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Dispatches From Dystopia

~ "What man by worrying can add one cubit to his span of years?"

Dispatches From Dystopia

Tag Archives: freedom

“Bringing The Art To You”

01 Wednesday Jul 2020

Posted by David in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Aesthetics, freedom

How much should I tip the driver?

I know how much for a pizza. But art? Wait. They don’t really bring art to me or to anybody else, for that matter.

“They” is the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, more of an “it” than a they. What they do is stay open, most of the time, so I can go in and look at the art. I grew up in a time when an art museum did not need a slogan, the way GE or State Farm did.

Some of the art is sculpture and paintings by Dead White Men. But it happens to fulfill an aesthetic that defines beauty. There are standards. They express ideas, some of them related to Christianity, like Bible stories or portraits of saints.

Sometimes the secular art depicts soup cans, or horses, or pictures of Elvis and Marilyn Monroe. But Hey, it’s art and I don’t want to look like a rube that has Leonardo’s Last Supper reproduced on black velvet hanging on the living room wall in my double wide.

Art is what the Museum can afford to “acquire”, which is Museumspeak for buying a work of art or borrowing a work from another museum. Let’s not forget accepting art from rich people as a gift.

Kinda creepy that within walking distance of the Museum, protesters destroyed one of the most beautiful urban boulevards in America, because it had statues of Confederate heroes . Destroying what disturbs you is what tyrants do, or the mobs hired by tyrants and plutocrats to fulfill their wishes.

Right now the mob does its destroying outside the walls of The Museum. But how long before all those religious paintings, rendered by Dead White Christian Men will need to be removed? They’re in a state-owned Museum after all. We could make room for more soup cans, or non- heteronormative art that is transpositive, ya know?

What happens when somebody decides that the art being brought to people like me is no longer acceptable? Then what ? Do we store it, sell it, or burn it? The Nazis seized, sold or destroyed the art they didn’t like. Now when aesthetics is made secondary to politics, like what Hitler and, later, Mao did, we can watch one more of our freedoms die. That particular freedom is the freedom to think for ourselves, to decide what is good or bad art. Great art has been made depicting despicable ideas. Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph des Willen (Triumph Of The Will) immediately comes to mind.

We have to find beauty and even truth in what we don’t always understand. I guess that’s what makes it art, instead of just pretty pictures.

The University In The Information Age

11 Thursday Jul 2019

Posted by David in Politics

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Tags

#Universities, freedom

Do people still call our current time by this pompous name? Putting a binary coding (not binary that way, different rant) on all that can be seen, heard and recorded gives you information, of sorts. I’m not deriding that classification and organisation of the world. But it requires people who need the world organized in such a way. Suppose you have no need of a binary universe, like a Kalahari bushman, or a Mongolian goat herder? But with the ever expanding digitized universe comes control and power. It follows that autonomy from the digital world creates gaps in the control of the digital masters. Now I’m neither a Luddite nor do I advocate an unrealistic primitivism, but what institutions exist to counterbalance the tech giants? These businesses appear motivated at their core by money and the evermore sinister megalomania of their founders, owners, and top executives.

I’m not really interested in giving the tech plutocrats any more power than they have already. But with every election, this is taking place. High technology tycoons have ready partners with politicians, also blatantly hungry for power. They also have ready accomplices with the officials of the university establishments, both public or private (with a few exceptions). The modern university’s need for ever more money makes the university little more than a satrapy, the academic bureaucrats and professors, the vassals, of the government agencies(through grants), tech companies,and individuals who give them money. The legislature, through its appropriations has devolved into merely another funder. President Ryan, at the University of Virginia, recently unveiled plans for a digital, information science college. Directly, it will produce more qualified workers for the technology field. It will also produce yet another dependent class of workers, perhaps more affluent and better educated than a nineteenth century millhand, but still carrying the risk of being dependent on the fortunes, whims and vicissitudes of an industry. The textile manufacturers of the past or high tech digital industries of the present day suggest merely a distinction with no difference.

Thomas Jefferson is being vilified these days because he owned slaves. His position around slavery is more complex than what his detractors suggest. I suspect the real reason he is “ungood”, in Newspeak terms, goes beyond his slaveholding, but in his social and economic vision.

Jefferson had a vision of a self-sufficient yeoman class, who were independent of the monied interests and their political allies. The powerful could control the independent factions by manipulating their economic environment. Look at a railroad setting freight rates in the nineteenth century, with no free market alternatives to curb their power.*

Senator Kaine and Senator Warner, in Virginia, can scare the civil servants, uniformed service members or federal contractors with the specter of a conservative or libertarian out to eliminate their job, military mission, or contract. They use code phrases like “strong defense” or “supporting military families”, undoubtedly worthy purposes, to maintain both their own power and the size of government. Other worthy and necessary purposes keeping government big are highways and education. The administrative state needs government employees and government contractors, who will always fall prey to the political bully boy/girl. I’m not suggesting merely derailing the gravy train. Rather, I’m saying take up the track, just as railroads abandon obsolete, disused, and,therefore, expensive lines. Thriving economies have a dynamism to them. Shackling them to government or to privileged industries with the risk of ossification and obsolescence hinders that dynamism. The counter balance demands citizens who see beyond a job or an industry. And it is a delicate balance, requiring the discerning skills of a broadly educated citizenry, unfettered to any potentially stifling industry.

