Slate has been running a short series on “The Paranoid Style in American Science” by Daniel Engber, which chronicles the recent trend of skepticism run amok, meaning it is skepticism that takes up such a contrary position that it crosses over into the paranoia of the conspiracy-minded.  We are well familiar with this, of course:  global warming skeptics, intelligent design proponents, people who swear off vaccines because of alleged links to autism, etc. etc.  Engber deftly points out the myriad ways in which so many people have taken on the mantle of skepticism, starting with legitimate problems or weaknesses with their object of inquiry, but going much further, such that:

the conspiratorial thinker sees “a projection of the self”—he’s just like them but more discerning and more rational. Indeed, for the paranoid skeptics, it’s not that science is wrong but that the scientists aren’t scientific enough. (original emphasis)

The circuitous discourse that is then taken up is seen by the skeptic as hyper-rational, when it is in fact anti-rational.  The effect of this tack of so-called skepticism, then, is not to find “truth,” but to destabilize it.  Although they themselves think they are exposing a conspiracy to hide truth, what they are in fact doing us undermining our ability to consider anything “true” that does not exist with 100% exactitude — in other words, that scientific fact/theory (which is understood as being “true” yet contingent) becomes suspect as an entire regime of knowledge.  What the skeptic actually engenders then, is not truth but Truthiness.

“Truthiness”, coined of course by Stephen Colbert, refers to the notion that “truth” does not necessarily stem from, or adhere to, “facts”.  Although the term is mostly reserved for “intuitive” thinking that one thinks or wishes to be true when it’s not, I think the term is actually somewhat more complex with regard to the way in which people approach “truth.”  The purveyor of truthiness recognizes that facts are only meaningfully rendered when they enter into discourse (and are at base derived from science, which operates according to its own discourse), but nonetheless holds that the discourse of truthiness, while not literally “true” in the traditional sense, speaks to a kind of truth, a higher order truth.  Thus we have a discourse that adopts a sophisticated postmodern disdain for truth on the one hand, but paradoxically believes that somewhere out there is truth in an absolute form.  In this way, proponents of intelligent design call into question the way scientific knowledge is legitimated in order to propagate a notion that speaks to the “truth” of God’s creation without making any claims on truth that can be empirically defined or arrived at.  This kind of postmodern position is (perhaps ironically teleologically) best explained via poststructuralist notions of discursive practice and skepticism toward metanarratives—how else can we explain this marriage between irrationality and rationality?  What aspect of capitalist ideology can systemically produce subjects who are both very good capitalists and very good fundamentalists?  And so we have the ultimate irony:  people who believe in truth in its absolute form are in fact the ones pushing us further and further into postmodern relativism, whereby “truth” and “facts” are entirely subjective and discursive.  To this end, “truth” is linked to situational politics, and is taken up strategically, as a weapon to “prove” whatever it is one already believes in (needless to say, without good reason).

So, welcome to the (post)modern era, where the logical conclusion of truthiness will lead us into a new age of, potentially, hyper-rational capitalism paradoxically (or so it would at first seem) coexisting with an anti-rational culture.  So, awesome, we get all the exploitation and commodity fetishism, but none of the reason.  This oughtta be fun.

As you can see from previous entries, I tend to find television advertising annoying.  Occasionally, however, it transcends this and becomes perplexing, then alarming, then hilariously horrifying.  Such was the case recently when I happened to catch a new Wendy’s ad.  I couldn’t tell you what they were advertising, because the prologue, if you will, featured something truly astonishing:  Wendy giving me the “come hither.”  The next time the ad came on, I asked my wife if she saw it, if I wasn’t going crazy:  nope, “That is totally the come hither,” she said.

Wendy, mind you, is that twee freckled redhead in pigtails, allegedly modeled after founder Dave Thomas’ own daughter.  By no stretch of the imagination is she even barely legal (g’head, click on it, only the government and your internet provider will know).  And apparently an animated, forever youthful American icon giving me the come hither is going to make me want to come in and buy burgers.  Um…wtf?

Between being exceptionally busy and all the politics stuff, I sorta forgot all about The Bracket.  So for you fan(s) out there, here’s how it ended:

If you recall, the semifinals featured the intriguing matchups of:

(7) Alka-Seltzer Cheesedick vs. (3) Verizon Dipwad

(1) Jared Fogel vs. (4) Geico Caveman

My take:  Caveman beats up Jared, Verizon  beats the Cheesedick, and in the battle royal a challenger comes out of the stands with a chair:  Freecreditreport.com Assface.  Amidst the fracas he overpowers both with the magnitude of his bad lip-syncing kissy-lips.  Seriously, it’s like a kind of douchebag Blue Steel.  The end.

