Re: [blind-democracy] Re: Clueless and Shameless: Joe Biden, Staggering
Frontrunner
I hope you know that when someone tells me that they have no idea what
something is I have a compulsion to explain it. It is that pent up
teacher in me.
So don't complain about my going into teaching mode. You brought it on
yourself. First, I really don't like calling it philosophical
materialism. I just
started adding a modifier after I had that very confusing conversation
with a man who could not conceive that materialism is anything but a
strong desire
to acquire expensive consumer goods. The word is materialism and it is
half of the great philosophical schism between idealism and materialism.
At one
time philosophy was viewed as a hodgepodge of differing philosophies
without any clear dividing line between one kind of philosophy and
another. Specifically,
their was no attempt to distinguish between religious and secular
philosophy. Philosopher names are escaping me right now and I don't want
to pause to
look them up, but if you are interested you can look up the names of the
ones who were responsible for the contentions that led to the schism.
What it
comes down to is all the varying philosophies were gathered under two
main categories. One is idealism. The name does not necessarily describe
all the
philosophies under that heading, but the point was that it included
philosophies which held ideas alone as supreme. That is, if you just sit
around and
think about how the universe around us should be interpreted without
actually consulting that universe then your philosophy is superior.?? All
religions
are based on idealist philosophy. Every time you hear someone talk about
spiritual things you are hearing the explication of some form of
idealism. By
the way, certain words that had meant the same thing were divided up
between the idealists and the materialists. For example, the idealists
speak of spirits,
souls, ghosts and similar concepts. Materialists speak of minds,
thoughts, cognition and so forth. Idealists tend to attribute thought to
the supernatural
and think it is separate from the corporeal body and they seem to think
that there can be disembodied minds that they call spirits or gods.
Materialists
hold that thought is a function of the brain. The word materialism comes
from the idea that it is assumed that all that is real is material and
that supernatural
concepts are simply?? false and not real at all. In a literal sense that
is not exactly what materialists believe and my example of dialectical
materialism
is an illustration that material objects are not all there is. But just
like idealism can be divided into many and various religions and other
superstitious
systems of thoughts, materialism can be divided into different kinds of
materialism too. There are materialist philosophies that go by names
like empiricism,
pragmatism, mechanical materialism, dialectical materialism and so
forth. I will also include objectivism, but I think that one is horribly
misnamed. It
is the materialist philosophy promoted by Ayn Rand. But since we were
just talking about mechanical materialism let me say a bit about that.
The whole
idea is that the universe works with clockwork like mechanics. That is,
one particle bumps another particle causing it to bump another particle
and everything
that ever happens in the universe can be predicted accordingly. Let me
allude to the comment that Engels made about it in his book The
Dialectics of nature.
He said that the idea of mechanical materialism would have it that if we
knew the exact position and momentum of each constituent particle of the
original
solar nebula then we could theoretically predict that a flea bit me last
night at three o'clock rather than at two o'clock. I have noticed that a
lot of
people seem to think that mechanical materialism is the only kind of
materialism and dismiss it claiming that materialism has been proven
wrong. That ignores
the other kinds of materialism, but it is true that mechanical
materialism suffers some problems that have largely discredited it. The
two main problems
are the theory of quantum mechanics and chaos theory. Putting aside
those main problems, I am not a mechanical materialist in the first
place, but I think
that if it can be revived it could be a part of dialectical materialism
because it does not actually deny the concepts of dialectics.
