Tuesday, March 16, 2010
The Prolegomena
I will preface all of the below with the declaration that I believe that capitalism is the best economic system man has devised. I think this for the simple reason that I believe that capitalism reflects the best (and by that I mean the most efficient, and provides the potential for the most fair) way to allocate scarce resources. I think history bears this out quite strikingly when you compare countries that were "divided" -- like North and South Korea and East and West Germany. I could be wrong, but that's what I think. Therefore, for me, capitalism is not prescriptive, it is descriptive, and, to some extent, apolitical. It is no more an ideology than the law of gravity.
That said, the Unitest States of America can no longer claim to be a captalist country, or at least as it comes to several of the largest portions of our economy. The auto industry would not exist in this country without government assistance. More accurately, "domestic" car companies wouldn't exist, because some foreign cars are made in the South (well, maybe Ford would still be around, whatever). And, the entire edifice of Wall St. would not exist as it currently does. If AIG had been left to fail, ALL the major investment banks would have gone out of business, along with many of the largest commercial banks. I'm OK with not letting that happen, because it would have meant Great Depression 2.0, but we should never ever forget that all of Wall Street would be closed, bankrupt, out of business if Uncle Sam had not intervened.
The financial-political complex in this country is rotten, and, even worse, it doesn't even live by its own credo -- make money at all costs.* The titans of wall street, the masters of the universe, are bad businessmen. They are bad businessmen because they drove their businesses into the ground. They lost money, lots and lots of money. Unimaginable amounts of money. How they lost the money is unimportant (well, it is very important, but not for the purposes of this little blog post).
If a little kid with a lemonade stand made a nickel, he made more money than AIG last year. Congrats kid, you're a better businessmen than all the quants, all the traders, all the guys "on the street" who made millions of dollars. (For doing what? Why?)
So, to all those guys who like to eat their steaks red, pay really low taxes, and smoke big cigars -- guess what, you're just another ward of the state, a welfare recipient.
How did it happen? Because the game was rigged. It was heads I win, tails you bail me out. They wrote the rules, but then they broke them anyway, all in the name of "the free market". There is no free market. In the free market, these guys would be out of business. I say it again because it's worth repeating. Ask the guys from Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers what happens when Uncle Sam decides not to bail you out.
If you own a grocery store, and the cash coming in isn't enough to pay your debts as they come due, you will go out of business. The bank will tell you to close, liquidate, and tough luck kid. There is no "bridge loan", which is just a euphemism for saying that you're broke and you need money to pay your bills. However, if you are "too big too fail" you can never lose. And if you can never lose, you will take big risks. And when the shit hits the fan, the country gets the bill.
This is no longer a capitalist country. It's reverse socialism -- take from the poor, give to the rich.
And in a few years, we will have forgotten how close we came to complete destitution. After the Great Depression, we got the New Deal, we got the SEC, we got the administrative state and loads of new regulations. After this, we will get toothless regulation (if we're lucky), nothing will change, and the "free market" will just hum along until the next calamity.
[*You know what, this is wrong. They did make money ... for themselves. That was their real credo, money for me at all costs. To hell with the real economy, to hell with my clients, to hell with my own firm, fuck the taxpayer, just give me money.]
|
That said, the Unitest States of America can no longer claim to be a captalist country, or at least as it comes to several of the largest portions of our economy. The auto industry would not exist in this country without government assistance. More accurately, "domestic" car companies wouldn't exist, because some foreign cars are made in the South (well, maybe Ford would still be around, whatever). And, the entire edifice of Wall St. would not exist as it currently does. If AIG had been left to fail, ALL the major investment banks would have gone out of business, along with many of the largest commercial banks. I'm OK with not letting that happen, because it would have meant Great Depression 2.0, but we should never ever forget that all of Wall Street would be closed, bankrupt, out of business if Uncle Sam had not intervened.
The financial-political complex in this country is rotten, and, even worse, it doesn't even live by its own credo -- make money at all costs.* The titans of wall street, the masters of the universe, are bad businessmen. They are bad businessmen because they drove their businesses into the ground. They lost money, lots and lots of money. Unimaginable amounts of money. How they lost the money is unimportant (well, it is very important, but not for the purposes of this little blog post).
