Medieval Times Come To America

By Restless [Originally on goofyblog 4.25.08]
“The treatment of crime and criminals is one of the most unfailing tests of the civilization of any country.” - Winston Churchill
The United States currently incarcerates 738 people per 100,000 of population. Europe’s average is 200 (The United Kingdom is 145). Only Russia comes close at 603 per 100,000.

The U.S. is the only Democracy that indefinitely disenfranchises non-incarcerated felons, a practice prohibited by the international covenant of civil and political rights to which America is a signatory.
But who cares about these criminals and their namby-pamby “rights?”

Answer: You do.

Studies show that 2/3rds of ex-convicts vote Democratic. 5.4 Million Were disenfranchised in 2000 and 2004. Do the math – we should have had a different President all these long years.

Furthermore, allowing those who’ve served their time to vote would have prevented at least 7 key Republicans (John Warner, Connie Mack, Mel Martinez, etc.) from staying in, or getting elected to office.

The United States is also the first country to re-instate the practice of civil death or “Dead in Law” once popular in Europe about 500 years ago. It is the idea that a person can never repay their debt to society; after they do their penitence (in a penitentiary) they must run a gauntlet of years of parole or probation.

Then, the death part begins: Invasive background checks ensure unemployment or under-employment. Having a criminal record can keep you from getting an apartment, a government loan, even a driver’s license in some states.

The vaunted dip of unemployment in the US during the 90’s? Over 2 million prisoners and 600,000 more awaiting trial went unaccounted for, and still remain excluded. Meanwhile, 60% of black men have done time by the time they reach their mid 30’s.

True, the crime rate dipped in the 90’s, but was it the prosperous times, or was it the draconian sentences being meted out daily throughout the land? As economic times worsen, the crime rate is rising, putting the lie to this cruel practice that harms families and relatives of the Ex-Convict, and society in general.

What’s up with this? A Society turns on its own people. Creationism taught in schools, Laissez-faire capitalism is king, a country moving backwards.

“We don’t want to build more prisons; we don’t want to lock people up.” - Sen. Sam Brownback, Conservative Republican, former Presidential Candidate, after spending a night in a cell at Angola prison in Louisiana.

Dateline California –
In a move to ease chronic overcrowding, California approved the largest single prison construction program in the nation’s history. The plan will cost $8.3 billion and add 53,000 prison beds.

Based on current spending trends, California’s prison budget will over take spending on the states universities in 5 years. But California has all but guaranteed that prisons will eat up an increasingly large share of the taxpayer’s money because of chronic failures in a system that the state is now planning to expand.

Film Review: No Country For Old Men

By Restless [Originally on goofyblog 3.8.08]

In December I watched the new Coen Brothers film, No Country For Old Men, which has gone on to win the Academy award for Best Picture. It is a tragedy, a work of unremitting violence.

As I left the multiplex, I was moved by what I had seen, but I wasn't sure why. I thought: What are these guys saying here?

I mean, the Coens, the actors (Josh Brolin, Javier Bardim), all the artists who put this together, who made this considerable effort to construct something far more substantial than the usual meaningless mish mashes of action and mayhem like others (Tarintino’s Kill Bill 1 & 2, Rodriguez’s Sin City and Scorsese’s The Departed being the most notable examples) have done recently.

The best art reflects society back on itself, revealing the underlying reality by peeling away the white noise, the static (American idol, anything Britney/Lindsey/Paris, “reality” shows, Fox News, happy “news”) that clogs understanding.

So what reality was revealed by this film? For help, I consulted Aristotle’s Poetics, the 2000-year-old tome still considered the Bible of dramatic construction.


The film opens in the late 70’s with what passes now-a-days for a Greek chorus in the guise of Tommy Lee Jones' aging Texas country sheriff, which as Aristotle says serves to comment on and reinforce the central idea of the work: things ain't what they used to be. Or, to be more clear, decent people can’t stand up to or stop the ruthless, sociopathic evil unleashed by the unwinnable “War on Drugs” initiated by Nixon, who was then reeling from his failures in the Vietnam War.

This idea is reiterated throughout by Tommy in voice over and on camera as well as by other secondary characters--another type of modern Greek chorus (for true Greek choruses in modern film, see Jonathon Richman's guitarist-in-the-tree in “There’s Something About Mary” or the full-on Greek chorus used by Woody Allen in "Mighty Aphrodite").

We catch first sight of this ruthless evil just after Tommy Lee’s first soliloquy in what Aristotle calls a Parode, a "parody" of the action to come, a preview, a warm-up that sets up the action in the film with the thunderously violent escape from custody of the film's villain, Anton Chigurh.

From there the film moves directly into what Aristotle calls the “Complication,” – Lewelyn Moss, a Vietnam vet out hunting antelope on his day off, comes across the violent remains of a drug shoot-out with one-half of a survivor. He recovers a satchel full of money and makes it back to his trailer-park wife with no one the wiser and his fortune seems assured.

But, Aristotle teaches there would be no drama at all without a reversal of fortune. He writes in Poetics that this reversal must come from an error in judgment, not from depravity. And finally, said error must instill pity and/or fear in the audience (not disgust and/or revulsion).

Thus, when Josh Brolin's Llewelyn decides that the right thing to do is to take the sole survivor the water he so desperately had requested, it sets up the roller coaster of action of the rest of the film. Aristotle calls this the "denouement,” our hero’s tragic reversal of fortune. But, this is just the first of several misjudgments Llewelyn makes, always however stemming from his basic decency and goodness.

From then on, every scene in the movie hammers home the single idea: Decent men and women don’t stand a chance against amoral evil. They are either destroyed by it, or corrupted by it. There is no escape.

But, Aristotle writes that the denouement in a story must build up a well of pity and fear in the audience that will finally lead up to catharsis, a release of the built up pity or fear.

In this film's case, as in the only other masterpiece of the first decade of the 21st century, David Cronenberg’s “A History of Violence,” catharsis comes at the end when we finally realize that the urge to decency, to goodness, can never be completely exterminated by corruption or evil.
This makes for mature, modern entertainment!

No Country For Old Men is the place our country has come to inhabit.

Check it out!

