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Let Us Now Return to Those Thrilling Mistakes of Yesteryear
Out of all the famous quotations, few better describe this eerily familiar time than those attributed to George Santayana and Yogi Berra. The former, a philosopher, warned that "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." The latter, a baseball player, stumbled into prophecy by declaring, "It's déjà vu all over again."
As movies give us bad remakes of already bad productions (hello, "Predators"), television resuscitates ancient clowns (howdy, Dee Snider) and music revives pure schlock (I'm looking at you, Devo), we are now surrounded by the obvious mistakes of yesteryear. And it might be funny — it might be downright hilarious — if only this cycle didn't infect the deadly serious stuff.
Vietnam showed us the perils of occupation, then the Iraq war showed us the same thing — and yet now, we are somehow doing it all over again in Afghanistan. The Great Depression underscored the downsides of laissez-faire economics, the Great Recession highlighted the same danger — and yet the new financial "reform" bill leaves that laissez-faire attitude largely intact. Ronald Reagan proved the failure of trickle-down tax cuts to spread prosperity before George W. Bush proved the same thing — and yet now, in a recession, Congress is considering more tax cuts all over again.
These are but a few examples of mistakes being repeated ad infinitum. In a Yogi Berra country, the jarring lessons of history are remembered as mere flickers of déjà vu — if they are remembered at all. Most often, we forget completely, seeing in George Santayana's refrain not a dark warning, but a cheery celebration. And the logical question is: Why? Why have we become so dismissive of history's lessons and therefore so willing to repeat history's mistakes?
Some of it is the modern information miasma. Though the Internet makes eons of history instantly available, the 24/7, moment-to-moment typhoon of cable screamfests, blogs, tweets, e-mail alerts and "breaking news" graphics makes last week's news feel old, and last month's news feel positively Paleolithic. Add to this reportage that is increasingly presented with zero context, and it's clear that journalism is sowing mass senility.
Politicians also make significant contributions to the problem. With the age of the permanent campaign intensifying and the era of the long-term electoral majority ending, both parties deliberately focus only on the very recent past — and obscure the larger historical record. From the national debt, to poverty to the downsides of American empire, Republicans tell us it's all the fault of Democrats' two-year-old reign, while Democrats blame it on Bush's eight-year presidency. This, even though these emergencies developed over decades.
And then, of course, there is ideology.
With the present so radically departing from our past, history has become a damning package of inconvenient truths — and those truths are often shunned because they threaten today's most powerful ideological interests.
This is why in the debates over war, economics and taxes, we aren't urged to consider past conflicts; we aren't encouraged to remember that America experienced its most storied growth under the New Deal's aggressive financial regulation; and we aren't told that wages and job growth expanded in the mid-20th century with a top income-tax bracket above 70 percent. We aren't reminded of these facts because they threaten the defense industry, Wall Street and high-income taxpayers, respectively — and those forces exert enormous influence over our political discourse, whether through media sponsorship, political campaign contributions or lobbying.
No matter the issue, this axiom is the same: When money has a vested interest in burying history, history is inevitably buried, ultimately leading us from Santayana and Berra's aphorisms to Albert Einstein's definition of insanity: doing the same things over and over again and somehow expecting different results.
56 Comments so far
Show All"Add to this reportage that is increasingly presented with zero context, and it's clear that journalism is sowing mass senility."
This is because the news writers know very little of the context,and the news readers know nothing of what happened the day before yesterday.
"News" journalism is part of the entertainment business and will not let facts get in the way of a good story.
When I vote for a candidate who cites facts that Sirota presents (greatest US prosperity during times of high regulation, high taxation, etc.) my Democrat and Republican associates tell me I am voting for a spoiler.
Since the Obama fiasco, I'm resolved to only vote for such candidates. If my vote spoils things for one corporatist or the other, then I suppose I can live with that.
No D, No R. Let's get the message out there.
That's exactly why we need instant runoff voting (see Wikipedia). Would actually give such candidates a fighting chance against our current two-party stranglehold.
"(S)owing mass senility" is a phrase that ought to be enshrined along with Einstein's quote. If it's not original with Sirota, I'd like to know where it came from.
And is anybody else old enough to appreciate the title?
Many of us were Lone Ranger fans.
From out of the past...
Are you talking radio or that other thing, kimosabe?
"When money has a vested interest in burying history, history is inevitably buried"
And if you had added ideology to money (instead of just mentioning it in context) you would have been totally correct David.
Though you are certainly correct, we are also presented with those that want to transfer time, in essence make past history present circumstance. And that confuses discussion more than anything else.