BTW, Freecreditreport.com:  for fuck’s sake, if we have to have catchy ditties sung by the most boring-voiced drip noggin possible, at least do us all a favor and edit the music so that his lip-synching actually matches it.  God damn, that’s annoying.

Update!  Big Dog Beta is out, and although it looks just as formidable and uncanny, it’s clearly also more fun-loving.  Now that’s the sort of scary DARPA-funded cyborg overlord run amok that I could really learn to love!

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last month, you’ve seen Stuff White People Like, a blog that needs no further explanation. And of course with the inevitable success and meme-making that is that site, it’s seen its fair share of criticism and praise in many incarnations. This morning I read yet another critique, at The Root, which argues that SWPL is really nothing more than a smarmy, lame extension of smug whiteness, far inferior to the cuttingly smart Black People Love Us! and so forth. But unfortunately, this author, like I think nearly everyone who goes to that site, still doesn’t get it, not really. What makes Stuff White People Like so funny to me is not just that it’s a (sometimes clever, sometimes obvious) list of white accoutrements and behaviors. Its true charm lies in something more subtle: a critique not only of “whiteness” but of late capitalism (whether or not author Chris Landers is really fully aware of this himself).

First off, the site doesn’t trade on “whiteness” as skin color per se: it trades on a specific kind of white privilege. Notice there is nothing on there about NASCAR, for instance. If you were starting a list of things “white people” like, wouldn’t you go straight to (or at least include) stuff that rednecks like? Certainly this joke has been done to death (there is a reason Jeff Foxworthy is now primarily a game show host), but wouldn’t such things count as “white”? So this is not just any whiteness, this is a specific kind of whiteness. This is stuff that upper middle class, milquetoast Democrats in their 20’s and 30’s like. And this is the crucial part of that satire: the stuff they like sets the trend for establishing power and consumer trends in our society, of what “everyone” aspires to (and paradoxically, marketers help inculcate this market to convince white people of what they like). The new American Dream is not about having a ranch home with a picket fence and 2.5 children, it is, essentially, Stuff White People Like. “Whiteness” is therefore coded as being much more, and much less, than skin color, and is instead about a particular taste culture that for the moment is the hegemonic form of “success” in this country. This is borne out in the blog’s mode of address: advice to someone who isn’t white on how they can move in white circles and take advantage of white people. The base assumption is that everyone wants to be white, or hang out with white people. Why? In order to get ahead in life.

This requires an extremely brief discussion of the core of what is meant by “white privilege“: although intimately connected to race, it is not limited to race. After all, you can be white and not really be able to capitalize on white privilege (and vice versa). It is not merely skin color, it is a set of attitudes, behaviors, cultural norms, and a host of other socially advantageous attributes. It is rooted in being “white” not merely because white people have historically been the most advantaged group, but also because its boundaries and elements are largely established and maintained by white people, as a whole way of being, as praxis. Most importantly, these qualities are what become the standard for “proper” behavior and attainment in our society, from relatively banal things like the stuff listed on SWPL, to extremely important things like how to conduct yourself at a job interview. And the most important thing about it is this: it is entirely normative, meaning that it establishes norms, and it is regarded as being “normal” when it is in fact a culturally, socially, and historically specific set of elements. How do you know whether you have white privilege? Well, when Katrina hit, and you saw the footage of the refugees in New Orleans, did you say or think, “Why don’t those people just get the hell out of there?”? If so, you “suffer” from white privilege in the sense of not being fully aware of how privileged you are or how privilege works in our society.

So, SWPL is not just a means of making fun of whiteness—it’s about exposing the normativity of this kind of taste culture, and how it’s not actually “normal” at all, and is based instead on incredible socio-economic power (which may or may not be “earned” so much as granted to those with the right connections and/or skin color—although certainly anyone can attain it). To this end there is no contradiction between being a “person of color” and doing/buying/enjoying all the things on SWPL. SWPL also therefore exposes the politics of such so-called liberalism for what it is: being mostly vain and unthinkingly consumerist. The site further exposes the real truth of this kind of liberal: whether or not they truly realize it, they “celebrate diversity” as an end in itself, not as a means of actual social empowerment; their means of “protecting the environment” is not to advocate fundamental consumption and lifestyle changes, but to merely recycle and buy “green” products. And so on. In short: their politics is not a real politics, it is a commodity fetish. It is an ultimately arbitrary set of signifiers of social power, which in its normativity and banality, not only hides the source of that power, but ironically puts it on display. Meanwhile, it is also ultimately somewhat bereft of meaningfulness (though not meaning), in that it is almost entirely based on conspicuous consumption. In short, this demonstration of social power, while in its way less of a barrier to social mobility than in years past, is still a means of maintaining a class system, only in this case it is also the privileged in society who become dependent on and beholden to capitalist ideology. The problem with confusing social relations with commodities is that it masks the true nature of these social relations, and with it any truly liberatory politics. It is also a problem in that every aspect of our lives becomes commodified, and we are rendered incapable of being social without buying something (or buying into something) first.