4 Fantastic Films - III

By Restless [Originally on goofyblog 11.30.07]

1. The Century of the Self (2002) Pt. 3

At the end of the 50s, Anna Freud’s psychoanalytic methods were being challenged by those alienated by businesses’ use of them to sell products and also by a growing awareness of several major failures: Dr. Cameron’s experimental treatments using drugs and shock had failed, and the family on which Anna had based her treatment model had suffered casualties. Then there was Marilyn Monroe.

The 60s: The Tower Burns

The Freudians

The abuses of Dr. Cameron and the sorry state of Anna’s failed guinea pigs were not well-known, but Marilyn was famous worldwide. In 1960, she had turned to Anna Freud’s Los Angeles associate, Dr. Greenson, for treatment. Employing Anna’s techniques, he tried teaching Marilyn normality and seeing her daily, even hiring an assistant to monitor her at home. His treatment included drug therapy, and Marilyn became dependent on barbiturates.

When she killed herself in 1962, many in and outside the psychoanalytic world were shocked. Challengers and critics rushed the gate.

The Challengers

In the late 50s, a small group of renegade therapists in New York City had begun practicing new therapies, influenced by the teachings of Wilhelm Reich – himself an original disciple of Sigmund Freud. Reich had formed a concept of human behavior radically different than Sigmund & Anna’s: repression of essential human nature was the cause of all individual and social ills.

According to Reich, sexual energy is the primal force animating every person, thus all neuroses were caused by failure to orgasm. Free a patient’s sexuality and he would flourish. Static societies needed to be changed to be made more livable, human, sexual.

The Critics

In 1957, Vance Packard published The Hidden Persuaders, a book that called attention to businesses’ use of Freudian theory to create Pavlovian mass consumers. It had been a best seller, the book title itself becoming a common figure of speech.

Radical philosopher, Herbert Marcuse, had begun criticizing the empty prosperity that had been created by the broad conformance to a static social model. The idea people needed to be controlled was wrong, said Marcuse, agreeing with Reich: the individual should not conform. The unhealthy forces Anna Freud had seen in people were caused by a repressive society.

Ghettos raging; student, hippies protesting, playing; Babylon burning

Marcusian theory was used by the new Student Left to justify protests that attacked corporations and demonstrations opposing the Vietnam War. The mindless conformity of the 50s had led inevitably to a mindless war in Southeast Asia. American business and US government interests had become one with neither the advice nor consent of the people.

The students saw themselves as autonomous citizens in a democracy, able to make their own decisions, and rejected any secret or overt manipulation by business and government propagandists, still using tired Freudian techniques. Rebelling against consumerism, they experimented with non-conformist, anti-corporate ideas: communes; sexual freedom; long hair; funky attire; civil rights; women’s liberation; gay lib.

When the strong leaders, those who had radiated hope and pushed for non-violent change, were assassinated, and the US continued pursuing the war, even in the face of massive student opposition, some of the Left decided they needed to go farther.

The Weathermen group began a series of bomb attacks against the corporate structure. The police and FBI struck back hard. At the 1968 Democratic Convention police were set upon protesters, clubbing them at will. After 4 students were killed by the National Guard at Kent State, the Left began falling apart.

Out-gunned, they started turning inward, using Reich’s theories again: go inside, change oneself, change society from within.

The 70s — The Me Generation? – Reichians triumph

Esalen, initially a small West Coast retreat near Big Sur became the locus of this move inward. Fritz Perls – an Esalen therapist trained by Reich – created gestalt therapy as a new way for individuals to see and express their hidden inner feelings, and in so doing, free themselves of all social conditioning.

Experiments in social change via personal liberation were attempted, first with black and white radicals, then with a convent. As the nuns found liberation, they released their repressed sexuality. In the end, over half renounced their vows, some became radical lesbians — the convent closed its doors.

Thousands flocked to Esalen and other centers that were founded to emulate it. Then philosopher/entrepreneur Werner Erhard developed a method for mass producing self-expressive individuals. Calling it est – erhard systems training – he did his trainings with large groups in grueling all-day sessions, stripping off participants’ layers of social conditioning, going down to their nothingness. Once there, individuals were free to re-create themselves from that nothingness. They could be anything they wished to be.

Erhard taught that it was one’s highest duty to become a fully actuated individual. One of his aphorisms was “Participation is health.” These newly actuated individuals would change society by sheer numbers.
Est became hugely successful and was replicated all over America, the UK and other parts of the world.

As this internal “revolution” took hold, Business wondered: how could they reach these new individuals? Their old focus group model was of no use — fewer people were interested in participating. Moreover, existing methods of mass production wouldn’t work with this new urge for individual expression by consumers.

A leading market researcher, Daniel Yankelovich, was hired. Using surveys Yankelovich discovered a surprising truth about the Human Liberation Movement. Expressing oneself had become the most important thing, superseding all else.

The urge to change society had become irrelevant. What now emerged was the idea that people could be happy simply within themselves.

By 1980, a vast majority of the population had become preoccupied with the self. Then Ronald Reagan stepped onto the stage, and using Reichian theory, became the first politician to talk to these new beings and in so doing he defined the way to political victory for the next 27 years . . . and counting.

[more tomorrow]

Now a Word. . .

By Restless [Originally on goofyblog 11.27.07]

My abject apologies. Right in the middle of writing and publishing the series on the 4 Fantastic Films, my laptop punked out.

My tech skills are pretty rusty, and it was the day after Thanksgiving. I immediately thought: has to be the hard drive. Quick get on craigslist, 2 hours later a meeting at a Starbucks and problem solved? Not quite.

When I bought this Dell Inspiron 2 years ago, I added a 1-year on-site warranty. That was good because it failed immediately. Error messages saying the “module” wouldn’t seat onto the motherboard – which module? The only modules I had was the CD-R or the hard drive, but Dell Support instructed their sub-contractors to replace the motherboard instead – and they had to do it 3 different times.

So, twice, in a Starbucks, and once, in an empty trash-strewn 2-room office about a block from Ground Zero, I watched and learned. Now, it was my turn.

Layer by layer I pulled the Inspiron apart – first the hard drive, then the DVD-R (a free upgrade for all my “trouble,” evidently the problem in the first place). Then, keyboard, screen, modem.

Finally, I got down to the fan housing and pulled it away from the copper heat sink that lead to the covering over the cpu.

A thick layer of black dirt and hairs was clogging the heat sink! I’d wondered why the fan was working so extra hard at the end of the summer. The chip was fried.