The term insanity is relevant and it resonates. It is a pity the insane do not listen. That once seemed to be possible, but it was a delusion.
It not only resonates, it means 98% (the % of voters who vote for Dems and Repugs)of US voters are insane.
we are whipped dogs...our land was taken years before we were born, and we have never taken it back, so we work for our masters as dogs for the right to a piece of property upon which to sleep...
a property not set up to sustain our natural needs, but, rather, to sustain unnatural ones...primarily electric...
a property for the hoarding of product...
the 'mistake' we keep making is allowing this hijacking of land to continue...
the confusion this article carries is the result of our attempts to rationalize our lack of action, our fear to retaliate...
we allow a system of corrupted others to control us because we find it more comforting than having to take responsibility for ourselves...
the way out is to reclaim the inherent right to inhabit the planet without indebtedness to another, fight them when they resist such, then proceed in a much more local, minimal, and individually intimate fashion...
that we are whipped dogs partially explains our willingness to whip others, or to watch others getting whipped...
that we take twisted pride in our pitiful accomplishments, or utter lack thereof, also indicates dangerously low levels of esteem and awareness...
not to blame, as much of this has been done to us by powerful interests with equally powerful motivations...
the key is the return to primacy in daily survival of the individual's interdependent and interactive relationship to the community and the living world, combined with a positive encouragement of behaviors supporting the sustainability of the environment and all living things, and to do so, land and resources must be freed, and managed to a minimum of industrial destruction...
a person's thoughts and actions must carry weight, the benefits and consequences to immediate neighbors and surroundings continually analyzed, emphasized and recognized by their community...
we must turn on the whip, stop the whipping and free the land, then relearn how to be adult humans, living together within a delicate, isolated and finite pearl of a world...
Global Start Date: September 22, 2012...
if we're not too late already...
intellectual articles have run their effective course...the government is a sham, supported by military and police...
take life back, take the land back...then work it yourself, alongside your locals...
Right on. Let's do it. It will be very, very bloody.
Dogs are a perfect analogy. They can't survive on their own,
like our friends the coyotes and wolves. Early People considered them less than an animal. Despite dogs reputed low station,
even they had the right to be.
Brains washed from birth
by washed brained parents
from washed generations,
systemic induced habits
controlled by violence.
Woody Guthry was right;
This land IS my land, yours too.
Those are my trees, yours too.
The air, the water, the Earth
Mine Yours Ours
Three problems with this article:
1) Most of the things he was talking about WEREN'T MISTAKES from the point of view of those who enacted the policies.
2) George Santayana held some rather unsavory views besides his wittish quippicism.
3) Calling Devo "schlock" is just inexcusable.
The third is obviously the most severe infraction.
I was thinking the same about 'mistakes'. They are not, and the 'journalists' either 'report' what the bosses say or they join the unemployment line [see, for example, 'Outfoxed'. You shouldn't pick on Santayana. He couldn't help being a scumbag, could he? Who is Devo, anyway?
Are we not men...? No! We are DEVO!
Its DEVOLUTION!
And how can anyone who knows anything about power-politics, not to mention neo-liberal economics, call the Wall Street bailout (aka financial stimulus, etc) a 'mistake'? This was the farthest thing from a 'mistake.'
TARP and other Wall Street bailout programs represent the plantinum standard in corporate welfare.
The robber barons of the 19th century are looking up from the inferno and thinking they were born too soon.
I concur with Leo M.
Besides, DEVO never really left us, and Mark Mothersbaugh is some sort of genius.
I'm with the other posters who concur with Leo M.
Don't know if Mr Sirota reads these threads but if he does I'd like to make a couple of points to help him back to the world of reality.
Viet Nam wasn't a mistake for Dow, Dave...they made vast fortunes selling napalm and other noxious chemicals to the US military.
I just watched a documentary on the war in Laos and heard once again the oft-repeated fact that more bombs were dropped on that country than were dropped by all countries in WW1 and WW2 combined. This is mostly jungle. No real "targets"...just coordinates on a map. It's called carpet bombing. Maybe you'll hit something. But every one of those bombs cost...what $1000...and as soon as it's out the door you have to go get another.
Some people did very well, Dave. And it turned out that their voices (bribes) were the ones heard in Washington. So stop using the term mistakes. It all depends on your perspective. And from the vantage of the profiteers it was a glorious success.
Those who think that Viet Nam didn't accomplish anything are wrong...it created many new millionaires (billionaires in 2010 dollars).
