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The Fading Global Distinction Between the Good U.S. People and the Bad U.S. Government

By Paul Street at May 17, 2006

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In the sixth chapter (titled "Who Hates America?" ) of my book Empire and Inequality: America and the World Since 9/11 (Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2004 www.paradigm publishers.com), I suggested that the U.S. citizenry's initial apparent willingness (as measured by leading national polls) to support the Bush administration's bloody and criminal attack on Mesopotamia was leading to the decline of the venerable and welcome distinction between the U.S. government and the U.S. people in world opinion. The chapter was based on an essay written in April 2003. For much of my adult life, I've heard non-Americans tell me that "we like Americans; it's just your government we can't stand." "Operation Iraqi Freedom" seemed to me a pretty strong nail in the coffin of that old distinction, which had been fading for some time. From this particular imperial crime (one in a long record, of course) onwards, I guessed, ordinary Americans were no longer going to get the benefit of the overseas doubt. Well, look at the book review I've pasted in (below)from the nation's newspaper of record (the New York Times) below. The reviewer is Robert Wright, who works at something called "The New America Foundation." One of the books reviewed by Wright went through recent global opinion data and found that global "anti-Americanism" is now at a new high and "this time it's personal. Only a few years ago, anti-Americanism focused on government policies; the world 'held Americans in higher esteem than America,' [authors Andrew] Kohut and [Bruce] Stokes note. But" now, Wright observes, "foreigners are 'increasingly equating the U.S. people with the U.S. government.'" Imagine that. Much of this book review is rather inane, typically enough for the Times. Going into all the the specifics would take this post to article length, but I do want to mention a few problems with one of Wright's formulations. According to Wright, one of the authors reviewed "complains that 'Americans think of themselves as kings and queens of the world's prom.' But, actually," Wright says, "we can't escape that role, at least for now. In wealth and power we are No. 1. The question is whether we'll be the typical prom king or queen — resented by most at the bottom of the social hierarchy and many in the middle — or instead the rare prom king or queen who manages to be really, truly, you know, popular." Excuse me but who exactly is Wright's "we?" These strutting American kings and queens of the world imperial "prom" (yes, "prom"...how juvenile), exist, I suppose, but they are not composed of the majority of the harried, dazed and confused U.S. populace and certainly not of the many poor people at the wide bottom of the imperial homeland's steep domestic socieconomic and racial pyramid. Somehow, I don't feel compelled to go into the vast and miserable ghettoes of Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis, or [...fill in the blank with your closest local hyper-segregated concentration of highly racialized urban poverty]to instruct their "American" residents to stop acting and thinking like they're God's gift to the planet. Now, with the "Americans" of the country club set, it's a different story. Many of THEM do need the instruction (though they'd never take it from the likes of me). There's plenty people living in sub-First-World conditions right here in the imperial "homeland": "No. 1" America. Those people and indeed most of the U.S. populace have very little input on the making of U.S. foreign policy. Wright might want to reflect on the fact that the U.S. possesses its own internal "social hiearchy" --- the most unequal and rigid one in the industrialized world in fact. Another problem: neither the reviewer nor (at least by the reviewer's account) the reviewed authors (who deserve of course to be actually read before final conclusions about their books are made) seem to have any grasp of the critical role war-state and war-media propaganda play in shaping U.S. opinion. If you read the full review (it's short) below, you'll see that Wright sets up a debate between (1) seeing "Americans" as a bunch of obnoxious imperialists who want to impose "their culture" and values and power on the rest of the world or (2)viewing them as obnoxiously apathetic and self-involved...narcissistically indifferent to people outside America and world events. I've met a few "Americans" in category (1) and a lot more "Americans" in (2). But really most of the ordinary "Americans" I know are in neither classification. They are decent human beings who generally care about other people at home and abroad and sincerely want to see democratic and humanistic solutions to international problems, which they think should be solved through cooperative international bodies and processes. This vaguely optimistic observation of mine is backed up in some of the public opinion data I mentioned in my last blog post. The main problem with these decent and democratic human beings is that they are so often badly overworked, bewildered, and horribly misinformed and confused by Orwellian war media and state propagandists, who work to keep the masses confused and afraid even as the more (Aldous) Huxlean lords of the corporate crafted, so-called popular culture do everything they can to make "the rabble" infantilized, petty, and stupid. Under the twin and interrelated imperatives of Empire and Inequality, some "Americans" have a lot more power ---- over foreign policy, over wealth, and over mass domesttic opinion --- than other "Americans." Now that the majority of the U.S. populace is on the record (for what it's worth) against the war on Iraq (good for us) --- a majority now even says the war is not morally justified --- will overseas opinion (assuming it knows about this shift) turn back a little to its old distinction between the (bad) U.S. government and the (good) U.S. people? I suspect not. "If your government's policies don't reflect your beliefs," I imagine most of the world's people would say now, "then its time to change your government and its policies. Until you do so, your esteem will continue to plummet in our eyes. We've cut you a lot of slack for a very long time, American people, but really enough is enough. The hour is getting late. No more excuses. Do we need to read your government's founding revolutionary document back to you?" A little harsh perhaps, but it would be difficult to blame the "foreigners" for coming to such a conclusion. They're on the other end of Uncle Sam's guns and not exactly in the mood for accommodating our failure to make a long overdue revolution here in the U.S. Here's the review: May 14, 2006 New York Times Book Review Books on Anti-Americanism They Hate Us, They Really Hate Us Review by ROBERT WRIGHT You wouldn't expect to find good news for President Bush in a book by Andrew Kohut, a pollster and commentator who seems to divide his time between quantifying America's Bush-era plunge in the world's esteem and quantifying Bush's plunge in America's esteem. Then again, you also wouldn't expect to find good news for President Bush in a book by Julia E. Sweig, a liberal senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. But Sweig's "Friendly Fire" joins Kohut's "America Against the World" (written with the columnist Bruce Stokes) in showing that Bush isn't the only one to blame for the world's dim view of the United States. And these days that counts as good news for Bush. Whether it's good news for the United States is another question. Once you see the deep and diffuse roots of current anti-Americanism, you realize there won't be an easy fix. Still, these two books — especially "Friendly Fire," the more prescriptive of the two — offer insight into how we might avoid what Sweig calls "the Anti-American Century." The strain of "American exceptionalism" that President Bush has made internationally infamous is hardly new, Sweig notes. A Latin America specialist, she can list a century's worth of examples of the dubious idea that "America could throw its weight around — willy-nilly of international law or the sovereignty of other states — because its goals were noble, its values universal in their appeal." And she doesn't stop with Latin America. More obviously germane to current headlines than the 1954 coup America sponsored in Guatemala is the one it sponsored in Iran in 1953, ushering in the secular authoritarianism that would in turn usher in the fundamentalist revolution of 1979. This, like so much American support for oppression during the cold war, made less of an impact on Americans than on the oppressed. "The dramas that contained the seeds of today's rebellion played out in obscurity, as yet imperceptible to the naked American eye," Sweig writes in the course of her sweeping and pungent review of abrasive American foreign policies. Anti-Americanism emanating from globalization also long predates the Bush presidency. As Kohut and Stokes point out in their data-rich book, international resentment of American culture (movies, McDonald's) and business practices (long work hours) was appearing in Gallup polls by the early 1980's. If America has been alienating people for decades, why has anti-Americanism so rarely gotten the attention it's getting now? For one thing, several forces have converged to create a new truth: national security depends crucially on foreign feelings toward America. Of course, it was always important that some people — notably political leaders in nations deemed allies — like us. (Alienating freshly installed dictators has long been considered poor strategy.) But popular sentiment mattered less in the years before democratization made leaders beholden to the masses in so many countries, and before microelectronic information technology made the masses in even authoritarian nations more unruly. And, of course, terrorism wasn't the threat it is now. The Venezuelans who stoned Vice President Richard Nixon's car in 1958 might have made their grievances felt more powerfully and farther to the north if they'd had modern munitions, transportation and information technology. Neither book much emphasizes this peril of anti-Americanism — the growing lethality of grass-roots hatred. But the war on terror is the backdrop for their illumination of how anti-Americanism impedes effective alliances. America's post-cold-war pre-eminence — and the sudden visibility of that pre-eminence — complicates our attempts to win friends. People already ambivalent about encroaching American culture and commerce can increasingly see affluent America itself via video. Masses that have long felt bitterly toward the rich in their own nations can transfer some antipathy to their new next-door neighbors, us: the globalization of resentment. In sum, by the late 90's America was becoming a more natural target for ill will, even as its national security rested increasingly on good will. More than ever, we needed a leader of diplomatic sensibility, keenly attuned to the hopes and fears of diverse peoples, willing to help other nations address their priorities. And in walked . . . George W. Bush. His alleged failures in this regard have been so thoroughly discussed that we can save time by evoking them with keywords: "crusade," "evil," Kyoto, Iraq, Bolton, Geneva Convention and so on. There's no proving Sweig's contention that Bush's "policies and nonpolicies . . . stripped bare the latent structural anti-American animus that had accumulated over time," but Kohut's Pew Research Center polls show that global opinion of the United States has plummeted under Bush — not just since its unnatural post-9/11 high, but since he took office. And this time it's personal. Only a few years ago, anti-Americanism focused on government policies; the world "held Americans in higher esteem than America," Kohut and Stokes note. But foreigners are "increasingly equating the U.S. people with the U.S. government." Kohut and Stokes argue, in effect, that these foreigners are confused, that Americans aren't in the grips of the offensive exceptionalism lately exhibited by their government. According to the polls, "the American people, as opposed to some of their leaders, seek no converts to their ideology." And they are not "cultural imperialists." Maybe not. But this reserve seems grounded less in humility (60 percent of Americans consider their culture "superior to others") than in apathy. Americans, Kohut and Stokes write, tend "to downplay the importance of America's relationship to other nations . . . to be indifferent to global issues . . . to lack enthusiasm for multinational efforts and institutions" and in general to have "an inattentive self-centeredness unmindful of their country's deepening linkages with other countries." In other words: We're not obnoxiously evangelistic, just obnoxiously self-involved. So even if Bush doesn't reflect the real America, and is replaced by someone who does, we'll still be in trouble. At least, we'll be in trouble if much of the problem is indeed, as Sweig argues, the longstanding "near inability of the United States to see its power from the perspective of the powerless." Changing that will require not a leader worthy of the people, but a leader willing to lead the people. Sweig complains that "Americans think of themselves as kings and queens of the world's prom." But, actually, we can't escape that role, at least for now. In wealth and power we are No. 1. The question is whether we'll be the typical prom king or queen — resented by most at the bottom of the social hierarchy and many in the middle — or instead the rare prom king or queen who manages to be really, truly, you know, popular. Americans may be bad at doing what Sweig recommends — "seeing ourselves as others see us" — but we're not alone in this. People in general have trouble putting themselves in the shoes of people whose circumstances differ from theirs. That's why the world is such a mess — and why succeeding at this task would qualify as real moral progress. So history has put America in a position where its national security depends on its further moral growth. This is scary but also kind of inspiring. Maybe the term "American greatness" needn't have the militaristic connotations lately attached to it. Here, perhaps, is an exceptionalism worth aspiring to. But if we succeed, let's try not to brag about it. Robert Wright, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, is the author, most recently, of "Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny

