"... democracy is now but a term for the various means by which the few govern the many."
Jonathan Clark, in a review of a new book on Thomas Paine's Common Sense, by Sophia Rosenfeld (Harvard Press 2011) Times Literary Review November 11, 2011, p. 12.
See also, Al Jazeera's excellent piece on the Koch brothers at
http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/peopleandpower/2011/10/2011102683719370179.html
Monday, November 21, 2011
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Failure
My love she speaks like silence ...Bob Dylan, Love Minus Zero, 1965
She knows there’s no success like failure
And that failure’s no success at all.
In Judaism there is the concept of rav hamuvhak - the identifying teacher. For example, one thinks of Plato as the student of Socrates or Margaret Mead as the student of Franz Boaz. In the world that I come from the teacher is the master of the student and the student bears the master’s mark. Thus, Israel Salanter was the student Rav Yosef Zundel who in turn was the student of Rav Chaim Volozin - as I am the student of my teachers, Rav Zechariah Fendel and Professor Jerry Hirsch.
Success for a teacher is to have students who bear his mark. In that sense, I have failed. But, as my father taught me, by sheer repetition, “we live in hope.” I still have work to do. Each day I shovel sixteen tons and what do I get? Another day older and deeper in debt. St. Peter don’t you call me, cause I can’t go. I owe my soul to the company store.
Merle Travis, Sixteen Tons, 1946.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Databases and DOplomas
Re: Renewal of the Ferris Library subscription to the Proquest Historical Newspapers Database.
Ferris State University currently subscribes to the six most important newspapers in the country including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Christian Science Monitor, the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times. Over the past seven years Ferris students have accessed these databases 112,566 times. But these are hard times and the tenured historians have been asked to help our librarians as they face the “hard decisions” that have to be made. The question is, which ones can we do without? We have also been asked to suggest areas where more money needs to be spent to bolster any significant gaps.
One of the many Ferris billboards on US 131 reminds us that at Ferris students don’t get diplomas, they get DOplomas. The cost of these billboards, like the cost of our databases continue to rise. It is important for us to remember that without these billboards we would not be able to attract the DOploma seekers who pay our salaries. It is because of these billboards that Ferris is the fastest growing university in Michigan. Our local paper recently headlined a story on declining enrollments among Education majors, apparently because there are no jobs in Michigan for teachers. Our History Ed majors don’t need databases, they need jobs and the way Michigan is going to recover from our current slump is by slashing our education budgets, cutting teacher salaries and eliminating databases so that we can afford tax breaks for business. And it’s working. Forbes magazine recently reported that Detroit had a higher rate of increase in millionaires that San Jose! Last year alone Detroit saw an increase of 4% in the number of millionaires. Teachers don’t stimulate the economy, tax breaks do. It is obvious that we need lower taxes, not more teachers. That is why I have converted all my history courses into The Barry Mehler Show. I don’t need databases or even books, the show depends exclusively on YouTube videos. My focus is entertainment, not education. I urge our librarians to cancel all of our database subscriptions so that we can bolster our billboard advertising to insure a steady stream of students interested in DOplomas. Furthermore, cancelling these subscriptions would have the added benefit of giving our students more time for their Facebook pages.
[Forbes, America’s Fastest Growing Millionaire Cities 7/14/11: http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenbertoni/2011/07/14/americas-fastest-growing-millionaire-cities/].
ps. No historical databases were used in writing this essay.
Ferris State University currently subscribes to the six most important newspapers in the country including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Christian Science Monitor, the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times. Over the past seven years Ferris students have accessed these databases 112,566 times. But these are hard times and the tenured historians have been asked to help our librarians as they face the “hard decisions” that have to be made. The question is, which ones can we do without? We have also been asked to suggest areas where more money needs to be spent to bolster any significant gaps.
