alias Bruce.

Trump-Free Thursday: Freedom of art at Gwarlingo

Welcome to an experiment: Trump-Free Thursday, a place where All Trump All The Time yields to better and truer things.

Need a space to breathe? Today I suggest Gwarlingo, one of the truest windows I've yet found for art, poems, wild ideas, and all else creative: recent poetry by staggering channeler Nickole Brown, shockingly sublime postcard art by John Stezaker, the twisted fairy mirror of Grimm's tales, and way, way, more, courtesy of site founder Michelle Aldredge and a zillion contributors. (Full disclosure: I was one. But that was years ago.) Just go.

The Guardian’s Lindy West: Why say alt-right when you mean Nazi?

This from columnist Lindy West on why we stop at “alt-right” when we’re talking about ethnic-cleanser racial supremacists:

What does it take to call a Nazi a Nazi? In the interminable fortnight since the election of Donald Trump, the US press has been floundering in a gyre of panic over the internal taxonomy of racists.

For months, many (myself included) indulged Trump’s base in their euphemism of choice, the “alt-right”, an attempt to rebrand warmed-over Reconstruction-era white supremacy as a cool, new (and harmless!) internet fad. Despite the fact that Breitbart News (described by former honcho turned Trump adviser Stephen Bannon as “the platform for the alt-right”) had, at one point, a news tag labeled “black crime”, and was a driver of the racist conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was a secret Kenyan Muslim, the press contorted itself into labyrinthine knots to avoid applying the word “racist” to Bannon or Trump in any committed way. (In our post-meaning world, being called a racist is nearly as grievous as being a racist.

Public outcry has prompted some hemming and hawing over the finer distinctions between “white nationalists” and “white supremacists”, the mainstream media not allowing either term to get too close to Trump himself, even as antisemitic, anti-black, anti-gay and Islamophobic hate crimes (not to mention KKK victory parades) continued to proliferate in his name. The website Boing Boing published a “White Supremacy Euphemism Generator for journalists”, explaining: “even when people pander to the idea Western culture’s wellbeing is inseparable from European ethnicity, they somehow avoid being called white nationalists or supremacists by journalists”. One hang-up seemed to be a lack of self-identification. If a person doesn’t consider himself a white supremacist, can he still be one? (Answer: OF COURSE.)

Finally, though, at Richard B Spencer’s closing speech at Saturday’s alt-right conference just a few blocks from the White House, it became undeniable what we’re dealing with here (at least among this particular sect of Trump’s true believers): it’s a bunch of straight-up neo-Nazis.

According to the New York Times, Spencer – who claims to have coined the term “alt-right” – “railed against Jews and, with a smile, quoted Nazi propaganda in the original German. America, he said, belonged to white people … As he finished, several audience members had their arms outstretched in a Nazi salute.” The crowd joined Spencer in a cry of “Heil victory!”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Richard Spencer: ‘railed against Jews and quoted Nazi propaganda.’ Photograph: The Washington Post/Getty Images

And yet, still, headlines were tentative. The New York Times gesticulated wildly toward Nazism without actually using the word (“Alt-Right Exults in Donald Trump’s Election With a Salute: ‘Heil Victory’”), and a CNN panel managed to avoid saying “Nazi” entirely, despite discussing a chyron that read, “Alt-right founder questions if Jews are people.”

But if declaring the superiority of the white race, quoting Nazi propaganda, calling for “peaceful ethnic cleansing”, and provoking Nazi salutes from his audience isn’t enough to qualify one as a neo-Nazi, then where on earth is the bar? What is the hesitation? And, given the close ties between the “alt-right” and Trump’s cabinet, how is the top story on every front page not some version of “NEO-NAZIS ATTEMPTING TO SEIZE CONTROL OF AMERICAN GOVERNMENT”?

Read her entire column here.

Keith Schlegel on Trump, words, and language as a bomb at a bus stop.

My colleague and friend Keith Schlegel, a retired university English chair and owner of a baritone voice most guys would go to jail for, wrote and recorded a video reading of the following (I'll share a link when I have it [Update 12/8: video is here]):

 

"Polonius: What do you read, my lord?

Hamlet: "Words, words, words."

 

Well, yes, when we read or speak or listen, that is all we encounter, mere words, which, unlike sticks and stones, can never hurt us, or so we teach children. Hamlet's answer to Polonius is that it doesn't matter what Hamlet reads, that whatever it is is meaningless, that words are meaningless. Yet this play, itself made of words only, shows the meaning, purposes, and effects of words, which include cruelty, since words can hurt very much and not just our feelings about ourselves.

