America at War With Itself

[Eric the Green]

Sometimes Democracy Now really scores a bulls-eye. Today they had on Henry Giroux, author of American at War With Itself. He's an early Boomer-war baby cusper born Sept. 18, 1943 (but still has great hair    )

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Giroux

I wish I was as articulate an author and speaker as he; who knows? But I'm glad to discover another spokesman for the real Awakening with its legacy still going on; another visionary for our times. An author who understands what's going on and what our needs are. Bravo!

http://www.democracynow.org/2016/10/14/i..._result_of

He says we are sliding toward authoritarianism because we are living in a state of imposed ignorance. We can't have a democracy if our people have no civic knowledge and literacy, and if our imagination is schooled out of us. The rise of Trump is a sign of our times.

America has declared war on itself in the war on education and dissent. Schools are modeled on prisons, he says. Dress code violations are criminalized. How do we understand what's happening? The punishing state is taking over. Ours is a culture of the immediate and celebrity, which paralyze us and kill the radical imagination. Trump is a symptom of a decline of a culture that can form thoughtfulness about justice. Money has corrupted politics, and we can't equate capitalism with democracy. If the ethical imagination dies, then we live in a state of terrorism.

Today younger people are mobilizing and linking issues together. Violence and militarism are linked; modes of repression are global. Politics is local and power is global. Schools should be places where children learn to imagine a world that's a better place. Our schools instead teach to the test and see students as the work force; a place to make kids boring and ignorant. Schools can't take education seriously when they are under assault with charter schools and school choice as Trump and Republicans want, and Obama goes along with.

Was "America great" as Trump proclaims? Camus wrote that democracy and freedom depend on memory. We forget about the ways America was not great. The progressive left has failed in some ways, especially about schooling. School is about changing consciousness, to make what we learn relevant to our lives. We need to see how issues are related.

[pbrower2a]

We live in ignorance because we have blinders. Life is all about survival based on kissing up to elites out solely for themselves. The K-12 educational system remains dedicated to churning out people to be assembly-line workers, warehouse workers, domestic workers, and salesclerks -- people damned to a lack of job security, to low pay, and to few chances for their children.

People with some ability to do critical thinking can recognize Donald Trump as the demagogue that he is and that a vote for him is an unacceptable risk. People without such ability have little but fear. People who have fear as their driver go for extremists, Left or Right. Critical thinking also causes people to recognize the superficiality and irrelevance of the 'celebrity' culture.

We need culture -- not mindless entertainment -- to define us. Culture connects Humanity across national borders and to the greatness of the past. Entertainment is the contemporary opiate of the masses. (If the entertainment is truly good it is culture. Shakespeare and Mozart really were entertainment in their times).

I can see the likes of such right-wing pols as Governors Paul LePage, Rick Scott, and Scott Walker trying to crush any thought inconsistent with their right-wing, corporatist agenda of low wages, underinvestment in education, and concentration of economic power. Those go together. A plutocrat playing the game of politician can win only with a cowed and foolish population. Even if the supporters of Trump are honorable on matters other than politics, their political beliefs are quite deplorable.

[gabrielle]

(10-14-2016, 10:36 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote:

(10-14-2016, 10:04 PM)taramarie Wrote:

(10-14-2016, 09:16 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: We live in ignorance because we have blinders. Life is all about survival based on kissing up to elites out solely for themselves. The K-12 educational system remains dedicated to churning out people to be assembly-line workers, warehouse workers, domestic workers, and salesclerks -- people damned to a lack of job security, to low pay, and to few chances for their children.

People with some ability to do critical thinking can recognize Donald Trump as the demagogue that he is and that a vote for him is an unacceptable risk. People without such ability have little but fear. People who have fear as their driver go for extremists, Left or Right.  Critical thinking also causes people to recognize the superficiality and irrelevance of the 'celebrity' culture.

We need culture -- not mindless entertainment -- to define us. Culture connects Humanity across national borders and to the greatness of the past. Entertainment is the contemporary opiate of the masses.  (If the entertainment is truly good it is culture. Shakespeare and Mozart really were entertainment in their times).

I can see the likes of such right-wing pols as Governors Paul LePage, Rick Scott, and Scott Walker trying to crush any thought inconsistent with their right-wing, corporatist agenda of low wages, underinvestment in education, and concentration of economic power. Those go together. A plutocrat playing the game of politician can win only with a cowed and foolish population. Even if the supporters of Trump are honorable on matters other than politics, their political beliefs are quite deplorable.

