this morning i became familiar with the new radiohead video, 'house of cards'. really amazing visual description of infrastructure collapsing, whether that means thom yorke's head, or a suburb and power lines...



a lot of you have been responding to the obama hype poster that i mocked up. obama is clearly the better choice within the 'race', but he is still part of a system that seeks to objectify its participants. he wants to be like you, he wants to know you as a viewer on some level, but he still remains a politician..



via Krishnamurti's Think on These Things

When the mind revolts within the pattern of society, such a revolt is like a mutiny in a prison, and it is merely another form of ambition. But when the mind understands this whole destructive process of the present society and steps out of it, then its action is not ambitious. Such action may create a new culture, a better social order, a different world, but the mind is not concerned with that creation. Its only concern is to discover what is true; and it is the movement of truth that creates a new world, not the mind which is revolt against society.

Obama is not an iconoclast. Obama will not change the system. He will make the system more manageable and people friendly, he will attempt initiatives, and he definitely listens more to dissent than Bush does, at least seemingly, but his stances against gay marriage, and towards further wiretapping are not progressive. Wanting 'progress' without the massive restructuring of society seems absurd, and every progressive that wants progress within our contemporary order is naïve, to say the least.

whatever. i'm not really interested in obama qua obama. i'm way more into what obama represents within the language of control. the ability to abstractly choose one's national representative should not be regarded as freedom. the ability to listen to one's ipod while choosing one's national representative is also not freedom, but possibly more near to it...


this from Theodor Adorno's essay on Freudian Theory in The Culture Industry

The essential role of narcissism in regard to the identifications which are at play in the formation of fascist groups (ed: which we must consider the US as, given its consistent rebuking of international law especially in regards to 'the war on terror') is recognised in Freud's theory of idealization. 'We see that the object is being treated in the same way as our own ego, so that when we are in love a considerable amount of narcissistic libido overflows on the object. It is even obvious, in many forms of love choice, that the object serves as a substitute for some unattained ego ideal of our own. We love it on account of the perfections which we have striven to reach for our own ego, and which we should now like to procure in this roundabout way as a means of satisfying our own narcissism.' It is precisely this idealization of himself which the fascist leader tries to promote in his followers....The people he has to reckon with generally undergo the characteristic modern conflict between a strongly developed rational, self-preserving ego agency and the continuous failure to satisfy their own ego demands. This conflict results in strong narcissistic impulses which can be absorbed and satisfied only through idealization as the partial transfer of the narcissistic libido to the object. This, again, falls in line with the semblance of the leader image to an enlargement of the subject: by making the leader his ideal he loves himself, as it were, but gets rid of the stains of frustrations and discontent which mar his picture of his own empirical self. This pattern of indentification through idealization, the caricature of true conscious solidarity, is, however, a collective one. It is effective in vast numbers of people with similar characterological disposistions and libidinal leanings. The fascist community of the people corresponds exactly to Freud's definition of a group as being 'a number of individuals who have substituted one and the same object for their ego ideal and have consequently indentified themselves with one another in their ego'. The leader image, in turn, borrows as it were its primal father-like omnipotence from collective strength.

in this way, obama becomes 'hope', which i feel is more a shame than a triumph. this seems to stem from a reliance on media and credit, and a lack of personal control or an ability to maintain personal responsibility, which is mirrored in almost every financial institution extant. we would not have personal debt if our nation did not uphold the standard. we would not seek another michael jordan if we no longer believed in any sort of attainable/sustainable victory. the breaking of norms seems facile within contemporary society, and almost a mode of rebellion against history, which seems to only beget more history. institutional reformers generally don't see society as too stringent, they see it as too loose. the Lutherans know this well. Luther wanted a stricter church, and therefore affixed a doctrine to the church door. Obama is not a visionary, he is a manager sans manger. He is our chicken soup for the soul.

enough hateration. we're beyond that. let's talk about us instead of him/them. let's change our internal policies for other than fiscal considerations. let's cease positing our expectations/hopes in others and forge them in ourselves. let's turn off our ipods and talk to each other. let's all be special little art rebels together.