The Two Faces of One City

Phew, I'm back in GA after a week in Dallas, Texas. Here's the thing about Texas: On the one hand it really is the republican stronghold you've heard scary campfire stories about. Every gas station I went to along I-20, under the big Texan sky, had for sale special edition TIME magazines dedicated to the legacy of Ronald Reagan, prominently displayed, right in front of the cash registers. In Dallas, there were numerous highways named after George W. or Reagan, and, of course, Dallas is the town where the G.W. Bush library is located (I drove by––I didn't actually go in).

But on the other hand, the part of Dallas where I stayed looked almost exactly like little 5 points in Atlanta or the end of Washington street in Athens, GA. Which is to say, no more than a 5 minute drive from the G.W. Bush library was a section of town filled with tattooed hipsters riding fixies to specialty craft beer pubs or co-opt grocery stores with banners advertising "No GMO" products (at one point, I even spotted an organic dog food store). It was strange. I mean, it was odd that in what is arguably the most conservative state in the country, in Dallas there was a sizable amount of what might be called progressive/Whole Foods style culture right next door to the super-patriotic cultural monuments of the New Right.

This dichotomy was epitomized for me when I spotted a Volvo emblazoned with numerous liberal bumper stickers supportive of Obama and the local library system right next to a car with Army of God style anti-abortion stickers. And it was nothing to spot a group of goth girls all with polychromatic hair walking behind a group of frat guys wearing pastel Polos and khaki shorts. There was something almost schizophrenic about it, cowboy boots and doc martens all walking alongside each other without anyone batting an eye. I didn't stay in Dallas long enough to get a handle on it, but I do have free place to stay if I every decide to go back and try and understand it––the seemingly binary culture of Dallas, TX.

Fermented Moralism (A fragment)

Wherein a conversation is overheard in obscure dive-bar, somewhere outside of Savannah, GA, 2316 hrs. EST. WASP MALE #1 is a young, twenty-something, bookish and needle-faced student wrapped in a tweed sport coat and blue jeans. WASP MALE #2 is a chubby and bearded and 40-something regular; he sits on a precarious black bar-stool while sweating into plaid shirt and a pair of red sweat pants. The air is stained with tobacco smoke and darkness, a howitzer of an air conditioner is booming from the back of the bar. Drinks have been served. Voices are elevated.     

W.M. #1: “What the hell are you talking about?”

W.M. #2: “I don’t know man, [left hand clutching his chest] I just think there are different types of drunks in the world. Some people, when they drink, just want to hump it on over to their brother’s, sister’s house––whatever––and knock on his ‘r her door and kick their face in, bloody––while other people, they get drunk and want to call up their brother ‘r sister and tell ’em how much they love ’em at 3am on a Saturday morning. It’s just some inner thing that alcohol strips away like paint thinner and reveals, you know? I think there’s a continuum between love and hatred that most people fall on and alcohol makes it easier to get a measurement, is what I’m fruckin sayin’––think of drunkenness like a pregnancy test or something for whether or not someone is an asshole––pour some alcohol on ‘em for the plus or minus.  And results differ, obviously. On the one hand, there are some people who just understand…like it’s frucking innate, they just understand what love and beauty and pain are, you know, like, all that shit. They’re just born with it, they can connect with it cause they’re able to really feel something. And when you drink with these types a pure, base level, drunken empathy comes out, I mean, not all the fruckin time, but sometimes these types will express themselves in a silly expression of good-will that is done in a honest-to-goodness way––it’s like real or whatever. Example, this especially drunk and empathic type person might listen to you describe how your mother died of a rare and terrible form of mesothelioma and then they’d relate to your experience and maybe even shed a vodka soaked tear for you––sure, maybe they won’t technically remember every detail of the conversation the next morning, but don’t think for one second that their expression of empathy wasn’t real in that moment, it was, and this little incident says something about who that person chooses to be [closes his eyes and takes a drink]. And you’ll have, on the other end of the spectrum, you’ll have these people that just fruckin can’t connect with this type of stuff, love or empathy or whatever. These are the negatives. These are usually your aggressive, angry types; they’ve been forced into this hateful and scary world and they just can’t help but be scary and hateful right back. And when these negative types walk down the street all they see is a herd of others; people who aren’t like them; strange people who want to steal and fruck over innocent God-fearing people first chance that comes ‘round.  Just pour some alcohol on a frightened and volatile personality like this and you’ll see it––a red stripped misanthropic streak––it’s like some drunken king will emerge that wants to push everybody else off the friggin’ mountain, in other words, this king doesn’t know what else to do but react. All that fear and hated ‘ll ooze right out of ‘em because the alcohol has dissolved away their normal façade of basic human solidarity. Dig me? And sometimes, even, with an especially bad case, shit will go down in a situationally, inappropriate and violent way. You’ll see fruckin sweat and bloodshot eyes and then clenched fists will erupt for little or no reason. Tantrums will explode and a fruckin-malignant-shit-strapped-mouth will turn on you and start to threaten you and yours because of your faggoty-looking pink t-shirt or something. You know the breed I am talking about, don’t you? It’s not a rare-fruckin-bird to say the least. Stay away from these drunken bastards––but then drink around them occasionally so you’ll know who they are.”