One of the many Ferris billboards on US 131 reminds us that at Ferris students don’t get diplomas, they get DOplomas. The cost of these billboards, like the cost of our databases continue to rise. It is important for us to remember that without these billboards we would not be able to attract the DOploma seekers who pay our salaries. It is because of these billboards that Ferris is the fastest growing university in Michigan. Our local paper recently headlined a story on declining enrollments among Education majors, apparently because there are no jobs in Michigan for teachers. Our History Ed majors don’t need databases, they need jobs and the way Michigan is going to recover from our current slump is by slashing our education budgets, cutting teacher salaries and eliminating databases so that we can afford tax breaks for business. And it’s working. Forbes magazine recently reported that Detroit had a higher rate of increase in millionaires that San Jose! Last year alone Detroit saw an increase of 4% in the number of millionaires. Teachers don’t stimulate the economy, tax breaks do. It is obvious that we need lower taxes, not more teachers. That is why I have converted all my history courses into The Barry Mehler Show. I don’t need databases or even books, the show depends exclusively on YouTube videos. My focus is entertainment, not education. I urge our librarians to cancel all of our database subscriptions so that we can bolster our billboard advertising to insure a steady stream of students interested in DOplomas. Furthermore, cancelling these subscriptions would have the added benefit of giving our students more time for their Facebook pages.
[Forbes, America’s Fastest Growing Millionaire Cities 7/14/11: http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenbertoni/2011/07/14/americas-fastest-growing-millionaire-cities/].
ps. No historical databases were used in writing this essay.
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Teaching Kindergarten in Abu Dahbi
Navigating the "madcap" Abu Dahbi housing market can be a challenge. Fortunately, this kindergaten teacher is given a 65K housing allowance. But she will have to hurry and straight from a fourteen hour flight, she looks at 3 apartments in a single day. She rents a spectacular luxury apartment a few blocks from the Mediterranean. In Abu Dhabi, education is important.
Check it out, America has become a third class nation with a collapsing housing market and educational system. The only thing that we still excel in is our nuclear submarines and other military technology.
For the entire program:
http://www.hgtv.com/video/apartment-hunting-in-abu-dhabi-video/index.html
or a snip from youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbHQtg2jI14
We are a civilzation in decline pretending that all we need is a tea party. That might have worked in 1774, it is delusional in 2011.
Check it out, America has become a third class nation with a collapsing housing market and educational system. The only thing that we still excel in is our nuclear submarines and other military technology.
For the entire program:
http://www.hgtv.com/video/apartment-hunting-in-abu-dhabi-video/index.html
or a snip from youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbHQtg2jI14
We are a civilzation in decline pretending that all we need is a tea party. That might have worked in 1774, it is delusional in 2011.
Friday, July 1, 2011
Defending White Supremacy
The Sacred and Profane:
Class Assignment for the Fourth of July Weekend for my American History classes.
Robert E. Lee believed that Virginia was the nearest thing to a Godly kingdom that could be found on earth. Certainly, Northern society had lost it’s organic connection to God. It was a materialist culture. The South was a spiritual culture. It was wisely governed by a nobility of white men, just as God had ordained that it should be. The negro, cursed by God as the descendants of Cain and cursed again by Noah as the descendants of Canaan, were at the bottom of this Godly society - as they ought to be. God certainly could not want the negro raised to an equal level with the white man. It was unthinkable. The fabric of reality made up of all the facts made it unthinkable, but only for whites. For blacks it was more than thinkable, it was dreamable, but for most only as a reward in the world to come - swing low sweet chariot, coming for to carry me home! Even slaves are caught up in the fabric of reality in which they are glued. Slaves internalize the values of the dominate society, just as everyone else does. From the King on top to the slave at the bottom, everyone internalizes the values of the society.
