Did the CIA fund creative writing in America?

[Luther Blissett]

…HAHAHAAAAHAHAHA...oh, man. You're hilarious.

I have applied for so many foundation grants for the institute that I'm supposed to be running at another university, and have been denied for all. The feedback that I keep getting is that the review boards are surprised that the university is willing to house a project with such strong political undertones. The theme is environmental racism. Is clean air that political? It's just fucking clean air. It's just terribly unsexy to say that we sell our waste to be incinerated in black communities, no one wants to change that or consider the alternatives. I'm not even applying for federal grants because I already know what the answer will be. Clean air in communities of color is not good for capitalism.

Do you really think the leftists are winning? Winning the climate crisis, the drone war, domestic surveillance, wealth equality, the demilitarization of the police? Society as a whole has made some progress with LGBT human rights, but that's mostly people-powered in spite of the power elite's desire to suppress everyone as much as possible. I don't mean to come across like an underdog, I've actually become quite privileged and my quality of life has gone up in recent years. But what am I supposed to do? Not fight for peace and ethics anymore? Become a resource hog?

Ivy Leagues are wildly conservative. Come on. There are maybe tiny pockets of progress within them. Everything else is in service of the 1%. I'm not as familiar with Harvard as you are, so I don't know if there's some widespread peaceful, green, utopian thought going on there, but from what I've heard it's not exactly that.

It really seems to me that one becomes interested in intelligence work when one has a certain mindset. If someone is anti-war, why would they do that? To change it from within? That's laughable. They would be up against the most powerful and technologically savvy intelligence community (that runs on war and violence) in human history.

Do you really want a list of teachers fired or deplatformed for leftist politics? I'm not sure if I have enough energy for that but it's quite a few.

[tapitsbo]

Well said Luther Blisset! The "creative" forms of dissent allowed out of the stables by the academy are more often than not phony and toothless or else venomously fanged for the wrong reasons

Even if you get to the centre stage on your own steam, it begs the question of why you're allowed at the pulpit (the one protected by police brutality, etc)

[Luther Blissett]

Well said Luther Blisset! The "creative" forms of dissent allowed out of the stables by the academy are more often than not phony and toothless or else venomously fanged for the wrong reasons

Even if you get to the centre stage on your own steam, it begs the question of why you're allowed at the pulpit (the one protected by police brutality, etc)

Fully agreed, thanks for expanding out on that so well. It might be a bad idea for me to roll this out on this thread, but Chris Hedges subtly criticizes Vice in this interview, highlighting their shift from covering legitimate "undergrounds" around the world in the 90s to speaking on behalf of colonialist power in a fairly surreptitious manner (questioning why exactly they are given access):

http://www.vice.com/video/vice-meets-chris-hedges

[JackRiddler]

Do you really think the leftists are winning?

At least someone does. Thanks for the reality dose, Luther, and it's important to have it on record here for all to search and see, etc. What good it will do within this "debate" is another matter.

[FourthBase]

…HAHAHAAAAHAHAHA...oh, man. You're hilarious.

I have applied for so many foundation grants for the institute that I'm supposed to be running at another university, and have been denied for all. The feedback that I keep getting is that the review boards are surprised that the university is willing to house a project with such strong political undertones. The theme is environmental racism. Is clean air that political? It's just fucking clean air. It's just terribly unsexy to say that we sell our waste to be incinerated in black communities, no one wants to change that or consider the alternatives. I'm not even applying for federal grants because I already know what the answer will be. Clean air in communities of color is not good for capitalism.

So the repeated rejection of your particular grant proposals at one particular university for one particular hybrid sub-field of activism, which is nevertheless an already well-established and increasingly sexy pursuit in universities all over the country, and which already enjoys the financial and political backing of the executive branch, is evidence that the deck is stacked against the left in academia and the government, lol?

Do you really think the leftists are winning? Winning the climate crisis, the drone war, domestic surveillance, wealth equality, the demilitarization of the police?

Winning the discourse game, yes.
Winning the culture war, yes.
Dominating, actually.

As for winning short-term power...

I know a lot of folks here use a frame of reference weighted so far to the extreme left and subject to purity tests so stringent that Chris Hedges is suspected of being an establishment plant, but there are other people in the world who might categorize leaders like Obama and Trudeau as leftists, who don't see the rise of even leftier leaders like Sanders and Corbyn as anomalies, who might think that China is still a Communist entity and so therefore quite leftist, who see the Christian world being led by a leftist Pope, who see the social-democratization of Europe as a triumph of leftism not neoliberalism, etc.

I do understand that it's hard to see any of that as winning for those who can't declare victory until there's world peace, the abolition of borders, the prosecution and imprisonment of all sociopathic warmongerers and CEO's, perfect statistical parity among all social identities, the literal conversion of weapons into agricultural tools, etc.

