Per's Decent Blog

Poor America (2012), is an excellent half-hour exploration of American poverty, and meditation on what we owe to others in any society that allows so many people so little social mobility.

In our own time, conservative politicians seem intent on letting people suffer forever until they find the Nietzschean will to power to become independently awesome enough to win at life. If you can’t survive on your own, no matter your childhood or misfortunes, then die already! People deserve better.

The fact that so many people are so unwilling to invest in the growth of fellow neighbors is beyond me. They push for bizarre social causes based on values instead of realities. They take their selves so seriously. The whole political apparatus strikes me less as a coherent ideology than one, powerful one cleverly camouflaging itself to make various conservative groups cheer for it like a sports team once in a while when elections come around. That’s if they even bother to vote — we can barely get half the country to come out when it’s the damned president being elected.

This poverty stuff is real, and people need to get real, and a little more imaginative.

adhocumentary:

How TV Ruined Your Life - “Aspiration: how TV rubs our noses in other people’s ‘superior’ lifestyles”

In this episode, Charlie Brooker explores how hollow, moneyed lifestyles have come to be so ubiquitous on TV, and how people have been made to think that their possessions mean so much. Aspirational imagery is everywhere now, and over time it has infected and bent reality and people’s expectations to unrealistic, privileged, self-serving, and off-the-Earth material standards. Brooker’s program makes particularly excellent use of archival and contemporary imagery to make his point, that “it was a collective delusion, and none of it was real.”

(Source: youtu.be)

adhocumentary:

The Power of Nightmares: the Rise of the Politics of Fear is a 2004 3-part film series by Adam Curtis. It’s a brilliant look at the power of our time and explores ideas including the parallel rise of neoconservatism and radical islamification, and the notion that “Al Qaeda” as widely understood is an utter fabrication.

“The story starts just after the Second World War, when political philosopher Leo Strauss begins to formulate his ideas: freedom and liberalism lead to decadence, therefore a politician must promote strong myths to counter that liberalism. Such myths can be religion, patriotism or the threat of an outside enemy. It doesn’t matter that a leader believes in them himself (in fact, it is preferable he doesn’t), they are important to unite an otherwise uncontrollable populace. In the next decades some of his followers like Paul Wolfowitz, John Ashcroft or William Kristol set about putting his ideas into practice, first during the cold war and now during the Bush-era. 

Curtis draws parallels between the ideas of Strauss and those of Sayyid Qutb, who can be considered the godfather of radical Islamist thought: he too considered freedom dangerous and he too promoted the use of religion and fear to accomplish his objectives: to overthrow the corrupt regimes of the Middle East and replace them with Islamist societies.

Both groups would develop independently, meet when fighting a common enemy in Afghanistan and diverge again until September 11, 2001. The final part shows how, since the the US invasion of Afghanistan, the Neo-cons have kept the threat of Al Quaeda alive through misinformation, outright lies and spurious arrests of ‘sleeper cells’ (all of which later turned out to be innocent). As was evident on November 2, their tactics have paid off.

Watching The Power of Nightmares we’re reminded that we’re living in a world of fantasy and deception, lead by politicians who have little respect for truth, decency or human lives. There isn’t much to be optimistic about, but as long as documentaries like this can be made and broadcast on national television, there’s a dim ray of hope for democracy after all.”

You can find Part 1 (and the rest) on Youtube here. 

“Al Qaeda” was invented; it never formally existed until Western governments invented the idea of a sophisticated network of terrorists waiting to be commanded, under a banner Osama bin Laden may not even have coined himself. This segment is from Adam Curtis’ film series, The Power of Nightmares: the Rise of the Politics of Fear.

“People are looking for something that isnt there. There is no organization with its terrorist operative cells… what there is is an idea prevalent amoung young, angry Muslim males throughout the Islamic world. That idea poses a threat.”