Furthermore, I think
there is a chance for its revival under certain conditions. For one
thing, I don't think that quantum theory is complete and its
incompleteness is why
we observe these subatomic phenomena that are called quantum weirdness
and the fact that quantum theory is not compatible with relativity
theory indicates
that both are incomplete. If we could see what is going on in the
sub-Planc world we just might be able to reconcile them. However, so far
there is no
way to observe anything that might happen in the area smaller than the
Planc length, not even theoretically. Now, with that said, let me allude
to dialectical
materialism. I have explained this before, but since I am explaining
materialism let me skim over it again. Dialectical materialism gives a
dynamic to
the universe, or at least explains the dynamic that the universe clearly
has beyond the mere process of entropy, and it gives room for concept to
have
realness too. It is the materialist philosophy of the unity of
opposites. Here is my favorite example of a dialectical relationship. A
slave cannot exist
without a master and a master cannot exist without a slave. Without the
other each would stop being either a master or slave. That gives them a
unity,
but their roles are entirely different and are contradictory. The slaves
interests are in opposition to the interests of the master and the
master's interests,
by necessity, oppose the interests of the slave. But by their
interdependence on each other for their existence as master and slave
they have to interact
with each other and thereby change one another. The interaction is an
interaction of struggle against one another. That is, change itself is a
necessity
and it is always ongoing. If you look around you can see lots of
dialectical relationships and witness the ongoing change they result in.
This unity of
opposing forces largely describes how the entire universe works and it
even describes entropy, which is more often cited as the motive force of
change
in the universe. So then, so much for your assumption that I am somehow
stuck in the past and do not recognize change. But I hope this has done
something
toward explaining what philosophical materialism is.
---
Carl Sagan
??? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. ???
????? Carl Sagan
On 6/22/2019 9:24 AM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
block quote
Good morning Roger,
I think you're correct. Our frames of reference are different. By the
way, I have no idea what philosophical materialism means. It sounds very
abstract.
I suppose that I would say that you think and talk in abstractions, but
these abstract concepts have reality for you. I think in very concrete
terms. We
may both be concerned about the same phenomena, but we come from very
different places.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From:
blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
??On Behalf Of Roger Loran Bailey (Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for
DMARC)
Sent: Friday, June 21, 2019 10:09 PM
To:
blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Clueless and Shameless: Joe Biden,
Staggering Frontrunner
The more I think about it the more I think I got it right when I said
that talking to you was like talking to that guy in a bar that I told
you about.
We are on entirely different wave lengths. I am talking about one thing
and you are assuming that I am talking about an entirely different
subject. Then
I get frustrated because no matter how many times I explain something
you still do not understand it. I am now thinking that you do not
understand it because
you are assuming that I am talking about something other than what I am.
You would be correct that certain terminology would be inappropriate
when discussing
certain subjects, but if I am not discussing those subjects and am
discussing another subject the terminology is likely to be completely
appropriate.
Think about the situation I told you about. I was discussing
philosophical materialism and the other person was discussing a desire
to acquire expensive
consumer goods. Just how could anything but confusion result from such a
conversation? Frankly, that conversation caused me to change my verbal
formulation
a bit. Ever since then I have made a point to call it philosophical
materialism instead of materialism. I have also learned that if I ask
someone if he
understands materialism, whether I call it materialism or philosophical
materialism, and if he says yes that I should not assume that he really
does. In
this case the understanding of materialism is not at issue except that I
began to realize what the problem is when I started to explain why
dialectical
materialism is not the same as mechanical materialism, but we are still
talking about entirely different things. If I am talking about people's
individual
situations or the personal effects of being in a certain economic class
or interpersonal relations I would not use the terminology that you
object to either.
However, that is not what I am talking about when I use that
terminology. We are simply not on the same wavelength.
---
Carl Sagan
??? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. ???
????? Carl Sagan
On 6/21/2019 9:20 PM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
block quote
OK. So it wasn't Marx. These were names that people used in the country
where he lived, at the time when he lived. I'm not offended by these
words. You're
free to use them. But they are not words in current usage by most people
in the US in 2019. You said that Marx used the terms because they were
in current
usage at the time so he felt they would effectively communicate his
ideas. Well, that was more than 100 years ago. Now, it is a small group
of scholars
of socialism who are familiar with these concepts and terms, and who
find them meaningful.
You're correct. I do not regularly engage in economic class analysis.