Comment On This Blog Post  See All Comments (32)

Person

Canadian living standards and life quality

By Kissenger, Clark at Jun 11, 2006 15:46 PM
This going to change fast Paul, the Harpies ( extreme left) are promessing tax cuts to buy the next elections.. Traditionally , Canadian are inclined a bit more to the left than americans. Quebec nationalists ie le Parti Quebecois had a social democrate agenda similar to the NDP. Since the 90s reformist have pushed to reform the country to mould under the US model of less taxes. Alberta, Ontario and Quebec had their reforms, In Quebec, under the Bouchard governement the nationalist movement made a shift spousing the right wings values of the conservative right wings of the country. Quebec people seemed favorable to tax cuts; the nationalist movement was born on the oposition of Quebec people paying taxes and welfare for the have-less provinces that have no relation to Quebec 's interests as for example Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island , provinces which "were deemed" to have been living off the tax payers wallet since these provinces joined confederation. so far everyones seem to be bending over to make tax cuts just to please the corporate world : except the NDP.. may be the left should reorganizes its color under a single political machine : green , social democrats and socialist for the next elections.. What is interesting is that the majority of people knows the Iraq war is motivated by oil. i just don't get why people voted for the Harpies.. ( the Bushites cousin here) Of course this is my account

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Person

Canada/US

By Kissenger, Clark at Jun 01, 2006 21:29 PM
No cyrano, Anonymous was dead on right about much of what previously ran comment logs into the hundreds or thereabouts; that is one good reason not to romanticize that era in this blog's history. I am amused that Canadians are feeling sorry for U.S. Americans but I suspect that Canadian living standards and life quality are considerably higher on the whole so there's some basis for the pity. Go right under the tunnel from Detroit and you leave a space of massive ghettoized hyper-poverty --- highly racialized of course --- and enter an at least comparatively egalitarian nation with its own share of inequities and policy issues no doubt but also with single-payer national health insurance for cruing out loud --- imagine.

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Person

Hey Graeme, Nice post and

By Kissenger, Clark at May 31, 2006 14:46 PM

Hey Graeme,

Nice post and all but, before you start identifying with Cicero as "anti-Empire", I think you should read 'A People's History of Rome' by Michael Parenti...

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Person

Yeah, I'm a(was) lurker here

By Kissenger, Clark at May 31, 2006 14:36 PM
Yeah, I'm a(was) lurker here and this works very well. It was a confusing trying to find the comments before but now they are visible

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Person

Re : few evil fascistic bastards

By Kissenger, Clark at May 29, 2006 14:49 PM

james you have to make it easy for right wingers to understand what you say, they may not be able to understand what a few evil fascistic bastards means but if they click here all could be explained in a few humourous pictures : caution nausea may be felt while viewing the fascists.

