mail call

another long holiday weekend that has been routinely dull and uneventfull (all the cool people seem to be out of town...which is to be expected, but i don't have to like it)...dull at least until i ambled out to the mailbox to peruse what the post washed in....in what i can only hope is high, swiftian satire my union local has sent me a 2009 "pocket planner" on the twenty-third of may along with a letter bemoaning these "tremulous times" and aprising us of the cost-cutting measures they have undertaken ( the local's journal will be bi-annual instead of quarterly and they will only be sending out targeted mailings dealing with referendums on school bond issues because that may be the only work left) and soliciting our "...patience and steadfast support of our union and our elected leaders ( i cannot begin to tell you how wrong i feel that is...see my myspace blog) during this time."...along with a pencil, some bumper stickers, and a lapel pin, this may be the sole return on my membership in this organization this year...but the irony and pathos doesn't stop there...old ed peper, the north american vicce-presidient of chevrolet motors has written to me to reassure me that in these "turbulent times" ( a lot of alliteration in these letters, no?) he and the folks at chevy want me to be sure that they are "...committed to fulfilling your transportation needs." ed, it seems, has been with chevy for four of its ninety-eight years and is in a position to know my needs, and he seems to think i need to know about chevy's new "awesome" compact the cruze (sp?) and the "..chevy volt, the world's first extended-range electric vehicle." a panacea for a "energy challenged world." so the new doomed continue to cling to old forms with new facades rather than re-orienting themselves to a smaller, more local world with some scaled down expectations...denial runs deep, but with any luck enough people will realize that the old economy died last fall and that things will never be the same...less poor is the new rich...we all have adjustments to make...let's not let them confuse us about the realities of the situation and the necessity of the choices

language, architecture, and you

so much of culture is designed to reinforce the elite that sometimes it's hard to see..it's just second nature..so mundane you hardly notice...unless you're not part of the hegemony...then it's plain as could be. nativists everywhere insist on the use of the "national" language as a symbol of belonging. this may be co-opted by elites as a rationalization, but the destruction of language is an honored tactic in an elite's colonialization of a people. language can provide shelter for cultural resistance to an elite's purpose, and their attcks on it don't have so much to do with belonging as eliminating the establishment (or perpetuation) of an alternative to the elite's influence and control. at some point most peripheral european languages have been repressed and subgbornly maintained at the same time. the irish kept gaelic alive when the british banned its teaching through the use of "hedge schools". my carpatho-rusyn grandmother was a subject of the austro-hungarian empire and bitterly resented the use of the hungarian language at school. the language of a stateless people is always at risk. how many languages have been destroyed under the guise of "assimilation"? and isn't acceptance of an elite's authority a central issue in their concept of assimilation? an offensive against a language is an offensive against a culture...shouldn't acceptance cut both ways? it would if it were voluntary...there's nothing voluntary about being subjugated...elites may not be nationalistic...indeed elites are trans-national, but adopting nationalist forms can provide them with additional weapons in their war against the "other".
the use of space is another facet of elite control. why are "official" buildings so massive? the scale is meant to intimidate and engender the feeling of what geert mak calls ant-ness...the smallness of the individual in the face of the collective power of the elite..like a massive military or an efficient secret police its aim is to project authority and absoluteness...even in its ruins...state buildings can be rendolent of a past greatness (look at rome) that can be utilized by elites that claim direct descent from that past culture (look at mussolini...and why are so many building from britan's imperial era and those things along the mall in washington dc neo-classical?) hitler and speer evolved a concept of "ruins architecture", and their plans for germania ( to be built after the clearing of the rubble from bombed out berlin) were based, in part, on the size and qualituy of ruins those buildings would leave as a testament to future germans about the power of the third reich. urban centers here are full of architecture that speaks of corporate power...they are not accomodating to human existance...stand at the bottom of what was the sears tower ( i don't give a rat's ass what they've renamed it or their
ballparks either) and look up...what's human about that? "it's a struggle to see what's at the end of your nose." (that may not be exact, but it's at least close to what orwell said...same spirit anyway) reinforcing of the hegemonistic culture goes on every day...stop and give it a thought now and then...you may not be happier, but you'll have a more realistic picture of how you live.
happy mother's day to all you moms out there!

change

change is an anathema to elites because what is defines them as an elite and must be preserved...they may be fluid in adopting some new strategies to maintain what is , but like capital's ( and so the elite's) addiction to profit, that need to be defined as an elite frames their percertions and limits their actions. everything relates back to how it impacts their status. a box they cannot escape from. so elites will not sanction collective behavior thay cannot control...uncontrolled behavior can lead to uncontrolled change. banks that have shown a profit in the first quarter of 2009 ( the recesstion/depression may be easing for wall street, but not for those of us who work for a living) are declaring their intention to pay back bail-out funds and so avoid new regulations....that could lead to a change on how things are done, and protocols, mechanisms, and methodologies could change. they may not be set in stone but they are embedded in highly vicous mud so they're hard to move around.