Neither do most other people. I never heard of the term, labor
aristocracy. I am
not a member of the small group of people who read the kind of material
in which one would find these terms. But if I had studied all of this
stuff and
if I wanted to engage in political organization today, I would
definitely avoid using this kind of esoteric language. I'd find simple,
everyday terms in
which to describe the phenomena that I wanted people to understand and I
would avoid negativity if they didn't seem to understand?? me or if they
didn't
agree with what I was saying.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From:
blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
??On Behalf Of Roger Loran Bailey
(Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
Sent: Friday, June 21, 2019 8:25 PM
To: blind-democracy
<blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Clueless and Shameless: Joe Biden,
Staggering Frontrunner
Miriam wrote: "Those are names that Marx gave them back in what year? In
what country?
"
Here we go again. Marx did not give them those names. Marx wrote about
classes that were already named and he did not either invent those
names or give them any new definitions. He analyzed interactions
between classes and he called those classes what everyone else called
them so that everyone else could understand what he meant. Sometimes
he used modifiers that had not been used before to make a point about
class relations, but where did you ever get the idea that Marx named
classes himself? He wanted to be understood, not found some secret
lodge with secret handshakes and secret languages. In fact, some of
the modified names were not even necessarily used by Marx or else he
used them very rarely. Labor aristocracy is more associated with
Trotsky, for example. But Trotsky was not trying to found some secret
cabal either. He was talking about a highly paid section of the labor
force that identified itself more closely with the owning classes. I
suppose if you do not regularly study or engage yourself in economic
class analysis you may be unfamiliar with some of the jargon of the
field, but do you become so offended when you hear unfamiliar jargon
from other fields? I have medical appointments and the doctor often
uses terminology that I do not understand, but that are probably
everyday words to him. I do not become offended. I just ask him what
it means and accept his answer. Do you become offended when your
doctor uses a word that is unfamiliar to you? ---
Carl Sagan
??? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. ???
????? Carl Sagan
On 6/21/2019 5:27 PM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
block quote
Roger,
You say that if we talk about economic classes, we must name them and
then you give them names like national bourgeoisie, bourgeoisie,
petty bourgeoisie, proletariat, lumpen proletariat labor aristocra
peasantry, proletarianized peasantry and so forth. These are simply
names that describe classes in a capitalist economic system
Those are names that Marx gave them back in what year? In what country?
Even if I chose to think about contemporary issues only in terms of
economic class, as if no other variables influenced what is happening in
today's world,
there is no rule that says that I must use those names. Those names are
not relevant to America in 2019, not as far as I'm concerned. And I
haven't heard
any current Marxist economists use them either. Not that they may not
have used them as they were learning Marxist theory, but if they want to
communicate
with their fellow Americans, they need to use language and concepts that
feel relevant to people's everyday lives.
You write about how class can be used to understand people's economic
situation. You said, The categories of what is commonly called class is
there to let us know what economic role people play in economic
relations and how
they relate to each other on an economic basis. Ethnicity, religion or
even the specific job one performs are mostly irrelevant to this.
I cannot imagine how it is relevant to talk about people's financial
situations, about who has more privileges or more power, about who ends
up homeless
or incarcerated, without taking ethnicity, race, religion, and personal
psychology into account. I suspect that what you are referring to, is a
very mechanistic
formula of economic theory like, "dialectic materialism" or some other
economic theory, the reverse side of market theory, which doesn't take
real people
and their thoughts, feelings, or motivations into account.
In fact, one of the criticisms made of Bernie Sanders by some of his
detractors on the left, is that he doesn't talk enough about how race
impacts people's
economic situation. I don't agree with that particular criticism of him,
but I do think that one can't look at class status in the United States
without
analyzing the impact of race, religion, and ethnicity on just who is a
member of which economic class.