At its core is a conflict. Politicians and their financial backers want the economy and the government to grow, Thus the university has morphed into a trade school. Some new graduates will get jobs in government. Alternatively, the prospective college graduate/ employee finds work in an industry (often “high tech”), whose owners regularly and overwhelmingly support politicians who advocate for their agendas. They conflate the needs and values of, say, an Amazon, with the greater public good. The tech giants have shown with increasing frequency that their corporate “cultures” are monolithically authoritarian and leftist, holding political, social or religious conservatives in disdain, if not outright contempt. An employee who must conform to the corporate culture to practice their skill is not free.

All this “education” for work in the administrative state or private sector behemoth creates a dependent or subservient class that would be anathema to visionaries of a free society, people like Jefferson. Higher education has the challenge of educating a free people, not evermore sophisticated serfs. And this challenge to educate independent critical thinkers is not new. Paradigms of conformity have always existed, and always it is necessary to assess the value of these paradigms. Transcendent standards and ideals must be studied.The studies comprise the liberal arts and sciences. It would do well to study tbese disciplines independent of a Marxist analysis.

In the political realm, I would urge voters to make university funding and overview priority issues in the upcoming election cycles. That means seriously looking at just what colleges are up to. That means using funding and the student loan programs to maintain universities as institutions dedicated to the free exchange of ideas. Demand the college presidents go before the legislative bodies to justify their institutions’ existence. The legislatures, while they still can exert a modicum of restraint on the public college, should demand full disclosure of the “partnerships” between the University and contemporary tech companies. If they are reticent to disclose, use the subpoena power. Have tbe University presidents explain why they turn a blind eye to the leftist gangs and their excesses. Have them explain why cronies of Democratic politicians get teaching jobs and conservatives working in Republican Administrations don’t. Have them justify the tenure systems that keeps Marxist ideologues employed in perpetuity, all in the name of “academic freedom”, while, at the same time, they seek to repress dissent. Look no further than the academic monoculture that decries “white male privilege” and villifies Jefferson, to name just one of their bĂȘte noir.

The voters can stop this impending dystopia. The politicians and academic officials won’t.

* The exorbitant unchecked rates (power) of the railroads was counterbalanced by a robust government response at the time. So I’m not advocating a toothless lion for government.

Russia.Change.

22 Tuesday Jan 2019

Posted by David in Hidtory

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Tags

freedom

It is 4:54 AM Eastern Time U.S. I am watching a young Russian woman showing me women’s underwear. She is holding each item up, pointing out details. Will she model the items? Who knows?

I remember when the stereotype of Russian women was of a frumpy middle-aged woman who wore a head scarf (baboushka) and chunky boots. Things have changed a bit. Russia very much has a consumer, free market (capitalistic) economy. Fifty years ago, the United States and The Union Of Soviet Socialist Republics were prepared to annihilate each other and the rest of the world along with them.

Now we have an entire generation who have NO memory of The Cold War, the abject failure of Marxist economics, and the brutality of the Communist totalitarian state. At least one of these young people is now serving in Congress.

The street survivalist wisdom of living under a Marxist economy suggested that one stand on the line whenever a queue formed to buy whatever it was that was available, whether one needed the item or not. For example, toilet paper might be offered in today’s line. One bought the quota of toilet paper available, with the intention of trading your surplus toilet paper for the toothpaste, razor blades or feminine hygiene items someone else may have acquired that you or a family member might need. Americans, used to living in capitalist abundance, have no concept of any other system, where scarcity is the norm.

The resurgence of the Russian Orthodox Church is another aspect of Russian life we are surprised to hear about. The faith, during the age of Communist suppression, was practiced underground. I remember hearing a man who recalled praying the Our Father during the Nazi bombardment of Stalingrad. His mother taught him the prayer. She could have been denounced and sent to a gulag, a slave labor camp for performing such an action. The spiritual formation of our children is something we take for granted, or worse, neglect.

Standing On Line, 8 November 2016

08 Tuesday Nov 2016

Posted by David in Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Communism, economics, freedom, voting

This is the 99th Anniversary of The October Revolution in Russia. It was a coup d’etat that brought Lenin and the Bolsheviks to power in Russia. Triumphant over the counter-revolutionary White faction after a bloody civil war following this seizure of power, Communism, Marxism-Leninism, held on to control the government and economy  until the early 1990’s.

An awful lot of people who voted today in the US of A weren’t even born until after Communism collapsed. I thought about that demographic fact standing on queue to vote today. I waited, shuffling forward for nearly forty five minutes before my turn came. It was a minor inconvenience. When I think of standing on line, I remember hearing the common complaint of most Russians under Communism that standing on line was the norm, so rife were shortages in Russia. The state-controlled economy could not meet the needs of the people. The common sense logic dictated that, if one saw a line forming, one got in it, because whatever was available at the end of the line was something a person probably needed, whether it was a chicken, cloth or toilet paper. 

We, as a nation, as states, cities, counties and Congressional Districts, voted today. This constitutional republic voted to choose its leader and representatives, the ones who make and execute the laws under which this nation governs itself. 

Were it a meaningless exercise, fortunes would not have been spent, advocating for one outcome over another, for one party to gain power over another. People emigrate to the United States because individual, personal freedom is the reality. 

Who knows how it will turn out. But We The People expressed our will.

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