W.M. #1: “[Almost yelling] But come on, do you really think it’s necessary to get someone drunk to tell the difference between someone filled with love and someone filled with hate? Between a simpatico and a King Asshole? Sounds suspect to me. You’re building two poles of positive and negative and then diagnosing people accordingly. Two poles that don’t necessarily fit the population you are describing––everyone in the world, presumably? And, I mean, the social utility of alcohol isn’t really in question is it? What I mean is, alcohol has been lowering inhibitions and lubricating, as it were, the grinding realities of social interaction in public spaces since antiquity, and part of what it means to lower one’s inhibitions is to make conspicuous the sorts of personal desires and thoughts that a sober and more timid self would keep hidden or severely edit––nothing new here. So maybe alcohol does make someone more apt to reveal something about who-they-really-are in front of strange…others, so what? Unless you are trying to congratulate yourself for the amounts of fermented juniper you have consumed before me tonight, then by all means…”

W.M. #2: “OK, you got me there. Sure, sure my argument is self-serving––hey man look at that young lady right there, soo sexy, yes dear lord [eyes blinking rapidly]––hell yes I am saying that alcohol is a wonderful and socially useful thing right as I am drinking it, of course, and obviously I consider myself to be a positive-slightly-morally-better-than-you-empathic-type, as my current drunkenness clearly reveals [winks]. There simply is no way I will fall into some sort of violent rage this fine evening, or, pretty much any evening before or after this one for that matter. But OK, if you want to poke holes in my typology or argument, sure, go ahead––‘cause I, unlike you, haven’t been nursing this fine pint glass filled with mostly gin and some tonic that I’ve been lubricating this little social gathering with. So maybe I’ve exaggerated a bit. Spoken with shovels full of my own bullshit. Oh Lord, I don’t know [eyes blinking more rapidly than before].”

W.M. #1: “Hey, I’m not saying everything you say is bullshit. I’ll spare you my estimated percentages, but some of the shit you say rings true. And yes, I’m not drinking tonight like there is an impending apocalypse. Anyway, for the sake of argument, how much of the King Asshole is someone really responsible for? Where does one draw the line? You seem to be saying that the Asshole is intrinsic to the Self and is amplified through inebriation, a priori. In Freudian terms, when someone drinks too much their “id” comes out to play like a cement truck rolling through an antique store. But I guess we should leave Freud out of it; you’re just saying that alcohol reveals something true about someone, I guess, in less technical terms. And you realize you’re taking the Cartesian Self for granted here, right? But keep going, I’m amused.”

W.M. #2: “Where did you learn to talk like that? You should probably not do it anymore. It’s anti-social [burps].”

