JamesLindenschmidt.com

I just ran across this quote from Bertrand Russell: “it is in the nature of imperialism that citizens of the imperial power are always among the last to know – or care – about circumstances in the colonies.”

This is from the early 1970s, but it holds true today. Indeed I think it sums up the situation in America quite nicely. The problem is, “the colonies” are shifting from being a geographic entity to being an economic entity. The people of the US — and indeed people all over the world — are becoming “the colonies,” and the economic elite are the colonizers.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

This is an interesting, if a bit reactionary and preliminary, look at post-corporate information flow.

I’m still wrestling with this whole who-do-I-vote-for thing. To further confuse matters, I just read Amy Goodman’s interview with Ralph Nader.

And now my thoughts are even further blurred. Consider:

AMY GOODMAN: Last question, and that is the rage of your former friends that you’re experiencing right now. What is your response to this, to your being so — to them feeling so alienated by all of the things that you have represented in the past that they say they have supported?

RALPH NADER: Think they deserve John Kerry for another four years. So, then they’ll come back in a year and start complaining, oh, oh, this party, oh, the White House, so terrible on the environment, caving in to the coal companies and the nuclear and not doing anything about biotech or W.T.O. or NAFTA. How many times do they have to be betrayed? You can forgive them in they’re under 30. They have not been betrayed enough, but people — my peer group going like that? There’s no end to the lowering of their expectation level. The least-worsters have no end logic to their attitude. Because every four years until the end of kingdom come, there will be a least-worst party in America. They have no end, in 2008, 2012. And every four years, both parties get worse and they make no demands. If you are going to go for least worst, at least pull the least of the worst in your direction. They don’t even have the courage of their convictions to stand tall, and to say they have wimped out is truly an understatement. And it’s a tragedy because they’re very bright, and they fought a lot of good fights in the old days. They have either run out of gas, or they have lost their self-respect.

So for me it comes down to compassion vs. authenticity. The only authentic choice I have would be to vote for Nader or Cobb (I still haven’t taken the time to distinguish carefully between the two candidates). However, I can’t help but think that significant, nonzero suffering would be alleviated if I do everything in my power to get Bush out of office.

So what to do? Should I be authentic? Or should I be compassionate? Or is this line even a false one? In the long run, it may actually be more compassionate to vote authentically, at least that’s probably what existential philosophers would say.

Just when I think I have a nice ethos to help figure things out in my life, I am flummoxed by this.

Perhaps the only conclusion is that voting, at least in America, is utterly absurd.

Well, I wanted to record for posterity this fix I just did to my Linux install. Hopefully Google will pick it up soon in case others have this issue.

I just installed my Audiophile 2496 soundcard, which sounds much better than the old soundblaster I was running. When I installed it and rebooted, ALSA(Advanced Linux Sound Architecture…the Linux sound system) loaded the correct driver, ice1712, automatically. XMMS had no difficulty with it, and it played back mp3s, oggs, and CDs fine. It was a nice relief to hear good quality audio again.

However, when I went to play back a DVD using Xine, the audio was lower-pitched than normal. This is the problem I want to document.

The problem is a sampling rate problem. When audio expects 44.1kHz, and gets 48kHz, the pitch of the resulting audio is affected. The solution is to go to the config file, /usr/share/alsa/alsa.conf, and change every ‘48000’ parameter to ‘44100’. There were 2 instances of this in my config file. Once I changed it, I restarted Xine, and everything worked great.

So we went to the Marillion show at the Paradise in Boston on Monday night.

All I can say is, what a treat. Last night was my first and only time seeing the band on this tour, and man. The band is absolutely on fire. It’s a bit strange seeing a band with this much command of energy in such a small place. Each of these guys are highly skilled musicians, and they’ve been playing together for a very long time. They were at the end of the longest tour they’d done in years, so they were in great shape. This band should be playing stadiums, so to see them in a place like The Paradise Rock Club, where they can have intimacy with their audience and blow the roof off, is almost unfair.

They have an amazing back catalog of songs to choose from to play live, dozens and dozens of songs. And that’s not even including the Fish-era stuff. Every song on their setlist was a treat. The new Marbles stuff was particularly good.

Setlist:

The Invisible Man
Marbles I
You’re Gone
Angelina
Marbles II
Don’t Hurt Yourself
Fantastic Place
Marbles III
Drilling Holes
Marbles IV
Neverland

Bridge
Living with the Big Lie
Quartz
This is the 21st Century
The Party
Between You and Me

Beyond You
The Great Escape

Beautiful
The Bell in the Sea
Easter

Other highlights were h fetching his anorak until they turned off the air conditioning system that was blasting him onstage. Once they turned that off, it quickly became fairly sweltering as a good rock club should be. The venue was packed, it must have come close to selling out if it didn’t.

Also, John Wesley’s set was, as always, great. I haven’t heard him in years, his new stuff is great. I also like his new technologically-assisted sound. Very cool.

