Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Ayaan Hirsi Ali grew up in Nairobi under the thumb of Islam. She was not permitted to read or write, but she smuggled books into her house, and read them, secreting them into the pages of the Koran. Comics, spy stories, geography, everything she could get her hands on. Her mother was illiterate, and hoped that her daughters would be, too. Then she was shipped to Europe by her father to be part of an arranged marriage, but escaped to Amsterdam and was granted political asylum.

Those who got out of communism and came to our shores were often artists and intellectuals, sometimes Christian. The Solzhenitsyn's of Islam, on the other hand, are its women.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali writes to western readers at the end of her book The Caged Virgin, "We Muslims come from collectives. We come from tribes. We missed the Enlightenment. You give us your compassion, your medicine, your money. But instead of your wealth, share with us your values. Protect us from the bearded men in long robes from Medina and Mecca" (177).

Bush, Blair and the other conservatives have largely taken up the mantra that Islam is peaceful. We went into Afghanistan and did allow women to be educated. Some 9 million women are not illiterate thanks to Bush and Blair. But Afghanistan is still a one-religion state, and the publishing houses are not exactly pumping out feminist texts, or secular poetry, or algebra manuals. The press is tightly guarded, and publishes next to nothing that they didn't publish before. If we leave, the Taliban would destroy these 9 million women as apostates. Would the left say anything? No, they would not. It would be racist to see anything in the third world as bad.

Meanwhile, Islam spreads west, but it is against the law for Christianity or atheism, or any other religion to spread over there. Ayaan Hirsi Ali asks, in an address to Australians,

"Why, in this wealthy nation, do you allow Saudi Arabia to finance schools here? The kids who attend these so-called Muslim schools are Australian citizens. Should they not be groomed to become Australians with Australian values of life, freedom, and tolerance? Why abandon them and look the other way as their hearts and minds are filled with the Day of the Overwhelming Event?" (176).

In many western countries, genital mutilation continues to be practiced. Children cannot defend themselves against surgeons who come in the name of religion, especially when parents are aligned against them.

"Did you know that Australian doctors are struggling to treat victims of female genital mutilation? Little girls who tell the doctors it hurts to urinate; teenagers who tell the doctors that menstruation hurts; and girls, of twelve, thirteen, and fourteen who are married and have difficulty giving birth. Yes, you heard me: these are child brides, not in Saudi Arabia but in Australia!" (176).

One wonders if tolerance isn't just a matter of sticking one's head in the sand, as we appear to be doing with the victory Mosque at Ground Zero. The Ground Zero Mosque is an obvious Trojan Horse.

The intellectuals of Troy did not rejoice when they saw the horse. Cassandra spoke out against it, as did others. But they were overruled by the happy few who wanted to believe so badly in peace that it cost them their whole culture.

Our intellectuals praised Stalin as he put millions into gulags. A few piped up. Orwell spoke, and some others. But most intellectuals got on the train, or were only too happy to look the other way, and to believe the propaganda. It's far easier to believe the propaganda, especially if you can get tenured.

The Muslim world is corrupt. They still have royal families who control the levers of the military and the courts in places like Saudi Arabia. Fundamentalist Islam is an uprising against those families, but it seeks to create a theocratic state with no human rights for women. Massive emigration to western Europe and other places like Australia has allowed some of the frustration to dissipate. But the problem remains. There is intellectual stagnation throughout Islam. About 300 books a year are published in the entire Islamic world. Anyone unlucky enough (especially women) to be born under the flag with the moon on it (a sign of lunacy) has only one chance of escape: the west.

The war we fought with the communists was difficult, but now, aside from a few western intellectuals like Michael Berube, communism is a spent force. A few misguided head-in-the-sand-types continue to revel in it, and to think that redistribution from the hard-working to the indolent, disorganized and drug-addicted will create justice.

The few governments that remain communist are embarrassed by those who seek to flee from their nightmarish grip. Tens of thousands walk out of Zimbabwe every day. North Korea would be a desert if they opened their borders. Vietnam has finally opened up to individual entreprenurial efforts, as has Red China, but still monitor information very tightly. They are embarrassed states: red with shame.

The leaders of Islam are not embarrassed. They are quite certain that they are the one true religion. Of course, everyone who says differently gets killed. This is how the communists remained in power for so long. But one feels the grip of the imams slipping. They rescinded the fatwa on Rushdie.

In thirty years, it may be that there will be no more Islamic countries, and the only true believers will be in American universities.

Many academic birdbrains think to go against Islam is racist. But Islam isn't a race. It's a religion, as Hirsi Ali points out. And she asks us in the west who have so many freedoms, while those in Islamic countries have nothing. "Whom do you help by saying nothing? It's selfish not to want to appear racist," Ali asserts (75).

Race trumps gender. Gender is taking a beating under the (matriarchal) imams. but to say anything is racist, so no one says anything. Ayaan Hirsi Ali talks, but why don't we take her more seriously?