Oh well. The guy who’d sold me the hard drive had thrown in an external drive casing, and kind relatives had donated an old desktop. No data lost . . . just a dead laptop.

A quick search on eBay and I’d bid and won a new chip from a company in Georgia – I’ll be portable again in another week.

The desktop was wrecked – old SIMM, funky hard drives (WARNING: IBM hard drives are defective, that’s why they went out of the hard drive biz in 2002). All I had to do now was completely rebuild the operating system and install all the programs I use daily (Office, Photoshop, etc.).

4 false starts later, I’m up and running. Then a jillion upgrades, service packs and patches more, and finally, I’m done.

The documentaries are worth seeing and definitely worth writing about. I’ll start up again tomorrow. Stay tuned for the 60s and the age of Reich (below).

4 Fantastic Films - II

By Restless [Originally on goofyblog 11.21.07]

1. The Century of the Self (2002) – Pt. 2

In 1929, the stock market crashed and people simply stopped buying anything they didn’t need. Sigmund Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays, saw the power and influence he had amassed during the 20s whither as business and government lost control of the people, now rioting against the corporations they blamed for the downturn. As the depression in America deepened, it helped to worsen the economic & social situation in Europe.

The 30s: Freud, Hitler & Roosevelt

Freud in Vienna became convinced humans were full of dangerous impulses and should never be allowed to truly express themselves. Democracy was illogical. He wrote Civilization & Its Discontents wherein he warned that people could easily be manipulated to love their leaders, while being turned against any outsiders.

His writings influenced Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, who came to power promoting the concept democracy was too dangerous, chaotic, leading only to unemployment and disaster. Societies must be planned. In 1933, his government started dismantling democracy, first controlling businesses, then more and more aspects of German life.

Elected in 1932, Roosevelt had similar ideas about business but completely different ideas about people and democracy. Yes, business must be regulated and reigned in. People on the other hand were rational and could be relied upon to make wise decisions when well-informed. The Founders concept of democracy was to be preserved and enhanced under his watch.

He worked with Joseph Gallup, who devised the first-ever polls of the people to find out what they wanted and what they were feeling. Armed with their opinions Roosevelt felt it was government’s role to enact the people’s will.

Hitler’s Minister of Enlightenment and Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, agreed with Roosevelt in regard to business: corporations must be controlled by government so that people had work and could support themselves. But when the Nazis took Austria in 1938, they employed Freud’s warning as their game plan, unleashing the deep frustration of the unemployed masses on the outsiders, the Jews.

Seeing this, Sigmund fled to Britain with daughter Anna, whom he had analyzed and then trained in his psychoanalytic techniques.

When Roosevelt was re-elected in a landslide in 1936 by promising even more controls on business, corporate leaders, fearing a dictatorship, decided they had to fight back. Calling on Edward Bernays and others, they began to produce propaganda: films extolling business as the true and only engine of prosperity, news articles that were nothing more than publicity for business giving the impression that they were the movers for good not sole profit in society and thus their motives should not be controlled or questioned.

The ability to insinuate this type of pr into main-stream journalism was clever and has been used in many ways since, but Bernays’ piece de resistance was in the creation of the New York Worlds Fair in 1939. Financed by corporations such as General Electric, the Fair was a truly impressive work effectively propagating the message that only business could bring consumers what they needed offering a vision of people, not as active citizens, but as passive consumers.

Their rational thoughts were not in charge any longer, instead only their desires were, which can be then controlled by business elites.

As WWII began, Sigmund Freud died of cancer and Anna became head of the Psychoanalytic movement. A severe, virginal woman, first analyzed by her father once he discovered she was masturbating, her goal was to push her father’s theories as the only true way. She had a messianic fervor and could never admit any mistake or acknowledge any other possible path.

The 40s: the Triumph of Conformity

Just before the war had begun, a wealthy New York mother of 4 fled her divorce, bringing her children to Anna for treatment. She began an experimental therapy, strictly controlling the environment of her young patients, believing the children could be taught to conform to family and social norms, and then their egos would be strengthened. In this way they would be able to control the dangerous forces within themselves. By adapting to the society around them they would be happy. Society and thus democracy would be secure.

But Anna never questioned if the society itself was causing the irrational behavior in her patients.

After America’s entry into WWII in 1942, the military became alarmed at the large number of soldiers suffering what is now called post-traumatic stress disorder – see my article of February 13^th. A Freudian psychoanalyst, Karl Menninger, was given authority to do a massive study on American soldiers and civilians.

Using Central European refugee psychoanalysts – due to a shortage of trained analysts in the US – they probed hundreds of Americans.

They concluded Freud had been right: just under the surface, human beings were driven by primitive irrational forces – they saw a vision of human nature as incredibly destructive. If allowed to go untreated these forces could infect society, they were a threat to democracy.

They came to believe what had happened in Germany and earlier in Russia during the revolution was the result of uncontrolled drives. The Menninger study convinced political leaders who were reeling from the shocking discoveries of the atrocities committed during the War: something must be done.

In 1946, President Truman signed the Mental Health Act of 1946, which set up hundreds of Guidance Centers in the US to deal with these mental health “problems” revealed in Americans.

The experimental techniques Anna had used on the New York family were used by the Menninger brothers to re-shape the psyches of their patients, not just children as Anna had, but adults also.

The goal: to teach people to control themselves and conform by using the new “science” of psychoanalysis thus making for a better society . The Menninger clinic was founded and psychoanalytic workers were trained to use these methods at Centers situated in hundreds of towns across the nation.

The 50s: the Strategy of Desire

Business also was interested in the secret self of the American consumer. Betty Crocker Foods was marketing a new product — instant cake mixes — but it wasn’t selling well. They employed, Ernest Dichter, one of Anna’s peers and Dichter devised the first focus groups, finding there was unconscious guilt about how easy the powdered product was to use.

Using Bernays’ old-school techniques of manipulation, Betty Crocker reduced guilt by changing the instructions on the box, telling consumers they must add a totally unnecessary egg to the mix. Guilt assuaged, consumers bought Betty Croker by the millions.

Dichter’s success led business to rush to employ psychoanalysts using the new concept of focus groups to probe American’s underlying secret traits, the sexual and social secrets too embarrassing or unconscious for people to verbalize. Products now were being marketed as having a therapeutic value: using products made you more secure, and thus more successful – to your benefit and for the betterment of society.