Or, as a non-academic translation: remember Edward Norton’s character in Fight Club? He lived the life of a white person, as articulated on SWPL. The point of the film was about how empty he felt living that comfortable life. And of course while a lot of audiences and critics alike were fixated on the problems of defining “authentic” and meaningful masculinity according to fighting, they missed the point of the whole last third of the movie: about how that morphed into an anarchist organization, where at the very end they blow up the buildings of credit card companies. At base Fight Club’s argument is therefore that our malaise stems not from the fact that men don’t get into fights anymore, but rather that this malaise is a function of living with/in capitalistic postmodernity.

Although it’s clear that practically nobody “gets” either SWPL or Fight Club at that level of detail, there are signs that people understand the humor of SWPL well enough that it’s not just a list of things that white people do—lots of people, it would seem, are prone to at least a little bit of critical reflection about what they or acquaintances of theirs do, and therefore recognizing that it’s no more or less “normal” than any other culturally specific thing. But it seems pretty clear that the underlying critique of white privilege is still not really getting through, which, ironically, demonstrates its power.

Hillary supporters, please spare me invectives denigrating Obama, unless you have truly substantive criticisms (which there is more than enough fodder for).  There’s been plenty of ugliness back and forth, and plenty of media whoopsies back and forth (Obama got the golden boy treatment, but nobody ever pressed Clinton on her “experience” until now), but your candidate was never cheated out of this.  This is a primary process, not a coronation.  Don’t become fucking Pats fans, whinging about how “destiny” was averred by some “unworthy” opponent.

That metaphor, in fact, is quite apt:  Clinton, the candidate of destiny, the wielder of a great machine, has been upended by someone who’s worked harder, run a better ground game, played solid defense, and put together a much better game plan.

At least when this is finally over, you won’t hear me shouting some sort of political equivalent of  “Eighteen and one!  Eighteen and one!”:  I started out as an Edwards supporter, and Barack’s had to work up from about fourth place to convince me that he’s the better candidate.

Many wags compared Clinton’s wins in OH and RI (and sorta win in TX) to a zombie or similar monster, rising from the grave just when Obama was filling in the last bits of dirt.  The comparison seems inapt now because zombies you can kill by destroying the brain or removing the head.  But it seems to me that the Clinton campaign is not operating with a lot of brains.  I don’t want to start turning into one of those anti-Hillarycranks in the blogosphere, but I have to rant for a moment:

Both campaigns have traded some extremely nasty barbs.  I can’t say who’s on the moral high ground there, so we’ll just say they’re even.  However in the process, the Clinton campaign managed to denegrate states Obama won as being “insignificant,” which would mean they are write-offs for her in the general.  That’s a problem, because Dems will probably need states like VA, CO, MO, WI, and IA in the general in order to win.  So, not only was it a failed strategy for taking down Obama, it was a disastrously stupid thing to say for in the future.

But that’s in the past.  Here’s what’s brainless in the present:  Hillary is fighting damned hard despite that it’s now pretty much impossible for her to win.   As noted below, and posted in excruciating detail elsewhere, the only way Hillary can get the nomination is by a superdelegate landslide in her favor.  By some estimates, assuming public commitments maintain their commitments, she’ll need 64-75% of the remaining superdelegates to win the nomination.  Even with lingering questions about Rev. Wright, are that many superdelegates going to go for Hillary?  That’s also leaving aside the fact that even with Obama doing more poorly than expected, he’ll still be ahead in both popular vote and pledged delegates (probably the former, definitely the latter), potentially even including do-overs in MI and FL.