When the recent Newsweek edition ranking countries came out, all the Lutheran countries were in the top ten. No Islamic countries are in the top fifty. But could Newsweek have said something?

Could Obama say something? His father was a Muslim from Kenya, the same country that Ali was raised in. But Obama doesn't have any brains, and he has less guts. Ali has plenty of both. Obama seems to see no problem at all with Islam. Imagine what it would take to get Obama to wake up to the problems of Islam. Obama is the representative of the American academy, and its whole way of "thinking."

As dumb as they are, even the Republicans are smarter. Which is why I'm a Republican.

THINGS THAT SWIRL

Inside of toothepaste caps, helicopters, cinnamon buns, shells, tornadoes, tops, galaxies, umbrellas, tapioca pudding, flushing toilets, waves, black holes, cowlicks, curly hair, licorice, candy canes, Ferris wheels, carousels, curve balls, bullets in flight, lassoes, Barber's shop poles, waterspouts, coiled staircases, DNA, springs, hubcabs in motion, yo-yos, footballs thrown on "long bombs."

LIGHT AS A PHYSICAL PROPERTY

If light doesn't weigh anything, does it still exist?

1.

NEWSWEEK DECLARES FINLAND WORLD'S BEST COUNTRY TO LIVE IN

The August 18, 2010 issue of Newsweek declared Finland the world's best country. I lived in Finland for five years, and married a Finn. I also wrote a novel (Temping, Black Heron Press, 2006) which is set in the country. I am an American. Perhaps I can offer a point of comparison.

The Newsweek cut was made using five criteria: education, health, quality of life, economic dynamism, and political environment.

Cuba was 50th.

America, 11th.

Finns are educated (they generally speak English and Swedish better than Americans but Swedish not as well as Swedes), they live longer than most (late 70s), the quality of life is good (their food is a bit bland, but there's plenty of it, and it's healthy food), they have high-functioning companies such as Nokia, to name only one, and they are politically stable, and there is almost no corruption (they're Lutheran).

Bill O'Reilly in today's Daily Star editorial attacked the country for its weather which is more amenable to polar bears than to people. Generally, I like O'Reilly, but this column was fairly poor, although meant to be jocular. First off, there are no polar bears in Finland. The southern reaches of Finland are relatively mild (it rarely dips below zero, and the winters are beautiful with snow piling on fir trees as far as the eye can see). Florida's Gulf Current abuts Finland, and creates a relatively mild although lengthy winter throughout the southern reaches.

O'Reilly says that there would be no mosque controversy in Finland because he doesn't think there are Muslims in Finland. There are mosques in the three major cities of Finland. They are tiny, but they exist. O'Reilly is having fun attacking the lack of diversity in Finland. There isn't much "diversity," and it's funny that Newsweek, a liberal rag, chose an almost homogenous country for its #1 spot. O'Reilly's got a point.

O'Reilly says there are 60,000 lakes, but you'd get hypothermia if you got in one. The lakes are reasonably mild in summer, and you can swim in them from late May to early September. After October you'd be skating, or driving a car across the lakes.

I liked Finland, but I prefer America, even if it only #11. Part of it is the diversity. There are many different kinds of restaurants here. Outside of Helsinki, you are dealing with potato dumplings and fish. I think one thing that the Newsweek article doesn't acknowledge is that a person becomes accustomed to where they grew up. Leaving that home is difficult. Few people can make the jump. Newsweek invites you to move to one of the good countries, and enjoy their lifestyle, as if it's that easy. Finland is nice for Finns, and if you grow up speaking the language, eating potatoes, getting drunk with your friends, taking sauna together, it is all quite good. For outsiders, not easy. Finnish language is very rich, and the literature is (apparently) unbelievably good. But this is closed to outsiders, as is the television humor, the cinema, and the theatre. I learned some Finnish and can read children's books. They are very high quality. The clothing is high quality. The people shine with a certain innocence. Many are brilliant.

Still, I'm happy to have Finland in my house, but live in America. My wife is Finnish, and my kids speak Finnish, but I can't speak Finnish. I admire the Finns, especially those in my own home. If I met a Finn on the street, I would do my utmost to help them. Finns are good eggs, but they are very difficult to really understand. No outsider can ever really understand a Finn.

Helsinki is beautiful. Tampere is beautiful. Turku is beautiful. My wife is beautiful. My children are beautiful. All of Finland has its beauties, both in the people, in its nature, and its buildings.

Still, I prefer the beauty of the Brooklyn Bridge, houses falling down in the Catskills, the weirdness of walking through cities and seeing weird eggs from everywhere, some dressed like Ukrainian easter eggs and some like sticks of butter, still others like slobs. In Finland, most people are dressed the same, and look the same. This provides uniformity, and uniformity of quality, but it does pall in terms of diversity.