W.M. #1 “Are you saying I'm pretentious or something? [chuckles] Your social instincts are better than mine, I think. You must feel more, being in the world as you are. If my dad were alive he’d like you more than me, I think. You remind me of him. You know one’s relationship to their father, or parents for that matter, is less important than some may have you believe. The perceived importance of your family life as it relates to your mental health is mostly a vestige of Freudian dogma, which stills plagues the empirical psychological research done here in North America, believe it or not. Even though not everything he said was total bullshit, [chuckles, again] I am writing as fast as I can to exorcise that Viennese ghost…”

W.M #2 “[Interrupting] Psychology? Gross. I have no use for Academia, so called. [turns to bartender] Hey man! Beer me. Yeah, I’ll take that green one, yeah that one, thanks man…[Slaps W.M. #1 on the back] You know man…you’re hurting; I can see it in you. Look at yourself. You look like a nerdy, sad puppy gone missing his God; you need to laid, right!? [laughs]. I think I understand you now, see––see!? I can understand you now. See Dylan? It’s the positive and empathic effects of alcohol happening right here before your eyes. I know that what you need from me right now is empathy and understanding, personal verstehen my man. That’s a good German word.

W.M. #1 [interrupting] I know what it means.

W.M. #2 OK, sorry, look, I’m talking about a type of person who seeks a better understanding of others, understanding to the point where then can truthfully, not in any bullshitty-type-way, extend something like love to someone. And if this sad world is ever gonna get any better, this type of love and simple social courtesy of giving someone the-benefit-of-the-doubt needs to happen more often. Jesus, you know, that old Jew would have agreed with me. But there are some pitfalls with extending love to the people that need it. See I think people are mostly scared and alone and lonely, and the most repulsive people are usually the most scared and the most lonely, which can lead to this strange double bind where the people that really need love the most are the ones that are the hardest to reach out to because they’ve morphed into such pricks [squints his eyes at W.M. #1]. What a frucking mess, right? Just a bad situation, but someone has to love these mean fruckers. The ones that want to lash out in the world when they get viscerally intoxicated, somebody has to love them, yeah, even them.  And for me, I have this unavoidable conflict in my head about these negative types that, really, one should avoid because they’re so mean and indignant and hateful, but the problem is they’re the same people who need love the most, all while they don’t deserve it. Don’t ask me to solve that little conundrum here now. Love and understanding, that is, as unoriginal as all this sounds, people, all people, need these two things from other people to be in the world and not collapse from all the inevitable suffering that comes with the whole deal. It’s a question of being, or, better yet, a soul. So what I’m saying is a person’s soul is a intrinsically-social-kind-of-essence; it is living inside of you Dylan, and healthy souls make connections with other souls. Connections between lonely souls are the only way to confront this absurd situation we find ourselves in. Floating around on some rock in an infinite space that is so big you can’t even begin to describe in terms that are even close to any relatable, daily experience. No one should have to confront that kind of thing alone, that abyss––not even assholes. All we have is one another.  

My New Surroudnings [A place in GA to remain unamed]

The people here are huge. In this town I've moved to, that is, they're big. And I'm not trying to pick on them, it's just true. They're also mostly white, religious and camo-clad. These are facts I have learned from surveying my surroundings while taking trips to the grocery store. Their religiosity is normally displayed in unequivocal-bumper-sticker-form. One, seemingly ubiquitous, sticker I see here takes an unusually antagonistic stance towards its readers, next to a picture of a cross it reads: "If this offends you, we'll see what you think when you stand in front of Him on judgement day." The cars that the stickers are attached to are also huge. Most of the population here, or at least their children, participate vigorously in organized sports. This fact is evidenced by bumper stickers as well, and also by sliding mini-van doors that open to reveal small groups of uniform adorned teenagers.

My new port side neighbors are a couple––much younger than they look I imagine––and they have a small child, a boy, between three and five years old. The boy likes to play by himself in the front yard with yellow toy dump trucks. He is usually naked. Sometimes he is wearing a diaper. I have often wondered if the naked boy in my neighbors' front yard is part of some sort of elaborate government scheme to lure and capture pedophiles. I am becoming more accustomed to seeing baby penis on my way to and from the house. Baby toys dot my neighbors' backyard like white plastic stars on a grass canvas.

