I heard that on the way home and could not decide if it was good that NPR highlighted this connection or if it was irresponsible to give that bigot a platform to spew his hate.
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I think I’ve been doing it wrong.
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And just the traces of the original Americans, sadly shaking there heads.
Right, that’s what makes Breitbart an interesting read; a good vein of good journalism, not terribly beholden to the paper, and a thorough salting of things that go nowhere, like Bannon’s stuff. Nothing like a railroad tour full of dead ends to make one want to burn something (but do they print anymore, and did anyone want the home paper recycler?) Very fine TEDtalk lines and facts that uncheck with gaming likelihood, but without taking the trouble of the turns.
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Breitbart was never a print publication.
Your list of words to skip in the salad making, I think you need to update it.
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I am starting to develop TEDtalk lines also. As soon as I walk into a room, people see them on my face and know I am a lecturer. And the kickdrums are like dribbling concrete basketballs.
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The man is a posing Somdomite.
Something’s telling me that Trump’s presidency’s going to lead to massive civil unrest by just about three months in.
Could you clarify why you included the information about Ginni Rometty and IBM? Her letter doesn’t support Donald Trump specifically. It instead basically just says that IBM maintains it’s policy positions and that IBM is more than willing to assist Trump to implement those positions, (I’m sure for a hefty contract). It seems like a red herring here.
Which, to my thinking, makes for an easy link between the “quiverfull” type movements of American Evangelicals and white supremacists/supremacy.
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Let’s just say that IBM’s past policies regarding the use of its Hollerith machines to do special cross-index censuses in a certain country don’t inspire a lot of confidence.
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I know. I mean, if only trump had appointed others into his cabinet that hold similar views, then we could maybe point to something problematic. Just think: it’s not like he wants Jeff “I Couldn’t Be a Federal Judge Because I’m a Fucken Racist” Sessions for Attorney General or anything. And that guy, Flynn? He’s a lunatic! Hates muslims! Has business ties with Russia! Dog forbid he becomes National Security Adviser or somesuch.
“Yuck”, indeed.
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Well, since the results are control of the United States of America, maybe that’s not such a bad thing…
But in seriousness, until you responded to me, I didn’t know that your problem was with the “deport” thing rather than the “civil society” misquote. Which was my point, that saying that something is misrepresentative without saying what you mean is kind of lousy.
You are right, as far as I can tell, Bannon did not call for deportation of Asian-born tech CEOs, and if you google “bannon deport asian” you find a bunch of things that ultimately link back to Cory Doctorow. What he apparently wants is for there to be some mechanism by which there would end up being fewer Asian-born tech CEOs, and leaves us to imagine what that mechanism might look like. I will say that limits my sympathy for him as a misrepresented party.
Maybe for you the issue is specifically deportation and so you feel terribly misled. If you would be comfortable with some other, more reasonable way to ensure that white people control America’s large corporations, then I can see how misleading the headline might be. I’m struggling to think of any way to generate that outcome that isn’t horrific, though. Deportation isn’t even close to the top of my list of bad ways racists in the white house might do that (the precedent we have for racist governments who wanted to stop racial groups from having influence involves internment camps and/or murder).
I’d say the headline speculates about what Steve Bannon wants, but I’m not sure it even speculates terribly uncharitably. Like I said, if there is some reason for me to think Bannon would not be thrilled to deport every Asian-born American (and for that matter, every American of Asian descent) I’d be happy to hear it. It could be something as simple as Steve Bannon saying, “I think that all people are equal regardless of their skin colour, and I think America is better for having people of all racial backgrounds as citizens.”
The “Breitbart playbook” isn’t pointing to a logical extension of what someone is saying and then daring them to deny it. It is outright bald-faced lies that are too bizarre to deny.
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Civil society? How quaint! Looking forward, we should be glad to have any society at all.
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Civil society is not what we have, it is what we do. It might sound like a nitpick, but I think it is a crucial difference in perspective. That’s why a culture based upon acquisition struggles with it.
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Is there anything specifically by or about Foucault that you recommend? I only have the POWER/KNOWLEDGE interviews.
My annoying tendency is to approach political problems skeptically and use analysis and reason to tease them out and plan actions as if dealing with scientific problems. So yes, I know that categorizations have real power. But “the disconnect” is that if this power is real, that I think anyone can use it. As @bibliophile20 put it, I disregard typical power dynamics because they seem to be based not as much upon process - what works and how it works - but rather who one is or who one’s friends are. This runs completely counter to my egalitarian thought processes and actions. My first instinct is to “democratize all teh things” and push for participation rather than assuming some static consensus of entrenched groups. It feels to me like I am always confronted by a “naive realism” that because something has power, we should be expected to be subject to it rather than use it or subvert it.
His most approachable book is Discipline and Punish, which charts the rise of the modern prison system (and to a lesser extent, our modern school system). I’ve heard good things about his books The History of Sexuality (I think that would probably really be of interest to you). You’d probably like his more esoteric stuff, like the Archeology of Knowledge and The Order of Things (which are very French!).
I want to read his lectures on the Rise of Biopolitics, but haven’t gotten around to it yet.[quote=“popobawa4u, post:79, topic:89655”]
I know that categorizations have real power. But “the disconnect” is that if this power is real, that I think anyone can use it.
[/quote]
Well, but I think that’s where Foucault comes in handy, in that he describes power and the counterintuitive places it’s found (mainly in the way our society demands categorization), but not everyone is in the same position within that power structure. Foucauldian power operates through consensus and in creating a very specific kind of world view, that feels like consensus. Breaking out and showing that there are other realities are tough. Easier to do on an individual, even at times, localized level, but not so much on a large scale level, which is the kind of society we live in. There are ways to confront this stuff, locally and personally, but the system is pretty pervasive and that needs to be acknowledged, I think.
That’s part of the problem, though, I think is that when you’re talking about the power of the dominant world view, it’s hard to break others out of that world view and to create a new kind of consensus.
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Yes! I was trying to remember what that concept was.
Looking online I just found a syllabus of one Professor Paisley Currah for a course about Biopolitics. I am going to “eat my Paisley” and defer to this as a reading list.
https://www.gc.cuny.edu/CUNY_GC/media/polsci/Currah-Biopolitics-PT-GC-Fall-2016.pdf
Michel Foucault, “Society Must Be Defended” – Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975-1976
http://rebels-library.org/files/foucault_society_must_be_defended.pdf
Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population – Lectures at the Collège de France, 1977-1978
http://www.azioni.nl/platform/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Foucault-Security-Territory-Population.pdf
Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics – Lectures at the Collège de France 1978-79
Alexander G. Weheliye, Habeas Viscus: Racializing Assemblages, Biopolitics, and Black Feminist Theories of the Human
https://frgnyu.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/weheliye-habeas-viscus.pdf
Some other interesting-sounding reads listed there also. Of course, I just started reading another book yesterday so I will probably stick with that and see about converting these lectures to epubs in the meanwhile.
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