but she has a great web site. tixon told me about it, and now, tina brooks blows as i blog. the body is sticky, but the ears are cool. you can reach it at pandora.com, and they will play you uninterrupted sets of 4 to 5 hours. they will feature artists similar to the person you have chosen to hear. cool shit, unlike this weather, which at this moment, seems hotter than godzilla's breath.
the teacher i work with is fast becoming the hair police. not to me, but to certain students. you would think it was 1958, not 2008. tell me, how is one supposed to make a buck without feeling like an accomplice?
and while the world concerns itself with haircuts...(yeah, you know. wars, starvation, disease, do their thing.)
how can you own land? how can there be water companies? what is a country?
you see, there is no teaching going on. there is fascism going on, but not education. commenting on someone's appearance is not teaching. teaching science without ever going outside is not teaching. teaching a u.s. history course that ends after ww1, and was filled with lies, is not teaching. they are to education as our government is to a humane and decent set of foreign and domestic policies. by the way, analogies are also not education.
speaking of government, obama has named as an economic adviser a defender of wal-mart. the man claims that wal-mart helps poor communities by creating jobs and offering cheap consumer goods. we hear often of obama's days as a community organizer. he surely knows this is bullshit, but what one knows doesn't matter. it is what one does that counts. nader recently said that a smart person who says and does stupid things becomes a stupid person. to succeed in the american power structure, one must apply fundamentally stupid solutions, because to apply sane, intelligent, solutions is not an option. the forces of power are on the side of insanity, so when one elects to represent those forces, one is bound to also behave in an insane manner.
of course, obama is better than mccain, but is he good? getting beaten up is better than getting killed, but that doesn't mean that i look forward to getting my ass kicked. i don't begrudge people voting for him, as he is the stronger of the two candidates, but i do begrudge the excitement over the whole thing, as if obama represents some great societal leap forward.
to those who say that if obama is elected, it will show how far we have come in terms of our racial views, i point to the fact that hugo chavez and evo morales are both the victims of extreme racial hatred, even though they are both presidents. racism has always been more than the individual ideas of people. rather, it is also a construct of power, a set of institutionalized practices. it is also tied to class, skin color, immigration, and other factors. is obama in power going to help the next rodney king or sean bell? is obama in power going to help the hundreds of thousands of black men behind bars? will obama in power lead to affordable housing, decent health care, an end to war, and a set of cultural and educational values consistent with an anti-racist society? of course not. not to make light of it, as this would not have been possible in the recent past, but obama's climb can be seen as the latest example of "black faces in white places," and a light black face at that. i bring to your attention that obama claimed that the clinton campaign doctored a photo of him to make him look darker. think about that; that bothered him. as krassner said, "you'll have to send the negro dummies back. they're not light skinned enough." oh yeah, we have come so far that a "black" guy running for president is at pains to convince us that he is just light skinned enough for the gig.
progress baby, progress.
gore vidal once said that the range of political thinking in america runs from conservatism to fascism. so called progressives should remember this before they get excited about presidential elections.
and they should start working on extending that range.
anarchism, anyone?
hey man, that would be chaos!
as opposed to what we have now? welcome to the usc.
the united states of chaos, where only the rich have a sense of order.
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