Meanwhile, when Soviet Russia tested its first nuclear bomb, politicians turned to Edward Bernays to quell public fear. But Bernays had always felt the only way to deal with the public was by manipulating their subconscious desires and fears. At heart, he believed people were stupid and they could not be told the actual reasons they had to be fooled and tricked. He successfully argued that the public’s fears should be amplified and then used as a tool in the Cold War.

Now, American affairs began to take a turn. Forces in President Eisenhower’s Administration became convinced that American businesses must be protected at all costs, seeing business and democracy as one and the same. In 1950, a mildly socialist president had been elected in the miniscule country of Guatemala.

Up until his election, the giant US corporation United Fruit owned much of the land and had been controlling that nation’s government while running their plantations there. President Arbenz was promising a land reform and the end to the domination of this American business. United Fruit turned to Bernays who ran a propaganda campaign using falsehoods and dirty tricks to imply Arbenz was a communist puppet of Soviet Russia, while CIA operatives trained an army, hand-picked a new leader, then sent in bomber planes to paralyze the country.

After Arbenz was toppled, Richard Nixon, Eisenhower’s VP, flew to Guatemala City and, in front of stacks of Communist booklets planted in the Presidential palace by Bernays, gave a speech supporting the “overthrow of the communists by the people.”

The Corrosion of Conformity

By the mid-50s, Freud’s ideas had penetrated American business, political, entertainment and journalistic spheres. Psychoanalysts were rich and influential, sought after. Once again as in the 20s, the masses could be controlled by feeding their underlying desires, but now it was the future of a stable democracy that was at stake.

People needed to conform to societal mores for the good of the whole. Their animal natures needed to be subjugated.

The foundation of our democracy is that change can and should be brought about by an informed and free citizenry, but Freud had challenged this, seeing people as incapable of deciding anything rationally. His theory was authoritarian: society would remain static unchangeable, instead the individual must adapt to it. The idea that an elite could control the masses via conditioning for their own good had triumphed. Aside from a few beatniks there was not much challenge to this brave new world.

With the success of the Guatemala coup, the CIA began to take these ideas much further. Hearing that the Soviets were possibly able to program people in any way they wished, they set out to find if they could do it, too. They poured millions into universities across the country in an effort to determine if mind control could be done.

One of the beneficiaries of the CIA’s funding, Dr. Cameron, became impatient with psychotherapy: it was taking just too long. He began experimenting with psychedelic drugs and electroshock, putting tapes under patient’s pillows attempting to change them subliminally to quickly alter human behavior. Instead, he reduced his patients to a vegetative state. In the end, all his experiments ended in complete failure.

And though Anna Freud had triumphed, her methods were not holding up. The family upon which she had formulated her theories weren’t responding correctly. Now in mid adulthood, they had become alcoholics, suffered divorces, were having nervous breakdowns. One had committed suicide.

Something was really out of whack.

[More Friday – Happy Thanksgiving]

4 Fantastic Films

By Restless [Originally on goofyblog 11.20.07]

months ago, the best aggregator of full-length video, jonhs.net – see my article of March 5th — changed urls, now moviesfoundonline.com. Youtube and other sites are great for short vidclips; this site is the best repository for the longer stuff.
Want standup — Pablo Francisco, Dane Cook, Carlos Mencia, Bill Hicks, Dave Chappell, Andy Kaufman, George Carlin? Click the Entertainment link.
What about movies? There’s “It’s a Wonderful Life,” “The Lost World,” “Joan the Woman.”
New, old; more are added weekly.
Docs on Iraq or 9-11? The site is the most comprehensive I’ve seen.
But, what’s best about this fantastic site are the Documentaries links. In the past 4 months, I’ve watched 4 remarkable works, three of which can be found there, that have fundamentally altered my understanding of the how we got to where we are today. That knowledge is power is true; the power to see where we can and must go now.
This is the first in a series of articles on these films. Don’t miss them!

1. The Century of the Self (2002)

Perhaps the best documentary I’ve ever seen. A history of the 20th century — in just 4 hours.
The century’s beginning marked also the beginning of the triumph of democracy. In its first 2 decades, most monarchies in the West were destroyed or saw their powers reduced to impotent ornamentation. By mid-century, most Asian ones had disappeared as well.
In 1900, most lived in rural communities under an aristocracy. By 2000, most lived in urban communities under some form of democracy.
But, as they say: the more things change, the more things remain the same. The dream of representative democracy, government of the people, by the people still eludes us.
This documentary shows clearly how elites still rule — not by aristocratic custom, but by ideas first developed at the turn of the century in Vienna by the father of psychoanalysis. It is about the most influential family of the 20th century.
Freud – WWI — the end of the aristocracy — birth of mass culture

After unsuccessfully promoting cocaine as a new wonder drug, Sigmund Freud invented new techniques for analyzing the individual. From his analyses, Freud theorized there were powerful, hidden primitive sexual and aggressive forces deep in humans, forces that if not controlled would lead societies and human beings into chaos and destruction. It was only decades later, that many of his conclusive theories were proved misguided at best or false at worse, such as the concept that his women patients who complained of incest were hysterical, imagining things or that all sexual urges or feelings were dangerous and needed to be repressed.
When WWI broke out, followed by the Russian Revolution, Freud felt he was on the right track — his new theories about human nature were proved.

At the time, his nephew Edward Bernays was a US press agent for opera singer Enrico Caruso, but when America entered the War, President Wilson appointed Bernays to promote the necessity of our entry, which was counter to the campaign promises he had made in his recent re-election. Wilson declared he was entering the war not to restore the empires, but to spread democracy throughout Europe, and Bernays proved extremely adept at spreading this concept both in the US and Europe.
When the War ended, he was asked to accompany Wilson to Paris, where he realized just how successful he had actually been as masses of people jubilantly greeted Wilson as a Savior. Bernays decided that what he could do in times of war, he might be able to in times of peace.
But how? He turned to the writings of his Uncle Sigmund. From Paris, he had sent his Uncle a box of Havana cigars and in return had received a copy of Freud’s Theory of Psychoanalysis. Freud’s depiction of the hidden forces in humans fascinated Bernays. Could he make money from people’s irrational hidden desires? He returned to New York and opened the first public relations firm.
Freud’s Nephew & the Roaring 20s

