Halo halo

My job still passes the Lego test — it’s basic enough that they make a Lego man who does what you do (lawyer, judge, etc).  There are Lego teachers, Lego firemen, Lego police officers, Lego ninjas.  There are no Lego systems analysts, no Lego hedge fund managers, etc.  But I digress — my job was itself something of a Baby Boomer residual — one of the last corners of the public sector not completely decimated by this last great retraction of most of our basic principles of Public Democratic Governance (compare: The Teacher, The Librarian, The Social Worker), still paid well enough to function under the illusion of relative affluence in a way that conceals that the doctors, surgeons and small business owners are the new “upper middle class” (insofar as they make more than 98% of us but still make only a 10th of the people a percentage [point] above them) or which exposes that the upper middle class, at least as conventionally defined as the Top 25% or so often no longer make enough money to own a house before the age of 40.

— excerpt from an essay written by a criminal prosecutor who’s in the top 9 percent of U.S. earners; owns a house; can afford occasional overseas vacations; and still isn’t as well off as he would have been a generation ago

OK, just so I get this right: You’re arguing that most Americans have a mental illness.

Exactly. That’s definitely correct.

But — if that’s true — wouldn’t that mean “mental illness” is just a normative condition? That it’s just how people are?

That doesn’t make it normal. This is based on science. If there was a flu epidemic, and 60 percent of the country had the flu, it wouldn’t make it normal … the problem is growing, and it’s growing because there’s a subtle war — in America, and in the world — between business and health. It’s no secret that 2 percent of the human population controls all the wealth and the resources, and the other 98 percent struggle their whole life to try and attain it. Right? And what ends up happening is that the 2 percent leave the 98 percent to struggle and struggle and struggle, and they eventually build up these stresses and conditions.

So … this is about late capitalism?

Definitely. Definitely.

— excerpt from Chuck Klosterman’s interview of Royce White

In sports you defend your team at all costs.  But you’re also — you’ll admit when your team is like, yeah, A-Rod sucks, I wish we weren’t paying him that much money.  In politics you can’t ever admit failure; you have to stick to whatever your side is almost all the time; and it’s just you’re almost blindly clinging to this is what our side believes in, we have to defend this, and we have to attack the other guys, which is really the biggest reason why I don’t like politics that much.

— Bill Simmons, in conversation with Nate Silver

BILL MOYERS: But do you think taking sides marginalizes your journalism? When you were being arrested, and some businessman was quoted in the paper passing by and looking at those of you being carried away and said, “Bunch of idiots.” He needs to hear what you, read what you say. Do you think he will once he knows you’ve taken sides?

CHRIS HEDGES: Well, I think that in life we always have to take sides.

BILL MOYERS: Do journalists always have to take sides?

CHRIS HEDGES: Yes. Journalists always do take sides. You know, you’ve been a journalist a long time. The idea that there’s something objective and impartial is just a lie. We sell it. But I can take the same set of facts— I was a newspaper reporter for a long time, and I can spin that story one way or another. We manipulate facts. That’s what we do. And I think that the really great journalists—

BILL MOYERS: Not necessarily to deceive though. Some do, I know, but—

CHRIS HEDGES: Right, but we do.

BILL MOYERS: We choose the facts we want to organize—

CHRIS HEDGES: Of course, it’s selective. And it’s what facts we choose, how we place, where we put the quotes. And I think the really great journalists, like the great preachers, care fundamentally about truth. And truth and news are not the same thing.

And the really great reporters, and I’ve seen them, you know, in all sorts of news organizations, are management headaches because they care about truth at the expense of their own career.

BILL MOYERS: What do you mean truth as opposed to news?

CHRIS HEDGES: Well, let’s take the Israeli occupation of Gaza. You know, if I had a dinner with any Middle East correspondent who covered Gaza, none of us would have any disagreements about the Israeli behavior in Gaza, which is a collective war crime. And yet to get up and write it and say it within American society is not a career enhancer.

Because there’s a powerful Israeli lobby, and it’s a lobby that I don’t think represents Israel, it represents the right wing of Israel. And you know it. But the great reporters don’t care. And they’re there.

But you know, large institutions like “The New York Times” attract huge numbers of careerists like any other large institutions, the Church of course, being no exception. And those are the people who are willing to take moral shortcuts to promote themselves within that institution.

And when somebody becomes a headache, even if they may agree with them, even if they may know that they are speaking a truth, and it puts their career in jeopardy— they will push them out or silence them.

So I think that one can take sides, and Orwell becomes the kind of model for this. But one can never not tell the truth. And I’ve often written stories that are not particularly flattering. And there’s much in this book about people in Pine Ridge or Camden, you know, that is not flattering. I mean, we’re interviewing people that are drug addicts and this kind of stuff. And—

BILL MOYERS: Drug dealers—

CHRIS HEDGES: —prostitutes and—

BILL MOYERS: Yeah, drug dealers—

CHRIS HEDGES: Yeah.

BILL MOYERS: —prostitutes.

CHRIS HEDGES: So we’re not, you know, the lie of omission is still a lie. But I don’t think any foreign correspondent who covers war, whether it was in Bosnia or whether it was in Sarajevo can be indifferent to the tremendous human suffering before them and not want that human suffering to stop.

BILL MOYERS: But there is a price, as you have said, to be paid for stepping outside of the system that enabled your name and reputation and becoming a critic of that system. I mean, what price do you think you’ve paid?

CHRIS HEDGES: I don’t think I paid a price, I think I would’ve paid a price for staying in. I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself.

“For the Euro-American demographic there is a great disturbance in the Force.  A bit like Darth Vader’s family crisis.  His son, his ex-droid, his future son-in-law, and his future son-in-law’s Wookiee are all coming to rescue his daughter. Stay tuned.”

— “Lynda” on citizenism versus white nationalism

(photographs via Joho345 and Shorpy)

“As you may know, President Obama initially tried to strike a ‘Grand Bargain’ with Republicans over taxes and spending.  To do so, he not only chose not to make an issue of G.O.P. extortion, he offered extraordinary concessions …  Obama effectively staked out a position that was not only far to the right of the average voter’s preferences, it was if anything a bit to the right of the average Republican voter’s preferences.

“But Republicans rejected the deal.  So what was the headline on an Associated Press analysis of that breakdown in negotiations? ‘Obama, Republicans Trapped by Inflexible Rhetoric.’  A Democratic president who bends over backward to accommodate the other side — or, if you prefer, who leans so far to the right that he’s in danger of falling over — is treated as being just the same as his utterly intransigent opponents.  Balance!”

— Paul Krugman, The New York Times, 29 July 2011

(sketch & painting of Zatanna by Alex Ross)