 

Oh James? I understood your post without pictures.. does this make me a genius? [ lol ]

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Person

Left Polling

By Kissenger, Clark at May 28, 2006 12:20 PM

If the goal is ammunition, then a Left polling organization will work, but if the goal is accurate information, then it will not. A scientifically concerned polling organization, which does it's best to write non-leading questions (or asks multiple questions and cross-references the answers, ala a psych test) would be far more valuable than a LeftPol.

So far as the decency of Americans, I think the article roughly mirrors my experiences (but then, I'm also from NIU)---a few evil fascistic bastards, a bunch of self-centered narcissists, and the vast majority of otherwise normal people who simply have been drilled to jump when the TV starts fear-mongering about whatever country we're supposed to hate this week.

Unfortunately, the structure of the society means the evil ones end up running everything, and the narcissists end up putting the televised face on it.

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Person

I have noticed though that

By Kissenger, Clark at May 27, 2006 10:38 AM

I have noticed though that most of our discussions more or less followed the following pattern: right wing agitators stirred things up (often with pedantic non-sequiturs, mindless diatribes and the like); people here attempted to deconstruct their arguments point-by-point; things quickly degenerated into name-calling;

I disagree with name caling.. right-wingers are often afflicted with strong nationalistic emotions, They tend to believe that they pecuniarily profits by supporting "big "business ", there is nothing wrong by showing that it is an erroneous notion.

 

--- people show me my erroneous notion every day..

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Person

Speaking as a Canadian...

By Kissenger, Clark at May 25, 2006 23:55 PM

I've always felt Canadians are in a rather unique position when it comes to the issue of the perception of Americans in the world - we live and interact with Americans more than anybody else, yet we are "foreign" enough to have an outside perspective on them. In fact, a quick count gives at least three of us (all from the Toronto area in fact, so it seems) involved in this discussion alone (a quick aside: I've actually found Torontonians to be pretty receptive to radical analyse, by and large knowing who Chomsky is, and I live in the suburbs).

This certainly applies to me personally: I have American relatives, I've lived and studied with Americans, went to "activist training camp" in the US, and have quite a few close American friends (in fact I'm even in love with an American). I wrote my MA Thesis on US foreign policy. Yet I still qualify as an outsider. My take on the issue (having lived in Europe for a while and travelled quite a bit) is indeed that non-Americans hate US policies (and some of the more annoying aspects of American culture: the superiority complex, the perceived arrogance, ignorance, etc.), but we don't hate Americans. We make jokes about them, sure, and we don't always *like* them very much, but if anything we tend to feel sorry for them.

Certainly the global reservoir of good will towards the US state and its policies is by now nonexistent, but such a reservoir remains towards the American people. This too is getting dangerously low I suppose, but I think people around the world are smart enough not to equate one with the other. It does get frustrating at times to hear even very well-meaning Americans say things like "we can't leave Iraq now, or things will be worse" but this is a function of the way the American thought control system operates.

In any case it makes no sense (and indeed is counterproductive) to consider Americans themselves our enemies. This is the same kind of dualistic thinking Bush and bin Laden would have us all subscribe to, but we do so to our own peril: Americans are our most important potential allies in restraining the worst excesses of their own government. Ultimately, it's up to them to do something about the situation; we can't do anything without them.

After all, why are we here discussing things with Street and Chomsky, on a website based in Massachusetts? The greatest anti-Empire resources and actors are always to be found within the Empire. Cicero wouldn't have been taken seriously in Rome had he not been Roman. All we can do (the other 5.7 billion or so of us) is offer our help and understanding in aid of the great (and necessary) project of launching the next American Revolution.

Graeme 

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Person

Very Good Questions Paul

By Kissenger, Clark at May 25, 2006 23:23 PM

Nice to see some people back here (bwong, evan). As a long time regular on the old ZNET commentary system, I too have recently wondered what happened to everyone. For me it has been a combination of things - the new system, while obviously superior in some ways, seems to have been in a state of ongoing construction or something for a very long time now. I still check out the blogs from time to time (as good as ever, by the way), but since I don't see many replies I'm often not motivated to join in myself. Finally, I was busier in my personal my life throughout March and April than I had been so I stopped visiting ZNET as frequently.

Perhaps it was just kind of a "perfect storm" of factors that hit all at once that led to the reduction in activity here; perhaps there were never that many regular contributors to begin with, and when a few stopped participating it created a cascade effect.

I have noticed though that most of our discussions more or less followed the following pattern: right wing agitators stirred things up (often with pedantic non-sequiturs, mindless diatribes and the like); people here attempted to deconstruct their arguments point-by-point; things quickly degenerated into name-calling; then the process was repeated. I'm very glad that hasn't happened much here yet, though I also hope we don't become a group of 4 or 5 like-minded people whose entire discussion consists of "yep, I agree with that." Case in point, your current post Paul, which I feel raised some very good issues (see my next reply).