Bernays first effort was to see if he could get women to smoke, which was a strong societal taboo at the time. He called in the American psychoanalyst, A. A. Brill. Using Freud’s theory of penis envy, Brill told Bernays that women would feel more powerful if they smoked for then they would have their own penises, challenging men. Bernays devised a stunt that changed society and became known the world over.
Persuading a group of wealthy debutantes to do a “group smoke” at New York’s Easter Day parade, he touted their rebellious act as lighting “torches of freedom.” He propagated the idea that when women smoked they became more powerful, more independent, more free.
Corporations suddenly became extremely interested. Up until then, goods and products were promoted solely for their practical value. Because of the great successes of assembly-line mass production, businessmen were now worried they would soon saturate the marketplace and then see their profits decline.
If people could be persuaded to believe that smoking cigarettes would make them more free and powerful, they might be made to believe buying other products were good for them regardless of their actual need.
Bernays showed business how they could make people want things they didn’t need, by linking their desires to mass produced items. Out of this, would come a new political idea about how to control the masses. By satisfying people’s inner selfish desires, one made

them happy and thus docile, which was the start of the all-consuming self, which has come to dominate our world today.
Bernays used his uncle’s theories as the foundation for the creation of the mass consumer. He used movie stars & sports figures in the first testimonials and began the first product placements in movies, cleverly promoting cars as symbols of male power and energy.
Then, starting with Coolidge, Bernays was called upon to promote political figures. Public relations had entered into politics
By 1927, the US had become not a nation of citizens but a nation of consumers. Bernays propagated the idea consumers should also participate in the stock market, buying shares on credit.
Freud Darkens — Infects Politics — Intellectuals Embellish
Meanwhile in Vienna, by the mid 20s Uncle Sigmund was nearly broke in a war-ravaged and depressed Europe and appealed to his nephew for help. Bernays responded by getting Freud published for the first time in the US, becoming his agent, getting him accepted there, fundamentally affecting journalists and writers – the American intelligentsia.
By then Freud’s ideas on human nature had become more pessimistic. In the aftermath of the war, he saw groups of people as animals driven irrationally by deep forces of sadism. The guiding principle of democracy – citizens were rational and could be trusted to make decisions based on the facts – was wrong.
The influential American journalist, Walter Lippman, theorized that if this was so, then it was necessary to rethink democracy, which was now too dangerous; what was called for instead was a new elite that could manage the “bewildered herd.”
Bernays had found it easy to manipulate the masses and thought people were stupid; said so many times. He took Lippman’s theory as his own. People needed to be socially controlled, their hidden desires needed to be stimulated, then guided to the acceptable solution. Democracy could be run this way; the masses could be managed, docile, happy, through the creation of a consumerist society. When Hoover was elected in ‘28, what Bernays called “enlightened despotism” became the new model for running democracy.
By the end of the 20s, he had become one of the rich, influential elite in this new world.

Then in the fall of ’29, his success at promoting stock market speculation by the masses –shoeshine boys had stocks by then – backfired and the simple world of the docile consumer ended.
[Continued mañana]

Escape from New York

By Restless [Originally on goofyblog 11.8.07]

Two and a half years after planes were flown into the Twin Towers, I moved to New York City. I’d been thinking about living in New York City for like 30 years, yet there had always been something daunting about it – cold, distant, big, tough. Shy and easily crowd-shocked, close to my dysfunctional family, I wasn’t ready for any of that.

Then, during the 90s, I lost all my reservations one by one. I began long-distance travelling in ’97 and by summer 2001 I had 3 trips to Europe and 1 to Chicago under my belt. So, when the buildings fell, I thought seriously of going to New York for the first time. I wanted to help out. A manager I once worked for had transferred there and I discovered his office had been on the 100^th floor of WTC2. I sent him emails and he finally responded: he’d been late for work that day. For awhile I regretted not rushing to New York.

Now, I’m glad. Volunteers are now dying from whatever it was they inhaled while helping downtown after the authorities assured them it was safe.

But, the next Spring I did go, flying into La Guardia, taking the subway across the East River to Manhattan. No hotel reservations, no clue as to where to go – in New York City for 10 days. Not so daunting once you’re there. I liked it there immediately. I had my hair bleached on Astor Place. I stayed at the Chelsea, then moved to St. Marks, finally to the Gershwin. I got sore feet from walking.

Near the end of my stay, I met a friend for lunch. I picked her up at the NJ Ferry in a cab, took her down to the pier at the bottom tip of Manhattan.

Afterwards, we wandered around downtown looking for a Starbucks and came upon Ground Zero. By then, advance reservations were required for the long wait to stand on the raised platform above the boarded-up block to see the hole that was once the World Trade Center. The line stretched on down the block.

On the cab ride back, we passed the site from the other side, slowed by the congestion on the highway, Battery Park and the water on our left. We could see that chunks had been ripped out of some of the buildings on the periphery, adding to the sinister effect: something evil had happened here.

In the aftermath of 9/11, authorities in New York and elsewhere began using terrorism as the catchall excuse to muzzle the people’s right to demonstrate for change, one of the engines that drove America and made us the most dynamic and admired society on Earth. In summer 2004, when the Republicans had their Convention at Madison Square Garden, protests were broken up by mass arrests to a holding area out on a remote pier. Later, all charges for most were dropped.

In this new world, bicyclists were now terrorists, too. Using this stupid excuse, the NYPD made mass arrests at one of the last-Friday-of-the-month demonstrations Critical Mass uses to bring attention to the need for more bike lanes. Biking in NYC is still very dangerous, while in other cities, Critical Mass has pushed leaders to make streets more bike-friendly.

Cops were stationed in random subways and terminals, watching for what, I was never sure. And there were what seemed like daily demonstrations of cop-car power in Times Square — caravans of 20 or more, sirens screaming, jetting down 42^nd west from the Square.

This fearful reaction bled over into the business sector. I noticed bomb-sniffing dogs being used in downtown parking lots. The search for temp office work was littered by background checks, urine tests, credit checks, sometimes even fingerprint and iris scans. It was extremely rare to not have to go through some kind of security ceremony in order to enter any office building in New York.

Most had a computer cam, coupled to a database, with a label printer. You’d get your daily badge and then have to do it all over again – everyday, for every job. Other buildings had no badge process at all meaning everyone had to wait in long lines to show ID.