Society as a whole has made some progress with LGBT human rights, but that's mostly people-powered in spite of the power elite's desire to suppress everyone as much as possible.

Some? What in the fuck is left?

I don't mean to come across like an underdog, I've actually become quite privileged and my quality of life has gone up in recent years. But what am I supposed to do? Not fight for peace and ethics anymore? Become a resource hog?

It makes sense that the more you'd become better-off personally, the more desperate you'd be to cling to that self-image as a political underdog.

Ivy Leagues are wildly conservative. Come on.

Are you fucking shitting me?

There are maybe tiny pockets of progress within them. Everything else is in service of the 1%. I'm not as familiar with Harvard as you are, so I don't know if there's some widespread peaceful, green, utopian thought going on there, but from what I've heard it's not exactly that.

Holy shit, lmfao. You really do live in a different world.

It really seems to me that one becomes interested in intelligence work when one has a certain mindset. If someone is anti-war, why would they do that? To change it from within? That's laughable. They would be up against the most powerful and technologically savvy intelligence community (that runs on war and violence) in human history.

Question: Was the KGB staffed by leftists?

Do you really want a list of teachers fired or deplatformed for leftist politics? I'm not sure if I have enough energy for that but it's quite a few.

No, no, no, no, no, no, lol: Not just "leftist politics", but "even the most basic anti-war, anti-police brutality, and environmental messages", i.e., not some unhinged anti-Zionist freak, not a 9/11-truth preacher, not an advocate for culling the human species. (Although, sure, I'd also like to see which of that variety have been deplatformed or fired.) Not a list, either: Just one.

[FourthBase]

FB, you ever been to a Left Forum? It's open to the public, not far from Boston, and pretty cheap to attend. Literally hundreds of panels and it may answer your questions about "us guys" (assuming you are in the least interested in knowing). Empirical observation might also help you avoid hallucinated realities like your last couple of posts.

I know enough. Seen several panels on C-SPAN. The constant infighting and superficial diversity probably masks this reality, but: You belong to a cult. Sorry, no interest in forfeiting control of my mind.

[tapitsbo]

I'm not sure if I follow you at the end there FourthBase with your bit about people who want to cull the human race.

The breakdown going on in this thread between different types of leftism is fascinating. There's no question that there's a big gulf between "Western liberalism" and the Left" but all sorts of entities populate that gulf.

Interesting that the EU which makes a lot of progressive platitudes has recently given the boot to populist leftist governments in Greece and Portugal, and that Corbyn, who appears at least to have huge amount of integrity, has been threatened with a military coup.

So the liberal capitalist hegemony in Europe is basically neither social or democratic.

When I said "hegemony of the left" I meant the sort of cultural leftism which is seamlessly integrated into neoliberal regimes.

I am not sure what exactly is leftist about contemporary China...

[82_28]

You wouldn't be having your mind controlled. You walk in with your mind and then walk back out with it. You'd just see what others are saying staying firm to your ideals. If others are firm, then so are you. Not a big deal. But from the sounds of it, you could network.

[FourthBase]

You wouldn't be having your mind controlled. You walk in with your mind and then walk back out with it. You'd just see what others are saying staying firm to your ideals. If others are firm, then so are you. Not a big deal. But from the sounds of it, you could network.

You can get all that from watching the shit on TV, too, except you get to change the channel if the exposure to hours of doctrinaire groupthink gets too nauseating. It's really convenient. Fascinating, too. Like an opportunity to eavesdrop on the internal squabbles of way more erudite and slightly less cultish Scientologists.

[Luther Blissett]

Fair enough on my grant just being anecdotal evidence…but I'm pretty sure the executive branch isn't doing anything but deepening environmental racism. Most new toxic waste sites, incinerators, landfills, and other new polluting facilities are placed in poor communities. That particular problem is getting worse.

I don't want to speak for leftists as a whole here but I don't want power (short term or long term), I want a leaderless paradigm shift, peace and utopia, to be frank. I accept this as science fiction, that's fine, but it's some kind of aspiration. I do like your list of victories, all sound like things that I want. I too accept that it's hard to see victory in absence of these. The metaphor I always use, based on an actual fight I've had with my peers, is "why would I want to celebrate advances in child poverty while children still starve to death?"

The rest of the progress still left for LGBT people includes getting the murder and suicide rates for trans people down from their current astronomic levels down to societal parity (and then reducing the rates for all even further), housing and employment protection, cessation of discrimination, custody rights, representation, etc. Globally there's still a ton of work to be done in eliminating executions for LGBT people, access to therapy and surgery, plus all of the preceding domestic examples.