Graeme

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Person

Zblogs compatibility

By Kissenger, Clark at May 24, 2006 13:04 PM

Attention , for user on the Mac OS X platform 1.3.9 and 1.4 the tags editors are compatible with mozilla and firefox, see the chart below..

Browsers compatibility/Compatiblity Chart

This is my ZBlog test on Mac OS x 1.3.9 using Firefox 1.5 , note user can link also pictures.. toggles the editor in full screen mode..and have some ability to re-edit their comments..

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Person

So True

By Kissenger, Clark at May 24, 2006 03:11 AM

Paul,

 

First, I'm afraid I was "Anonymous" - the site did not sign me in or prompt me. Apologies for that. And apologies for being so long-winded - I'm quite passionate about some thigs, it's true. And I really don't mean to bore the socks off folks here...;-)

Secondly, the article you posted was quite insightful. In fact I could not have put it better. My experience was the same, and continues to be when I (rarely now) visit the US. When I lived there, I led a "normal" suburban life, filled with what turned out to be meaningless activities and surrounded by people with no more mission in life than to get to get on to the next entertainment event - a party, a game, a movie, TV, a trip. The country is literally built upon a capitalistic entertainment base - even war has become entertainment until it gets boring and people realise that their sons and daughters are REALLY dying.       - Victor

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Person

trying a canadian layout

By Kissenger, Clark at May 23, 2006 23:52 PM

Achar

this is rich text disabled..

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Person

this on safari

By Kissenger, Clark at May 23, 2006 23:35 PM

R.Fisk

this is same bug, now toggling rich text

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Person

By Kissenger, Clark at May 23, 2006 23:28 PM
<a href="http://www.robert-fisk.com"> R.Fisk </a>

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Person

Messieurs..most of the time

By Kissenger, Clark at May 23, 2006 00:25 AM
Messieurs..most of the time whenever I voice a political opinion, toronto people look at me like if i was some sort of alien, I am somewhat labeled as anti-american, a lots of people dont even know whom Chomsky is. I do admit I do have difficulty to dissociate american people from whom they elected for government, it does help a bit knowing that the reps stoled two elections. Something I have learned about forums, blogs and dissention against the american president and related policies is that some "listeners" feels that your opinion put their country is under attack; a blind patriotism suddenly becomes really appearant as soon as you start being critical ,personal attacks and disrespectful comments rises; I received a few threatening emails. i am the least surprised about the type of smear campaign(s) aimed at victimizing mr Chomsky.

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Person

"My soul was desiccated in America"

By Kissenger, Clark at May 22, 2006 19:04 PM
Following up on Anonynomous' reflections on alienation, disengagement, softeness, and individualism in the U.S., I ran across an interesting passage I thought I would share from Rian Malan's haunting memoir My Traitor's Heart: A South African Exile Returns to Face His County, His Tribe, and His Conscience (New York, NY: Grove, 1990): "In Los Angeles in 1979, the only people who seemed to have heard of Nelson Mandela were members of the Revolutionary Communist Party, who called up to invite me for a beer. They took me for a kindred spirit, which indeed I was, although I found their sectarian enthusaism for Albania somewhat baffling....It struck me after a few years in exile [in the U.S.], that I had thrown away something very precious by leaving South Africa. Maybe it was just nostalgia, but in my memory my former life seemed somehow charged with meaning. Every day had been a battle against howling moral head winds. I had lived amidst stark good and evil, surrounded by mystery and magic....Nothing in [the U.S. of] America could ever compare with so powerful a set of intoxicants. In America, my soul was desiccated. There was nothing to to but get drunk, get laid, and make money, and no hope that there would ever be more to it than that. I used to lean against walls at parties, demoralized beyond uplift, asking Americans what the point was, what larger significance they saw in their lives. They seldom had answers. And so I found myself yearning for South Africa" (p. 76). This is too harsh for my experience of the U.S. in 1979 and the early 1980s ---- which for me were pretty exciting and about reading Marxist and left historians [Hobsbawm, EP Thompson, and David Montgomery among others] and theoreticians and also about first-time involvements in activist efforts that were more engaged with ordinary people than the RCP (though I did join the SWP for one week....the chapter of five got raided by three Spartacists who yelled "Why Aren't You Smashing Capitalism?") ---- but it does capture some of the authoritarian banalization of evil and the hopeless fragmentgation of experience and consciouenss that have been such horrible hallmarks of the American System for a long time. Malan ends up pining back for the vicious apartheid regime of South Africa after a few years of seemingly meaningless existence in capitalist America, where everything true and (well) meaningful seems (to quote Marx and Engels in 1848) have "melted into the air" and been "drowned in the icy waters of egotistical calculation." I am too technically unsophisticated to comment intelligently on the mechanics of the blog system (don't know a Drupal from a Bohpal); I only sense that the readership fell dramatically after last system was introduced and think what caused that is a possibly worthwhile topic. On the positive side, I notice the system's once regular collapses no longer occur and that people are free to reflect beyond the old character limits (e.g. Anonymous' passage). And higher comment totals are not all good in and of themselves. A considerbale number of the comments and indeed much of what drove larger totals in the past was often fairly disrespectful commentary and insistent nagging (with concomitant response) from people who just trolled the site and blasted from the center and right.

