Slavoj Žižek - Who Is Responsible for the US Shutdown? The Same Idiots Responsible for the 2008 Meltdown

Slavoj Žižek is often very entertaining. In this recent op-ed for the UK's The Guardian, Žižek seems to think he has discovered a hornets next, so of course he gives it a good swift kick. On the other hand, anyone who can find a cogent argument to pin this current financial mess on Ayn Rand is cool with me.

Who is responsible for the US shutdown? The same idiots responsible for the 2008 meltdown

In opposing Obamacare, the radical-populist right exposes its own twisted ideology

Slavoj Žižek
The Guardian, Friday 11 October 2013

A Tea Party rally against the Affordable Care Act in Washington, DC last month. 'An opinion poll [in] 2012 showed that a majority of Americans, while opposing Obamacare, strongly support most of its provisions.' Photograph: UPI /Landov / Barcroft Media

In April 2009 I was resting in a hotel room in Syracuse, hopping between two channels: a PBS documentary on Pete Seeger, the great American country singer of the left; and a Fox News report on the anti-tax Tea Party, with a country singer performing a populist song about how Washington is taxing hard-working ordinary people to finance the Wall Street financiers. There was a weird similarity between the two singers: both were articulating an anti-establishment, populist complaint against the exploitative rich and their state; both were calling for radical measures, including civil disobedience.

It was another painful reminder that today's radical-populist right reminds us of the old radical-populist left (are today's Christian survivalist-fundamentalist groups with their half-illegal status not organised like Black Panthers back in the 1960s?). It is a masterful ideological manipulation: the Tea Party agenda is fundamentally irrational in that it wants to protect the interests of hardworking ordinary people by privileging the "exploitative rich", thus literally countering their own interests.

This twisted ideology is also behind the current federal government shutdown in the US. An opinion poll at the end of June 2012 showed that a majority of Americans, while opposing Obamacare, strongly support most of its provisions. Here we encounter Tea Party ideology at its purest: the majority wants to have its ideological cake and eat the real baking. They want the real benefits of healthcare reform, while rejecting its ideological form, which they perceive as a threat to the "freedom of choice". They reject the concept of fruit, but they want apples, plums and strawberries.

Some of us remember the infamous communist tirades against bourgeois "formal" freedom. Ridiculous as these arguments were, there is some truth in the distinction between "formal" and "actual" freedom. A manager in a company in crisis has the "freedom" to fire workers, but not the freedom to change the situation that imposes on him this choice. We see it in the US healthcare debate, too: Obamacare would deliver many people from the dubious "freedom" to worry about who will cover their illness.

Freedom of choice is something that only functions if a complex network of legal, educational, ethical, economic and other conditions exists – the constraints that form the invisible underpinning to the exercise of our freedom. This is why, as an antidote to the populist rightwing ideology of choice, countries such as Norway should be held up as a model: although all main agents respect a basic social agreement and large social projects are enacted in solidarity, the economy is thriving (and not only because of the oil reserves), flatly contradicting the common wisdom that such a society should be stagnating.

Not many people know – and even fewer appreciate the irony of the fact – that Frank Sinatra's iconic song My Way – which is supposed to epitomise the American individualist attitude – is in fact a version of the French song Comme d'Habitude, which means "as usual, as is customary". It is all too easy to see this as yet another example of the opposition between sterile French manners and American inventiveness. But what if this is a phoney opposition? What if, in order to be able to do it my way, I have to rely on things going on comme d'habitude? A lot of things have to be regulated if we are to enjoy our non-regulated freedom.

One often hears that the US shutdown is the result of partisan bickering, that politicians should learn to rise above it and find bipartisan solutions for the good of the nation. Not only the Tea Party, but also Barack Obama is accused of dividing the American people instead of bringing them together. But what if this, precisely, is what is good about Obama? In situations of deep crisis, an authentic division is urgently needed: a division between those who want to drag on within the old parameters and those who are aware of the need for radical change. This, not opportunistic compromise, is the only path to true unity.

One of the weird consequences of the 2008 financial meltdown and the measures taken to counteract it (enormous sums of money to help banks) was the revival of the work of Ayn Rand, the closest one can get to an ideologist of the "greed is good" radical capitalism. The sales of her opus Atlas Shrugged exploded. According to some reports, there are already signs that the scenario described in Atlas Shrugged – the creative capitalists themselves going on strike – is coming to pass in the form of a populist right. However, this misreads the situation: what is effectively taking place today is almost the exact opposite. Most of the bailout money is going precisely to the Randian "titans", the bankers who failed in their "creative" schemes and thereby brought about the financial meltdown. It is not the "creative geniuses" who are now helping ordinary people, it is the ordinary people who are helping the failed "creative geniuses".

John Galt, the central character in Atlas Shrugged, is not named until near the end of the novel. Before his identity is revealed, the question is repeatedly asked, "Who is John Galt". Now we know precisely who he is: John Galt is the idiot responsible for the 2008 financial meltdown, and for the ongoing federal government shutdown in the US.

Film: The Crisis of Civilization

This film is strangely entertaining and depressing at the same time - some weird hybrid of mash-ups and facts that disturbs as it captivates. Or maybe I just need more sleep.