I guess we're going to have to agree to disagree on the conservatism of the Ivy League. The students around here are broadly recognized as wealthy racists who don't tip and disdain the working class and service industry, filled with reverence for their ultra-elitist secret clubs, societies, and fraternities, and who are going to grow up to run neocon think tanks and oil companies. The most prominent school is the business school. Maybe this is a more recent shift in the 21st century, or maybe it's really just Dartmouth, Princeton, and Penn, but it's real: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/1201 ... love-ivies

I'd probably have nothing ideologically in common with the KGB.

Howard Zinn was fired for marching for civil rights.

[FourthBase]

I'm not sure if I follow you at the end there FourthBase with your bit about people who want to cull the human race.

There are environmentalists so hardcore about preventing climate change that they wish for a contagion that would wipe out most of humanity.

The breakdown going on in this thread between different types of leftism is fascinating. There's no question that there's a big gulf between "Western liberalism" and the Left" but all sorts of entities populate that gulf.

Interesting that the EU which makes a lot of progressive platitudes has recently given the boot to populist leftist governments in Greece and Portugal, and that Corbyn, who appears at least to have huge amount of integrity, has been threatened with a military coup.

So the liberal capitalist hegemony in Europe is basically neither social or democratic.

The rightier worldview, both unfamiliar and unwanted here, would say: Paternalistic, control freak leftists versus adolescent, rebellious leftists...still leftist, either way. Same ultimate goals, same horizon, just a different schedule, different style. "Slowly, carefully, quietly" versus "Now, fast, loud"...I'd rather the latter, at least they're usually more honest about themselves, however extra-deluded they might be about the rest of the world.

When I said "hegemony of the left" I meant the sort of cultural leftism which is seamlessly integrated into neoliberal regimes.

I am not sure what exactly is leftist about contemporary China...

Um, the fact that the Communist Party rules it?

China didn't abandon its Communist plan, did it? Didn't it just rewind a little to an intermediate stage of state capitalism, having decided it had gone a little too far too soon, from which it still fully intends to transition to Full Commie?

[brekin]

And all this begs the question as to whether you have a problem or not with the government stepping in cases like this?

Fourthbase wrote:
I have a general problem with a government interfering with art and literature production, but once it does, no, I have no problem with a government opting not to subsidize or hype the propaganda of its enemy. Which other governments are expected to pay for and publicize their enemies' propaganda?

I don't follow. You have a problem with it, until it happens and then its not a problem?

Fourthbase wrote:
I don't think governments purportedly representing the principle of liberty should interfere with art and literature industries. But when they inevitably do, especially in the face of an existential enemy with zero qualms about it, I don't blame them for not supporting their enemies' propaganda. Still don't follow?

Yes, I follow now. As in the Cummings case (and just treat it as a hypothetical if it strains your credulity) you are ok with, after slipping out of your "for liberties sake" windbreaker:

1. It is ok for the CIA to tell publishers what subjects that they can publish books about and what they can't.
2. There just have to be some supposed thread leading somewhere to some enemy, real or imagined, justified in the minds of the CIA but not having to be justified anywhere else, especially to the dumb public who won't be able to parse "enemy propaganda" on their own anyways, especially as we are saturated in pro "Leftist" propaganda right now.
3. Even though the CIA isn't suppose to interfere domestically at all, and especially with the distribution and free exchange of ideas in the private publishing industry which is a public good but, shit happens, and yo there is an enemy at the gates so someone has to keep the latest Das Kapital out of the kids hands.
4. Inevitably there is a constant war going on, an enemy somewhere, so you are ok with them stepping in always to take steps "to not support enemies propaganda", when that is just an awkward and passive way of saying censor and control the press, (hey kind of like Communist countries! Are you a pinko?)

Do you disagree with any of 1-4?

I don't think the US gov or agencies should give a dime to promote enemy propaganda as do you, and is a no brainer, non starter.

But I do think it should keep its nose out of the private publishing industry, especially with subjects, international subjects doubly. That also seems a no brainer, non starter and a totally different galaxy, far, far away. It seems you don't, because when push comes to shove, someone has to decide what to put in the sheep's feed.

I kind of dig your neo-anti-communist crusade though. It's kind of quaintly misplaced, heroically insular and strangely rabid at the same time. Kind of like a straight edge person at a AA Meeting.

[FourthBase]

Fair enough on my grant just being anecdotal evidence…but I'm pretty sure the executive branch isn't doing anything but deepening environmental racism. Most new toxic waste sites, incinerators, landfills, and other new polluting facilities are placed in poor communities. That particular problem is getting worse.