Let’s break this down:  at this point Hillary remains in the race hoping that something so catastrophic happens to Obama that all his ardent support evaporates, and two thirds of the superdelegates will side with her.  I mean, what must they be cooking up to take him down with?  Surely they’re not going to wait for something to crop up?  She is not a gambler in that respect.  In short, the sort of thing that they’d need to pull off in order to take Obama down will not endear her to the independents, who she’ll need in order to beat McCain.  I’m truly afraid of what they’ll try, because frankly it won’t just hobble Obama, who I think you can tell I slightly prefer as a candidate—it will undoubtedly hobble her in the process.  I mean, just when we thought all that crap from the ’90’s was the “old” politics, and we could forget the little things that the Clintons did that irked a lot of people, we are suddenly reminded all too clearly, and the fuzzy butterflies of peace and prosperity give flight to the ugliness of those pitched battles, still being fought by the Boomers.

God, fuck that.  Bring on the old timer and the upstart.  Boomer politics can suck it.

One last rejoinder.  While I understand precisely why Obama’s team is dragging their feet on Michigan and Florida, I don’t think they should.  I think they should play ball on this, not only because it’s the right thing to do, but because Clinton’s extremely unlikely to maintain the 55% margin she had there before (a recent Rasmussen poll has them tied there).  Obama, the math favors you even with re-votes.  You’re statistically tied with Clinton in Michigan.  If you win or tie her in that state you’ve blunted her so-called “momentum.”  And maybe at long last you can put her down.  You know, I had the wrong metaphor.  She’s not a zombie, she’s a bit more like Jason or Michael Meyers: no matter how much damage you inflict, no matter how far ahead you run, she just keeps coming.

I’d love to post on all the crazy and amazing political stories in the next few days, but even in my usual state of procrastination and distractions, I can’t give any of that the time it deserves. Anyway it will be good to wait awhile to see how some of this shakes out. To whit:

All three candidates have hit fairly significant obstacles this week, all of which go to the core of their respective purported strengths. Obama, the man of judgment, has been taken to task on his judgment for his long time relationship with Rev. Wright. Clinton, the woman of experience, has this week released documents of her itinerary and activities as First Lady, which calls into question her experience: she didn’t have a security clearance or take part in high level meetings, her tasks while abroad were mainly social, and there is no evidence linking her to the health care programs that she claims she helped work on. McCain, the man of foreign policy and military credentials, managed in a speech while in Iraq to repeatedly mixed up Sunni and Shia and to state that Iran was helping to train Al Qaeda, which is not remotely true.

None of these are minor glitches. While Obama’s speech was brilliant, moving, intelligent, thought-provoking, honest, forthright, etc. etc., I don’t think he successfully answered the base question that the righties are pushing, which weighs on people’s minds: okay, so did you ever pull Rev. Wright aside and ask him to knock it off? Of course from my point of view, this is a storm in a teacup. Some religious nut ranting in a sermon, raising some legit critiques about America as well as some batshit crazy inflammatory idiocy, doesn’t really influence my opinion of Obama one way or the other, really. But I’m not your average (white, working class, moderately to poorly informed) voter. Barack has met this scandal head on, but it will not leave him in the general.

Hillary’s big selling point is her experience. If her claims of experience (which I always thought were slightly overblown) don’t hold any water, then what’s her main draw? She and Obama have nearly identical policies on all the major issues, and he’s clearly gotten her beat on charisma (not that it should matter, but alas it does in our vapid political landscape). But to be honest I’m not going to dwell too much on Hillary, because barring a major superdelegate defection, she will not get the nomination: she won’t be able to catch Barack on pledged delegates, she almost certainly can’t catch him on the popular vote, and that’s even including the slim possibility that MI and FL will have do-overs. The Wright controversy is in a way manna from heaven for her, but even then….

McCain looked and sounded like a doddering old fool in confusing the situation in Iraq. He has by far the easiest task in overcoming his major gaffe for two reasons: 1. Let’s face it, the built-in animosity toward Hillary, and the hydrophobic reactions to Wright have kind of buried the McCain story for now; 2. He can pass off his gaffe as a mis-statement which, while maybe or maybe not true (and potentially no less troubling—this is how Reagan looked toward the end of his term, and we know what happened with him), is easier to believe than either of the excuses/explanations likely to come from the Democrats.