We also have, in this country wide differences in philosophical
viewpoints regarding religion, sexuality, and civil liberties and this
divergence of viewpoint
exists among the very wealthy. So although in some ways George Soros and
the Koch brothers have similar self interests, in other ways, they use
their money
in very different ways when it comes to influenceing events.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: Roger Loran Bailey
<rogerbailey81@xxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, June 21, 2019 3:24 PM
To:
blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
; Miriam Vieni
<miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [blind-democracy] Re: Clueless and Shameless: Joe Biden,
Staggering Frontrunner
Okay, you are getting into some of those quibbles that I alluded to that
I have with what Carl had to say, but your quibbles come from an
entirely different
perspective. I will have to agree that it is over simplistic to divide
everyone into two classes, the ruling class and the working class.
However, this
talk about different ethnicities, religions and things like that does
not even address the whole point of dividing people into classes at all.
In some
contexts the word class means category and that is what you seem to be
talking about. You can divide people according to their ethnicity. You
can divide
people according to whatever shade their skins are. You can divide
people according to whether they prefer to play chess or checkers. But
if you divide
people by any of those criteria or any of the vast number of criteria
available for you to divide them by you have to ask the question of why
are you dividing
them. Any such division you come up with may very well have some
usefulness in some study or endeavor like psychology, sociology
marketing studies or whatever,
but you are still talking about categories as opposed to class. Okay,
dividing people into classes is categorical too, but the purpose of
doing so will
not be the same as dividing people into the categories of people who
stand under five feet and people who stand over five feet. The
categories of what
is commonly called class is there to let us know what economic role
people play in economic relations and how they relate to each other on
an economic
basis. Ethnicity, religion or even the specific job one performs are
mostly irrelevant to this. As I have said before, you can be either a
lumper or a
splitter and varying degrees of lumping or splitting may be more or less
appropriate for whatever you are doing with your categories. You could
pick out
at random any two people from the human population of the earth and
compare them and find that one or the other has some advantage over the
other with
some amount of greater power or privilege, but to what purpose would you
be making that comparison? The only thing I can think of is that you
might be
studying individual psychology, but that doesn't have much to do with
what is ordinarily meant when the word class is used. This comparison of
just one
person to another, though, is an extreme example of splitting. What Carl
has explicated, though, is an extreme example of lumping. Okay, there is
the ruling
class. They are called the ruling class because they rule. They control
how the economic system is conducted and they have life and death power
over a
lot of people. However, there are other people who have a lot of power
too who are not quite as powerful as the ruling class. Their own lives
may be subordinate
to the ruling class, but they still have a high degree of privilege and
they maintain that privilege by implementing ruling class directives and
by making
their own directives when not directly implementing ruling class
directives. You have powerful people who own the biggest manufacturing
companies and who
control those companies. You have other powerful people who manage the
transfer of money who are the bankers. Below those kinds of people you
have managers
of various levels and owners of smaller companies. You have company
owners who not only own and so implement their own power, but who also
perform productive
labor themselves. Then you also have people who make their living only
from productive labor. Other people perform agricultural labor for a
wage or perform
agricultural labor while owning the farm where they work. Then you have
a reserve of unemployed people who are maintained to keep the price of
labor from
being bid up so high that the owners would fail to make a profit after
paying wages. Among those unemployed are a layer who have to resort to
criminal
activity to make a living and may become professional criminals. There
are a lot of other gradations too and it has very little to do with
their ethnicity,
religion or other characteristics that you mention. But my point in
mentioning all of these layers in the economic system is to illustrate
just how over
simplistic Carl's division is. There are a lot of classes other than the
ruling class and the working class and just how far you are going to
split or
lump them depends on what you happen to be doing with the information.
Now, let me add what I have been avoiding so far. These various classes
have names.
If you are going to talk about anything and have it make sense you have
to give it a name. Oh, I suppose you could describe it every time you
mention it,
but that would be very unwieldy. I know, Miriam, that you don't like it
when I put a name to these classes, but they have to be named in order
to make
sense of what is being talked about. When someone calls classes by their
names it does not mean that there is an attempt to make you think in a
certain
way. It does not mean that you are being looked down on. It does not
mean that anyone is dismissing your own cultural perspective. It does
not mean that
you are being personally attacked or however you see it. It only means
that the person who uses those names is calling something by its name.