Though some terrorists flew planes into buildings, apparently the new threat to our freedoms were middle-aged temp office workers – and measures were being taken.

But they would have been unsuccessful in foiling them. In many buildings, the low paid security personnel misread my ID then printed out a badge with the wrong name. In others, after a few days of regularity they’d just wave you through.

Some places were worse than others. One I particularly detested was down just off Wall Street. One of my agencies had their offices there and they were giving me free training in presentation graphics so I had to go in. In the lobby, you had to go state your name, destination, person you were visiting, show ID, then wait while they called up. Then they would print a no-pic label badge and you’d be on your way – allowed to walk 10 yards, and forced to show another guard not only your freshly made badge, but your original ID, because after all, you might have switched identities on the 10-yard walk.

Since I didn’t want to end up like the guys in the picture at right, I had to put up with this ridiculous practice. The ID above resembles one I received every single day at a place I worked this summer 3^rd shift on the weekends. It was the worst. Our “office” was in Basement 2, and I needed to borrow someone’s badge to enter every door including the bathroom. When my agency said they wanted a urine sample to continue there I told them bye bye.

By then I had begun to run into fellow temps who had quit their perm or long-term temp jobs at other corps in protest over those firm’s instituting of extra, invasive, pointless security procedures (fingerprint scans for one, extensive bg checks for another).

It may be difficult to understand how this incessant security stuff, aggressive police presence feels unless you are under it. Some aren’t affected at all. Others put up with it. Did I feel safer? No. I felt more watched. The boundaries had shrunk, it was like something wild had been hunted and trapped in the name of safety.

The day before I left New York, I got gig at a new firm located in the CBS building . In the center of the block, the building had entrances on 53^rd and 52^nd. The security procedure at this building was the oddest of them all. On a small 4×5 clipboard was a pad of small entrance tags to be filled out. You then showed ID and were allowed to go to the elevators. No badge. Meaning one had to do this whenever you left for lunch or breaks. And since you didn’t have a badge, you had no access once you got to your assigned floor until a perm employee came out of the elevators or walked by and saw you through the glass doors.

I had to go through this in most of the buildings I worked, but usually I could flash my badge to whomever was about to let me in. Not here though, leading some to question me again as if I had somehow gotten through 5 security guards in the lobby and was now about to gain entry to floor 17, where I would finally be able to accomplish my nefarious goal: typing boring documents for bored attorneys. Only to be foiled again by Joe Mailroom Clerk, questioning me closely on my motives for standing outside the glass door by the elevators. Drat! I almost had them didn’t I?

When I finally left that day, I decided I’d walk up the east side of Central park to my place. I got off the elevator and started out towards one of the entrances and got to mid-lobby before I realized I was heading out 52^nd the wrong direction. So, I did a 180 heading back through the elevator banks to 53^rd, zoning out to 2Pac on the iPod.

This black security guy is running towards me, but I can’t hear what he’s saying because I have plugs not buds in. By time I get one of them out, he’s in front of me midway through the elevator area.

“You can’t do that!”

“Do what?” looking at him, surprised, irritated.

“Do you work here?”

Like why would I be coming out of the elevator if I didn’t work here? “Yes!” Emphatic. Started to dawn: he didn’t think I’d come out of an elevator – and I had no badge to show I worked there even for the day, no way to prove anything.

I turned and saw another guy running toward me from the 52^nd street side. He had only seen the part where I walked back into the elevators, hadn’t seen me turn around.
“You don’t do it that way! You sign in!”

I looked at them both. “I just got off the elevator!” my kneejerk reaction to this idiocy showing through as I started on to the 53^rd street door. Both of them were suddenly uncertain not wanting to believe.

“I just got off the elevator!!” and I was out the door. Thank God Almighty, free at last!

On the way up along the park, I thought about it. What if they had decided to detain me. Yeah, it could have been much worse. It was starting to feel like I was going from one what’s next to another. So, what was next?

Ben Franklin had it right when he said a people who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security deserve neither.

That night, I worked for hours on a high-res scan of a fake ID I’d bought from a hidden link on a non-descript web site 2 years before. Cash sent to a post office box at a small Illinois town had seen it come in the mail months later. But a year in my wallet had almost destroyed it: my photo was only half there and I’d thrown away the original passport shots long ago.

By dawn, I had something acceptable. And it was time to Escape from New York. To where though? Is the rest of the country as bad as this? I had to find out.

Make a Call, Kill a Bee, Redux

By Restless [Originally on goofyblog 10.30.07]

Earlier this year, I wrote about the mysterious death of bees this past year. Given the name colony collapse disorder to reflect the potentially catastrophic decimation of honeybee colonies in the US and Europe, a German study pointed to waves from cell phone transmittal stations as probable cause.

Not true. The real reasons for colony collapse disorder turn out to be much more complex, going to the heart of modern factory farming:

o European honeybee (apis melliferahas long history of human management; stores honey in bulk; lives always in large colonies (30 – 100K).

o During past 10 years, China honey underpriced US, leaving only pollination services to stay in business.

o California almond crop (800,000 acres in Central Cali alone) entirely depends on honeybees; can’t get crop insurance without 2 – 5 colonies/acre. Apples & blueberries run close second (90% bee pollination); peaches (50%); oranges (30%); squash & melons all rely.

o Factory farming means monoculture in the fields — no weeds, any other plant, no other insects; heavy use of pesticides.

o Bees must be trucked into the farms to replace insects killed by the pesticides. 100% of US commercial bee colonies are used just for the California almond crop, trucked in starting in November.

o Enroute, bees are fed high fructose corn syrup and soy protein. But these aren’t whole foods for bees, so cause malnutrition. After pollinating crop, bees have nothing to eat due to monoculture.

o Bees weakened by the above become susceptible to:
· tracheal mites — jumped from other species in the 80s;
· varroa mites — which carry 25 viruses, in the 90s.
· nosema, a fungus that invades bees weakened by mites.
· foreign predators – African beetles in Florida overrun docile honeybee colonies.
· pesticides used on the crop they pollinate.
· lower protein content of pollen — due to global warming.

o This year’s pollination process required emergency changes in the law to allow Australian imports of honeybees. But Indian bees have been discovered on an Australian ship recently and the Indian bees are host to a 3^rd kind of mite which would truly decimate the European honeybee should it make it to the US.

o The only beekeepers not affected are those that don’t artificially feed, use non-chemical mite control and do very little or no trucking of their colonies – equates to lower income, which very few pros can do and survive.

o Even before last year, world honeybee population had declined by 50% in 30 years.