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Person

re : ZNet blogs

By Kissenger, Clark at May 22, 2006 13:10 PM
David, it very difficult to design web sites according to everyone's preferences. Regardless, The greatest difficulty coders have when building web sites is often that "gibberish  or dirt" is overwriting the inside the code sometimes by just transfering "programs" files cross-platform and sometimes its is cause by proprietary editor or otherwise failing this and given to the outstanding experience of programmer here bugs could be more relating to a client-side problem like someone using blockquotes copied form a ms word documents  or whatever..The Zmag blogs are impressives..and really sophisticated

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Person

Technical Difficulties

By Kissenger, Clark at May 22, 2006 10:49 AM

Paul,

I can only speak for myself, but I have not kept up on the blogs because the new system has not been functioning properly or consistently.  For several weeks, it was simply impossible to navigate and view posts. 

CMZ

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Person

comment

By Kissenger, Clark at May 22, 2006 00:51 AM

hello.  i've made a few comments here and there, generally on lucinda's posts.  i find that things such as this usually yield more argument and posturing than constructive involvement.  i'm not sure i've done very much to make it different.

 

anyway, responding to posted question, i still read, but a long time ago i stopped commenting with any regularity whatsoever, due to the regular trolls and the (in my opinion) disagreeable and pointless nature of "arguing" in such a place.  also, i believe they cancelled my log-in name when they changed layouts, or something (i don't care).

 

i'd post if i had something useful to direct people to, or felt there was a good reason to offer some insight i had, on the rare occasion i had any.  if it doesn't bother anyone, i'd prefer to generally let silence be a tacit endorsement of people writing what they feel like writing. 

 

p.s. to point out a bit of the weirdness of these internet forum-ish places, don't my first two paragraphs seem to hint of some sort of drama?  like i'm backhandedly trying to disrespect someone?  the thing is, i'm not.  i'm just a reader, i like to read what's said here, and believe in voicing and thinking about these ideas.  online posting seems to shout for confrontation though; it's pretty mysterious and i don't like it.  i'm inclined very much to agree with david peterson's comment (which i guess will be below this one), though i think idea exchange should go on where it can, as much as it can.

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RE: The ZNet Blogs

By Kissenger, Clark at May 21, 2006 13:57 PM

 

Friends:

On the seriously degraded state of the ZNet Blogs: An honest answer to the perplexities expressed among these comments is so obvious, I won't bother. 

Still.  In Cyrano's "re old commentator" (May 20), you can find a hint as to the answer.  Namely: "keir please verify your safari text encoding is set to 'default' or check your keyboard layout to US."

Now.  When visiting other websites and posting comments to their various fields, how often do you suppose that visitors have had to undertake adjustments of the kind Cyrano advised?  As often as they have had to do at the new ZNet Blogs?  Half-as-often?  Almost never?

Buiilding a "community" based on a certain level of interest in, and knowledge of, computers and open-source software is an inherently elitist undertaking. 

There is nothing leftist about it.  Nor can notions such as community, democracy, participation, empowerment, and the like, legitimately be made to apply to its product.

PS. By the way: Bwong mentions "some theories about why there has been a decline in Zblog activities on the "forums" section on this site." ("What happens to Zblog?" May 19.)

As I am not in the least familiar with any of the material posted to the "Forums" section, please post some of it here. 

Or, if need be, I'll initiate a new blog on this topic, and you all can feel free to take it from there.

 

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Blogs

By Kissenger, Clark at May 21, 2006 12:04 PM
I've wondered that myself - why the sudden dropoff of activity here? It's like everyone quietly walked off with no warning. As observed, even the Choimsky blog is attracting but few responses. Perhaps the Patriot Act is having its effects?...;-)

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Paul, Image is a powerful

By Kissenger, Clark at May 21, 2006 09:13 AM

Paul,

Image is a powerful thing. When I lived in America, I found that most people around me just got on with their jobs and their lives as if little else existed. Actually, I think most of us in the countries making up the G-8 are like that. We want to work, bring in food to our families, have a warm bed, decent medical care, the chance for an education for ourselves and our children, and occassionally the opportunity to sit around the living room having a few drinks with family and friends and maybe watching a movie or sports. America is a country that for many living there (unfortunately, a shrinking number) offers just such opportunities to greater or lesser degrees. Almost everyone has at least one television, so even the poorest can find ways to watch a daily flood of entertainment, sports and mind-numbing, ill-informed, watered down news. And if I have that lifestyle, and if I am not threatened by any who would take it away, I'm happy enough to let the world get on with its business. I might have an opinion about it, but not so strongly that I would be willing to sacrifice my way of life.