If a little kid with a lemonade stand made a nickel, he made more money than AIG last year. Congrats kid, you're a better businessmen than all the quants, all the traders, all the guys "on the street" who made millions of dollars. (For doing what? Why?)
So, to all those guys who like to eat their steaks red, pay really low taxes, and smoke big cigars -- guess what, you're just another ward of the state, a welfare recipient.
How did it happen? Because the game was rigged. It was heads I win, tails you bail me out. They wrote the rules, but then they broke them anyway, all in the name of "the free market". There is no free market. In the free market, these guys would be out of business. I say it again because it's worth repeating. Ask the guys from Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers what happens when Uncle Sam decides not to bail you out.
If you own a grocery store, and the cash coming in isn't enough to pay your debts as they come due, you will go out of business. The bank will tell you to close, liquidate, and tough luck kid. There is no "bridge loan", which is just a euphemism for saying that you're broke and you need money to pay your bills. However, if you are "too big too fail" you can never lose. And if you can never lose, you will take big risks. And when the shit hits the fan, the country gets the bill.
This is no longer a capitalist country. It's reverse socialism -- take from the poor, give to the rich.
And in a few years, we will have forgotten how close we came to complete destitution. After the Great Depression, we got the New Deal, we got the SEC, we got the administrative state and loads of new regulations. After this, we will get toothless regulation (if we're lucky), nothing will change, and the "free market" will just hum along until the next calamity.
[*You know what, this is wrong. They did make money ... for themselves. That was their real credo, money for me at all costs. To hell with the real economy, to hell with my clients, to hell with my own firm, fuck the taxpayer, just give me money.]
|
Blogus Resurrexit II
Friday, August 07, 2009
No good deed goes unpunished
Johnny was riding his ten speed home from a long day of studying in the basement of the library. Down there he can concentrate, down among the dusty old books and the fluorescent bulbs. If he can just ace these tests … get out from under this bad air and plunge headlong into some freshly air conditioned classroom on a leafy campus with Priuses and Saabs in the parking lot, a world hermetically sealed off against all poverty and desperation. It was just on the twilight side of dusk, and the setting sun cast razorblades of light between the buildings and through the trees. Every so often a car would pass him on the left, parked cars to his right. There’s not much room to maneuver but Johnny navigates along well. As he’s racing along, he spots massive cut in the asphalt. It’s a mean, ugly looking depression in the road, roughly the shape of the state of Oklahoma. There’s not way to avoid it, and his front tire jams into it at speed, sending Johnny down to the ground. He is dazed for a moment as he takes inventory over his person. “You alright kid?” somebody asks. He puts his hand to his head – seems OK. He runs his tongue along his teeth – they all seem to be in good order. Then he looks at his hands. Reflexively as he fell he threw them out to break his fall, and they’ve taken the brunt of the force. Flaps of sticky red skin hang from his palms and bits of grit and broken glass have worked their way deep inside. Then Johnny’s stomach drops as he notices that his right wrist hangs askew. Shit! He slips his backpack off of his sweat-soaked shirt. He’s right-handed and the big test is in two days. As the sun sets the city closes in like a vice.
|
|
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Subway Stories 3 ... the Destiny.
[In addition to this story being 100% truthful, I warn that it is also quite vulgar. I apologize for the language, but in the pursuit of science we must press on.]
Different day. I'm on my way home. The train was particularly crowded because of "an earlier incident." I'm on the platform working my way down the stairs.
I hear: "FUCK YOU FAGGOT! YOU FUCKIN' FAGGOT! THAT'S ALL YOU IS."
I thought it was a man yelling (I was wrong), and I'm thinking that there's probably going to be an old-fashioned fracas going on when I get down to the stairs.
Then I see that it's actually a rather rotund short woman yelling at an even shorter and more rotund man. For the sake of the story, it is significant that they are both African-American.
"Oh yeah you like suckin' on that pussy don't you you faggot ... kissin' that white woman's ass."