More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette. They could have claimed, more lawyers smoked camels or more truck drivers... the fact, the real fact, was that for decades, Camels was the favorite cigarette of Americans, this American included. Yes, I will say it even now that the “facts” have all been changed thanks to our paternalist overloads who control thought - I will say it even now, I smoked Camels because it was a high quality, no bull shit, smoke. Fuck filters. Did I know then what I know now, that smoking is bad for your health? What kind of idiot do you think I am, of course I knew. I was an athlete. I trained hard and I knew exactly what cigarettes did - they crippled you. Yet, I smoked. Why? Because I wanted an A on the exam and I was staying up all night smoking and drinking coffee. And here I am professor Mehler. You see my point. Smoke Camels and you too can become a Jewish professor of history. I am not sorry I smoked Camels. You won’t be either. Take the Camels challenge today. Smoke Camels for 30 days and see if your throat doesn’t feel better!
Last season, I asked audience members to defend slavery and many of them simply refused. It was like I asked them to do something that they knew was wrong. You don’t want to think about things that you shouldn’t think about because you know before you start thinking where you are supposed to end up. And since you already know the answer, there is no longer any reason to think about the question. Might as well turn out the lights and go back to Facebook - somebody might have noticed me.
Remember this: You are unique, just like everybody else. You are just like everybody else. You don’t need to think. Just follow instructions and take notes. So, take note: Slavery is good. The negro is the descendant of Cain and Canaan, twice cursed by God. Don’t blame me for these propositions. I am one of those chosen by God to rule as your Emergency Manager sent here by Gov. Snyder to fire you’re Mayor. You don’t need a Mayor or a City Council. The best way to solve these fiscal problems is to bring in someone who has no stake in the community and is not accountable to anyone in the community. The EM’s job is to cut the budget and fleece you of millions before he disappears into the sunset with no liability.
George Washington asked, “Shall we become slaves, like the negro, over whom we rule with such arbitrary sway?” So, what are you, man or mouse? white man or negro? Get your head out of the mud and start thinking like a slaveholder. Sit back with a Camel and a shot of Jack and let your mind wander across the historical horizon. Despite everything you ever were taught - IT IS OK TO THINK. Don’t tell me slavery is bad and therefore I can’t imagine how to defend it. You are an attorney and I am your client. It doesn’t matter what you think. You have to defend me. And to do that you have to suspend your judgment. I know that is hard to do. Do it anyway. Do it because I’m telling you to do it and I’m your teacher. This is your homework assignment: Suspend your god-damn judgment... and come with me to the world outside your head. You will discover what a very small world you live in and you will begin a journey that will make your little world bigger. If you work hard at it, you too could someday become a old Jewish Professor of History teaching in a cesspool of intolerance for thought or provocation.
Class Assignment for the Fourth of July Weekend for my American History classes.
Robert E. Lee believed that Virginia was the nearest thing to a Godly kingdom that could be found on earth. Certainly, Northern society had lost it’s organic connection to God. It was a materialist culture. The South was a spiritual culture. It was wisely governed by a nobility of white men, just as God had ordained that it should be. The negro, cursed by God as the descendants of Cain and cursed again by Noah as the descendants of Canaan, were at the bottom of this Godly society - as they ought to be. God certainly could not want the negro raised to an equal level with the white man. It was unthinkable. The fabric of reality made up of all the facts made it unthinkable, but only for whites. For blacks it was more than thinkable, it was dreamable, but for most only as a reward in the world to come - swing low sweet chariot, coming for to carry me home! Even slaves are caught up in the fabric of reality in which they are glued. Slaves internalize the values of the dominate society, just as everyone else does. From the King on top to the slave at the bottom, everyone internalizes the values of the society.
