Dimensionally Barrett

John Barrett - Between us, 2020, spray paint, acrylic This is the first and hopefully, one of the few times, when I'll just write a post off the top of my head. I'm not going to set any links to supporting documents, no footnotes, no appendices or further reading.  Someone close to me opined that there's all this writing about the current state of affairs, that people are angry and protesting but it's not doing any good. That we know all this stuff and still the Republicans with their Stooge-in-Chief are wreaking havoc on the country and the world. But that none of the outrage matters.  I took issue with that assessment.  I still do. Look, no one reads this blog, a few people engage with me on FB but for the most part, I prefer using the blog as a way of making sense of the issues around us. It's my sandbox that I leave up in case people want to discuss, teach me a few things, maybe even talk among themselves. To be sure, to be redundant, no one reads the blog, so s...

The United States has become a pariah state. Not just a failed state, but a hazard to the well-being of the rest of the world through its dysfunctional approach to governance and public health and well-being. With the failure to respond in any meaningful fashion to the Coronavirus pandemic , the White House administration and its enablers have rent the fabric of society beyond anything I’ve seen in my lifetime. It's not just a matter of political division, it’s a failure to recognize facts and an inability to accept the reality at hand . And this has been the issue since day one of this administration, from Steve Bannon’s earliest announcing that he was here to “ deconstruct government ” to Kellyanne Conway’s much repeated and now accepted nihilistic philosophy of “ alternative facts ” (most people call them “lies”). What follows are some of the events that I’ve held in mind well up to today (July 23, 2020) and what sense we can make of them and where we can go from here. To be...

The United States of America is falling from within. I don’t mean that in a Krushchevian “we will bury you” sense. It should be obvious that it is simply a fact. (1) The coronavirus and our national leadership’s response to the crisis has been marked by incompetence, stupidity, and arrogance. Individual state responses have been variable and in the case of Texas, the state government has pretty much abandoned any attempt at leadership, foisting navigating a deadly health crisis on county and municipal legislatures. I don’t think I need to recap the shameful and disastrous steps that have brought us to this moment as a direct result of ineptitude, venality, and absolute ignorance on this White House Administration’s part. This is not debatable. It’s obvious. Whether “the Base”(2) gets it or not is immaterial. Whether the followers of their cracked-brained leader understand the reasons for what is transpiring around them and affecting their loved ones (which they don’t seem ...

Photo by Julio Cortez/Associated Press Given the events of the past few months, the past few days, and ultimately, yesterday (Friday, 29 May), it is safe to say that the country is on fire. This isn’t hyperbole; we’re seeing conflict bred of racial oppression of a virulent and systemic kind. I’m purposefully using virulent here to emphasize that racism isn’t merely a social act; it is very much a part of the DNA that led to the founding of this country and remains very much a part of our identity. It stems from deep rooted ignorance that goes back to (at the very least) our European ancestors and their sense of exceptionalism that led to the conquest of much of the world, their empire building, and the concomitant subjugation of the peoples they invaded/slaughtered/enslaved. NOTE: I’m not going to go off into a discussion about racism and imperialism in non-European nations’ histories. I’ll acknowledge that it is just as virulent and just as ugly, but what concerns m...

Just a thought experiment. What would happen if instead of a two-party system or a three or four or more party system, we had a no-party system? Seriously, consider this. Disclaimer: I'm not going to introduce or work with class, race, or capital in this post. This is a utopian thought experiment, not a deep issue engagement. These are vital, contemporary forces in our world and deserve attention that falls outside the scope of this very interior exercise. What I have in mind is the idea that candidates would have to stand before the electorate, free of party doctrine, dogma or stance, and (relatively) unfettered, lay out their visions. As I mull this over, I can’t help but feel that it might prove inspiring in a few different ways. One way is that people would have to confront ideas without a preset ideology dictating them what to feel, what to think, and whether they should support those ideas or the people proffering them. In theory, people would have to think mor...

At this moment: 14:57 2020/05/15 Lately, I’ve been considering the longer term ramifications of the effect of the Coronavirus pandemic on various dimensions of our polities, where “our” connotes' humanity’s". Being a self-interested unit, I start with this place where “I” am. I put I in quotation marks to denote the “I” as a process, to underscore the dynamic aspect of being-as-a-self, let alone the personality to which “I” is appended out of habit and convention. That understood, I’ll return to using I sans “” enclosures. This I is not really inconvenienced currently by the restriction in movement. In fact, this is almost a blessing in terms of exploration and examination of the inner and the world it/I inhabit(s). Virtual socializing works well, too, in keeping in touch with loved ones. However, it’s near-solipsistic to think that this is optimal in the long run. We are formed by and grow from relationship. To borrow from Sartre, being-for-others is tant...