My girlfriend has met the aforementioned couple next door. To date, I have not. The little boy's mother came over to ask my girlfriend, Amanda, about her cat. The mother was inquiring about the cat because, according to her, an unidentified cat had been sneaking into her house and "fucking" her cat in her bedroom, on her bed; and she suspected that Amanda's cat was the guilty cat fucker. Quite the conundrum, obviously. Amanda, however, told the mother that this unwanted and invasive feline coitus could not be attributed to her strictly indoor cat, Ruby. After Ruby's innocence was thus established, Amanda and the mother exchanged personal details and pleasantries. As Amanda recounted, the mother was extremely open to her––to put it mildly––as she, the mother, moved the conversation from simple introductions to her struggles with pill addiction with DeLorean-like speed. The mother's oversharing made Amanda not a little bit uncomfortable, but she listened with characteristic empathy. I concluded from Amanda's encounter that should we wish to know anything––anything––about the personal lives of the young family next door, we need only hurdle over a couple of baby toys and ask.

The other neighbors to my starboard are a much older couple with an unknown amount of children that have, presumably, left the nest. On Sundays I see a young adult pull perfunctorily into the driveway, with a small child in tow, and then leave again shortly thereafter. During the week the husband and wife can usually be seen on their front doorsteps smoking cigarettes. On the weekends, I usually see the husband obsessively mowing his lawn––he mows over and over the same spots of grass with Sisyphean-esque repetition for hours on end. The man has a zen-like determination to prevent his grass from rising due either to an intense inner hatred of graminoids, or explicit love of them, I can't tell which. I have spoken to this grass-worrier only once, and upon learning of my then status as a graduate student, he told me that I "[looked] like a college man." I took this to mean "unemployed." He then invited me to church, and I, shamefully, lied and told him I was leaving town to visit my mother and could not join him in worship. When I step outside, he waves at me and says, "hello neighbor!" I can't help but appreciate the greeting. I usually wave back and say, softly but firmly, "what's up man."

My new surroundings are very familiar, extremely so. I am not alien to the cultural norms of the southern U.S., and I have a complicated relationship to them akin to the relationship between a disagreeable son and narrow-minded father. It's a strange mix of frustration and anger, mixed with a sort of obligatory love and commitment. I am indeed a native son. So if you feel that I have been unkind to those I've written of, know that I speak of them as a part of the community and not as an indignant outsider.

As for now, I should be looking for a job instead of blogging––so wish me luck in finding a corporation to rent myself to. I'm looking forward to maybe making some of you a cup of coffee while working at Starbucks, that is, if I'm lucky enough to get a job there. 

"We are Professionals after all."

Graduate school for me has been an interesting experience. As a process and method for professionalizing young minds and bodies, a university education  is pretty damn effective. If you're the type of person who is going to study for and then suffer through the admission exams; who is going to fill out the appropriate forms and turn them in before the deadlines; who felt really good in High School when they got an "A" on a test (even if they knew that grades are at best arbitrary and at worst class repression--getting that "A" felt soo great); a person who got excited when the teacher asked you a question and you knew the answer, etc., etc., etc. If any of these things are true for you, you (like me) can be, will be, professionalized  should you go to Graduate school.

 The question you should ask now is, "what the fuck do you mean by professionalize?" So, I'm talking about a process, not a static concept. To begin with, a professional is someone whose occupation requires training, competence in their duties, and adherence to standards within their field. In other words, a "professional" in popular parlance refers to someone who is skilled in "Best Practices" and who offers their services to the public for a fee. The noun "profession" has its roots in the neo-classical Latin professionalis meaning a public announcement of canonical obedience. This meaning was retained in British English circa 1275 whereas a "profession" was an announcement or vow of obedience to God that marked someone's entrance into a religious order. Over time of course, the religious connotations of the word have vanished, and I'll leave it to you to decide the nature of the God  professionals are now obedient to. To "professionalize" someone in the modern sense is to cultivate them according to a particular set of norms and practices. In the case of graduate school, this process is designed to make students into productive academics armed with the proper methodologies for attaining truth/knowledge in their respective fields. Additionally,  this process serves to teach them the proper habits in associating with one's colleagues, students and the like. At least, this is the oft told and commonsensical story. 