Therein, lies a problem. We have become soft. It's been a long time since America and Americans had to fight for their lives, and family, and homes, and lands, and way of life. The last time I know of was the American Civil War. And we've never had to fight for today's allotment of food, if it is to be found. Until Bush, we've never had to fear that someone would come unannounced in the middle of the night and steal our loved ones off to a detention centre as suspected "terrorists" where they have no rights to an attorney or to courts of law and can be held indefinitely.

Added to the softness is a 24-hour barrage of misinformation, suble messages, and blatant propaganda from cradle to grave. No one can withstand that without someone or something to break them free of it, and most of us never come across that saving event(s) in our lives. We are continually fed information in all forms (TV, radio, school, university, work, culture, word-of-mouth) that tells us how wonderful America is - the Land of the Free, the Land of Opportunity. And we are told how threatened America is - always. Our movies and our televisions constantly demonstrate to us from a very early age that violence is the answer to virtually every threat. Our heros are not educators, or scientists, or charity workers, or writers, or any of the other so many people who excel in so many ways useful to humanity. No, our heros are football players who smash the opposition (our modern blood-bathed gladiators). screen stars who promote a fantasy world where everyone has a large home, a nice car and lots of money, action heros from the movies who teach us that violence and carnage, if done for a just cause, are the answers to those who would threaten us. And even when they are not filling us with violent messages, they are titillating us with sexual messages and humour that works like a mild acid that over time breaks down the fabric and sanctity of any closely-held moral or ethical basis for right-living. And do these messages have an effect upon us and our children? Of course they do. They numb us to violence, and worse, encourage us to turn to violence as a form of esteem enhancement or problem resolution. They lessen our resolve to lead strong moral and ethical lives, and worse, to accept as a necessary part of life those in government or industry who don't. They fill us with a belief that America is good and kind and well-meaning, and that if you question that, you are an enemy of America, and that enemies of America need to be dealt with - if you know what I mean. And they fill us with the idea that we should trust our government and industry leaders to protect us and our way of life, even if it means sending our sons and daughters to a foreign shore to kill and destroy on their behalf.

Yes, we are soft. We let our leaders do our thinking for us. We let our leaders inform us. We let our leaders protect us. We are too soft to say no to leaders who extort our sons and daughters and hard-earned money. We are too soft to accept a somewhat lower standard of living if it means that the rest of the world will live just a little better for it. We are too soft to take away the trade barriers that prevent the farmer in Africa from selling his crops to us. We are too soft to prevent our multi-national corporations from externalising costs over the world. We are too soft to prevent our leaders from killing all hopes of freedom in other countries to benefit our industry. We are too soft to say no to our leaders who indiscriminately bomb and destroy people and their families and their homes and their life-sustaining infrastructure in other lands who "threaten the American way of life".

Indeed, the people of the world are waking up not only to the fact that the American government is a brutal empire, but that its people, the one force that can stop it, must bear the blame for not using that force to protect the world.

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re old commentator

By Kissenger, Clark at May 20, 2006 22:28 PM
hi mr neuringer, I have no problem with safari..[this off topic, keir please verify your safari text encoding is set to "default" or check you keyboard layout to US..] paul, Keir, I can't say , it seem that the north american population has been rendered numb by the television news..

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From an old commenter...

By Kissenger, Clark at May 20, 2006 20:36 PM
Paul: I've been lurking. I'm not fond of the new blog system but haven't had the time to make any constructive criticisms. One personal issue is that the new system hasn't liked my browser (Safari). From my perspective here in The Hague, it seems many ordinary Europeans imagine Americans in the US are sort of held captive by their government and its "Christian" fundamentalist supporters. As for Americans abroad, there are two kinds, and everybody rolls their eyes and tries to avoid the more common one of the two. As has always been the case.