The Finnish military took on the Soviet Union and beat them in World War II. Stalin invaded, and within two months, the Finns sent two million Russians home to be buried. That's more than you could say for Germany, or for Hungary, or for the Czechs. Russia outnumbered Finland 50-1, and got its ass kicked.

Outside of the five criteria that Newsweek used to spin the country closer to Finnish socialism, they also forgot to think about how Lutheranism is the backbone of Finland and what makes the country so habitable, which is also what drove Iceland, Denmark, Sweden and Norway toward the top of the list. Finland may be the most Lutheran country on earth. You see their churches, and inside, you know that the people have things about as right as you can get on this earth. I became a believer in Finland. This is the real criterion that is missing in the Newsweek article. It's what the left can't think about, because they are so busy with this multiculturalism thing (all societies are equal). When they do a comparative ranking, they leave religion on the cutting-room floor. But it is Lutheranism that drove the Finnish armies to destroy Russia's godless juggernaut. It is Lutheranism that makes the country have the lowest corruption rate on earth, and to take care of their children, their poor, their sick, and to allow for equality in education and yet to strive for quality in arts, in literature, in style, and in the military (mandatory two years' service). More than anything else, it's the religion, stupid.

Why did Newsweek do this comparative ranking without thinking about WHY the different countries are so different? Culture is important, but religion is the basis of culture.

President Obama: a Ninja?

20% of Americans now believe that Barack Obama is a Muslim. About 38% believe that he is Christian. Lutheran Surrealism offers a third possibility. President Obama is actually a ninja in the service of the Emperor of Japan!

This would make President Obama a Zen Buddhist.

R. Motto

"It is what it is." Buddhism

"It isn't what it is, it is what it isn't, isn't it?" Lutheran Surrealism

2 Natures

"Two natures in one person." -- Tertullian

BACHOFEN AND MATRIARCHY: REDUX

Stu's back, with questions about matriarchy vs. patriarchy. William Barghest has also arrived, and we feel a need to explain the basics of Lutheran Surrealist thought. Not so much as to create agreement (full agreement is never possible), but simply as a form of orientation.

Since Bachofen is the truest center of LS thought, let's dive back into the archives, and resurrect Bachofen in all his dire difficulty. Matriarchy doesn't mean rule by women. Patriarchy doesn't mean rule by men. Matriarchy (according to Bachofen) means rule of the strongest, with desire as the only principle (which it was, purely and simply, for the surrealists, or, as Marcel Duchamp put it, "eros, c'est la vie"). Bachofen said that patriarchy was the beginning of principles. Let's sketch the whole thing out (you can't leave anything to Wikipedia).

According to the Teach Yourself Greek Myth Series, there is a simple set of criteria by which one can distinguish between a matriarchy and a patriarchy.

Matriarchy

Feeling
Passive acceptance of nature
Acceptance of humanity
Unconditional love
Happiness
Unity
"The law of nature"

Patriarchy

Man-made laws
Rationality
Efforts to change, control or exploit nature
Judgment
Conditional love
Obedience
Hierarchy

The college that I went to -- Evergreen State -- tried to inculcate the matriarchal values. I felt sorry for everyone who believed in those ideas. Then, in graduate school, where I studied with a number of French-based intellectuals, those laws were again inculcated, or at least the attempt was made. However, in this case I studied mostly with one brilliant Jewish man, and I could always feel the enormous respect for the true laws of justice written on the heart just underneath his matriarchal surface. I had been raised as a Lutheran, and felt very comfortable with Judaism. Lutherans accept the ten commandments. There is an obedience to the given ruler, and to God. Although rationality is to be used, it cannot take us to the highest place, which is to faith.

I was taught at Evergreen and at the University of Washington the idea of Gaia -- the primitive Greek notion of a primal mother, or that the earth is one thing. We had Earth Day on campus, which was a laughable event where bugs were held up as moral professors. Bretonian surrealism partakes in this, esp. in its later phases -- Arcane 17 (written during WWII) in which an island off the coast of Canada is compared favorably to Notre Dame Cathedral at the heart of Paris.

The great project of French modernism was to release all repressed forces or agents and to massacre the church-sponsored state that seemed to them to have locked shut the lid of the Pandora's box of revolution. Having opened the box after the French Revolution

Race,
Gender,
Class,
Insanity,
Bad Hygiene,
Sexuality of every kind (including child molestation -- Foucault explicitly waived any and all criminal statutes with regard to sexuality -- including that of child prostitution)

All of these were to come out of the box with Nadja (in Russian the name means Hope).

Freud's idea that we would abolish the work day and instantiate permanent revels (the end of all taboos was said in Totem & Taboo to usher in a permanent holiday),

Marx's erasure of the upper class through the "dictatorship of the proletariat" as it was called in the C. Manifesto, calls as well for a permanent holiday, but this
has led to a crisis. If Man Ray painted Sade's pleasure at the burning of the Bastille, then we should also see Luther's gaze as he watches the City of God burnt to the ground by the utopian left under the Anabaptists, who begin to rape Lutheran women. The choice is between the leftist Sade, and the man of God Luther.