What this professionalization process actually accomplishes is to weed out people that aren't cultivated so easily. For example, I have a friend getting a PhD in information science who dresses like a bum; I am also likely to be accused of looking like this. He doesn't shave, has long hair, wears cut-off camo pants everywhere (is probably wearing them now) and I have never once seen him wear a tie -- an admirable quality no doubt. When my friend attends academic conferences to present his work, attends various social mixers and colloquiums, he usually looks like he slept on the back of a freight train the night before. I think it's funny, his adviser and colleagues do not. In fact, warnings have been issued telling him, in effect, to clean up his appearance and look more professional. To most people, this sounds so normal it barely merits any comment. Most people accept that it just does not do to dress a certain way in certain social circumstances. Yet, this dress requirement is also a form of professionalization, a type of disciplining of the body -- a shave and a haircut (Foucault would smile). The powers that be, the status-quo, whatever you want to call them, have a stake in not only molding minds but bodies as well; even if telling someone what to wear is only a mild form of coercion, it is a form of prescriptive coercion nonetheless that seeks to further cultivate an appearance of professional status and obedience. Put another way, this bodily discipline is a part of the process of which one of the the end goals is justification of social position, and of course, part of that justification is "looking the part". Those who deviate from the established norms, in thought or appearance, are appealing to the wrong God, as it were. Appealing to the wrong God in thought, practice or appearance will cause one to be denied access to the professional order -- filtered out and discarded. So of course, should my friend wish to further his career in the academic order, he will have to change his habits because of the social pressure - it's sad really.

Media Effects

          There’s a tradition in the study of mass communications called the “effects tradtion” which seeks to answer to question of “who says what to whom, and to what effect?” Some academics in the field call this the “effects paradigm” rather than "effects tradition" because they want it to sound more sciencey. The word “paradigm” is an allusion to physicist and scientific historian Thomas Kuhn’s book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, published 1962; this famous book made the word paradigm one of the most widely used words in Academic English (AE),  sort of like what Gramsci did for the word "hegemony." Kuhn’s use of the word paradigm was the term for an overarching framework that delimits a mode of scientific investigation. In other words, a paradigm determines directions for inquiry, core assumptions, methodology, and issues of verisimilitude.  Kuhn’s book deals mostly with physics, and when mass commincations schalors  use the term “effects paradigm” they are implying that what they are engaged in is also a science.