 

Words are in fact a species of action and the result of choice. Words are more than mere words to those who depend upon them to represent something like truth, to inspire us, to console, to teach us. Alas, words can also anger, harm, and, most dangerous of all, deceive.

 

Notwithstanding his claims that he has "great" words, President-elect Trump is pitifully lacking in good words, in accurate words. Is Pakistan really a "fantastic" nation full of "fantastic" people and led by a "fantastic" leader, as Donald Trump has recently said? When he said he "saw" hundreds of Muslims in America celebrate the horror of 9/11, his words were fully as perilous as a bomb thrown into a crowd. More recently, he exchanged words with the president of Taiwan, violating established diplomacy. Examples of irresponsible talk abound from the 2016 campaign, but now that it's over, Americans can and should assert a higher standard of active citizenship that listens, reads, judges, and most of all uses words critically and accurately. No excuses remain.

 

I doubt we can quickly or thoroughly change Mr. Trump's bad habits of careless speech, regardless of who is advising him. Those of us who worry most about the degradation of truth can, however, focus our resistance to the debasing of language. Accordingly, as we make ourselves the loyal opposition, we commit to name every misrepresentation, every unfounded assertion, every flattery of tyrants, every overly-general or unfair accusation. We plan to speak truth to power.

 

Over my decades teaching writing, I never let pass without comment any vague use of the word great. "Do you mean famous? large? powerful? important? good?" I'd comment. To make something "great again" surely first requires understanding what the word great means now and what it meant in the past, and much of the divide we now endure stems from people's not sharing the same meanings for words: in that way, the rise of Trumpism has made clear what before was hidden.

 

I'd be happy to agree that American citizens should try to make America great again if that means to return to the clear humanity of Abraham Lincoln or the hopefulness of a young President Kennedy or to the heroism of the civil rights workers or the sacrifices of American soldiers or indeed the promise of justice that lives in the Constitution, which our Presidents swear to defend in the words of their oath of office. I suspect these are not the values defining "great" of those who even now yell for the President-elect to throw Hillary Clinton in jail, albeit I seriously doubt one in a thousand could even name the supposed crime or explain how any President could exercise such unconstitutional powers. The Presidency is the most powerful office in our nation, but it is also limited in ways that would irritate any despot.

 

Much of the power of the American Presidency lies not in the exercise of force but in the authority and stature of the office such that Presidential words must be attended to. The Presidency is a pulpit (a "bully" one) to do good. This is a truth that President Obama knows well, as his soaring rhetoric has shown. Mr. Trump also gets the point, at least in part: when he tweeted this week attacking Boeing, the stock shares fell precipitously: now that’s power.

 

We do no disservice to our country when we demand high standards in Presidential speech: we show thereby that we honor the office.

Introducing Poemmentary.com.

It's news headlines and political commentary -- but exclusively through poetry. Wherever it is found, seen, heard, or scrawled. Its motto is "Freed Speech."

For a different kind of reporting,  go to Poemmentary.com. The April 6th story, for instance, is "Illegal Immigration Is A Touchstone For Anger."

I launched the site this week after years of daydreaming about it. There is much, much more to come. In all kinds of directions. Please visit as it grows.

State of the Village Report - 2014.

From odtmaps.com and populationeducation.org:

STATE OF THE VILLAGE REPORT - 2014

If the world were a village of only 100 people, there would be:
     60 Asians,
    16 Africans,
    10 Europeans,
      8 people from Central & South America, Mexico & the Caribbean,
      5 from the USA and Canada, and
      1 person from Australia or New Zealand
            Source: www.census.gov/population/international/data/idb/informationGateway.php

The people of the village would have considerable difficulty communicating:
    17 people would speak a Chinese dialect (12 of them Mandarin)
      6 Spanish,
      5 English,
      4 people Hindi/Urdu,
      3 Arabic,
      3 Portuguese,
     This list accounts for less than half the villagers. The others speak (in descending order of frequency) Bengali, Russian, Japanese, Javanese, Lahnda, German, French, and over 7,000 other languages.
            Source: www.enthnologue.com/statistics/size

In the village there would be:
     32 Christians,
     23 Moslems,
     15 Hindus,
     16 Nonreligious, Agnostics, or Atheists,
      7 Buddhists,
      6 Folk or traditional religions
      1 All other religions (including Judaism, Baha'i, Sikhism, Shintoism,
          Taoism, Zoroastrianism, to mention just a few.
                  Source: www.pewforum.org/2012/12/18/global-religious-landscape-exec/