More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette. They could have claimed, more lawyers smoked camels or more truck drivers... the fact, the real fact, was that for decades, Camels was the favorite cigarette of Americans, this American included. Yes, I will say it even now that the “facts” have all been changed thanks to our paternalist overloads who control thought - I will say it even now, I smoked Camels because it was a high quality, no bull shit, smoke. Fuck filters. Did I know then what I know now, that smoking is bad for your health? What kind of idiot do you think I am, of course I knew. I was an athlete. I trained hard and I knew exactly what cigarettes did - they crippled you. Yet, I smoked. Why? Because I wanted an A on the exam and I was staying up all night smoking and drinking coffee. And here I am professor Mehler. You see my point. Smoke Camels and you too can become a Jewish professor of history. I am not sorry I smoked Camels. You won’t be either. Take the Camels challenge today. Smoke Camels for 30 days and see if your throat doesn’t feel better!
Last season, I asked audience members to defend slavery and many of them simply refused. It was like I asked them to do something that they knew was wrong. You don’t want to think about things that you shouldn’t think about because you know before you start thinking where you are supposed to end up. And since you already know the answer, there is no longer any reason to think about the question. Might as well turn out the lights and go back to Facebook - somebody might have noticed me.
Remember this: You are unique, just like everybody else. You are just like everybody else. You don’t need to think. Just follow instructions and take notes. So, take note: Slavery is good. The negro is the descendant of Cain and Canaan, twice cursed by God. Don’t blame me for these propositions. I am one of those chosen by God to rule as your Emergency Manager sent here by Gov. Snyder to fire you’re Mayor. You don’t need a Mayor or a City Council. The best way to solve these fiscal problems is to bring in someone who has no stake in the community and is not accountable to anyone in the community. The EM’s job is to cut the budget and fleece you of millions before he disappears into the sunset with no liability.
George Washington asked, “Shall we become slaves, like the negro, over whom we rule with such arbitrary sway?” So, what are you, man or mouse? white man or negro? Get your head out of the mud and start thinking like a slaveholder. Sit back with a Camel and a shot of Jack and let your mind wander across the historical horizon. Despite everything you ever were taught - IT IS OK TO THINK. Don’t tell me slavery is bad and therefore I can’t imagine how to defend it. You are an attorney and I am your client. It doesn’t matter what you think. You have to defend me. And to do that you have to suspend your judgment. I know that is hard to do. Do it anyway. Do it because I’m telling you to do it and I’m your teacher. This is your homework assignment: Suspend your god-damn judgment... and come with me to the world outside your head. You will discover what a very small world you live in and you will begin a journey that will make your little world bigger. If you work hard at it, you too could someday become a old Jewish Professor of History teaching in a cesspool of intolerance for thought or provocation.
Friday, June 24, 2011
Managers Excepted
“Der Jude Kann nur judisch denken. Screibt er Deutsch… aber judisch denkt, is ein Verrater” - Heidegger, 1938 Recktorship Address cited from Emmanuel Faye, p. 332. “Emmanuel Faye incontestably shows that Heidegger’s Nazism was not fleeting, casual, or accidental but central to his philosophical enterprise. Faye’s book challenges us to recognize the ethical consequences of this fact.” - Robert Norton, Notre Dame.
I wonder about Heidegger’s teacher, the Jewish phenomenologist, Edmund Husserl. Was he, like my Lutheran, to discover that he was a Jew and that this fact was far more important than he had ever imagined? And what possible value could that have had to him sitting in his study at home, watching Germany being transformed by Nazis antisemitism and denied the use of the university library by his own prize student.
We, like the moon, are caught in the gravitational field of something much larger than we are. The moon might like to travel in a straight line, but the fabric of space-time is warped and it cannot escape. Antisemitism is a huge gravitational force. It is like a black hole that we would rather not think about. Yet we see all around us evidence of it’s power to influence minds, great and small. There is already a global coalition of groups representing the widest and most irreconcilable contradictions of ideology, theology and philosophy from the politically progressive evolutionary biologist, Steve Rose to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. From Russia, Eastern Europe, the European Union countries, the progressive left and reactionary right. One thing only they can all agree on - Israel is a racist apartheid state that has no right to exist. Fundamentalist Christians love us so much they want to save us from our Judaism, not realizing that most Jews have nothing to do with “Judaism.” Yes, there are still Jews, like myself who get up each morning and put on tefillin but the majority of Jews do not pray. Most Jews in the United States are assiduously working to shed themselves of their Jewish identity.