To unleash the id is monstrous. To unleash the lower classes so that they can decapitate the upper classes (what the Khmer Rouge did to the educated in Cambodia), is bad, bad especially as a return to a rural utopia of the matriarchal kind which invariably posits a single dynamic tyrant (communism is always already not only matriarchal, but represents a return to an even lower form, in which there is one leader, who uses the rest as if they have no subjectivity, but are only material to be sculpted into whatever he desires).

We urge instead a turn from the convulsive tearing down of the riotous revolutionaries of Sade and surrealism and communist insurrection TOWARD a return of marriage, church, and government.

It has been seventy five years since Sade was first feted by the surrealists, and now we watch as child molesters walk, divorce rates exceed 90%, police are badmouthed, and syntax is stretched.

LS is on the ramparts of the Bastille, calling for a return to order. The festival of the id that culminated in the sinful life of the Marquis de Sade (Simone de Beauvoir calls him a great moralist!) shows us the best that the left has to offer. Lutheran Surrealism cries out for order against this chaos.

The fundamental disorder wreaking havoc in our society is the problematic distinction between patriarchy and matriarchy. Teach Yourself Greek Myths, tells us of these distinctions between matriarchy and patriarchy.

Matriarchy is the law of nature, while patriarchy is based on heaven-sent laws.
Matriarchy is feeling, while patriarchy is rationalist.
Matriarchy is passive acceptance of nature, while patriarchy controls nature.

(p. 37)

Sade is not quite a matriarch in Bachofen's terms, much less is he the quintessential matriarch. Bachofen argues that there is a level even lower than matriarchy in which "the male is still dominant; every tribe is headed by its tyrannos" and that this is found in "conjunction with the extreme degradation of woman" (143). Nowhere is rule by men said however to be the essence of patriarchy. Patriarchy is law and order, the ten commandments, liberties and responsibilities, checks and balances, marriage, church, and government. Preceding matriarchy is tyranny in which individual feeling predominates, and the Sadean Minotaur is the symbol. Marriage is the rise of Hera, and the notion that pure male tyranny is broken. Symbolically, the west has made a precipitous turn, due to a willfully catastrophic misreading of Bachofen. Because above matriarchy is civil law, instantiated by the coming of the sky gods, and the notion that there are transcendent and universal principles or laws. Against mere feeling, Bachofen has posed marriage as the litmus test of a society's cultivation. The lowest societies use women as whores or as ashtrays because the materialist emphasis predominates (Bachofen specifically puts down Islamics, and says that there is a reason they worship the moon, and by moons, since it symbolically represents the night of desire, as opposed to the burning sun of high noon, when judgment is at its most keen.) ("The lowest of all orders of creation is that of Aphroditean desire" (190)). The highest societies sanction marriage because the religious emphasis predominates. Marriage represents a curtailment of bestial natural law. The way in which the weaker party is treated determines the level of society.

Bachofen sees the marriage principle as the basis for the Trojan War. Helen and Paris break her marriage vows to Menelaus, but even within her marriage to Menelaus she is not treated as an equal partner. Contrasted with this is Odysseus' marriage to Penelope. Emancipation from the "crudely sensual animal life" (143) first begins under matriarchy, but it finds its truest expression in "purely spiritual father right" (147) in which "just laws" prevail over the "material side of our human nature" (147). Odysseus has had lengthy stays among matriarchal goddess cults, and has fornicated endlessly to the point that he loses all track of time with Circe and with other goddesses, who tyrannize him, and sap all his strength, but ultimately he arises from these foul nests and returns to his wife.

The surrealist left has turned not to Odysseus but to Sade who uses women as if he wants to destroy all of creation itself. The right urges us not to seek glee in the burning of our traditions, or in the return of the satanic Sade to the canon but the left chortles fiendishly and insists, laughing at the prudery of the right. If we are Christian we look to the right (away from the id and toward the paternal superego) and we must resurrect all taboos surrounding sexuality, and maintain the phrase "complete depravity" in regards to basic human nature. Against nature we must pose the safeguards of Christian thought: walls and boundaries, police and surveillance, order and care not to sin, as we recathect the ten commandments, and the Final Judgment of God.

QUOTES FROM BACHOFEN (appendix):

"There is only one mighty lever of all civilization and that is religion" (85).

"The exclusivity of the marriage bond seems essential to the nobility and higher calling of human nature" (93).

"The initial determined resistance to the bestial state of sexual promiscuity is woman's. It is woman who artfully or forcefully puts an end to this degrading state. The staff is wrenched from the male, the woman becomes the master. This transition is inconceivable without individual marriage" (142).