            It is not. At least that is my thesis. What mass communications scholars do cannot justly be called science regardless of the fact that they have had modeled their methodologies after those used in the natural sciences (aka naturalism). The study of the "effect" a message has on a receiver - that is, a self conscious human being - has no coherent theory able to break down human communication to a set of causal or behavioral laws. This failure is due to the fact that too little is known about the how the physical processes of the brain produce what we call a consciousness -- this is the classic mind/body dilemma that's been around since Descartes. In fact, scientists like N. Chomsky and R.C. Lewontin  say that there is a good possibility that we will never know how the brain gives us the "mind" ("As soon as questions of will or decision or reason or choice or actions arise, human science is at a loss." - N. Chomsky). Nevertheless, "effects" practitioners in mass comm. will bore you to death with their intricate descriptions of their empirical methods (which usually involves a survey) and their theories about "media effects" on human cognition. Although, after thousands of studies researchers remain vexed on the question of how portrayals of violence effect children and many other questions like it.
            One of the major debates within the media effects "paradigm" is whether media have strong or weak  effects; which is to say, there is no agreement at all within the field on even the degree to which the media affects someone's  behavior after almost 60+ years of investigation. This is not surprising given what I have outlined above, but there are reasons that such investigations will continue to persist regardless of their lack of success. First, such "effects" research tends to focus its attention exclusively on the receiver of messages -- the audience -- and  these questions conveniently sidestep any questions about the institutions creating the messages in the first place. Most effects researchers essentially do not care about institutions and politics even though one might think such issues would be central to a study of the media. This avoidance of integral political questions allows these scholars to point to their professional detachment and objectivity. Second, to say that "we don't know" anything conclusive about media effects is frankly unacceptable. The history of the study of mass communications is tied intimately to the study of ways to conduct successful propaganda campaigns after all, and saying that it is impossible to measure scientifically "media effects" to interests --like advertisers or political candidates --  that believe that these questions can be answered and have a vested interest in them being so answered would effectively discredit the whole enterprise. People believe that science should be able to answer these questions and so scientific language and methods are used to try and answer them -- but this is just mere scientism, it has no explanatory ability.
          Thus, one need not be afraid of the absolute power of propaganda; it has no such power. Of course, mendacity is always a problem in public life, and I think that it is the special responsibility of educators to teach their students to detect the massive amounts of bullshit that will be thrown their way for much of their lives. Nevertheless, it is a fallacy to believe that advertising and other forms of propaganda are a kind of hypothermic needle injecting desires/ideology into an unwitting public. Are modern forms of advertising and propaganda sophisticated and well-funded? Yes. Has propaganda been used to successfully confuse the public on a complicated scientific issue like global warming? Yes. But one need not attribute these to any special scientific powers of corporate bullshittery. People can be credulous, short-sighted and easily confused, but this has always been true and there have always been those in positions of authority who have taken advantage of these human downfalls. But that does not mean that reason and active minds cannot prevail in the end. Try as they might, corporate and national interests cannot control people's minds, even if they think that they can -- the powerful are never as powerful as they believe they are.
   

Final Draft: A Review of the comedy album "A Great Stillness" by Eddie Pepitone, or, "Despair is Funny."

 

Eddie Pepitone is not for the faint of heart. His brand of hyper-self-loathing belted out relentlessly with his signature eardrum shattering vocal cords––while hilarious––is not the type of standup act that a mass audience is going to find suitable for their entertainment-as-escapism needs. In his album “A Great Stillness,” E.P. pretty much shatters that already weak boundary between comedy and tragedy, and then he invites you to laugh along with him as he stomps angrily on the pieces. Which is to say, Pepitone is fucking brutal. Not everyone is going to appreciate his self-deprecation and madman outbursts that don’t let you forget for one second how absurd and horrific life in the post-industrial American wasteland can be. The album is a barrage of road tested bits and gags that show off his talent for producing material designed precisely to tread uncomfortably between the lines of the persona/clown onstage and the vulnerable man behind the crying clown make-up. Pepitone is a master at revealing just enough of the actual man behind the persona to make you uncomfortable, and that’s exactly what good comedy is supposed to do, make you squirm just a little.

I have had conversations with friends who totally disagree with me on Pepitone’s effectiveness, though. They just don’t get why Pepitone is funny. I posit to them that the reason they just don’t “get it" is because Americans have been conditioned to see the main purpose of comedy as entertainment/amusement. The typical comedy in American media culture is a type of existential pain-killer designed to wink at the audience with hip-fatigue and irony and reassure them that everything is OK, "the world is as it should be." But of course, Pepitone’s brand of humor is a totally different animal. Pepitone uses comedy in the way that L. Wittgenstein understood it, as a way to speak of things so terrible that the only way to address them is through a joke. Pepitone’s comedy is a sledge hammer of angst and darkness that is both personal and political. His act has this almost a religious quality to it in that he is able to deal with despair in a communal setting that is both powerful and hilarious.

In his book “The Gay Science,” Nietzsche used the voice of a madman to announce to the world that “God is Dead,” but his point was that the world just didn’t realize it yet. Nietzsche’s madman was screaming to his audience a truth they were not yet ready to hear: God was dead and his blood was on their hands. Pepitone’s madman is similarly designed truth teller but with a different message. Pepitone invokes his audience to “be still and know your God” because yet another deity has risen from the ashes of the old one, the celebrity. Pepitone’s madman is telling us something that is difficult to admit, that no matter what God passes away we will still worship, and now we worship amusements and irrelevance. Our new Gods are the talking heads on our TV screens; the names and faces we all know and are disconnected from but wish to be near. Celebrities derive their power from their ability to nurture our ennui not with meaning but with amusement. They are the ultimate empty spectacle.