Factory farming driven by petrochemicals doesn’t work, is headed for massive failure led by honeybee’s decline. Biodiversity is the only real answer. It’s all about pollination.
Do we want to continue to eat?

For more detail, see Gina Covina’s piece on AlterNet, from which this post liberally borrows.

One Dead in Ohio Part II

By Restless [Originally on goofyblog 10.28.07]

Midnight in a Greyhound depot underneath one of Pittsburgh’s many bridges. The harshly lit rectangle of a room was packed. Amish, black, latin, whites. One of my bus mates from New York, a short, fat guy, sat down at the table next to what passed for a café. Based in Arkansas, he delivered school buses for a living, then took the bus back. Without prompting, he went off on George Bush, a scenario to be repeated with others over the next few days.


An hour passed and we re-boarded, with a fresh bus driver and some fresh passengers. Our Opus Dei pastor had taken the bus to Cleveland, thank the Lord. A Rob Zombie lookalike, tall, dreads, guitar strapped to his back, sat a few rows back.

We drove out from under the bridge and up through town to the freeway as our new driver did the standard spiel twisting it into a mildly funny standup routine. We were on the road to Columbus, set to arrive at 4am for an hour breakfast break. Hadn’t seen my friend Bill, who lived near there, so I’d called him as I left New York to see if he was up to a real early start to his Friday and he was game.

I tried to doze in the dark, now quiet bus. 2 hours later, we pulled over onto that area between an on ramp and the far right lane of a freeway. Our driver announced there was a problem with the bus and we’d have to wait for a replacement to be sent from Columbus, now 70 miles away. He allowed us outside for a smoke and fresh air, but told us: stay close to the bus, stay off of the on ramp.

The freeway was deserted; the on ramp looked to be the outlet for a small country road. I went out twice, calling my friend to tell him of our delay, then walking up the on ramp away from the bus to take a piss. The night was mild, breezeless and quiet. I took my seat on the bus, sitting a few rows behind the driver.

I could hear something coming down the ramp. Then desperate shouts watch out! watch out!! And thwack!!! — a sickening sound – a car swerved into view stopping in my line of sight on the island in front of the bus. A guy in a white T-shirt got out wringing his hands and walked back. He’d plowed into a young Jewish man who’d been walking with an Asian man on the ramp talking their backs turned. When they finally saw the approaching car they tried to dodge it – just as the driver tried did the same.

The passengers across the aisle went into a running narrative. A young girl ran back onto the bus and down the aisle crying. I couldn’t bring myself to look. I thought it might have been Rob Zombie, who was out there and whom I’d spoken to a few minutes before.

First a fire truck, then 2 state trooper cars, finally an ambulance came. I could see the driver of the car being put into the back of one of the trooper cars. He was weeping. He passed a breathalyzer test and was eventually released to drive away even before our replacement bus arrived. The medical people were helping the Asian passenger sit up on the gurney, then carried him into the ambulance.

The young man died later that night. He was 26, on his way to visit a grandmother in St. Louis.
An hour later, we got a new bus and driver, drove to a rest stop, waited another hour for a mechanic to fill the old bus with coolant. When our original driver limped the old bus into our stop, he sat in front on the right. He was inconsolable. In sue-happy America, he was about to have major problems.

We got to Columbus 3 hours late and were met by insurance investigators who kept us from leaving for another 2 hours.

Why were those guys walking in the road like that? Why didn’t the bus driver go to the rest stop? Life is so fragile, it can end so easily.

I’d been watching many documentaries on the wars of the past 30 years. Millions have died just because of a concept, a political dogma or religious belief. During Pol Pot’s reign of terror just wearing glasses was a death sentence. Our passenger had died young, there was no reason, no meaning to it.

Get your affairs in order. Be aware of the gift of life.


My friend met me at the Columbus depot then had to go to work. While waiting for our bus to depart for St. Louis, I watched a cluster of Amish men wearing Panama hats and long beards accompanied by one Amish woman in blue full-length dress and matching bonnet. They were speaking what sounded like Dutch, smiling and politely joking with each other.

Our new driver, the only woman driver during the entire trip, barreled out of the station trying to make up for some of the time lost. I napped fitfully wondering what more lay ahead.

[to be continued]

Hot, Hot, Hot: Throwdown

By Restless [Originally on goofyblog 10.23.07]

The weekend’s mail brought 2 of the new action films from Asian director Johnnie To. I watched Fulltime Killer (2001) first. Set in Taiwan, Macau, Hong Kong and Thailand the dialog is in Cantonese, Japanese and English with a little Korean thrown in for good measure. It’s the story of 2 dueling contract killers, a girl caught between them and the Hong Kong police detectives tracking all 3 of them. The sets, mostly urban, are lit and shot with a clean, sharp definition that draws one in. There are hundreds of these locations all looking pristine-beautiful and that alone would be worth seeing it.

The action never stops though. Fulltime Killer moves like a bullet train, without a second thought, to a final night time showdown at a fireworks warehouse and its double ending.

Next day, time to take in Throwdown (2004), set entirely in Hong Kong and opening at night among the breezy reed beds along the edge of the city. The soundtrack jumps between Cantonese and English as the film features another threesome: an alcoholic nightclub owner resting on his laurels as throwdown champion, the challenger who becomes his partner and the ambitious woman who wants fame and success as a singer. Again, the locations have to be seen. The lighting for the night shots is exquisite. My eyes devoured every scene. And like Killer, Throwdown barrels down the line, weaving multiple plotlines together without pausing once for breath.

Neither film makes standard Hollywood sense: there is little romance, motives are murky. What the characters want to do is all that matters, but why they want to or how they feel as they succeed or fail is never dwelt upon.

Watching both these films I glimpsed a new world — modernist, crowded, a paper thin borderline separating life and death – where no one really cares. In shiny, dense city-jungles where most of humankind now live all that matters is keeping your wits, taking care your physical self, getting money to live well. Check it out!

One Dead in Ohio Part I

By Restless [Originally on goofyblog 10.21.07]

I left New York Thursday before Labor Day weekend. Tried Amtrak, which goes NYC, Cleveland, Chicago, then down to Albuquerque and over, ending in L.A. Sold out, try tomorrow.