"Hera makes use of the dance to check the excessive manhood of her wild son Ares. This principle of harmonious movement is contained in marriage, whose rigorous law is upheld by women... In a noteworthy passage Strabo imputes this culture-bringing benign power of woman to fear of God, which first dwelled in woman and which she implanted in the men" (144).

Quotes from Myth, Religion, and Mother Right (Princeton UP, 1967) (NB: this edition is a 200-page bowdlerization of the 1400 page original, which has never been translated into English.)

TIME AS A CRUCIAL ASPECT OF PATRIARCHY!
Surrealism found its inspiration in dreams. In dreams there is no sense of time. Time gets stuck, time stretches, as it does in Dali's watches, during dreams.

But Lutheran surrealism believes in time.

Unlike all those movements who would like to waft us back to the timeless present of the matriarchies, Lutheran Surrealism believes in patriarchy. We believe that time is of the essence: not only must we redeem ourselves in time, but that great actions are possible only through time. In this sense we are closer to the novel than to lyric poetry; and in this sense we are closer to Homer than we are to Shelley.

It is crucial that Odysseus must struggle for TWENTY YEARS to get back home to Penelope and to his MARRIAGE.

Whereas the surrealists privileged moments outside of time, moments of magical eros, we privilege the arc of duration of marriage (marriage as a patriarchal notion, according to Bachofen).

In Breton's great novel Nadja, or in Soupault's Last Nights of Paris (translated by matriarchal thinker William Carlos Williams, who endlessly befouled his own marriage with haetarism), we see the two whoremonger surrealists out of their heads over prostitutes. By the end of the novels the fixation they have is over, and the few erotic contacts are done. They actually celebrate this whoremongering and these ephemeral contacts when they should be ashamed of them!

Matriarchy is about hedonism, pure and simple. And hedonism leads to use and abuse of the weak (Nadja is put in an insane asylum at the end of Breton's novel, and the narrator never visits her).

Lutheran surrealism is about principles, and principles lead to protection of the weak with laws and contracts, such as the marriage contract. The ultimate weak are the children. (What happened to Nadja's child?) We like the idea that children have parents who are legally bound to protect them. And we like to think about lyric poetry or narrative art as one that is not so much about a chance interaction between two people who never see one another again, but rather the deep contractual space between people who are thoroughly engaged with one another for generations. This latter has not been a big topic for lyrical poetry for at least a few centuries.

We try to elucidate fulcrum moments where character is formed. Character means the choice between good and evil. Choosing something good is evidence of good character. Bad is bad character.

In a larger sense, we think that those poets who celebrate ephemeral encounters are themselves choosing evil over good. Anything of brief duration is automatically evil. We believe that photography of bums met on the street is an evil practice, just as evil as giving them money, because it implies a brief glancing acquaintance rather than sustained community. Bums are bums (generally) because they haven't accepted their role in time, but have instead sought oblivion through wine or drugs.

To be in time together brings out all the sin & mischief of which a person is capable. We get to know one another in a deeper sense through time. It is only through time that character can be illuminated. The surrealist novels that celebrated the ephemeral had no plot because they also had no character, and thus they also had no sense of a revelation of character. Our novels are moving in another direction. Not toward matriarchy, and the dumbness of the lyrical moment outside of time, but toward patriarchy, and the intelligent fulcrum inside of time, while waiting for eternity.

We are interested in those institutions that rise above the brief hedonistic contract of the hippies and the surrealists. We are interested in churches, schools, hospitals, and government agencies, in longstanding businesses and railroads and highways. Anything that is meant to last more than one generation. If timelessness and love without consequences is important to matriarchies, we are interested in restraint of desire, and in the ways in which people hold back in order to think about the long-term repercussions of our actions on the patriarchal institutions that hold together life in the Christian west. Anything that lasts one generation or less (by default) is evil. Ultimately, only eternity has any value.

MANIFESTO CONTEST!

We have had several poetry contests over the last year. Now I think we should have a manifesto contest.

For a Lutheran Surrealist Poetry:

1. All writing takes place in space & time and is evaluative of a lived experience.

2. All other writing (classicism, dream writing) is etiolated.

3. Who, what, when, where, and why are valid questions as they are in newspaper journalism. Poems can be dated, and given a context.

4. Our framework of values is Christian and specifically Lutheran.

5. The establishment of patriarchy is essential to the establishment of sane values (Bachofen).

6. While we recognize the value of the technical accomplishments of Whitman & Ginsberg we deny the values of the NAMBLA set.

7. Our aesthetics are Kantian -- there is no fixed concept that it is necessary for the poet to recreate. Between the space-time continuum and the vagaries of values (Biblical -- esp. the 10 commandments as defined by Luther), there is room for the imagination -- and it is the beauty of the spark between the real and the eternal upon which we base the judgment of a poem.