Interesting, isn't it? Setting up funds for and preaching the gospel of environmental justice...but the problem gets worse. Hmmm. Isn't there a school of thought that in order for things to get better they have to get worse? Shit, if things did get better, that might placate communities which need to stay angry to sustain the momentum of progress and hasten the revolution, yeah?

I don't want to speak for leftists as a whole here but I don't want power (short term or long term), I want a leaderless paradigm shift, peace and utopia, to be frank. I accept this as science fiction, that's fine, but it's some kind of aspiration. I do like your list of victories, all sound like things that I want. I too accept that it's hard to see victory in absence of these. The metaphor I always use, based on an actual fight I've had with my peers, is "why would I want to celebrate advances in child poverty while children still starve to death?"

You don't just accept it as science fiction, I think you need it to be science fiction. Impossible aspirations of perfection as an engine for generating meaning in your life. And it generates meaning, for sure, but what you're left with is an identity based on the obverse of those impossible aspirations of perfection, the constant sensation of losing. If you're not on the losing side, you wouldn't know what to make of yourself.

The rest of the progress still left for LGBT people includes getting the murder and suicide rates for trans people down from their current astronomic levels down to societal parity

Ugh. And if that just isn't meant to be? Because maybe gender dysmorphia happens to somehow correlate genetically with a predisposition to depression and suicide? What then? Genetic modification?

The pursuit of perfect statistical parity couldn't be less respectful of actual diversity in the world, and is bound to be one of the major reasons why leftists will become the monstrous fascists they've always hated.

(and then reducing the rates for all even further), housing and employment protection, cessation of discrimination, custody rights, representation, etc. Globally there's still a ton of work to be done in eliminating executions for LGBT people, access to therapy and surgery, plus all of the preceding domestic examples.

How are the transgendered not protected re: housing and employment right now? Bathroom accommodations, which is an utter clusterfuck of various conflicts and interests? Anything else? "Cessation" of discrimination? What does that mean? Like, the total silencing of the Germaine Greers of the world? Representation? As in, making sure that a fraction of one percent of every institution is transgender? Or are we simply going to need more transgendering in the world, volume-wise, i.e., encourage it in the merely curious? As an antitranshumanist, I'mma say hell no to that.

I guess we're going to have to agree to disagree on the conservatism of the Ivy League. The students around here are broadly recognized as wealthy racists who don't tip and disdain the working class and service industry, filled with reverence for their ultra-elitist secret clubs, societies, and fraternities, and who are going to grow up to run neocon think tanks and oil companies.

Sounds like you're the one describing a tiny pocket, however disproportionately powerful.

(p.s. The idea that tipping well is reliable indicator of ideology is a fucking riot. Surely you have known progressives who revere the working class in the abstract but consistently disdain them in person, because I sure as fuck have.)

The most prominent school is the business school. Maybe this is a more recent shift in the 21st century, or maybe it's really just Dartmouth, Princeton, and Penn, but it's real: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/1201 ... love-ivies

If you only focus on the few domains where conservatives still thrive, instead of the vast majority of domains where progressives dominate, then sure, I guess you'll see universities as conservative strongholds.

I'd probably have nothing ideologically in common with the KGB.

I think you'd be surprised, lol.

The question remains: Were there leftists in the KGB? Perhaps dwelling on the KGB will make it easier to imagine why a leftist would ever work in intelligence.

Howard Zinn was fired for marching for civil rights.

ROFLMFAO

Yeah, uh, fucking forever ago. Since then? He was venerated as a national fucking treasure. Featured in the curricula of thousands of classrooms as an impeccable authority. Untouchable.

[Joao]

what brekin means is, "I got nothing and I'm totally full of shit."

HAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAA...
AHAHAHAHAHHHAAAA...
...hahahahaaaaaaa!!!

You don't just accept it as science fiction, I think you need it to be science fiction. Impossible aspirations of perfection as an engine for generating meaning in your life. And it generates meaning, for sure, but what you're left with is an identity based on the obverse of those impossible aspirations of perfection, the constant sensation of losing. If you're not on the losing side, you wouldn't know what to make of yourself.

I can't believe any of you are even choosing to interact with such a belligerent clown. And that's leaving aside all the bizarre suppositions, poorly understood concepts, and TV-news-level fantasies being presented. Kudos on namedropping Gramsci yet there isn't even an understanding of the basic terms. Damned "liberals"--lol! The last three pages are just a waste of time and space, contributing nothing to the discussion or any understanding of the topic. It's great to have ideas challenged but this isn't that.

Trolled me into responding, though, so hats off. Flurry of incoherent insults (while continuing to contribute nothing) in 5, 4, 3...

[82_28]

I'm willing to just turn this thread around and talk about the Broncos/Patriots game at this point. Just sayin'. . .