Those who think that nothing was learned from Viet Nam are also wrong. The military industrial media complex (MIMC)learned that when a war or occupation ends, their revenue stream dries up. The Ir-Af-Pak occupation is therefore designed to be an eternal occupation that provides an eternal revenue stream for the MIMC
1. The article was (is) not written from the point of view of those who enacted the policies. An intentional act may be a mistake. (Forgive me, but this entire line of criticism is just hair-splitting.)
2. So what? (See Hitler quoted above, and cited for making valid points.)
3. Who's DEVO?
Gifted art students, and a continued influence within the music industry for almost four decades.
DEVO has not been the exclusive form of their expression. As previously stated, Mark Mothersbaugh is some sort of genius
Yes, #1 is true. For example, the holocaust was indeed 'a mistake,' though an intentional act. That's some hair splitting for ya! Jumping out of the humorous idiom for a second, the point is not really about intentional/not intentional, the point is cui bono? See some of the other excellent posts on this topic.
Re #2: Agree
Re #3: Jocko Homo
#3 I'm not going to listen to them (googled it) to find out what all the ourtage is about...but to be fair to Sirota (like, he needs my assistance), he didn't say they were shlock. He said they were reviving shlock. Is that splitting hairs?
#2 disposed of
#1 Can you say the Holocaust is not a member of the set "mistakes"? Admittedly, it bears a lot of other labels, but is "mistake" a mislabling? And by the way, cui bono the Holocaust? The answer that comes to my mind is horrifying.
'Google search' not withstanding, me thinks you somehow still do not get the point.
Thank you for saying that, I had an Uncontrollable Urge to, but daren't as I was afraid something about 'irony recognition classes' or something would come out.
For those wondering minds, a brief excerpt from a Vermont Review interview with Jerry Casale, co-founder of DEVO:
(http://vermontreview.tripod.com/Interviews/devo.htm)
VR: Going back to your early days. You were present at the Kent State shootings in 1970. How did that day affect you?
JC: Whatever I would say, would probably not all touch upon the significance or gravity of the situation at this point of time? It may sound trite or glib. All I can tell you is that it completely and utterly changed my life. I was white hippie boy and than I saw exit wounds from M1 rifles out of the backs of two people I knew. Two of the four people who were killed, Jeffrey Miller and Allison Krause, were my friends. We were all running our asses off from these motherf&*$#ers. It was total utter bullshit. Live ammunition and gasmasks – none of us knew, none of us could have imagined. They shot into a crowd that was running. I sopped being a hippie and I started to develop the idea of devolution. I got real, real pissed off.
VR: Does Neil young’s "Ohio" strike close to your heart?
JC: Of course. It was strange that the first person that we met, as Devo emerged, was Neil Young. He asked us to be in his movie, Human Highway. It was so strange – San Francisco in 1977. Talk about life being karmic, small and cyclical – it’s absolutely true. In fact I just a got a call from a person organizing a 30th Anniversary thing. Noam Chomsky will be there and I may go talk there if I can get away. I still remember it so crystal clear like a dream you will never forget…….. or a nightmare. I still remember every moment. It kind of went in slow motion like a car accident.
VR: You said that the Kent State shooting sort of served as a catalyst for your theory of Devolution, which spawned Devo.
JC: Absolutely. Until then I was a hippie. I thought that the world is essentially good. If people were evil, there was justice and that the law mattered. All of those silly naïve things. I saw the depths of the horrors and lies and the evil. In the paper that evening, the Akron Beacon Journal, said that students were running around armed and that officers had been hurt. So deputy sheriffs went out and deputized citizens. They drove around with shotguns and there was martial law for ten days. 7 PM curfew. It was open season the students. We lived in fear. Helicopters surrounding the city with hourly rotating runs out to the West Side and back downtown. All first amendment rights are suspended at the instance when the governor gives the order. All of the class action suits by the parents of the slain students were all dismissed out of court because once the governor announced martial law, they had no right to assemble.
VR: Which came first, your reading the book The Beginning of the End or May, 4 1970?
thank you
WTF? (I don’t mean you, WTF, the person with that moniker on this site.) I mean WTF with singling out Devo as a prime example of schlock. Who besides me and a few other remnants even remember those late 70s bands and what they were trying to say? When I was just a sprite of a human here in the city of Kucinich's nascient career and our amazing flaming waters, Devo and Pere Ubu (inspired by Jarry’s “Ubu Roi,” and really the far better band) were vying for control over the absurd statement, the late 20th century dada.
I read a lot of jarring and Jarryish things on CS, but this is beyond my endurance. I’m gonna go blare Patti Smith’s “Horses” and Pere Ubu’s “Modern Dance” and Devo’s “Jocko Homo” and then go get me some serious alcohol and get me arrested by the thought control police and the, um, well. Whatever. Maybe it’s time for a nap.
