Stuff I've been thinking.

Classes are over and I've been neglecting this. I'll start macro and go down from there.

I'm glad that our new president-elect is Barack Obama. I had hoped for more liberal policies, but either way, it is what it is, right? At least we can now get respect in the world and people will want to come to the table and talk instead of going to war--or worse, ignore us. I don't like that so many Clintonites are back into the White House, but who else is there? With only one Democratic president (besides Bill Clinton) since 1968, who is trained at that level other than the Clinton people? But this new administration will be good, Obama is bringing in so many staffers that there will be well-trained mid- and senior-level political staffers on the Democratic side in 2016 when we're looking for a new president.

It worries me that Bush staffers felt that the Bush presidency ended after Hurricane Katrina. Sheesh. What they are really saying is that there has been no real executive since 2005. What the hell? It's just not right. We've been on autopilot hoping that things will be okay.

I was driving through D.C. tonight and I saw the Palestinian rally. They were headed from the White House to the State Department. They were yelling for Palestinian freedom. It's sad really, because there never will be such a thing. The Israelis won't allow it. My problem currently is with Egypt. As a nation, they could open up so that civilians could get out of the way. They can turn over all suspected Hamas militants. Either way, Hamas was democratically elected and we can't continue to allow democratically elected governments to fall and then claim that we believe in spreading democracy.

I've got my classes for next semester. History and Public Policy and Washington Influence and Power. Neat stuff, eh?

It's nice to have the holidays over now. The History Channel can get back to good programming, like what I'm watching right now, The Seven Deadly Sins: Lust. America is excellent. I just read a note on facebook that a friend posted that said that an Anglican who studied Islam has now become an atheist because no book could be infallible. It is this type of thing that Bertrand Russell figured out at the beginning of the 20th century. Individual people keep reinventing ideas. A wider reading list would have convinced the man to come to this conclusion years ago.

Alright. I'll write again sooner than last time.

My Silence

My silence has been compounded by being busy: School, family, work. The trident of success. I also someone managed to finish the first draft of my novel.

There has also been the issue of the political world. Obama and McCain. From a historical standpoint I have been trying to deny that there is anything to this. Really I've been observing.

I'm scared for my America. People have been using key terms. Terms that appeal to racist ideologies. Terms that appeal to...nothing I could say here hasn't already been written.

I just need something to happen to make me feel better about all of this. I need hope.

There really is a lot to say

I wouldn't really consider myself to be a hardcore Marxist--probably not even soft-core. Politically and idealistically I see myself between people like Antonio Gramsci, Rosa Luxemburg, and Eugene Debs. I'm a proud socialist. International Workers of the World Unite! and all that...go for it.

I'm watching George W. giving his address to the nation, his very own fireside chat in the hallway. Does anyone else see holes in the capitalist system? I was just told "democratic capitalism is the greatest thing ever devised....” Right that was a paraphrase, but think about that statement, if it was really that good, it the market functioned rationally, then wouldn't these problems not happen? See, this is the issue with capitalism: It depends on rationalism. Something that I, as a believer in (most) existential ideology sees as a way to run headlong into the absurd.

I've had stuff running around in my head for the past week or so when it was determined that, you know, the world was ending, cars would stop working, and people would just stay home because AIG wouldn't exist anymore. Could this event move us--accidentally--to a socialist rebirth? And now for the main event...I'm going to slightly disagree with Zizek.

Slavoj Zizek has been stating recently that even modern socialists have fallen into the belief system that we have reached "the end of history." Somehow, we are all Fukuyamists (for my reader that doesn't know what I'm talking about: Francis Fukuyama wrote a book called The End of History and the Last Man.) The argument that Fuki gives us is in brief that history (dialectical history) has ended with capitalist democracy winning over communism (read the Soviet Union). But might we look at this, might the government buy everyone's house and provide for that much more of our social welfare? Might this be a great liberal gift in disguise?

Unfortunately, there's not going to be a single person that can give us an answer on this until the time comes when we can stand on the hill and say, "ah, that's what happened."


A side point in brief: Humans cannot act rationally. We are not built like that.

Back to the main argument: I'm also wondering if it is a trade-off. Last night we discussed human rights. If you look at East Asian countries, food, housing, health care, those types of basic needs are provided, but the people give up rights that we claim, assembly, privacy, and speech.... Are we at that trade-off point? Would Americans feel better, more secure, if they gave up our freedoms for our basic needs? It's obvious that no nation has been able to provide both at the same time. Nations cannot provide these various rights because they run against each other.

I've got to develop this for my 230 paper. Hmm.

