Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Out Sick

I've come down with the flu or something. So, I may post a little, but only if I start feeling significantly better.
Posted by Saphron at 1/18/2012 11:54:00 AM

20 comments:

  1. hope you feel better soon, Taryn.

  2. i'd help if i could, taryn, but telekinetic healing isnt one of my strong suits...

    it was odd to see matched cold & flu remedy ads come thru with this post on my google reader...

  3. Today is the first day of the Year of the Dragon.

  4. Over at Huffington Post, there's an article about how Alan Greenspan says that we shouldn't blame capitalism for income inequality. I'd make a semi-coherent comment about this if I could quit sputtering. Reminds me of a comment Norman Mailer made about the US in Vietnam: it's like mugging a kid in an alley, then stopping to ask for a kiss. FUCK HIM.

  5. i wouldnt know how to argue that, raenelle...here's a sortable table of countries by gini-coefficient:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality#List

    tho its a little out of date, you still have countries like namibia & s africa as most unequal, while those such as sweden & japan are most equal...

    on a more recent chart, we rank near the bottom of the OECD countries...about the only thing one could say for sure is that those capitalist countries that have had greenspan for Fed chair are far more unequal than those that havent..

  6. Do you have the flu or the bubonic plague?

  7. @rjs. IMO, you can't consider countries as isolated from the rest of the world when you consider income inequality (footnote, "Capitalism: The Highest Stage of Imperialism," by V. I. Lenin). For a long time, the US was able to transfer the pain of profit-taking (or, as I was trained to call it, if you have a dollar in your pocket that you didn't earn, you stole it from someone who did) to 3rd World countries, especially in South America. Our entire foreign policy since at least 1945, in my reading of it anyway, has been aimed at protecting the ability of our plutocrats to funnel wealth out of the 3rd World into their offshore accounts.

  8. raenelle, i certainly wasnt suggesting one could justify the imperialistic nature of US capitalism, whether is be vis-a-vis latin america, or anywhere else we're ripping off the wealth of other countries...i was just riffing off what you said greenspan said, & my first impulse was to check for gini-coefficients, which a widely known measure of inequality...as it turned out that japan, obviously a capitalist country, was the most equitable by that measure, my previous comment was to note that i couldnt prove that capitalism causes inequality...in fact, even the US was among the most equitable societies in the world in the 50s & 60s, so i cant even say inequality is unique to the US...but dont take this as any kind of justification of capitalism, or anything but my propensity to explore the data for answers...

  9. I got the name of Lenin's work transposed--It's Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism.

    rjs: I've been around, immersed in even, M-L theory for over 40 years, and as of 2007, I still wasn't totally convinced. 2008, though, that made me scramble back to the only theory that could make sense out of what seemed to me to be going on. I've flopped all over the ideological spectrum--from leftist Democrat to Bolshevik--in my life, and I'm sure I haven't quit changing yet. Tomorrow, events might convince me that democracy is doing well, and the bourgeoisie and the proletariat can all live together happily. That could happen. But, right now, I have NO(!!!) faith in the beneficence of capitalism; I don't believe democracy has the power to rein in our plutocrats. Since 2008, the temptation to see the world through the prism of the class struggle has been just too great for me. I'm willing to change, but from where I stand now, Marx was right.

  10. well, you're certainly more versed in m/l theory than i am, raenelle...although i was quite involved in the civil rights & anti-war movements in the 60s, most of my associates were poets & artists on the coffeehouse scenes, & with the underground newspapers of the 60s & 70s...so although i knew people from progressive labor, SDS, socialist labor, the weathermen, et al, i was always uncomfortable with the idea of buying into any philosophy or set of theories...

  11. btw, just noticed that paul krugman put up some music for you ladies this evening:

    http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/27/friday-night-music-damn-love-song/

  12. rjs, you ran with a much cooler crowd than I did, and I'm envious. Looking back now, there was always that "drop out" and listen to the Dead option. I was just too angry. And I absolutely agree, there's something very distasteful and a lot of a cop-out on oneself to buy into a set of theories.

    OTOH, just to defend the whole M-L attraction a bit, I do think there's a bit of bourgeois propaganda swirling around the idea that those theories are rigid articles of faith from which cadre must not deviate.

    But, fuck it all. I really do own a lot more Dead CDs than M-L tomes, and truth be told, I get more out of them.

  13. Whenever I get some illnesses like flu, cough and colds accompanied by sore throat, I drink ginger tea with tea. It's one of the best flu remedies.

  14. Flu is an illness that will surely put you on bed all day long. It's even worse with cough, fevers, colds and severe sore throat. I hope you feel much better everyday from now on.