Cabbed from Penn Station over to the Port Authority, where Greyhound always runs, always has space. During the 3-hour wait for departure, I stumbled into the little cafeteria I’d been in the very first night I came here: New Year’s Eve, 2002, and that’s saying something because the Port Authority Terminal is a multi-level maze of entrances, stairways, gates and shops in which one can easily get totally lost.

Back then, I’d driven 500 miles in my Geo Prism all the way from Columbus over the fogbound mountains of Pennsylvania, arriving in Secaucus, New Jersey, at 10 pm, where I finally found a motel room (major feat on New Year’s Eve – so many were by the hour only, on that night). At the bus stop into the City, I met a guy who took me under his wing, amused that I’d come all the way from San Francisco for New Year’s Eve in NYC.

The end of the line was the PA and my newfound friend took me 4 blocks down 8th Avenue to a bar full of show people in mid-celebration, where he intended to roost for the night. I wanted to go to Times Square though, so, telling him I’d come back after midnight, I started walking down Eighth, trying to find a way to get over to Seventh and Times Square, but because of “heightened security” the cops had blocked every street.

For 10 blocks I walked. After enduring 2 checkpoints, the crowd I was in was funneled into a “corral,” a half block-long area surrounded by blue barricades,manned by dozens of cops. In the distance we could see the Square. This was my first experience with what New York City had become.

I love crowd surfing, but we could only be good cattle this night. A couple years later, I discovered the police had completely crushed the Critical Mass movement by calling the bicyclists “terrorists,” setting safe biking in Manhattan back many years. They did the same thing during the Republican Convention in 2004, setting freedom in America back many years. I could only wonder if it had been any different before 9-11.

It was a mild night – high 40s. New Year’s came and went without much celebration. I noticed lots of girls hitting on the cops; it’s so true about some women and a uniform, ain’t it?, I walked back to the bar to find my new short, pot bellied friend completely shit-faced. He slurringly told me the 1st was his birthday and since I’m a Capricorn, too, I asked how old he was.

He was a year younger than me. Lordy! Is this what living in the East does to you? I found out later the answer to that question is — yes.

He’d spent all his money and I was in no mood to drink anymore, so we navigated the 4 blocks back to the Port Authority. Our departure gate was 2 floors below the street, but didn’t leave for 45 minutes. Next to the gate was that little cafeteria.

I was hungry and I figured my friend needed some coffee badly. So I bought a hot dog and coffee for me plus one for him. As I handed him the cup I witnessed the most truly amazing sight of the evening. He began by first twirling around right by the condiment counter experiencing the vertigo that sometimes comes from severe drunkenness. On the 3rd twirl, he began projectile vomiting. A few more twirls and he stopped, then fell flat on his back, a felled tree amongst the forest of high chairs and tables, still vomiting like a whale spewing water from its blowhole.

Then he passed out and started snoring. Without a second’s hesitation, a latin guy was at my side, discussing these events. Could he be having an epileptic seizure? An older black lady said leave him alone. Two Port Authority cops came in, hovering around him. He regained consciousness and wanted to catch his bus and go home, but the cops weren’t going to allow him to go anywhere except maybe to Bellevue or the drunk tank.

While he argued with them, I got on the bus. My East Coast adventure had begun.

And now 5 years later, here I was in that small restaurant again. An old woman sat next to me. She badly needed a shave and a bath. On the other side of her, a 30-ish dished-out blonde was reading the Post, pointedly ignoring my neighbor’s attempts to chat. Cursing the blonde and NYC in general, she told me she was on her way to an ashram upstate.

Go figure. Maybe she was my last beacon from the East. Had I come full circle?

The bus left on time, a no nonsense black driver at the helm. A Christian 3 rows back started explaining “things” to his Asian seatmate as if giving a sermon in the Church of Greyhound. He spoke for 6 hours straight. I’ll bet you didn’t know the infallibility of the Pope is protected by God: if the Blessed Father attempts to say something not true our Blessed Lord will knot up his tongue rendering our Blessed Vatican City Mayor speechless.

I hadn’t slept at all the night before, preparing for my departure. As I tried to doze off, the Christian’s subliminal sermon penetrated my brain like pincers from an Inquisitor’s torture cabinet: his parents were part of Opus Dei; our Heavenly Blessed Pope visited and forgave his Turkish assassin in his prison cell, and yadda yadda. Oy! I left New York for this?

We made one rest stop on the way to Pittsburgh, just in time for a sudden rainstorm. The girl down the aisle smiled at me as she passed me in the 7-11. The latin family across from me didn’t return to the bus within the 20 minutes allotted by our driver, causing him to drive to the freeway entrance and gun his motor for 10 minutes, fuming. When they finally ran up, wet and anxious, he lectured them severely. Chastened, we rode on through the night, making it to Pittsburgh at midnight for an hour layover to change buses and drivers.

[to be continued]

Back in Cali Again

By Restless [Originally on goofyblog 9.21.07]

The first day of fall and my summer vacation from blogs and all news is now over — and so is my life in New York. As it turned out, my summer vacation was really the end of the end.
My last post was of a panorama. I started a plog the other day and wrote:

It looked to be just another hot, humid summer in new york. This shot [the one I posted in July], taken at 10am, 7/2, on the Upper East Side, of the East River and Roosevelt Island, shows the hazy beginnings of one of those days. How clear was it becoming that things just weren’t going my way any longer, hadn’t been going my way for some years now. Very clear. Everyday brought more clarity: don’t stay here.

Then, a way opened, and I walked through. Good bye for now, new york. So much I’ve learned, understood. Paradoxically, I began to feel more boxed in, more typecast, more immobile there than anywhere else (except perhaps London if I’d lived there for longer than a few weeks).

But, things change and one can benefit from changing with them. Escape from New York. That’s that I’ve done — for now. And off on a wild bus ride across country.

And now. . .see the photo above. Landed in a housesit for the next 6 weeks, my friend visits Southeast Asia twice a year, where Western men over 40 are considered desirable still. He likes it and like I said, things just fell together and that’s a sign.

And after many hours walking the streets of Manhattan listening to Eckhart Tolle on my trusty iPod, I’m all about signs. Pay attention to them. They are all around you.

[to be continued]

P.S., click on the photo for a blow-up. Look at the cat in the center!