Now these are verbatim quotes ... I'm not taking any liberties at all. Just imagine the scene -- the crowded area where the metrocard machines are (maybe a 15 by 15 square), a couple hundred people just got off the train and are working their way down the stairs, and these two are having one hell of a domestic squabble.
The man just kept backing away backing away until he ran out of real estate and couldn't back away any more. The woman continued berating him like a broken record. I thought for sure that she was going to clock him any minute.
Every so often you'd hear someone say something under their breath like "Can you believe these people," but absolutely no one confronted them or otherwise told them to cut it out. It was almost like we were there, but we weren't there. If she had pulled out a knife and cut his heart out, I think people would have just kept shuffling on just the same.
In any case, I turned the corner and continued walking along. I have no idea how the story ends.
|
Different day. I'm on my way home. The train was particularly crowded because of "an earlier incident." I'm on the platform working my way down the stairs.
I hear: "FUCK YOU FAGGOT! YOU FUCKIN' FAGGOT! THAT'S ALL YOU IS."
I thought it was a man yelling (I was wrong), and I'm thinking that there's probably going to be an old-fashioned fracas going on when I get down to the stairs.
Then I see that it's actually a rather rotund short woman yelling at an even shorter and more rotund man. For the sake of the story, it is significant that they are both African-American.
"Oh yeah you like suckin' on that pussy don't you you faggot ... kissin' that white woman's ass."
Now these are verbatim quotes ... I'm not taking any liberties at all. Just imagine the scene -- the crowded area where the metrocard machines are (maybe a 15 by 15 square), a couple hundred people just got off the train and are working their way down the stairs, and these two are having one hell of a domestic squabble.
The man just kept backing away backing away until he ran out of real estate and couldn't back away any more. The woman continued berating him like a broken record. I thought for sure that she was going to clock him any minute.
Every so often you'd hear someone say something under their breath like "Can you believe these people," but absolutely no one confronted them or otherwise told them to cut it out. It was almost like we were there, but we weren't there. If she had pulled out a knife and cut his heart out, I think people would have just kept shuffling on just the same.
In any case, I turned the corner and continued walking along. I have no idea how the story ends.
|
Subway Stories Part the Second
[I reaffirm that the below is 100% accurate in all material respects.]
As I believe I have already noted, I recently lost my earphones. So, instead of getting the Led out on the N/W, I play brickbreaker and am forced to listen to the goings-on around me.
One day, I was on my way home. I was sitting by the door and my stop was next, so I got up to stand. Immediately to my right was a boy about 12-13 with his mom. He said something like, "But Ma, I reeeeaalllly got to do it." She did not look happy and said, "You better not," in the way that adults do when they really mean business. He was kind of doing the pee dance, but as if his knees could no longer bend.
The train stopped, and this kid took off like a bullet, running right down the stairs. I got to the bottom of the stairs just in time to see him clear the turnstile and perform a world-famous non-seated one-cheek sneak.
His face said it all ... he had been holding in a righteous fart.
|
As I believe I have already noted, I recently lost my earphones. So, instead of getting the Led out on the N/W, I play brickbreaker and am forced to listen to the goings-on around me.
One day, I was on my way home. I was sitting by the door and my stop was next, so I got up to stand. Immediately to my right was a boy about 12-13 with his mom. He said something like, "But Ma, I reeeeaalllly got to do it." She did not look happy and said, "You better not," in the way that adults do when they really mean business. He was kind of doing the pee dance, but as if his knees could no longer bend.
The train stopped, and this kid took off like a bullet, running right down the stairs. I got to the bottom of the stairs just in time to see him clear the turnstile and perform a world-famous non-seated one-cheek sneak.
His face said it all ... he had been holding in a righteous fart.
|
Subway Stories I (of three)
[I hereby swear on a stack of Bibles that the events depicted in the following three posts are all 100% true.]