The names
of those classes include names like national bourgeoisie, bourgeoisie,
petty bourgeoisie, proletariat, lumpen proletariat labor aristocracy,
peasantry,
proletarianized peasantry and so forth. These are simply names that
describe classes in a capitalist economic system and the names were
never given to
any of these classes to offend you or anybody else. And if we only call
the class divisions ruling class and working class we just cannot talk
about the
ways these varying classes effect and relate to each other.
---
Carl Sagan
??? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. ???
????? Carl Sagan
On 6/21/2019 9:25 AM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
block quote
My feeling is that you can't just lump everyone together in, "the
working class". People have different levels of education, come from
different ethnic
and racial and religious backgrounds, do very different kinds of work,
have very different kinds of life styles, and most importantly, have
very different
views of who they are and what their place is in this world. You're
talking about power and it's true that you don't have any more power
than the people
with no education or who struggle to make a living for their children.
That is, you don't have any more power to influence whether or not we
have war or
peace, or whether or not we get a single payer health system. But you do
have enough power so that you will be treated with more consideration by
business
people, politicians, and police officers. To me, for people like us to
say that there's no difference between us and migrant workers or fast
food workers
or Walmart employees, is to trivialize the kinds of problems that those
working class people have. You're not one of them. They know it and you
know it.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From:
blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
??On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Thursday, June 20, 2019 10:11 PM
To:
blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Clueless and Shameless: Joe Biden,
Staggering Frontrunner
With all due respect, I continue to consider all of us who are not
members in good standing of the Ruling Class, to be members of the
Working Class.?? Unless
we are homeless or chronically unemployed, which would put us in the
Lower Class.
Middle implies halfway between something and something else.?? In the
economic structure of the American Empire, there is no "Middle"
anything.
My wife and I earned, back in the early 1990's, a bit over $100,000
per year between us.?? So $100,000 would put us mid way between
$000,000 and $200,000.?? But in order to be midway between $000,000,000
and $100,000,000, we would need to come in around $50,000,000.
Middle Class is just another make believe term that soothes the Soul,
but means absolutely nothing.
But hey!?? All of the rest of you can call it anything you want, because
the fact of the matter is that all of us who are not members in good
standing in
the Ruling Class are owned by one or more members of that Ruling Class.
Remember, when you get set to disagree, a Monkey on a golden chain is
just as much of a prisoner as a Monkey on an Iron chain.
Carl Jarvis
On 6/20/19, Miriam Vieni
<miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
??wrote:
block quote
Clueless and Shameless: Joe Biden, Staggering Frontrunner By Norman
Solomon, Reader Supported News
20 June 19
Joe Biden just put a spotlight on his mindset when he explicitly
refused to apologize for fondly recalling how the Senate "got
things done" with "civility" as he worked alongside some of the
leading racist lawmakers of the 20th century. For Biden, the
personal is the political; he knows that he's virtuous, and that
should be more than good enough for African Americans, for women, for
anyone.
"There's not a racist bone in my body," Biden exclaimed Wednesday
night, moments after demanding: "Apologize for what?" His deep
paternalism surfaced during the angry outburst as he declared:
"I've been involved in civil rights my whole career, period,
period, period."
Biden has been "involved" in civil rights his "whole career" all
right. But at some crucial junctures, he was on the wrong side. He
teamed up with segregationist senators to oppose busing for school
desegregation in the 1970s. And he played a leading role - while
pandering to racism with a shameful Senate floor speech - for
passage of the infamous 1994 crime bill that fueled mass incarceration.
Such aspects of Biden's record provide context for his comments
this week - praising an era of productive "civility" with the
virulent segregationist Dixiecrat senators Herman Talmadge of
Georgia and James Eastland of Mississippi (known as the "Voice of
the White South"), who often called black people "an inferior race."