[Any takers? You don't have to write a full manifesto, but could also comment on any of the above, add riders, or provide a poem that fulfills the above criteria, or somehow attacks it. Deadline: August 15, 2010, sunset.]

Culture War: The Long View

The left is with Pelagius, the right is with Augustine.

Ron Silliman's Comment Box

Note: this post first appeared in 2007, when Ron Silliman began to monitor his comments box. Silliman is a friend, and also a rival, of sorts, in the poetry realm. He is a member of something called The Language School, which I think of as a kind of de facto language police. He's recently turned off his comments box, and in the process scrapped probably 200,000 comments, consigning them to oblivion in the space of a nano-second.

I don't care that he did this, even though some thousands of those comments were mine. Who cares?

It's the process of thinking that matters. I don't consider myself to be a writer, or a poet. I do those things, but it's not my identity, for heaven's sake.

Recently, a woman poet named Jessica Smith complained that her poems were treated roughly at Silliman's blog. This made her feel like quitting poetry. In response, Silliman decided to shut down his comments box altogether. This has been controversial, and many all over have commented on it.

Basically, I think people should be allowed to comment. If you go to a restaurant, and liked it, or didn't like it, you comment. If the food was greasy, and disgusting, and overpriced, you don't have to be kind to the owner, just so that they can stay in business. If you go see a movie, you can say that it sucked as you're leaving the theatre.

But Jessica Smith cares more about herself than she cares about Poetry. I find this questionable, and narcissistic. (On the other hand, I don't know anything about her poetry, or about the comments that were left about her poems. I rarely read Silliman's blog any longer because of his new comments option, plus, more and more yahoos had begun making comments, which made it less of a payoff to read. I just don't think anyone should possibly care what comments anyone else makes about poems that are written. If they're intelligent, fine, if they're not, then that's fine, too. The thing is to think about the future, and to care only about positive interactions and deal with people you think you might like, and ignore everybody else.)

At any rate, here's my original post, from 2007, when Ron Silliman moved to monitoring the minotauresque minutiae of his comments box. I don't know if I'll have anything more to say on this topic. I'm kind of bored by the whole thing, now.

What I'd really like is to have a good sane crew of commenters, and to let sane new people in from time to time. One of the great things about not being so famous (as Ron is) is that I don't have so many weirdos showing up. His blog was like Warhol's Factory just before the poor man got shot by Valerie Solanas. Here, no one can get known, it's a one to one kind of blog, no psychos or people I don't know or trust. The comments box is what -- about twenty to a hundred comments per post. I get about two hundred to two thousand hits per day. Mainly, we're kidding around, and I come to know and like the people commenting, and care about them. It takes me about twenty minutes per day to run. I want to learn new things and have new ideas, maybe make a new friend here or there.
*

One of the problems with the Blog World is the comments box. In my case, I never police it, but often wish there were more commenters, and more zaniness, but also do like it when it heats up a bit. Usually it heats up when my posts are long and I'm actually thinking about something fairly intensively. Sometimes I've felt really truly burned -- as when Stephen Baraban has attacked me. At such points my whole body has burned sometimes for eight hours at a time. But heck, one can also be killed by kindness.

Ron Silliman's comment box on the other hand has been explosive at times. Huge and completely unnecessary arguments. Almost like life itself. Then he decided to monitor it. Since then, you had to remember to be PC, but I would sometimes forget, because Ron has a split personality and is partially a liberal. He doesn't like to censor, but I suspect he is surrounded by comrades who believe the censorship is necessary and even fun.

So part of the fun of Ron's comment box was testing the limits -- like seeing if you could say ... without getting bounced. Sort of like trying to catch the very corner of the plate and having the ump call it a strike. But now thanks to his ghoulish comrades he's apparently going to tighten it up. That's ok. I don't care. I like the idea of Speech Codes because they have a clear history going back to the Soviet Union where speech was very carefully monitored, and offenders were put in the Gulags. It's no accident that Ivan D. got eight years hard labor for having told a joke about Stalin... Jokes were almost totally outlawed in Zhdanov's Social Realism. One gets the sense that jokes within the nouveau communism (which pretends to be the new liberalism, but is anything but) are almost invariably frowned upon as hurtful.

Who's to decide? Oliver Wendell Holmes said that the best response to bad speech was good speech. Plato and Stalin (on the other hand) felt that the One should decide for the Many. Here at LS we believe that OW Holmes is the more salubrious of the two and that freedom of speech is vital to our project!

I think poetry would be better if it cooled it with the attempt to curtail freedom of speech and instead just spilled over into Rabelaisian grotsqueries in which greater and greater forms of uglinesses were not only permitted but encouraged and there was no attempt at all to teach but rather the mode of delight was turned up full blast. Then maybe I could stand to read poetry again. Right now it's all nice thoughts, and there's nothing in there to break up the boredom. Since Plato there has been this attempt to get poetry and its fans to behave, and to stay within some square ideological deal set out by some benign imperatrix or another. Could poetry please bust out into Rabelaisian populism?