The last week or so, the 49th Street station has smelled like a decomposing dead body. Or at least what I imagine a rotting corpse smells like -- I have never actually smelled one (or maybe I have?). The first day, I was kind of annoyed and wondered where it was coming from. The second, I got on the first train that came through the station just to get out of the smell, even though it was the wrong train and it took me a half-mile out of my way. By the fifth day I stopped wondering whether anybody was going to do anything about it, or even if anyone in a position to do something knew ... I had stopped caring. This smell, this putrid odor that was like a thousand gallons of bile puked up by the subway monster, was simply another object in my life. It is no different than the ground beneath my feet. It is, and I accept its existence implicitly. If tomorrow the smell is gone, I might even get a little confused and wonder if I'm in the right place.
I am standing on the far end of the platform. I have learned to get on the first car. It is not the most convenient, and by that I mean that it is not the closest to the exit when I get to my station, but it is the most convenient in that it has less people. While I'm still waiting for the train, about twenty feet to my left there is a group of about 25 tourists all wearing matching orange shirts. They look so fucking ridiculous. I guess they've heard how dangerous Times Square is ... so their reasonable response was to make every effort to distinguish themselves as easy marks. The logic is air-fucking-tight.
Their shirts tell me that they're all members of some evangelical church, but I did not need to their shirts to tell me that. They look like the characters from the comic strip Gasoline Alley only younger. They have the look of mild apprehension on their faces ... I wonder if they are privy to information that the rapture is imminent.
But oh no! one of the younger wildebeasts didn't quite make it accross the river with the rest of the herd and he is now stuck on the other side of the turnstile. Better act quick or he's liable to get snatched right up by some angry alligator.
"Sir! Sir! He's a minor ... he's an unescorted minor! Sir!" The palest of their group, and therefore the leader I assume, is using his "outdoor voice" to attempt to get the attention of the station attendant. He's not yelling, there's no anger -- it sounds more like how a landed gentlemen of the Victorian age would use his voice if he was being eaten by a lion whilst on safari -- "I say! I say! Cohorts! I believe I shall expire! Can someone please hasten to remove this ghastly beast from me?"
The station attendant obvsiously could not give two shits. This guy must hear dozens of stories every day from people that want to get on the subway for free, from the grizzled "vet" who "just needs a quarter" to the "senior citizen" who "left his senior citizen card at home, and just needs to get to the doctor." (Ever notice how liars love the word "just"?) At least the teenagers dispense with the embarassing "just" this-or-that bullshit and just jump the turnstile.
But the thing I don't understand is that this kid looks like he's about 16 or 17. He's not 10 or 8 or whatever the cutoof is for riding for free. Technically a "minor" I suppose, but not exactly "unescorted." Standing just 10 feet away are 12 extremely holy adults. See, they're even wearing matching shirts! If this kid can drive to the 7-11 to buy sodie pops, he can certainly go to the machine and buy a metrocard like everyone else.
Don't these people believe in rules? This IS America after all, isn't it? I mean, if those Mexicans that walk miles and miles across open desert to make less than minimum wage doing menial tasks are illegal and deserving of our (Christful) scorn, then ipso facto ye shall not passeth the threshold of subwaydom withouteth purchasething the symbol that is evidenceth that thou hast payeth the fayre.
My train came, so I didn't get to see how it ended, but I really hope that fucking kid didn't get on for free.
|
The last week or so, the 49th Street station has smelled like a decomposing dead body. Or at least what I imagine a rotting corpse smells like -- I have never actually smelled one (or maybe I have?). The first day, I was kind of annoyed and wondered where it was coming from. The second, I got on the first train that came through the station just to get out of the smell, even though it was the wrong train and it took me a half-mile out of my way. By the fifth day I stopped wondering whether anybody was going to do anything about it, or even if anyone in a position to do something knew ... I had stopped caring. This smell, this putrid odor that was like a thousand gallons of bile puked up by the subway monster, was simply another object in my life. It is no different than the ground beneath my feet. It is, and I accept its existence implicitly. If tomorrow the smell is gone, I might even get a little confused and wonder if I'm in the right place.
I am standing on the far end of the platform. I have learned to get on the first car. It is not the most convenient, and by that I mean that it is not the closest to the exit when I get to my station, but it is the most convenient in that it has less people. While I'm still waiting for the train, about twenty feet to my left there is a group of about 25 tourists all wearing matching orange shirts. They look so fucking ridiculous. I guess they've heard how dangerous Times Square is ... so their reasonable response was to make every effort to distinguish themselves as easy marks. The logic is air-fucking-tight.
