Archives for 2011
Who Is Most Insincere About Caring For Middle Class And At Risk?
What Happens To Pop Culture When Economies Enter Long Decline?
Per an earlier tweet (what, you don’t hang on every tweet in your feed??), Neojapanisme is offering a 5 part analysis of the decline of Japanese pop culture and what emerged afterwards. They’re up to part three as of now.
The collapse of spending on popular culture in Japan makes the country an important laboratory for understanding how a “cultural ecosystem” of consumers, producers, distributors, media, trend-spotters, and advertisers operates when market activity decreases. In this context, we must first look at the degree to which middle class consumers made up and then retreated from markets for cultural goods.
We’d agree. We’ve been tracking the decline they describe since we noticed it in the late 1990s. And certainly Japan is atypical in so many ways as to render casual analogies moot.
Yet still, we wonder.
Cracking Down On OWS: Too Little, Too Late?
Anyone finding their way to this blog probably expected the semi-coordinated crackdown on the most visible OWS outposts yesterday, Zuccotti Park, drama-infused Oakland bastion and Portland. Among others.
The ‘Authorities’ in each instance carefully mimic each other. They proclaim support for ‘free speech’ but then offering a lurid litany of health, crime and sanitation speculations — all to cast themselves on the side of hygiene and order to the heretofore OWS sympathizing but still passive American suburban onlookers.
From Oakland to NYC it’s a gamble: that the majority of Americans prefer to focus on upcoming Black Friday sales and ‘order’ over their own nebulously understood self-interest. We haven’t done the focus group work. Outside heavy media/Twitter consumers, we’re skeptical how many average ‘Amerikhuns’ understand the meme ‘We are the 99%’ or why that phrase advances their interests.
OWS in some ways emerged in September as happy serendipity. What’s been accomplished between organizing meetings in August to November defies design.
OWS’ various general assemblies, mini-protest marches and world wide presence are perfect fodder to Twitterati, twitching, tweeting and forwarding each detail. This activity conveys dynanism, progress, excitement — and vicarious participation. It eventually spilled over into the reluctant trad media. We’ve long maintained that OWS as a specific socio-politcial phenomenon, however, needs more. OWS has still to create bonds beyond intensive social media consumers. How much connectivity does it have? We may soon find out.
As it stands now, OWS overall and a flagship NYC presence (where ever re-located) need more time as a tangible manifestation. Perhaps non-coincidentially, local forces of small ‘r’ reaction aren’t anxious to grant time. The Oakland mayor said on the BBC the mayors were in coordination. Of course, the ground truth at each encampment and its relationship with corresponding authorities vary and determine outcomes.
It’s encouraging that the OWS sites disrupted by force are prepared to return and stay, challenging actions in courts, etc. OWS across the country appears to understand the imperative to avoid vandalism and violence – sure barriers to connecting with their larger audience. They would be wise to seek access to recognizable professionals sympathetic to their purpose to refute the ‘health, sanitation and public safety’ canards, too.
Regardless of this week’s events we doubt OWS’ destiny is to embody post-Obama politics capable of directly challenging and defeating oligarchy. OWS’ greatest service is to open the door to possibility. To give tangible form for the media-consuming onlookers to recycle from their offices and anchor chairs that Americans would not necessarily resign themselves to the false politics of the two ‘party’ system.
But then again, OWS has surprised before . . .
One of the many clever meme from the UC Davis abuse. Via Imgur.com.
November 2011 Election Results: Glimmers Of A Defensive Line?
It’s tempting to make a lot out of various state-level elections last night, Tuesday November 8th. After all, Ohio’s Beatles-loving (the band) Kasich suffered defeat on SB-2 and his radical war on collective bargaining decisively crushed. Mississippi similarly rejected a pro-life proposition that was so bizarrely drawn even Haley Barbour dropped his fond reminiscing of Jim Crow to muse even pro-lifers didn’t understand it. Maine rejected a Rightist rollback on voter registration access.
Would be nice to think that these small tactical defeats on Movement extremism represent its ideological and logistical over-extension. The establishment of a Non-Rightist Defensive Line, as it were. Sherrod Brown says Ohio’s action “is a decisive step towards rebuilding the middle class.” Such is the state of Opposition leadership. Still, wins are wins.
As noted by TPM and others, the message is more diluted. Ohio voters actually approved Issue 3 which called for an Ohio constitutional amendment to block implementation of Obama’s health care law.
Creating a proper political defensive line 18 months ago would have been the first priority of competent political professionals. These scatter shot successes, achieved in part by organization and mostly by Rightists’ over reaching, are but a step along that path. Halting an opponent’s Noon Tide and then switching oneself over to the offensive is an altogether trickier proposition. Given Obama’s personal inability to be authentically engaged in non-detached, non-judgmental politics, local successes such as achieved on November 8th will have to suffice: sua sponte, self-organizing (as in independent of Obama’s personal fate or trajectory). Billion dollars or no. Which means a proper defensive line, if it ever were to form, would have to hold for the next four years of Obama.
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