An exhilirating night, all in all. Even at $30 before Ticketmaster’s no-lube-anal-rape fee, a Marillion show has to be one of the best entertainment values going. Here’s hoping they come back, maybe hook up with a festival next summer.

Education

Bush says:

Mr. President, what do you say to someone in this country who has lost his job to someone overseas who’s being paid a fraction of what that job paid here in the United States?

BUSH: I’d say, Bob, I’ve got policies to continue to grow our economy and create the jobs of the 21st century. And here’s some help for you to go get an education. Here’s some help for you to go to a community college.

Bush then goes on about education and standards and testing and other nonsense…

And then Kerry says:

KERRY: I want you to notice how the president switched away from jobs and started talking about education principally.

OK. So Kerry nails Bush on switching the topic. But earlier, Kerry had said:

Every plan that I have laid out — my health-care plan, my plan for education, my plan for kids to be able to get better college loans — I’ve shown exactly how I’m going to pay for those.

Look at the system they have set up together: if you are unemployed, Bush wants you to go back to school. However, Kerry wants you to go into debt to do it. Tens of thousands of dollars in debt. Plus, you get credit cards, and rack them all up, making only minimum payments, if any at all. You’re a poor student, after all. Maybe you get lucky and manage minimum, ontime payments every month. But even then, you’re accumulating debt faster than you’re eliminating it.

The point is, you become entrenched in The System. You are in need of a job, and the need for a job is intensified by the debt from your education.

Not a good sign. I don’t like where Bush and Kerry want to take us with education.

this article by David Jagernauth, comes from a college newspaper in Oregon. It’s a very well-put perspective similar to my own. My favorite passage:

If the Democrats aren’t willing to fight for what is right when it could weaken them politically, then what good are they? Who cares what they say or think when they aren’t willing to act on those beliefs or take responsibility for their horrendous votes?

Now the Greens for Kerry — yellow Greens as I call them — have conspired with the Democrats to destroy the progressive movement from within. I’ve watched the man who best represents my beliefs and values, Ralph Nader, kicked off the ballot in Oregon and unfairly attacked from the left.

When honkey-donkeys blame Nader for what happened in 2000, it is a slap in the face to the black community. Your outrage, progressive America, is misplaced, as usual. Part of President George W. Bush’s legacy, win or lose, will be that he set back the progressive movement at least a decade. And what has the progressive movement gained by falling on its sword?

Very well said. Kerry in the Whitehouse is but a very small first step. More like a nudge, not even a step.

Speaking of debates, it hasn’t made much news that 2 Presidential candidates, David Cobb of the Green Party and Michael Badnarik of the Libertarian Party were both arrested on Friday night in St. Louis, when they protested their exclusion from the Presidential debates.

Now, this strikes me as significant on two counts. First, what have we come to when we require fully armored cops to patrol the grounds of the debate? Those cops are there for one reason only: to repress dissent. What kind of “democracy” (yes I know that technically and on paper America is actually a Republic) ignores valid viewpoints and then represses those who express those views with violence?

This is yet another example of the problem I have with American politics: the two corporate parties are different in some small ways, but they are so similar to one another that every other viewpoint is marginalized, officially in this case. Have a view that’s different from the official Republicrat or Demican viewpoint? Step outside, and we’ll have our thugs beat you up.

What to do, what to do… 4 more years of Bush would be horrid, no question. But this system, as I have repeatedly said, is utterly broken.

OK, I’ve read the transcripts from the Rep v Dem debates so far. I have a few thoughts about them:

• I remain convinced that neither Bush nor Kerry will give me anything close to what I desire as a political thinker. Both are committed to “winning” in Iraq and “killing” The Terrorists™. I see both as problematic. In addition, both are committed to expanding neoliberal economic policies, which obviously is not what I think is helpful.
• I’ve noticed that, in general, the Democratic candidates tend to oversimplify less than the Republican candidates. Indeed, the Republicans seem to think that taking the time to consider an issue and form a nuanced opinion is “waffling.” What concerns me, however, is how many of the American sheeple will agree with the idiotic “you can run but you can’t hide” rhetoric. That notion seems somehow to be quintessentially American, at least in the popular culture sense. I’m thinking of the Hollywood tough guys.
• I’m still conflicted as to who to vote for. Obviously, Bush will not get my vote. But I can’t decide between voting for Kerry, voting for a 3rd party, or not voting at all.
• What I’m currently leaning toward is this: no candidate will give me exactly what I want. So I have to be utilitarian; in what sense will my vote do the most good? So the question is, do I vote for Kerry, which will undoubtedly provide some relief to thousands or even millions of people worldwide, or do I vote for the candidate closest to my beliefs, empowering a third party to have more influence?

I’ll have to keep thinking about this.

my ‘net connection is working, 2 days early. Yay! I feel reconnected to the world again!