Their shirts tell me that they're all members of some evangelical church, but I did not need to their shirts to tell me that. They look like the characters from the comic strip Gasoline Alley only younger. They have the look of mild apprehension on their faces ... I wonder if they are privy to information that the rapture is imminent.
But oh no! one of the younger wildebeasts didn't quite make it accross the river with the rest of the herd and he is now stuck on the other side of the turnstile. Better act quick or he's liable to get snatched right up by some angry alligator.
"Sir! Sir! He's a minor ... he's an unescorted minor! Sir!" The palest of their group, and therefore the leader I assume, is using his "outdoor voice" to attempt to get the attention of the station attendant. He's not yelling, there's no anger -- it sounds more like how a landed gentlemen of the Victorian age would use his voice if he was being eaten by a lion whilst on safari -- "I say! I say! Cohorts! I believe I shall expire! Can someone please hasten to remove this ghastly beast from me?"
The station attendant obvsiously could not give two shits. This guy must hear dozens of stories every day from people that want to get on the subway for free, from the grizzled "vet" who "just needs a quarter" to the "senior citizen" who "left his senior citizen card at home, and just needs to get to the doctor." (Ever notice how liars love the word "just"?) At least the teenagers dispense with the embarassing "just" this-or-that bullshit and just jump the turnstile.
But the thing I don't understand is that this kid looks like he's about 16 or 17. He's not 10 or 8 or whatever the cutoof is for riding for free. Technically a "minor" I suppose, but not exactly "unescorted." Standing just 10 feet away are 12 extremely holy adults. See, they're even wearing matching shirts! If this kid can drive to the 7-11 to buy sodie pops, he can certainly go to the machine and buy a metrocard like everyone else.
Don't these people believe in rules? This IS America after all, isn't it? I mean, if those Mexicans that walk miles and miles across open desert to make less than minimum wage doing menial tasks are illegal and deserving of our (Christful) scorn, then ipso facto ye shall not passeth the threshold of subwaydom withouteth purchasething the symbol that is evidenceth that thou hast payeth the fayre.
My train came, so I didn't get to see how it ended, but I really hope that fucking kid didn't get on for free.
|
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Gertrude and Ike: A Character Study
It’s a muggy early Fall Sunday afternoon. All along the residential streets the faded green leaves are clinging obstinately to their trees. Someone either neglected to take in the Sunday New York Times that was delivered to their doorway, or maybe the family is away upstate eating pies made from the barrels of apples they picked yesterday. It’s impossible to say. Either way, the proud typeface above the fold of the saturated-to-the-point-of-being-transparent newsprint gives notice that a massive bank bailout is imminent, or at least its immanence is imminent. It’s impossible to say which.
Gertrude and Ike emerge from the subway station. They are walking side by side, arms around each others’ hips. They are roughly the same height, or at least they appear to be from this distance. The wind shakes some raindrops loose, falling onto my head, my nose, my right eyelid. I wipe my face. The sun fights through the clouds and time falls still for a few heartbeats. Shafts of light pour down through the canopy of trees, individual drops of water are clearly visible as they fall. So foggy yesterday, so damned foggy – couldn’t even see the Statue of Liberty from my window, couldn’t see the harbor or the buildings just a few avenues away. Why is it that when it’s so damned foggy, when you can’t even see the Statue of Liberty from your window or the office buildings downtown … why is it that on those nights sound travels so much better?
Gertrude and Ike are about fifty, fifty-five. Gertrude’s gone gray, probably been that way for a decade, but it never occurs to her to dye it. She’s wearing a green-flannel shirt, opened over her navy blue tee shirt. Her jeans sit high on her hips, too high, it’s unflattering. No belt. Ike’s hair is thinning in an odd pattern, cheap no-name sneakers. They’re smiling. You can tell by looking at them that they’re good people, honest people, unpretentious and genuinely in love. They look ridiculous.