God, Gold, Glory...and Spices

School has once again started and with a new semester brings the resumption of this blog. After all, it is a blog dedicated to policy and such and when not in school I'm not dealing much with policy, so I didn't feel like updating.

So now for the obligatory, "do I really want to do this?" post. Catherine had a few of these last semester, so once again, I'm repeating her.

The title of the post? Oh, that. Well, I was driving home today and thinking about Mr. Stover, the first teacher I had that really had me interested in a subject. I had always liked history. I had always done well in history, but this was different. One of his landmark lectures was on Mercantilism: God, Gold, and Glory, yes we get it, Marc, we all learned that, what's your point? Spices. They were also looking for spices. At which point everyone goes "ohhhhh, well yeah they were. That teacher of yours was pretty smart."

So yeah, I started doing what only a philosophy student would do; I began to relate that lecture to what I'm feeling today. My Malaise. My malaise is extended by an article in the Newsweek about Guyland or whatever they called it...something about kidults. Oh well. The point of the article is that men in their 20s are choosing because of media influence, friends, and misheld beliefs that marriage, settling down, working, etc. are generally bad things. This has driven the median age of first marriage for men to be 27 years old. I was married at 22. Annie and I had rough patches and we still fight every now and then, but were happy. Really happy and I have no doubts about the steps I've taken towards a domestic life.

So yeah, get back to how that relates!

Fine.

What if I'm a merchantilist and I'm Cortez searching for my very own God, Gold, Glory...and Spices.

Annie is now thinking in her head, "Shibby?"

Well, we all know how I feel about God: Something along the lines of Christopher Hitchens, Buddha, and David Hume battling it out. So that's been so far spread and understood.

Gold: I have my gold. My pockets are filled with riches as far as I'm concerned. Yes, I could have more but all and all, I just went and bought some groceries and didn't think twice about picking anything up no matter the price. Annie and Ihave good jobs and within a resonable ammount of say five or so years will have paid off our college debt (including credit cards that we got in college). So, basically by the time I'm 30 I'll be living like, I dunno Sir Walter Raleigh, except married and not chasing after the queen....hmm, off topic.

Glory: Yes, glory. Here is where I feel like I'm stuck looking for the Northwest passage. What is my glory? Finishing my book and writing others? Working a thankless job (but getting paid really well)? I mean, what I do is important and people do depend on me.... Or is my glory in getting a PhD. I want to become a professor and write and influence opinion. That just matters to me, going back to high school I wanted to be the friend of the popular kid, the smart one that thinks up the good ideas and then the popuar kid goes, "yeah, that'll work, that's great!" I want to be that guy. My ideas, my policies, I want them researched and enacted. And I want to teach students to become good people, to udnerstand more than just their topic or their subject, to enjoy other things and look at the other perspectives. But then I wonder if glory even matters if I have a good home and a great lovely family? That's my doubt in a nutshell. And then going back to the Newsweek article, I've never really felt god with those people, those guys in my age group who act that way. One of my managers, a guy only a few years older than me knows every single happy hour in Northern Virginia and which bar by name...I couldn't live like that. I dunno why anyone would. I wouldn't want to accept that kind of personal doubt.

My doubt is in where my glory is.

...and Spices: So, you're wondering how this fits in. Children. I want children. Kids, I love them really. Some are annoying, but that's bad parenting skills and a society that says kids can do whatever they'd like. For me it's different. Kids, I think, once Annie and I find them, will make our lives better. It's like having more than just salt and pepper.

So there, my current thinking in a nutshell version.

Next update will have something to do with policy. I swear.

Education as a means of suppression.

Subtitle: A fight for Popular Education in the U.S.

Today I read an article (http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/25238281/) about a teenager-an émigré-named Lukasz Zbylut. He got into seven "Ivy League" schools: Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Dartmouth, Penn, Cornell, Georgetown, Stanford and New York University. I'm fine with all the names on that list. But NYU as an Ivy League? No. But NYU would like to thank the Today Show writer for giving them the boost. He's a kid from Poland. He moved here in the 7th grade, went on to learn English and be a successful student (obviously). But wait, why did he apply to all 7? In fact, he applied to 11 schools in all-getting denied by only MIT. I don't have a problem with people being successful. I, in fact, am successful. Most of my friends are successful. But I think Zbylut is a keen example of the problems that have existed in American education since...oh, about...let's see...Reconstruction.