IF Barack survives this, which is to say, if he doesn’t lose as badly as estimated in Pennsylvania, and he still takes North Carolina, and particularly if he takes Indiana, he will still be the nominee. This scandal will still be with him, obviously, and the unfortunate reality is that he’ll lose a few million votes over it. But can he take the fight to McCain? Will he be able to press McCain, and will he be able to hang with McCain in the polls long enough in order to be within striking distance (or even ahead) by the time the debates come along in the autumn? From the Denver convention to that time, there will be a lot of time where he’s hit repeatedly by the right in every possible way, and they will try to push the Wright issue as much as possible, in every possible way. Barack’s main chances now hinge on whether he’s able to shift the conversation, and hit back at McCain (and for now Hillary, obviously). IF he can do this, and he’ll probably need some help from the MSM, he’ll be in pretty good shape. If not, if he’s constantly having to play defense, and constantly having to talk about his weaknesses, then….well, he might not be quite the “magic negro” we may have hoped he would be.

For those of you who have not yet seen it, behold the most freak-out inducing taste of the uncanny you’re likely to see any time soon: Big Dog.  Seriously, watch the whole demonstration, it’s quite…um, impressive, to put it mildly.

Now that you’ve uncoiled from the fetus position, let’s ponder the possibilities, in case they haven’t already been etched into your mind, which really should probably look like this right now unless you’re a either a super techno-geek, supervillain, or you work in the Pentagon.  It goes like this:  the military applications of that thing are pretty obvious, but this is not coincidence, as it was in fact specifically designed with military applications in mind.  I know this based solely on that footage, having done no other research.  Notice how it mentions its weight, and includes a weight for “payload”?  The term “payload” is not usually reserved for carting around groceries for the disabled and/or elderly.  Secondly, notice at the end that it overtly states that it is funded in part by DARPA (although really I would have guessed Arakyd Industries). Granted, it’s not as if everything that DARPA has made has been used solely for military purposes, and has always been a bad thing.  After all, DARPA invented the internet (not Al Gore).  But a “big dog” that carries a “payload”?  Hmmm…what do you think the applications are?

Oh yeah:  so that an autonomous, all-terrain killer robot with who knows what kind of sensor and weapons array can navigate the rugged terrain, of, I dunno, to pick a country at random, Afghanistan, and kill terr’ists.   I must say, I am all for this.  Between Big Dog and the predator drone, aided by cyborg moths, we can shorten the lifespans of Taliban, Al Qaeda and other fighters without even putting troops directly in harm’s way.  Undoubtedly Big Dog will also be effectively cloaked, as well, and though it can be destroyed or disabled, it will not be as easy to bring down as a human soldier.  Also, while the research is obviously quite expensive, the actual parts of this thing are not, it would appear, which means in the long run it is far cheaper to produce and field one of these than it is to train and field a human soldier.  We save money and lives, and freak the ever-loving shit out of our enemies.  And so on.

However.

As if we haven’t seen the Terminator movies.  As if we haven’t seen a whole slew of other films, shows, and books all about this very subject.

Also, while the upside is that wars may be cheaper and that there will be a lot fewer casualties, the downside is that wars may be cheaper and that there will be a lot fewer casualties.  What I mean here is that the main deterrent for not going to war is, let’s face it, the cost to us in lives and dollars.  Alas the greater American electorate could give two squirts of piss about the fur-nurs we obliterate.  And future wars (indeed current ones, in reality) will not be fought at the behest of national security, or even “national” interests of any kind:  they will be proxy wars over resources, but especially over the relative might of corporations.  Thousands will die in our name and on our dime, not always I’m sure with our express permission, and we will be made to feel glad about this and hardly ever question why this is done, because hey, our big dogs are fucking awesome, and little Johnny can while his days in Mobile suckin’ brews or having a wank under a coconut tree in Guam rather than getting into some dust-ups in regions of the earth that we are unable to find on the globe we bought at Wal-Mart.

Lastly, the likelihood is very high, I should think, that Big Dog or some version thereof will be deployed in situations that are not combat, per se.  Why should the police or military put cops with batons at barriers in order to deal with an unruly crowd?  Just stick some big dogs in there with shields, mace, and probably an array of other non-lethal weapons, and have them go at it.  They will also have cameras mounted on them to get clear pictures of who’s on the crowd, as well.  And if you don’t go to jail, you’ll definitely get a fine for moving outside of the designated “free speech zone.”

And so on.  Rise of the machines, kids.  Only it will be a long time before “human kind” is at their mercy.  In our lifetimes we will still be at the mercy of the human elites who control this technology and have the means to deploy it.

In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, I bring you this inspired bit of insanity (which reminds me of a similar bit of comedy from SNL back in the day, which is almost, but not quite, as fantastic).

Now, go get shitfaced you potato-eating subhumans!