If they ever split, if one of them ever died, they would both have a real hard time finding another sexual partner. I wonder if they know that. I wonder if that truth keeps them together … that fact might be the best thing that ever happened to them, the secret of their bliss. They have each other to walk arm-in-arm with up and down the avenues of houses they could never afford, sagging trees that drop cold water on your head, under short gray skies, past bad omens, smiling their stupid smiles, telling lame stories, and even sometimes time stops for a few heartbeats.
|
Gertrude and Ike emerge from the subway station. They are walking side by side, arms around each others’ hips. They are roughly the same height, or at least they appear to be from this distance. The wind shakes some raindrops loose, falling onto my head, my nose, my right eyelid. I wipe my face. The sun fights through the clouds and time falls still for a few heartbeats. Shafts of light pour down through the canopy of trees, individual drops of water are clearly visible as they fall. So foggy yesterday, so damned foggy – couldn’t even see the Statue of Liberty from my window, couldn’t see the harbor or the buildings just a few avenues away. Why is it that when it’s so damned foggy, when you can’t even see the Statue of Liberty from your window or the office buildings downtown … why is it that on those nights sound travels so much better?
Gertrude and Ike are about fifty, fifty-five. Gertrude’s gone gray, probably been that way for a decade, but it never occurs to her to dye it. She’s wearing a green-flannel shirt, opened over her navy blue tee shirt. Her jeans sit high on her hips, too high, it’s unflattering. No belt. Ike’s hair is thinning in an odd pattern, cheap no-name sneakers. They’re smiling. You can tell by looking at them that they’re good people, honest people, unpretentious and genuinely in love. They look ridiculous.
If they ever split, if one of them ever died, they would both have a real hard time finding another sexual partner. I wonder if they know that. I wonder if that truth keeps them together … that fact might be the best thing that ever happened to them, the secret of their bliss. They have each other to walk arm-in-arm with up and down the avenues of houses they could never afford, sagging trees that drop cold water on your head, under short gray skies, past bad omens, smiling their stupid smiles, telling lame stories, and even sometimes time stops for a few heartbeats.
|
Sunday, September 28, 2008
But what does it mean?
I watched the debate Friday. Who won?
"Looks like an Obama victory to me." -- USA
If winning a debate is a popularity contest, the polls say that Obama won.
An interesting question -- is the winning side of a rational argument, an argument between two thinking brains with different positions something that should determined by popular vote? If 50.1% people think X, even if the truth is Y, who's right? What if it's not as close -- say 95% to 5%? But then this is a political debate, not an academic or philosophical one, so it's not a thing in itself really, but rather a means to an end, i.e. winning an election. If you have to play defense, you play defense. You manage expectations. The fight is not necessarily fair. The superior debater is handicapped from the word go. If the favorite wins, he should have won, so no points scored ... apparently only an absolute knockout (making your opponent cry maybe?) is the only way the favorite can win. (Could the Globetrotters ever beat the Generals in this upside down world?) In presidential debates, you absolutely want to be the underdog. You want people to think you're dumb as dogshit going in, so that you're mere ability to construct (semi) grammatical sentences (even if they have absolutely nothing to do with the question, don't address the question or topic even tangentially, as if the question did not even exist) is considered miraculous. Think Bush-Gore, think Bush-Kerry. Those were wins for Bush because he managed expectations.
So this adds a new level of complexity then. Not only is the winner determined by mass acclaim, but the game is rigged as well. The bookies have set the spread.
And therein lies the biggest obfuscation of them all, the bookies. The media. I'm fairly certain they have their talking points ready before the debate even begins. Maybe they watch the debate, maybe they don't. For whatever reason, they seem to focus on the points I found irrelevant and ignore completely what I thought was important. Maybe that's me. I'm too far out from the happy warm masses that get to decide winners and losers. I'm in that 5% margin of error whose opinions don't count. I'd like to think I rarely agree with them because they are so obssessed with their own style that style is all they can ever see. Forget the substance -- that's irrelevant -- didn't you see X's facial expression while Y was talking? The horror. [Here's an idea, for once let's get a look at your stupid vapid mugs when the camera's not on you.]