The Ivy leagues and the elite state schools exist in an interesting world of their own. In the South and other rural areas, the families would pool their money and buy a teacher to roam around the countryside teaching their children. And this is much how these elite schools work. A child of a professor, political figure, celebrity, business executive, and so on get into these institutions regardless of grades or abilities. It is much the same for the sports star-a football player with a 2.5 GPA, substandard SATs and a child on the way can get into the school of his choice if he can run, kick, throw, or catch well. And then there are the legacy kids-the normal people who get into a school because their parents and grandparents went there. Then, there are the pity cases-the minorities that get in because they've had a particularly difficult life. They worked hard in school, applied and got in-but outside affirmative action, their applications never would have been looked at. What's left are the true normal people. A handful of normal people will be chosen to fill the ranks of the elite schools each year, for the rest it's the average universities, the community college, the military, a job.

And then there are two types of normal people: the lower and the middle class. Obviously, the lower class are worse off, they are less likely to even get to community college; they work in low wage jobs, can't afford health care, and will reproduce. They will do all of that without ever really understanding their role in society or how the society they live in works. Mr. Taylor, my government teacher in senior year tried to change that. I took the regular government class instead of AP. It was the best decision I made in high school. He taught REAL government. I learned the practical stuff (I was easily able to pick up the theory in college). But I learned how to debate issues and who set the policies that mattered. Of there 25 or so kids in the class, only three or four of us actually went to college. So those students are well off.

Aside from my tangent, I think that I've shown the problem. The largest university in Virginia , Virginia Commonwealth, houses just over 30 thousand students in various programs. The Ivies are much smaller.

Harvard: 19,000
Yale: Almost 17,000
Stanford: Almost 15,000
Columbia: 31,000 (much better)

Still, even Columbia is puny compared to the finest European Universities:

University of London: 135,000
Oxford: About 20,000
Free University: 35,000
Edinburgh: 25,000
Shanghai: 35,000
Melbourne: 33,000
Lund: 42,000
Oslo: 32,000

That's a small example. All of them are freakin' huge. Oslo has 32,000 students. THERE ARE ONLY 4 MILLION PEOPLE IN NORWAY. The point is, the U.S. is losing intellectual creativity and credibility because of the exclusive misuse of elite universities.

Many professors at elite universities do studies on the normal people, they go out and help them. University of Virginia medicals taff go to Appalachia and provide free medical care and various times during the year. But how many kids from Appalachia have ever gotten into UVA? Not as many as those that come from NoVa or Richmond, China or India. This isn't meant to me a rant on intellectual isolationism. Educating the world is one of the best ways the U.S. can strengthen and spread a positive image to the world community. What it is meant to say is that elite schools are paying lip-service to these normal people.

I am a normal person. I am a part of the lucky handful in that I was accepted for graduate school at George Washington, not Ivy, but only by a hair or so. By the way, GWU has about 24,000 students.

You don't need to go to college to be smart. I've discussed that in other posts. You can be an organic intellectual (OI), but in the United States it has become increasingly more difficult to do so. The OI has more and more had to depend on the idea and persistence of luck. The idea that a chance encounter caused your life to be completely different (better or worse) is difficult to deal with.

The fact of the matter is that we must create a new system. In our current system, could we have had a Eugene V. Debs? His parents came here from France. He never went to college and served as a fireman for the railroads before becoming one of the most beloved (no one that new him or heard him didn't like him) political figures of the 20th century. Or what about Karl Marx? While many of his ideas may seem like one of the great plagues, he changed society for the better by popularizing socialism-propping up sociology, social work, political science, philosophy, social science, and economics. Our world is better for him. But at the University of Bonn he was only an average student and almost failed out before transfering to what is now Humboldt University. And then there is Gramsci himself. He was upper-middle class and attended the University of Turin, but never graduated because of his radicalism. How often do college drop-outs influence society. I can name three: Kanye West, Karl Rove, and Bill Gates. Out of 300 million Americans I don't want those odds. Gramsci wouldn't either. Radicals today don't drop out to go further into their ambitions, because they know that they must remain a part of the system to change things.

But luckily through Gramsci we get new ideas about education. I will extend this idea into what I would like to call the Bolshevik educational movement. Not that I believe we should spread Bolshevism, we shouldn't. Instead we should take up their means of affecting change in the educational class structure. The Bolsheviks came from within the system and had an urge for immediate change. In such, the educational system demands immediate change within the U.S. Professor Richard Hofstadter felt that the interior of the U.S. would eat the coasts. Eric Foner, his devoted student, disagrees. I don't. Unless we change how education is manufactured, presented, and applied in the United States. Why is it that our best schools don't allow as many students? Do we have less faculty? Less facilities? No. The demand is there, there are more Ph. Ds in the U.S. now than ever, and they are available to teach on demand. Once you become a Ph. D in certain fields it can take up to three years to find a tenure-track position. You'd think that with that kind of shortage of work there'd be less interest in going to college. But to return to Zbylut, he applied to so many schools because "acceptance is down to the single digits at the schools he applied to and he wasn't positive he'd get into any." Why the constraint of knowledge?