Eric's post:
" Schools should be places where children learn to imagine a world that's a better place." Did American schools not tell kids what ideal qualities were dying in the world and what is needed in this world for it to be a better place? I can tell you one thing. When I finally grew up and really saw what the adult world was really like I was disgusted...till I was working with fellow millies in millie ran companies and I saw a vast difference which gave me hope that it is within us.

As to the parts i highlighted for pbrower...

What do you mean by culture and mindless entertainment? What do you define as culture?

All of my friends I went to primary, high school and community college with have all either just married and pumped out kids or have gotten the kind of work you mentioned. All but me. I would rather be dead than live a life like that. It is mind numbing, hard work for teeny pay and you are not treated well nor have many rights at all. Which is why I quit and now going to Uni to specialize in animation. I will not go back to that kind of work either. Only work that gets me to where I want to be in the end. I just cannot do it. It kills the spirit. I have seen what it does to mum and it is killing her slowly. Body mind and spirit. It was wearing me out to the point I could not be bothered with anything else. Never again. Unless it is something that puts me in the direction I want to head towards. Life is not just about money. It for me is more about what defines who I am. You spend a good amount of time at work for most of your life. I want it well spent. I do not know how others do it and some, willingly! I will not live in a lie.

Mindless Entertainment:
"Keeping Up With the Kardashians"
"Real Wives of ___________"
"Modern Family"
"Naked and Afraid"
"Ultimate Fighting"
etc ...

"The Apprentice."

[pbrower2a]

Culture:

1. Did you learn something from it that you might want to discuss, like something about the human condition?
2. Does it have some high-brow appeal?
3. Does it have lasting merit?
4. If folk art, is it competent in execution even if one finds it simple in conception?

Mindless entertainment:

1. Does it appeal only to debased drives (examples, sentimentality or pure pornography)?
2. Does it offend people of average of higher intelligence and education while being acceptable to people of low-normal or lesser intellect and limited education?
3. Is it strictly utilitarian as a time-killer?
4. Do critics pan it mercilessly?

Standards can change. Once the artist dies one might find his work going from banal to unique -- thus John Wayne's movies (he had more film credits than anyone else) and Norman Rockwell's paintings. Impressionism and Art Deco both had yet to get mass appreciation -- but they get it now. Velvet Elvis paintings are likely to remain ludicrous except as possible satire.

[Odin]

I think Giroux has an idealistic notion of what schools "used to be like" that borders on fantasy. Sure, the trend of recent years of making schools into something like prisons is a complete abomination, but that mythical time when schools were about open-minded learning and imagination never existed. The American system of public schools was strongly influenced by the Prussian system and has always been just as about creating a compliant and reflexively nationalistic citizenry ready to be docile wage-slaves in the factories as it is about educating kids.

And adults have come to accept this as normal. Look at the opposition to "New Math" in the 70s and 80s and the opposition to Common Core, today. Both were about showing kids the principles behind what they are learning rather than learning by simple rote memorization. But parents flipped their shit because it is "not how they learned it".

I have learned far more from reading non-fiction on my own time than I ever learned at school.

[Odin]

(10-15-2016, 10:03 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Culture:

1. Did you learn something from it that you might want to discuss, like something about the human condition?
2. Does it have some high-brow appeal?
3. Does it have lasting merit?
4. If folk art, is it competent in execution even if one finds it simple in conception?

Mindless entertainment:

1. Does it appeal only to debased drives (examples, sentimentality or pure pornography)?
2. Does it offend people of average of higher intelligence and education while being acceptable to people of low-normal or lesser intellect and limited education?
3. Is it strictly utilitarian as a time-killer?
4. Do critics pan it mercilessly?

Standards can change. Once the artist dies one might find his work going from banal to unique -- thus John Wayne's movies (he had more film credits than anyone else) and Norman Rockwell's paintings. Impressionism and Art Deco both had yet to get mass appreciation -- but they get it now. Velvet Elvis paintings are likely to remain ludicrous except as possible satire.

Point 2 on both lists are both subjective and pretty snobbish. Hating things just because they are popular is a common trait of pretentious assholes.

[Eric the Green]

(10-14-2016, 10:57 PM)gabrielle Wrote:

(10-14-2016, 10:36 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: Mindless Entertainment:
"Keeping Up With the Kardashians"
"Real Wives of ___________"
"Modern Family"
"Naked and Afraid"
"Ultimate Fighting"
etc ...

"The Apprentice."

A small beginning of a good list..........