Could comments boxes?

Ron has made many remarks in favor of Jefferson and such but were they just appetizers and the main course total suppression of dissent? I'd like him to prove that Pol Pot is his truest colleague, not Jefferson. Pol Pot said to the prisoners in Prison 17 (or am I thinking of Stalag 17?) that even to roll over in their sleep without permission would lead to a hundred lashes. 3 prisoners of some 14,000 processed in that prison survived it. Perhaps they had mastered the art of sleeping without movement, or they had actually gotten their written requests into the state for permission to turn over. Only problem: the ability to write was itself sentenced by capital punishment! Catch-22 at Prison 17!

So much for freedom under the reds.

Excuse me for the joke, but here goes: What's black and white and red all over?

Ans. Silliman's comments box.

MARIANNE MOORE'S NOTES ON PRAYER, ETC.

Marianne Moore attended a Reinhold Niebuhr sermon and in her Religious Notes on 14 July 1946, p. 3, she quoted Niebuhr,

"No nation is trustworthy beyond its self-interest."

This journal is found at the Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia VII 09 11.

She also wrote down these notes, but they are apparently her own ideas:

"The laws of God are Eternal and Unchangeable." September 1, 1946.

"We should come to God with our small petitions, or else our prayers lack realness." --
July 22, 1945

26 July 1946 (from a sermon by her brother):

"In the spiritual world we see His laws set forth in the moral law established in the heart of man."

Also from the sermon by her brother (a Presbyterian naval pastor):

"Kingdoms shall rise and fall, but my Word endureth forever."

Quality Vs. Quantity: The Deming Approach

The great problem of our time has to do with quality vs. quantity.

Now, America votes for the first of a kind, rather than the best of a kind. Obama scored on this. Obama has no understanding of quality. And he is himself an unknown quantity.

In the realm of aesthetics, we now tend toward thinking about inclusiveness, as opposed to exclusiveness. To be exclusive is to discriminate. Many people in aesthetics now believe that it is wrong to discriminate. Everyone gets a gold star, even if they are defective.

You rarely find anyone in the arts talking about quality.

Instead there is an analysis by number. You had only so many of such and such in your publication, therefore you are a racist, and thus you suck. So the blind Eskimo dwarves get their chance at the art gallery, at the expense of any notion of quality.

Mathematics can define quantity fairly easily, but quality is more elusive.

Last week I was moaning about this, and a friend of mine in business said, "You should read W. Edwards Deming's Quality, Productivity, and Competitive Position."

I looked in Amazon.com, and found a copy for $2.35.

Deming is an industrial production wizard who worked in Japan after first helping the state department in World War II. His job was to oversee quality armament production. The Japanese saw quality, and knew that they needed it, so they invited Deming over after the war. Japanese guns often jammed, which meant our guns beat theirs. They asked Deming to jumpstart their automobile industry. Deming helped various Japanese car companies develop the notion of quality. Deming argues that quality is what makes a company competitive. Quantity is a poor thing if it means that many of the products are defective, or have to be returned, or will disappoint the customer. Simply selling massive numbers of units can bring a short-term economic prosperity, but instead of this, Deming argues, a company should think about both quality and quantity, but put quality first.

"Why is it that productivity increases as quality improves," he asks on the first page of chapter one.

"Less rework," is the answer.

How many defective cars should a company produce in a year?

None, Deming says. "Zero is the only acceptable level to aim at" (9).

Low quality means high costs in terms of returns.

Deming offers 14 points that every manager should aim at. His prose is fairly mediocre (it's clear but not lovely) so it's not poetry we're reading. This is a man who thought about industrial production. We're reading competent prose.

"4. End the practice of awarding business on the basis of price tag. Instead, depend on meaningful measures of quality, along with price. Eliminate suppliers that can not qualify with statistical evidence of quality" (16).

"12. Remove barriers that stand between the hourly worker and his right to pride of workmanship."

In Japan, one only needs one minute to change trains. The trains are all on time. Therefore, one minute is sufficient.

Deming argues that suppliers should inspect the scene for which they are supplying materials. If a company is supplying glass windows for a skyscraper, they should visit the site, and clarify what their product is needed for.

"There was nothing wrong with the glass in a large building in Boston, nor with the steel. Both met the specifications. Yet somehow they did not work well together in service. Glass windows fell from the steel frames to the ground below" (25).

Deming argues that fear should not be felt on the production floor, because this keeps staff from doing their best. Staff should feel they are part of the production team.

Even in a classroom we are trying to produce quality. We want the students to write good papers and do well on tests. Fear of the tests should therefore not be part of the problem that students face. They should look forward to proving themselves on the tests. They should feel they are part of the process, able to ask questions, able to understand why we are doing what we are doing.