I do not see myself as an American. It just doesn’t mean anything to me. I study American history, the way I study Holocaust history. What is there to be proud of, the Tower of Babel? Walter Benjamin noted that as historians we must never identify with the oppressors of the past. “Empathy with the victor invariably benefits the rulers” and do we want to be a benefit to the emergency manager? The ruler who can dismiss the will of the people, usually, by the way, black people. The emergency manager system is as racist as the Drug War, which has also disenfranchised black voters. We have always known they weren’t smart enough for democracy. They need managers to handle their financial affairs, to steal what still can be stolen with impunity. No impoverished ghetto is too poor to steal from. Everyone has to pay their fair share for global war, managers excepted, of course.
I wonder about Heidegger’s teacher, the Jewish phenomenologist, Edmund Husserl. Was he, like my Lutheran, to discover that he was a Jew and that this fact was far more important than he had ever imagined? And what possible value could that have had to him sitting in his study at home, watching Germany being transformed by Nazis antisemitism and denied the use of the university library by his own prize student.
We, like the moon, are caught in the gravitational field of something much larger than we are. The moon might like to travel in a straight line, but the fabric of space-time is warped and it cannot escape. Antisemitism is a huge gravitational force. It is like a black hole that we would rather not think about. Yet we see all around us evidence of it’s power to influence minds, great and small. There is already a global coalition of groups representing the widest and most irreconcilable contradictions of ideology, theology and philosophy from the politically progressive evolutionary biologist, Steve Rose to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. From Russia, Eastern Europe, the European Union countries, the progressive left and reactionary right. One thing only they can all agree on - Israel is a racist apartheid state that has no right to exist. Fundamentalist Christians love us so much they want to save us from our Judaism, not realizing that most Jews have nothing to do with “Judaism.” Yes, there are still Jews, like myself who get up each morning and put on tefillin but the majority of Jews do not pray. Most Jews in the United States are assiduously working to shed themselves of their Jewish identity.
I do not see myself as an American. It just doesn’t mean anything to me. I study American history, the way I study Holocaust history. What is there to be proud of, the Tower of Babel? Walter Benjamin noted that as historians we must never identify with the oppressors of the past. “Empathy with the victor invariably benefits the rulers” and do we want to be a benefit to the emergency manager? The ruler who can dismiss the will of the people, usually, by the way, black people. The emergency manager system is as racist as the Drug War, which has also disenfranchised black voters. We have always known they weren’t smart enough for democracy. They need managers to handle their financial affairs, to steal what still can be stolen with impunity. No impoverished ghetto is too poor to steal from. Everyone has to pay their fair share for global war, managers excepted, of course.
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Catching a glimpse of history
Walter Benjamin wrote that the “past can be seized only as an image which flashes up at the instant when it can be recognized and is never seen again.” I imagine a Lutheran who was arrested by the Nazis and put into a holding cell with a bunch of Jews headed for Auschwitz. The man protested that he was not a Jew, he hated Jews, in fact. He was a Lutheran. He was born a Lutheran. The Nazis replied that his mother was a Jew and so he was a Jew. No, he replied with passion, my mother converted to Christianity long before I was born and she married a Lutheran and she raised me a Lutheran and she was a Lutheran. No, the Nazis replied, she was a Jew. And so the man found himself in a chamber load of Jews as the gas was being dropped. As he drew his last breath it finally dawned on him, "oh, my God, I'm a Jew!" All his life he thought that he knew who he was. He was a German and a Lutheran and he hated Jews. At the very last moment of his life he discovers that he is a Jew. He realizes that on some level this fact was fundamental to who he was and what his destiny was to be, but what purpose does his final insight serve?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)