Ideology has an equal determination to control history. Two depressed Russian historians were once sharing a bottle of vodka. Finally, one says to the other: "The problem is, from day to day it is impossible to predict the past."
Trylon, that one went into by permanent files. Thank you so much.
"The task of propaganda lies not in a scientific training of the individual, but rather directing the masses towards certain facts, events, necessities, etc., the purpose being to move their importance into the masses' field of vision.
The art now is exclusively to attack this so skillfully that a general conviction of reality of a fact, necessity of an event, that something that is necessary is also right, etc., is created."
"All propaganda has to be popular and has to adapt its spiritual level to the perception of the least intelligent of those towards whom it intends to direct itself."
"But if the problem involved, like the propaganda for carrying on a war, is to include an entire people in its field of action, the caution in avoiding too high spiritual assumptions cannot be too great.
The more modest, then, its scientific ballast is, and the more it exclusively considers the feelings of the masses, the mare striking will be its success."
"The great masses' receptive ability is only limited, their understanding is small, but their forgetfulness is great. As a consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda has to limit itself only to a very few points and to use them like slogans until the very last man is able to imagine what is intended by such a word."
---all from Adolf Hitler's MEIN KAMPF
These are interesting excerpts and seem to be really true on their face.
Another interesting fact is that the author who penned these observations came to believe his own propaganda (both internally and externally) and took his own nation -- and much of the rest of the world -- to his hell with him.
Though the fascists of our time are alot more dispersed (the power is less concentrated in a single person), they are pretty much on the same path.
The major difference, it seems, is that the present technologies of destruction and communication (i.e. propaganda) are so much more advanced and ubiquitous that our entire species -- and many others -- are facing total destruction.
See: inverted-totalitarianism
The power was dispersed in Germany in the 30's and early 40's. Many little fiefdoms were run by many different people. The industrialists made fortunes and had as much or more power than ever. Many agencies operated with relative autonomy. Hitler was more like the strongest gang leader in a world of chaos and disorganization dominated by criminal gangs than he was any sort of mastermind or controller of anything. He is given far too much credit.
"The present technologies of destruction and communication" are not a factor.
We are facing total destruction as the inevitable result of Capitalism.
Since this article is recycled from Friday, August 20, I'll do what I've never done and repost the comment I made then, as follows:
As others have said already, Sirota makes many good and salient points, as he generally does, especially about the way the information hurricane ("typhoon", he calls it) we're all trapped in now absolutely diminishes our capacity to sort thru the raging plethora and make sense enough of it to even know how or where to "take action." I'm bombarded daily by appeals from countless organizations for donations, as most of are. This has gone on for 30 years, and I've contributed to many of them, to what purpose I'm still entirely uncertain. All they ever want is MONEY to carry on with their mysterious work in bringing about either radical social, political or economic change, or incrementally working on thousands of reforms that never include the work of all these other groups, each of them working tirelessly for Social Change, because this worthless government, whether Dem or Repug, simply cannot and will never do it.
I'm expected to donate to "progressive Democrats" running for office all over the fucking country, as if there's no other way to counter the armies of Palin Bachmann Overdrive, the cadres of fascists at Fox Snooze, Newt and his band of Republican strategists, and the gathering horrors all these reactionary camps portend--except to OUTSPEND them. That's always the only thing We the Otherwise Irrelevant People are called upon to do: contribute to so-called progressive causes none of which work together to ever accomplish anything tangible. Like, you know, getting rid of capitalism for good. That's Off the Table for all these groups, including Sirota's Progressive Democrats for America. That's an area that can't be questioned or even wandered vaguely into.
This is why Sirota keeps saying our leaders and misrepresentatives just keep "making mistakes." As if they're overlooking something, or they're distracted and not paying attention to how they consistently do the same things over and over, expecting different results. Insanity doesn't result from everyday mistake-making. It's the result of persisting in false beliefs, ones that are proven false repeatedly to a heedless consciousness. Our idiot leaders literally BELIEVE we can "win" in Afghanistan, as Bush and his criminal gang believed we could, and have, in Iraq. They believed we were winning in Vietnam when there was zero evidence, or compelling evidence to the contrary. The more evidence there was that we were in fact losing, the more vehemently they declared imminent victory. Talk about deja vu all over again. They believe this pack of lies every time because they are structurally conditioned to believe it. Failure to religiously believe the lies can lead to systemic breakdown, the worst possible outcome. This system demands fealty to lies like these, and Obama is as loyal a servant to them as the Bush-Cheney cabal.