We come to the cultural hegemony of the evening. Our culture allows the masses to be educated by television, to accept the status quo. To live by means of day to day. If you don't work for something than you don't deserve it. It's a proud ethic that has cost lives, happiness, and the kind of social and political capital that America use to possess. We need a popular education system that teaches students their place in the world and provides them a means of becoming better citizens. We need to empower people to create better lives for themselves and therefore better lives for others. We can bring up almost everybody. There will always be some type of slave in society-someone who does something horrible and badly paid- so that others may live free, shop as they want and buy drinks at starbucks. But that number does not have to be such a large section of the population.

The elites of the U.S. like Zbylut will never really care about the very poor or the normal people, because they will never see them. It's the Bolshevik-the normal people-the lucky few in the system that are expected/doomed/challenged to go back into the cave and speak of what they have seen and influence others to head towards the light. I have no idea if it will ever work. But something must be done. There is a chock-hold on society and I am shouting at the windmill. We must find our voice in change and progress.

Florida Florida Florida.

I have to log this. I do not have anything profound to say. He was the profound one. As a child, I remember seeing him and I have vague memories of my parents watching him. I did not know him, I did not understand his genius until the 2000 election night. "Florida Florida Florida." I loved him from then on. There was no tougher interview. There was no more difficult program to watch than Meet the Press with Tim Russert. He raised me to the level of being able to glimpse real genius.

He was what Gramsci would call an Organic Intellectual. He came from Buffalo, New York. He attended John Carroll University and then Cleveland-Marshall College of Law at Cleveland State University. Who, outside of the people who have gone there, has ever even heard of Cleveland-Marshall? He came from nothing to be everything. He is clearly the reason why political reporting and politics in general works.

When I graduated from college I spent time wondering what exactly I wanted to be. I wanted to be him. I never thought I would be a reporter, I never attempted it. But I wanted to go to Cleveland-Marshall, I very seriously considered it. I thought just by being there for three years I could learn how to think like him. His eloquence, his brilliance. Every time I got the chance to see him on television I was transfixed. So this is how I have dedicated my life-to think and analysis every word and moment with vigor and truth-like he did.

As I've gotten older, in the two years since truly being an adult, I've tried to build myself to live life with that dignity and honesty. I know that I'll keep getting better at it. For a moment today after I heard, I fell into despair. I broke apart and said, "no more. I will not continue to try." But I knew that wasn't the response he would expect from me. Sadly I never met him. I had hoped to have had the chance. I thought that being in policy and hopefully getting into campaign and maybe on Capitol Hill, that I would one day get to go over to that studio and watch from the good seats and then shake his hand. Honestly I would have asked for a hug, because he has been, in a way I think he would be proud of, a mentor, hero, and father-figure for me.

I will never be the same. There is no moment where I will get that chance to meet him, to see him in person, and to exist in that greatness. But I will carry with me those moments when I saw him on the screen. Transfixed, emotional, and amazed.

Why It Really Shouldn't be Jim Webb:

Virginia needs him. Mark Warner will be our next senator. Warner is the strongest Dem that the Commonwealth has. If Webb leaves his seat, who would fill it? Kaine has another year as Governor. He could curtail that job and move to Senate, sure, but then VA has a Republican governor (since the Lt. Gov. is a Republican-I love VA politics). Who next? Moran (the elder)? Sure, but he's so liberal the rest of VA would never elect him. Chuck Robb is too old; so is Doug Wilder-although he would be excellent. So, we move to what I like to call the cluster-fuck level, or more politely, the third string. Creigh Deeds? Leslie Byrne? Harris Miller (the guy who lost the primary to Webb in '06)?

It leaves the Liberal Virginian scratching their head: We have a weak-assed group of underlings. Deeds and Byrne couldn't pull through on attorney general or lt. gov. Why? Simple. Their politics don't translate state-wide.

If Webb were to become the VP with Obama as president, I honestly think you have a viable 48 or 49 state solution. Webb comes with his issues, but he's an understated and powerful senator, and he's only been there 2 years. Many spend 6 terms there and do less. It's his choice, but if it's offered, and he says "yes," it'll make life interesting again.