Said Biden at a New York fundraiser Tuesday night: "Well guess what?
At least there was some civility. We got things done. We didn't
agree on much of anything. We got things done. We got it finished."
To Biden, any assessment of his past conduct that clashes with his
high self-regard is unfair; after all, he really means well. On the
campaign trail now, his cloying paternalism is as evident as his
affinity for wealthy donors.
Biden shuttles between the billionaire class and the working class
- funded by the rich while justifying the rich to everyone else.
His aspirations are bound up in notions of himself as comforter-in-chief.
"I get it, I get it," Biden said during his brief and
self-adulatory non-apology video in early April to quiet the uproar
over his invasive touching of women and girls. He was actually
saying: I get it that I need to seem to get it.
"I want to talk about gestures of support and encouragement that
I've made to women and some men that have made them uncomfortable,"
Biden said in the video. "In my career I've always tried to make a
human connection - that's my responsibility, I think. I shake
hands, I hug people, I grab men and women by the shoulders and say,
'You can do this' . It's the way I've always been. It's the way
I've tried to show I care about them and I'm listening."
Weeks later, appearing on ABC's "The View," he declared: "I have
never in my life, never, done anything in approaching a woman that
has been other than trying to bring solace." It was not a credible
claim; consider Lucy Flores, or the countless other women and girls
he has intrusively touched over the years.
For several decades, Biden has made his way through the political
terrain as a reflexive glad-hander. But times have changed a lot
more than he has.
"What the American people do not know yet is whether Biden has
actually internalized any of the blowback he's earned over the
years for his treatment of women," journalist Joe Berkowitz wrote last
week.
"So far, it's not looking good."
What's also looking grim is Biden's brazen adoration of wealthy
elites who feed on corporate power. His approach is to split the
rhetorical difference between the wealthy and the workers. And so,
days ago, at a fundraiser filled with almost 180 donors giving his
campaign the legal limit of $2,800 each - an event where he tried
and failed to get funding from a pro-Trump billionaire - Biden declared:
"You know, you guys are great but Wall Street didn't build America.
You guys are incredibly important but you didn't build America.
Ordinary, hard-working, middle-class people given half the chance
is what built America."
The formula boils down to throwing the "hard-working middle class"
some rhetorical bones while continuing to service "you guys" on Wall
Street.
Given his desire to merely revert the country to pre-Trump days, no
wonder Biden keeps saying that a good future can stem from finding
common ground with Republicans. But for people who understand the
present-day GOP and really want a decent society, Biden's claims are
delusional.
Biden sees his public roles of winking patriarch, civility toward
racists, and collaborator with oligarchs as a winning political
combination. But if he becomes the Democratic presidential nominee,
Biden will suppress turnout from the party's base while providing
Republicans with plenty of effective (albeit hypocritical) fodder.
Already the conservative press is salivating over the transparently
fraudulent pretenses of Lunch Bucket Joe, as in this headline
Tuesday in the right-wing Washington Examiner: "Biden Rubs Elbows With
Billionaires in $34M Penthouse."
When Bernie Sanders (who I continue to actively support) denounces
the political power of billionaires and repeats his 2020 campaign
motto - "Not Me. Us." - it rings true, consistent with his
decades-long record. But Biden can't outrun his own record, which
is enmeshed in his ongoing mentality.
And
so, the former vice president is in a race between his pleasant
image and unpleasant reality.
As the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, Joe
Biden is the biggest threat to Joe Biden's political future. He
continues to be who he has been, and that's the toxic problem.
Email This Page
Norman Solomon is cofounder and national coordinator of
RootsAction.org. He was a Bernie Sanders delegate from California
to the 2016 Democratic National Convention and is currently a
coordinator of the relaunched independent Bernie Delegates Network.
Solomon is the author of a dozen books including War Made Easy: How
Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work.
Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to
Reader Supported News.
e-max.it: your social media marketing partner
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block quote end
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--
---
Carl Sagan
??? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. ???
??? Carl Sagan