The Crisis of Civilization

The Crisis of Civilization is a documentary feature film investigating how global crises like ecological disaster, financial meltdown, dwindling oil reserves, terrorism and food shortages are converging symptoms of a single, failed global system.

Weaving together archival film footage and animations, film-maker Dean Puckett, animator Lucca Benney and international security analyst Dr. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed – author of A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilization: And How to Save It – offer a stunning wake-up call proving that ‘another world’ is not merely possible, but on its way.

Like the book on which it is based, the film consists of seven parts which explore the interconnected dynamic of global crises of Climate Catastrophe; Peak Energy; Peak Food; Economic Instability; International Terrorism; and the Militarization Tendency – with a final section on The Post-Peak World.

The film reveals how a failure to understand the systemic context of these crises, linked to neoliberal ideology, has generated a tendency to deal not with their root structural causes, but only with their symptoms. This has led to the proliferation of war, terror, and state-terror, including encroachment on civil liberties, while accelerating global crises rather than solving them.

The real solution, Nafeez argues, is to recognise the inevitability of civilizational change, and to work toward a fundamental systemic transformation based on more participatory forms of living, politically, economically and culturally.

Also featuring clowns, car crashes, explosions, acrobats, super heroes, xylophones and much, much more!

The links from the video on YouTube:

A dark comedy remix mash-up bonanza about the end of industrial civilization.
Support us! Get the DVD http://crisisofcivilization.com/buy
Listen to our response to some of the your comments here http://crisisofcivilization.com/podcast2/
Based on the Book by Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed - http://crisisofcivilization.com/book/
Directed by Dean Puckett
Animations by Lucca Benney
http://www.facebook.com/thecrisisfilm
http://twitter.com/crisisfilm

Bookforum - What Has Happened to Occupy Wall Street?

Occupy Wall Street, and all its local manifestations, has fallen off the media radar in recent weeks and months. America's short attention span is partly to blame (or at least the media's encouragement of it), but there was also the movement's own tendency toward hippie extravagance (hacky sack, Frisbee, drugs, and other nonsense).

But the people who really care about change, who want to make a more equitable system, have been continuing the work behind the scenes. This collection of articles - assembled by Bookforum - checks in with where the movement is now.

What has happened to Occupy Wall Street?

JAN 19 2012 9:00AM

• From The Nation, a special section on Occupying the Safety Net, including Frances Fox Piven on what the Occupy movement could do for poor people — and vice versa. 
• Occupy the Cloud: What Occupy Wall Street can take from Gov 2.0. 
• From Jacobin, Mike Beggs on Occupy economics. 
• Wealthy financiers are trying to turn the Occupy movement into a rich vs. poor debate — what they still don't understand is that Americans don't hate the rich, they hate the rich in finance. 
• At Occupy Wall Street, an unlikely mix of students, vets, bankers, regulators and academics are planning alternative financial institutions — including an Occupy bank (and more). 
• Is Occupy Wall Street strapped for cash? 
• Louis Rene Beres on Occupy Wall Street, Adam Smith, and the Wealth of Nations. 
• From The Awl, Lauren Kirchner on Occupy Scandinavia's long winter. 
• From Counterpunch, what if Occupiers armed themselves? 
• In the year of protests, is it really fair to compare the grievances of the Occupy movement to the courage of the Arab Spring? 
• Occupy Wall Street has been quiet since the November evictions, but the 2012 elections will give it a chance to have a lasting impact. 
• What has happened to Occupy Wall Street?

#OWS Teach-In with Douglas Rushkoff

Rushkoff seems to be transforming from a popular author to an activism leader - a Gen X Ralph Nader, only smarter and more aware. Glad to see it, we need someone like him.

OWS Teach-In with Douglas Rushkoff
by Douglas Rushkoff



 OWS Teach-In with Douglas Rushkoff from Douglas Rushkoff on Vimeo.

Footage by the Life Inc. media crew.

Documentary - Capitalism Is the Crisis: Radical Politics in the Age of Austerity

A little too extreme in some ways, for me, but certainly capitalism as it currently operates is soulless and lacking compassion - there needs to be a melding of capitalist principles favoring the individual and socialist principles supporting the collective - anything else feels, to me, insufficient to our current issues.

Via Top Documentary Films.

Capitalism Is the Crisis

2011

Capitalism Is The Crisis: Radical Politics in the Age of Austerity examines the ideological roots of the "austerity" agenda and proposes revolutionary paths out of the current crisis. The film features original interviews with Chris Hedges, Derrick Jensen, Michael Hardt, Peter Gelderloos, Leo Panitch, David McNally, Richard J.F. Day, Imre Szeman, Wayne Price, and many more!

The 2008 "financial crisis" in the United States was a systemic fraud in which the wealthy finance capitalists stole trillions of public dollars. No one was jailed for this crime, the largest theft of public money in history.

Instead, the rich forced working people across the globe to pay for their "crisis" through punitive "austerity" programs that gutted public services and repealed workers' rights.

Austerity was named "Word of the Year" for 2010.

This documentary explains the nature of capitalist crisis, visits the protests against austerity measures, and recommends revolutionary paths for the future.

Special attention is devoted to the crisis in Greece, the 2010 G20 Summit protest in Toronto, Canada, and the remarkable surge of solidarity in Madison, Wisconsin.

It may be their crisis, but it's our problem.

Watch the full documentary now