Pepitone knows this, that at the heart of corporate entertainment there isn't a soul, or an implicit belief system, or a telos, or anything like that––there's just another bottom line. And the angst Pepitone oozes on stage is partly due to the fact that he is conscious of these things and, at the same time, can't help but want himself to be worshiped too, as it were; he is in the entertainment "business" after all. But Pepitone is an authentic artist; he has a refreshing lack of the contemporary bad faith that plagues most mass entertainment in corporate media culture. In his act, beneath all the laughs and giggles, one can feel a real person driving at, and dealing with, some of the most basic themes of the human condition: things like pain, sadness, death, personal failure, and political powerlessness. Indeed, Pepitone is screaming about some of the most absurd and horrific things imaginable, and he is there to help us laugh in the face of them. If you want a stand up album that is going to make you acknowledge a little despair in order to get the joke, then Eddie Pepitone has some things to say to you.

Brutish and Short

I’ve been watching atomic bombs explode on YouTube. Taking trips to Wikipedia to read about the “Multiple Independently Targetable Reentry Vehicle” (MIRV) which is a missile with multiple warheads capable of destroying numerous targets (E.g. the LGM-118 Peacekeeper missilc carries 10 warheads)—missiles that (b/t/w) place a premium on first strikes. I’ve been reading about all the times the U.S., the wealthiest country in the world, has lost a thermonuclear weapon. They’re called broken arrows, and yes it has happened  enough times for there to be a term for it-- as I recall, the government has officially owned up to misplacing about 11 nukes.  SNAFUs will happened, one will fall off a transporting boat or plane and whoops, "we can’t find it." All of this is frighteningly true. Just a Google search away, go ahead and knock yourself out. And it gets much, much worse from there. 

All of the nukes in Russia pointed at the U.S. during the Cold War are still there and vice versa. Both Russia and the U.S. have each almost launched a full-scale nuclear attack on the other country by accident. Aerial defense systems are to some degree automated after all and sometimes wires get crossed, "what the hell are you gonna do?" The point is that the very existence of these weapons systems involves risk, a priori. So as more countries join the atomic death club, there will be even more opportunities for a government to screw the proverbial pooch in a supreme way: for a safety system to fail, for a bomb to just get lost, or for a broken arrow to find its way to someone with enough madness and want to use it.  And that’s putting aside an actual conflict. 

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists’ Doomsday clock now incorporates global warming in its warning of the threat of widespread destruction, for good reasons. Global warming, the other major threat to human survival, increases the risk of nuclear proliferation. Let me explain. The increasing extreme weather events due to global warming are straining vital resources like food and water in areas across the globe. Naturally, tensions between countries will increase because of these strains. Resource scarcity is not the only cause of armed conflict, no doubt, but it will inflame existing tensions if not creating new ones.  As tensions between governments increase, countries have an increased desire to arm themselves and this can spark arms races. More bombs means more inherent risk. As of January, the atomic scientists have moved their clock up to 5 minutes to midnight. 

All of this is madness but no one seems to notice. We have our expensive elections and the party keeps going on nicely. Yet threats to human survival are real. So far, since the invention of atomic weapons and discovery of anthropogenic climate change, governments have taken little action. Our modern forms of State Capitalism have been unable to confront the crises we face. At this point, it’s not hyperbole to say that finding some alternative is a question of life or death. To observe such problems as a individuals is pretty despair inducing I will admit. A single person can do nothing to confront an issue like nukes or global warming. These are issues that will take large numbers of highly organized and motivated people to confront—which means building communities and alternative institutions. Old-fashioned political organizing. I know these comments about organizing are clichés, and I apologize, but it's really the only way. Otherwise, the world is going to become a pretty nasty place to live.