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Follow up on public opinion and ZNet blogs

By Kissenger, Clark at May 20, 2006 18:23 PM
Thanks for the link bwong. Seems to me that a fair amount is lost in the new format, but also some gained. I think people liked seeing their comments posted in the old way not as much the new. I miss the old individualized home page for each blogger, bourgeois as that may perhaps sound. On R.'s comment, Mahajan is right about the need for left polling I suppose but please bear in mind that survey opinion research is very expensive and capital intensive and the like and that's part of why you are not going to seem much of it. Basically though, I find enough to work with in a progressive way in the polls that are conducted by the various bourgeois/mainstream organizations. If the results are as good as they often even with those institution's hidden biases and such, imagine how good a portrait of opinion (with all the limits of public opinion) with polling designed by actual leftists. I will try to blog a little more frequently in the next few weeks and see whether that helps...

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threads

By Kissenger, Clark at May 19, 2006 23:09 PM
may be the comments should be displayed by default flat list-expanded, date- oldest first " , 30 comments by page , this like on the old blog.. as per the blogs hierachy, should the most active topic be given predominance..?

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re : what happenned to Zblog ?

By Kissenger, Clark at May 19, 2006 22:54 PM
Paul it seem that commentators are lurking ( hi bwong, pangeae ),, I wonder what happened to zubub whom may have took me too personally.. I guess the others are still around.. [ fall off chair, while surfing I just fell on a picture of chomsky and fidel castro, une méchante photo, let me tell you.. time to turn on the printer!..]

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What happens to Zblog?

By Kissenger, Clark at May 19, 2006 20:04 PM
Hi, Paul, just stopping by on a lazy Friday evening. There are some theories about why there has been a decline in Zblog activities on the "forums" section on this site. Znet activity Take care.

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Diagnosing public attitudes

By Kissenger, Clark at May 19, 2006 13:26 PM

Paul, I am not sure how we interpret public attitudes. Given that this is such a crucial part of activism, I feel it hasn't deserved enough attention.

Most (left-wing) analyses of public opinion I've seen have been based on polls. Really, how reliable are polls? Note that I'm not criticizing the sample based approach of the polls. I have no doubt the percentages that are reported are accurate. But only as far as responses to the specific questions asked. It is impossible to understand the context of the question, the way it was asked and so on. Then how can we be so confident in using polls to interpret public attitudes? Isn't our extensive reliance on polling data worrisome?

There was a proposal some time back by Rahul Mahajan that the left ought to have its own polling organization where we can ask suitable questions and get a better sense of public attitudes. Is any one working on this? It seems such an obvious need.

Further, I'm not sure how certain we can be of the decency among Americans. After all, America is a racist country.

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re : what happened to znet blogs ?

By Kissenger, Clark at May 19, 2006 00:00 AM
Personally, I come read occasionally the blogs but since recently I am ennoyed with privacy concerns in regards to my ISP. [ the cable modem is giving my computer name over the net!] So I have reduced my posts. It does not mean I don't come here and peep on the posts or try to inform myself with new stuff. I think it is a bit early to say that readers declined, I guess most readers are only lurking; Regardless, I would agree the numbers of personal attacks on Mr. Chomsky have diminished... The number of post from Leia Mouammar has decline too..[ that is sad ] Where did she go? One other tiny thing I noticed is that sometimes bloggers seem to be posting on the same topic, so Its a bit confusing which blogger to choose when adding comments..

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What happened to ZNet Blogs?

By Kissenger, Clark at May 18, 2006 21:49 PM
So what happened to this blog system's old readership and/or commenter cadre? I recently saw that even a Chomsky post led to something like 6 comments; under old system, for better or worse, you could put up his grocery shopping list and it would garner 100 plus. I am assuming (falsely perhaps) that a drastic reduction in comments reflects a drastic decline in readership. Constructive responses might inform changes or perhaps abandonment of the blog mode (which is not a self-evidently progressive mode of communication)altogether.

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In Mexico...

By Kissenger, Clark at May 17, 2006 19:58 PM
I am generally treated very well. I go where there are few white people and fewer Americans (more Europeans, specifically Germans). The US Dollar isn;t accepted in any stores, and the banks are demanding about the quality of the bill they will exchange (no rips, tears, discolorations, etc). hell, even American express Traveler's checks are refused by the banks hint: use the ATM machines... best exchange rates, and actuallya smaller fee than using the ATM at the local stores here in Dekalb). So, in coming in contact with many who know of the US only through the Mexican media, I can only say that that they do indeed *hate* the US gov't and it's "Bigger Boss" attitude, but they have never turned that anger towards me. of course, I'm not the idea of the American tourist, running around with a big beer belly, big dark sunglasses, reeking of sunscreen, huge brim hat, fanny pack, and asking where I can "get a cheap drink and a cheaper woman." The bottom line seems to me that if we and our government treat the people of the world with respect (especially in their own country), then we ourselves will be treated the same way. Unfortunately, our government fails to do just that, and many US tourists treat Mexico as the place to go and sin and feel guilt free about doing it. Sorry to rant. Paul, as soon as we finish building the house, you *have* to come down for a visit.

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