"Secure means without fear, not afraid to express ideas, not afraid to ask questions, not afraid to ask for further instructions, nor afraid to report equipment out of order, nor material that is unsuited to the purpose, poor light, or other working conditions that impair quality and production" (33).

Imagine the conditions in North Korea, and how one can be sentenced for life on the spot, and then wonder why they have famines, and virtually zero exports.

Similar conditions can be created in a classroom, especially by an insecure teacher or professor who does not herself know what counts for quality work.

Deming leans on the notion of quality, but never defines it in an abstract sense. He says that quality is always contextual, and that it depends on what you are making, and for whom.

I am hoping he does better than this by the end of the book. I'm on p. 43 of 371 pages. The book is done in a strange format. Large pages, and the words look as if they have been typed. The book was published in 1982 by MIT Press. Aesthetics have more or less abandoned the notion of quality. But in industrial production one can still find texts and writers who work with the concept. The book has the look and feel of an industrial manual, rather than of a poetry book. But it's workable. I like it.

We know there is a qualitative difference between Ford and Honda. Japan has a sense of quality that is missing in Michigan. Sweden has a sense of industrial quality that doesn't exist in Zimbabwe.

It may be that in Zimbabwe the ability to produce song or dance is highly developed, but one would think twice about buying a car from that country. Buying a machine of any kind from France is a mistake. Their yogurt is slipping, too.

Our own country is declining. We need to think less about quantity, and more about quality. We need to think less about hiring someone as a first, and more about hiring someone who will be the best.

Otherwise, we are going to have justices that cannot produce anything but ambivalence, and who produce judgements that constantly have to be appealed, and repealed, and CEOs who create products that people wish to return. We will have companies whose oil rigs explode, because they didn't do it right the first time.

Enormous costs went into the stealthcare bill, but no care went into getting it right the first time. It will have to be repealed, and done over. Being first is nonsense. Being best is what works.

Last Supper by Warhol

Yesterday I was driving the family down to Brooklyn. The family reunion was over, and we had held a vote in the parking lot at Target in Stroudsburg. I wanted to see the Warhol Exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum. Julian, my first grader, wanted to see it. Fia, who's only four, wanted to see it. Tristan, who is going into fourth grade, wanted to go home. Lola, who is going into sixth grade, wanted to go directly home. My wife Riikka was split 50-50.

I took this as a yes.

We drove on Route 80 until it split into 280. I went through Newark looking for 95 south and got on, and went across the Godels bridge into Staten Island. We had been flying along at 73 mph, when we hit a jam. We were within ten miles of the museum, but were suddenly reduced to ten miles an hour, which meant it might be another hour before we got to the museum.

My wife said, "Let's go home."

My daughter Lola began to cry out of frustration. "I'm so tired. I just want to go home."

Mysteriously, Tristan now wanted to see the exhibit.

Fia, the four-year old, and my son Julian, aged six, were still up for the exhibit. that meant four were for, and two against.

But I had to consider getting back out of Brooklyn which usually takes an hour before you hit open highway. And, my wife was now dead set against the exhibit, and insisted we go home. Which meant she had exercised her veto vote. I tried to convince her:

"Warhol's last paintings are of the Last supper and have other striking Christian images that present him as a closet Christian. Warhol was the master of irony, and this was the ultimate irony. We have to see it! It will close in a week!"

"Will it really close in a week?" she asked.

"No, it closes in September," I admitted. But I wonder if she will ever get to see it. My guess is I will go down, and she will miss it! Which means it will only be half the fun, because we won't be able to discuss it.

I gave in, and went up through Bayonne, back out across 78 until I got to a highway called 21, which wended north along the Passaic River. At a town called Fairlawn we went east to Paramus. The Paramus Ikea had free summer lunches for kids. We bought a lot of furniture while the kids ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and milk, and cookies, and macaroni and cheese, and french fries. There was so much food they only ate half of it.

I just checked. The Warhol Exhibit is up until September 13th. Will I get to see it?

Probably. Because my birthday is just before that, and I will use that as an excuse.

Meanwhile, we had several days of fun in my hometown of Stroudsburg. We swam, ate (I gained two pounds back), and talked about Ancestry.com, and the future. We watched kids play (baseball, foosball, soccer, WII sports, and other games). We saw the Phillies lose. I read some more of Amity Shlae on the Depression, some of Deming's book on Industrial Quality, argued with my brother and mother (who hate Fox News) because they said it was such obvious propaganda, and I said it's better to be open and obvious, rather than pretend to be objective, like the rest of the communist stations. They rolled their eyeballs. Later on, we went to see my dad's memorial marker on the East Stroudsburg University campus. My dad liked Fox News.

I grew up in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. Ironically, there are no such things as the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. That is, there are no specific mountains that are called the Poconos. There is one town called Mount Pocono, but it is relatively flat. The name is applied to the region, which consists of a heavily-forested plateau.