These criminals aren't making mistakes, they're following a blueprint of lies that they persistently believe will lead them to the promised land of Full Spectrum Dominance, world economic and political domination. They're idiots and criminals, and of course they're insane, but not because they've made mistakes. Sociopaths and schizophrenics don't just go around "making mistakes." Capitalist fundamentalism is a belief system, like any other religion. Its patently insane logic is making the world unliveable.
Excellent post.
Hear, hear. Or is it here, here? You get the point. Someone who knows, help a brother out.
You are dead on with your comment. I've been trying to convey this reality to the people around me for quite some time, but it mostly feels like a waste of time. I guess the best thing we can do is prepare ourselves and loved ones for the hard times to come as best we can. May the bastards who are doing this to the rest of us eventually get theirs.
they got theirs already but want yours as well.
i wouldn't call them so much as Mistakes as I would call it an Agenda.
I'm so glad to hear we can repeat the past. Anyone object if I reset the climate to, say, 1850?
We have already reset the political climate to, say, 1850. Maybe 1861.
Has anyone made a spreadsheet of all the people and groups affected by the Afghan invasion and occupation? I mean identifying all the firms, including the weapons makers, the mercenaries and other war-supporting businesses, the towns and cities being disrupted and destroyed, the soldiers and their units, etc, etc. just to follow the money spent and earned and the lives spent.
If it seems like it's deja vu all over again as Sirota says, maybe he/we are looking at it wrong. Repeating the "same mistakes" implies we're in this conflict for new security reasons or new nation-building or because we think we're better and must help these Afghans. Even if those reasons play a role, maybe none of them are the primary ones.
Maybe it IS primarily about the money (personally, I think it is), and those are just the triggers, which need to seem new in order to get the general public behind the scams, for going into the war business again and again and again. It isn't like I've never heard this notion, but I think it would be instructive to see it spelled out in numbers. A spreadsheet like this would show outright who makes out and how well and who suffers. Once we see all this together and see who's doing well because we are fighting, then we can look at who those winners know in the government--you know, those folks we elect, but the companies own in whole or in part that those same companies rely on to authorize the killing--and do a spreadsheet on them, too.
And do a spreadsheet on all the banksters and their victims, the obscene salaries and bonuses shown against the bankruptcies, etc. Again, not new news, but it would be instructive and powerful to me to see this info devoid of politics, both left and right, and devoid of emotion.
Such spreadsheets couldn't give the whole story, but if, as I believe, the Afghan debacle is more about commerce than security, we might see it more clearly and have better resources for stopping such inhumanity. Then I would no longer only believe this to be true, and I could point to facts that tell can no other story.
In the 1970's or early '80's, I remember reading a very unusual article in the Sunday NY Times magazine. Most of its details are completely gone from memory now, and I had no luck with guesswork in my Times archives search. Still, I recall this article's lingering viewpoint: How utterly sensible, civil and affordable peace is as opposed to the massive costs of war. I vaguely recall some hard-number comparisons in the article. In any case, I'd like to also contrast the spreadsheet you suggest with a peace spreadsheet.
TGD: Excellent post. I have not pursued the spreadsheet numbers, but I've often related that the expressed purposes behind the wars (these dreamt up by expensive PR outfits to generate the public's "made-for-hire" consent) are not in any way indicative of their genuine reasons. The fact that so many citizens buy the rot about "spreading democracy" abroad, and/or "fighting for OUR freedoms," is absurd given the contraction of said freedoms AND democracy here in the homeland (in)security state.
Inverted totalitarianism meets upside down world, both brought to YOU by a highly paid disinformation media and its campaigns of willful deception.
"doing the same things over and over again and somehow expecting different results."
actually the MIC expects exactly the same results = huge profits.
Ordinary Americans are being robbed of their wealth, their young men and women, their dignity, and their moral standing in the world. But the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are a huge success for the people who started them. Don't say the wars are a failure and have accomplished nothing, you're not looking at the big picture.
You guys are good. I have already been classified Paranoid Schizophrenic by government in 1982 so you know my credibility is shot. The good thing is when people tell me I am crazy I tell them, "Yeah, you're right and I have the papers to prove it." I was 33 then I am 61 now. Been fighting this fight a long time. I am proud of you guys for thinking. Makes me glad to know that as Buckminster Fuller wrote me once, said, "Nothing can stop an idea whose time has come." The American Revolution is not over yet. The world loves our ideas they just hate the people who oppose them. Time is on our side. The predator wolves have been feeding off the lambs, eventually the bees are going to leave their hives and sting the predators Only this time the bees are mixed with killer bees.