In this 100-person community:
     51 would live in cities. (footnote #1)
     23 would live in substandard housing.  (footnote #2)
     74 adults (age 15+) live in the village; & 16 of them illiterate. (footnote #3)
     14 would suffer from malnutrition. (footnote #4)
     11 would not have access to clean, safe drinking water. (footnote # 5)
     20 people would not have any electricity.  (footnote # 6)
         Of the 80 that do have electricity, most would use it only for light at night.
     In the village would be 56 radios (footnote # 7), 22 televisions (footnote # 8),
         93 mobile phone subscriptions (footnote #9), and 9 computers (footnote # 10)
         (some villagers own more than one of each).
     40 people are using the Internet.  (footnote # 11)
     17 people would own an automobile
(some of them more than one).
(footnote # 12)
       8 people would possess 83% of the entire village's wealth. (footnote # 13)
       The poorest 70% of the people would receive only 3% of the income
          of the village. (footnote #14)

FOOTNOTE SOURCES:
1,3 CIA World Factbook, www.cia.gov
2 www.habitatforhumanity.org.uk/GlobalHousingNeed
4, 12 World Bank, World Development Indicators, http://data.worldbank.org
5 UNICEF, www.unicef.org
6 International Energy Agency, http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/resources/energydevelopment/accesstoelectricity/
7-11 International Telecommunications Union, www.itu.int
12,13 Credit Suisse Global Wealth Databook 2013, https://publications.credit-suisse.com/tasks/render/file/?fileID=BCDB1364-A105-0560-1332EC9100FF5C83
14 Oxfam International, "Working for the Few," Oxfam Briefing Paper, January 20, 2014, p. 9. http://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/file_attachments/bp-working-for-few-political-capture-economic-inequality-200114-en_3.pdf
 
2014 statistics compiled by Population Education www.populationeducation.org   
The above list is copyright-free, but we request that you acknowledge ODTmaps.com and Population Education as the source if you reprint them or post them online.
**************************
PREVIOUS VERSIONS:
Donella Meadows' original 1990 "State of the Village Report"
Is at: http://www.donellameadows.org/archives/state-of-the-village-report/
General information regarding the organization that Donella Meadows founded,
can be found at: http://www.donellameadows.org/

A 2005 version of the STATE OF THE VILLAGE REPORT
was published by ODTmaps and can be downloaded at:
http://odtmaps.com/behind_the_maps/population_map/if-world-were-village.asp

Speaking of what happens to language when thousands of corporations

find they are actors in a single narrow script of how goods and services are defined, here is a verbatim blurb from an actual company that is trying to attract new employees:

"[Name of company] serves the U.S. by accelerating the transformation of Federal healthcare through the application of new strategies, technology and processes. Our case management solutions offer a high benefit, low risk implementation of case adjudication and processing. We provide transformational functional subject matter expertise and health IT services to multiple civilian…"

and so on. It's a real problem, especially with big business. By its nature, late capitalism creates an incestuous upper layer of interchangeable merchants who offer basically the same shared pool of workers and the same commodities to the same gang of high-level corporate and government clients: business lions turned politicians turned business lions. Money buys membership into the revolving swap meet. The problem with trying to advertise to these cloistered buyers is that at this late date in the alleged "marketplace" there's very little left to say about most products and services that is distinctive.

Or I guess it's more accurate to say that there's very little left that's permissible to say about most products that is distinctive. The goods are all generally the same stuff, made with the same labor and the same materials, sold to the same captive customers, but branded with different names and contrived stories. And the rules of advertisement, agreed upon by the moneyed gang, forbid blantantly truthful pitches such as, for instance, "Ours is just as dangerous/fraudulent/generic as theirs, but our stockholders want you to buy ours." So, in the absence of Adam-Smith-style market meritocracy, most of today's monopoly capitalist sales messages are forced to devolve into bald-faced meaninglessness. Banal corporate slogans blend into an obscuring mist. We can't tell one from another, and we rightly believe none of them. It's not that the world has ever been a very credulous place. It's that the Western capitalist world, in particular, has stirred itself into a near-homogenous blend of vanilla dishonesty.

This is why most corporate advertising agency creatives -- of whom I was one for years -- now rely on a shared vocabulary of gibberish for general awareness campaigns, and why their clients -- corporate marketing directors, for the most part -- delude themselves into thinking that their own ad agency's latest confection captures the compelling personality of their brand. The truth -- that there is little or no material to work with -- is unacceptable to the enterprise. So the folks at the table have two choices: they can believe their own hooey, or they can pretend to.

Actually, there is a third path as well: they can be among the few ad creators who actually weave meaningful or memorable messages about what is sold. There are not many of those. But there are some, and their ads --whether truth or lies -- are the ones that make us laugh out loud, or feel understood or respected, or at least remember what they tell us, which is a feat in itself. You probably have some favorites. I do.