The media's endless "analysis" reveals more about them than it does about anything related to reality. Here's a law of rumination you can trust -- the more something gets talked about, the less it gets talked about. Huh? I mean that if you have 5 hours of talk about 90 minutes of debate, every extra additional minute of "coverage" has less and less to do with the thing that it being covered (i.e., debate, which the purpose of it all, right?), and the more it has to do with the coverage itself. The "spin" becomes even more derivative of itself, like a whirlpool swirling ever tigher around its own center, or a black hole accumulating to itself the flotsam and jetsam of space. Oh, and by the way, the public discourse suffers as a result.
We get lots of stories about stories about reactions to stories about expectations of tomorrow's stories. I think this is a bad thing. So who benefits? On some level, I think we all know that it's not the public.
The media class benefits, that's who benefits. They sell a product. That product is electrons coming out of your TV and going into your brain. It's as simple as that. They need you to consume as much of it as they can stuff down your throat. They're no better than McDonalds or a subprime mortgage dealer. They'll gladly give you as much shit as you can handle, because, after all, they're only giving the people what they want, right?
|
"Looks like an Obama victory to me." -- USAIf winning a debate is a popularity contest, the polls say that Obama won.
An interesting question -- is the winning side of a rational argument, an argument between two thinking brains with different positions something that should determined by popular vote? If 50.1% people think X, even if the truth is Y, who's right? What if it's not as close -- say 95% to 5%? But then this is a political debate, not an academic or philosophical one, so it's not a thing in itself really, but rather a means to an end, i.e. winning an election. If you have to play defense, you play defense. You manage expectations. The fight is not necessarily fair. The superior debater is handicapped from the word go. If the favorite wins, he should have won, so no points scored ... apparently only an absolute knockout (making your opponent cry maybe?) is the only way the favorite can win. (Could the Globetrotters ever beat the Generals in this upside down world?) In presidential debates, you absolutely want to be the underdog. You want people to think you're dumb as dogshit going in, so that you're mere ability to construct (semi) grammatical sentences (even if they have absolutely nothing to do with the question, don't address the question or topic even tangentially, as if the question did not even exist) is considered miraculous. Think Bush-Gore, think Bush-Kerry. Those were wins for Bush because he managed expectations.
So this adds a new level of complexity then. Not only is the winner determined by mass acclaim, but the game is rigged as well. The bookies have set the spread.
And therein lies the biggest obfuscation of them all, the bookies. The media. I'm fairly certain they have their talking points ready before the debate even begins. Maybe they watch the debate, maybe they don't. For whatever reason, they seem to focus on the points I found irrelevant and ignore completely what I thought was important. Maybe that's me. I'm too far out from the happy warm masses that get to decide winners and losers. I'm in that 5% margin of error whose opinions don't count. I'd like to think I rarely agree with them because they are so obssessed with their own style that style is all they can ever see. Forget the substance -- that's irrelevant -- didn't you see X's facial expression while Y was talking? The horror. [Here's an idea, for once let's get a look at your stupid vapid mugs when the camera's not on you.]
The media's endless "analysis" reveals more about them than it does about anything related to reality. Here's a law of rumination you can trust -- the more something gets talked about, the less it gets talked about. Huh? I mean that if you have 5 hours of talk about 90 minutes of debate, every extra additional minute of "coverage" has less and less to do with the thing that it being covered (i.e., debate, which the purpose of it all, right?), and the more it has to do with the coverage itself. The "spin" becomes even more derivative of itself, like a whirlpool swirling ever tigher around its own center, or a black hole accumulating to itself the flotsam and jetsam of space. Oh, and by the way, the public discourse suffers as a result.
We get lots of stories about stories about reactions to stories about expectations of tomorrow's stories. I think this is a bad thing. So who benefits? On some level, I think we all know that it's not the public.
The media class benefits, that's who benefits. They sell a product. That product is electrons coming out of your TV and going into your brain. It's as simple as that. They need you to consume as much of it as they can stuff down your throat. They're no better than McDonalds or a subprime mortgage dealer. They'll gladly give you as much shit as you can handle, because, after all, they're only giving the people what they want, right?
|