Maybe what we need is a bit more snobbery. Or at least, some sense of what culture could be that stimulates the imagination instead of dumbing us down. As most people here know, I think culture has an objective component. To think otherwise is to accept the lowest as the same as the highest quality. I disagree. There is good and bad culture, even if there isn't unanimous agreement on which is which in every case. A nation that can't tell the difference is severely deprived. Americans have been generally deprived for a long time. And it shows in the kinds of decisions we make. And now we have post-modernism that claims it's all relative and subjective and everything's the same.

Maybe our culture and education is worse now than ever, but no, there was never a time when it was that much better. But it could be. America is a young civilization. Before our current age was born in the 1890s, we had no libraries or concert halls; no city beautiful movements. Ask David McCullough, who described this. We were the frontier. It takes time in a country that admires the "wild west" to become civilized.

[pbrower2a]

(10-15-2016, 10:54 AM)Odin Wrote:

(10-15-2016, 10:03 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Culture:

1. Did you learn something from it that you might want to discuss, like something about the human condition?
2. Does it have some high-brow appeal?
3. Does it have lasting merit?
4. If folk art, is it competent in execution even if one finds it simple in conception?

Mindless entertainment:

1. Does it appeal only to debased drives (examples, sentimentality or pure pornography)?
2. Does it offend people of average of higher intelligence and education while being acceptable to people of low-normal or lesser intellect and limited education?
3. Is it strictly utilitarian as a time-killer?
4. Do critics pan it mercilessly?

Standards can change. Once the artist dies one might find his work going from banal to unique -- thus John Wayne's movies (he had more film credits than anyone else) and Norman Rockwell's paintings. Impressionism and Art Deco both had yet to get mass appreciation -- but they get it now. Velvet Elvis paintings are likely to remain ludicrous except as possible satire.

Point 2 on both lists are both subjective and pretty snobbish. Hating things just because they are popular is a common trait of pretentious assholes.

Point 2 in both lists reflects the usual role of a critic as someone smart enough to see through spin and hype and express  in credible prose that some art, theater, movie, book, music, or tourist spot is a waste of time and the admission cost or the effort to experience it. Critics are essential to keeping creative people honest and keeping the quality of their efforts above the 'ordinary' level. Smart people can tell what is awful and express why it is awful. Would I go 200 miles and plunk down $50 to see some exhibitionists dance nude on stage? Of course not. Some would, and if they like that sort of thing then that is their choice. But if I am writing a column about that performance I would give a fair warning. 

I like to think of myself as rather open-minded on cultural expressions so long as they are neither incompetent, banal, or pretentiously empty. This said, if one tells me that a landscape with no obvious vanishing point is a great work of art, then I could go into some spiel about why vanishing points are important.  If I find that some classical soloist is no longer performing up to the old standard (playing out of tune, doing wrong notes, showing a loss of rhythm, or has a cracking voice) then I would rather rely upon that soloist's recordings for my memory of that performer. If someone goes on stage in a poetry reading and offers nonsense... well, one might as well listen to some lame-brained preacher speaking in tongues.   

If something has no high-brow appeal it probably is suspect. Yes, some entertainments are tailored to dull-normal people who are likely to believe anything that has an authoritative voice and appeals behind it. This is especially so with television, and the derisive words "idiot screen" often applies all too well.  So if you are trying to sell schlock furniture, overpriced used cars, food of low nutritional quality, or (at a certain time) admissions to questionable 'vocational' schools, then there are certain programs with the target audience. A few years ago people were sold on the idea that with some high-cost training that would get people skills necessary for more-appealing jobs (these people are typically watching certain programs on daytime TV either during frequent layoffs, or they have work on the swing or graveyard shift or face belittling management and hate the layoffs or poor conditions, disliking one's co-workers, or having to work night shifts and have no life) they might be convinced that they have their one chance to improve their lives, so why throw it away? Truth be told, there are other things like being able to communicate clearly and effectively, to understand economics and human behavior, and to have imagination and initiative to get ahead in much of the world of work. 

Of course it is possible to create art or entertainment that has multiple levels of appeal to different members of an audience. That is Mozart. Just name a movie that you like that gets strong critical reviews. Sporting events are unscripted drama (if good) even if much of what goes on is random in character. The admission for a great movie is no higher than for a piece of cinematic schlock.  Read the reviews and see what the critics say. I have made some reviews on movies, and my harshest rebuke for a certain movie is that it is best appreciated drunk, on drugs, or with a low IQ. On the other hand I can also recognize pretentious garbage for what it is -- some exercise in pretentious narcissism devoid of entertainment value.     

Yes, many of us must beware of snobbery.  Then again, much the entertainment that we are offered really is 'empty calories".