The majority, though, are expensive goo. For every brilliantly intuitive ad messenger who divines the day's magic words for the public mind -- and I know a couple of them -- there are 99 barkers who hack their way into public speech with semi-methodologies of messaging (known as "creative strategies") that yield noises and images that are just good enough to get paid. I was one of those people. Most in the ad business are.

That is why it is now universal sport to mock adspeak, and why an especially apt act of ad satire, like Kendra Eash's "This is a Generic Brand Video," goes viral with contempt and hilarity. What our society has done to human work, and to speech about human work, deserves all the snarky ridicule we can muster.

So what do we need to do to change it?

This is a very good generic brand video.

You know that messed-with feeling you get while you watch 30 seconds of carefully-murmured nothing try to sell you something? Kendra Eash nails it in her McSweeney's poemmentary, "This is a Generic Brand Video," which has gone viral. The perfect irony is that the subsequent (and brilliant) video version is a real commercial for a real company: a video firm that sells itself as the winking, upstart alternative to generic advertising. More on blank ad campaigns – which I used to do for a living – soon. Right now, enjoy Eash's piece and the video.

This is a Generic Brand Video.

by Kendra Eash

We think first
Of vague words that are synonyms for progress
And pair them with footage of a high-speed train.

Science
Is doing lots of stuff
That may or may not have anything to do with us.

See how this guy in a lab coat holds up a beaker?
That means we do research.
Here’s a picture of DNA.

There are a shitload of people in the world
Especially in India
See how we’re part of the global economy?
Look at these farmers in China.

But we also do business in the U.S.A.
Or want you to think we do.
Check out this wind energy thing in Indiana,
And this blue collar guy with dirt on his face.
Phew.

Also, we care about the environment, loosely.
Here’s some powerful, rushing water
And people planting trees.
Our policies could be related to these panoramic views of Costa Rica.

In today’s high speed environment,
Stop motion footage of a city at night
With cars turning quickly
Makes you think about doing things efficiently
And time passing.

Lest you think we’re a faceless entity,
Look at all these attractive people.
Here’s some of them talking and laughing
And close-ups of hands passing canned goods to each other
In a setting that evokes community service.

Equality,
Innovation,
Honesty
And advancement
Are all words we chose from a list.

Our profits
are awe-inspiring.
Like this guy who’s looking up and pointing
At a skyscraper or a kite
While smiling and explaining something to his child.

Using a specific ratio
of Asian people to Black people to Women to White men
We want to make sure we represent your needs and interests
Or at least a version of your skin color
In our ads.

Did we put a baby in here?
What about an ethnic old man whose wrinkled smile represents the happiness and wisdom of the poor?
Yep.

 

This Is a Generic Brand Video from Dissolve on Vimeo.

We need a word

for a person who is the equivalent of a husband or wife but in an unmarried relationship by choice. I had an aunt who was with the same man for something like 40 years, until death, without their marrying. I have a friend whose live-in life love recently died unexpectedly --  again, they could have legally married but chose not to -- and in conveying my sympathy I realized I was missing a noun that would do justice to this person's role in my friend's life.

I have since been groping for that word in my hamstrung language, English, and I haven't found it. "Partner," to me, falls way short emotionally and sounds too transactional, although I know that some couples comfortably use it. "Companion" also seems to come up short; that could be your dog. "Girlfriend" and "boyfriend" seem OK to me up to a point, but once you have reached a certain seriousness of loving commitment, especially later in life, calling someone your "girlfriend" or "boyfriend" just sounds silly. I guess we could go with modifiers and try "life companion" or "loving partner" or similar pairings, but they feel to me more like fodder for obits or greeting cards than for actual life. Plus, who wants to lug around a two-word phrase as the generic handle for the person you love?

"Domestic partner" also feels chilly to me. I know the term is useful as a legal runner-up to "husband" or "wife" for gay couples who want to marry but are forbidden to by discriminatory laws, and it also has legal uses for potential recognition of straight couples who cohabit. But as a phrase it leaves me cold. Listen to it: "Domestic partnership." It sounds like a household business. All that's missing is the "Inc." afterward. Of course, gay couples who would like to marry can choose to call themselves "husbands" and "wives" no matter what the laws say (although there are plenty of reasons why they might not like those terms). But what about people who don't want to marry but who have built a life together?

So I've come up wordless for this. Maybe there's one I'm missing. Or it's time to create one. Surely we can do better than the lame assortment from which we've learned to choose.