…some handy guidelines for left-O-center folks who’d rather remain comfotably out of power: “Do NOT leave your comfort zone!… Powerlessness is a familiar and comfy place. Remember: you have no power.”

• “The curse,” reversed?
• Could Stephen Colbert be right about America’s biggest threat being bears?
• It’s official: Even Marshall Field’s in Chicago is getting Macyfied, alas.
• The mainstream media have discovered that Starbucks is a “lifestyle brand” even more than it’s a restaurant chain. Duh. I could’ve told you that, and have. From the pre-Howard Schultz start, Starbucks’ original founders intended to rebrand European-style coffee as an essential acoutrement to a young-professional, neo-bourgeois lifestyle. They offed the image of coffeehouses full of bongo-playing beatniks, and invented the image of a home espresso machine next to every Cuisinart.
• My recent acquaintance David Goldstein has a nice essay pondering out loud about whether we can use the “F” word (no, not the boring ol’ “F” word but another, more incindiary one) to describe the current U.S. political machine.My take: This word has been so overused in political discourse, especially in online discussion boards, that it’s become nearly worthless as a descriptor. Besides, its use can easily confuse readers/listeners. We’re not (or at least I’m not, and I believe Goldstein’s not) talking about some wholesale adoption of all the cultural, verbal, and sociological shticks of 1933 Germany—or even those of 1920 Italy, which our current regime more closely resembles.

  A Texas two-step is not a goose-step.

  America’s devolution from democracy to empire has occurred in an all-American way. It’s rooted in the dark side of our own traditions. And it’s within the good side of our own traditions that its effective responses must be found.

• Last week, I was interviewed by a white hip-hop DJ from the Seattle U student Internet radio station. He was eager for stories about gangbangin’ violence in Belltown. I tried to explain to him that the noise and the rowdiness and the drunken brawling seen on First Avenue in the weekend wee hours are principally the work of young affluent Caucasians, who often arrive here en masse on chartered buses from the Eastside.I could have digressed, but didn’t, that the whole gangsta mythology was a stereotype invented a decade ago by LA record producers, specifically to nakedly exploit young affluent Caucasians’ images of young black males as sexy savages.

  In real life, violent criminals of any race tend not to be alluringly handsome, well-spoken, or well-dressed. They’re far more likely to be pathetic, desperate losers, out of touch with their own souls.

…to remember the late, great John Kenneth Galbraith this week, let’s look at what his almost-as-great son James sez about the state of the nation. James writes in Mother Jones that the U.S. has become a “predator state,” with its upper classes feeding off of the declining living standards of everyone else.

Galbraith fils depicts a nationwide, pervasive culture of corruption. It’s a disease that can’t be simply lanced off like a boil by removing a few politicians from power. It’s more like marrow cancer, something parasitic, deeply rooted, and ultimately fatal to both parasite and host.

I tend to agree with this downbeat diagnosis.

Getting rid of Bush and/or Cheney won’t get rid of the whole rotten-to-the-core right-wing machine running all three branches of the federal government; it won’t get rid of the machine’s media whores; and it sure won’t get rid of the machine’s well-heeled sponsors.

I’d even call Bush expendable to the machine as it’s currently constituted. One fiercely obedient puppet ruler could easily be replaced by another.

So what is to be done? Galbraith fils asks that question at the end, and doesn’t answer it.

But I have a glimpse of what it would take. I saw that glimpse Monday afternoon.

The participants in Pro-Immigration March II: The Sequel had been coached beforehand, by Web sites and by preachers and by Espanophone talk radio, to present themselves as patriotic Americans who wanted to fully participate in their newly-chosen homeland. The participants followed this instruction with gusto. They chanted “U, S, A.” They waved American flags. They carried signs proclaiming their pride in their work in and for this land.

Several years ago (1994, to be precise), I wrote, “We don’t have to tear the fabric of society apart. Big business already did it. We need to figure out how to put it back together.”

That’s what the immigration advocates are attempting to do.

They’re presenting themselves as less cynical, more hopeful, and more constructive than the selfish boars now in charge of the federal apparatus.

In so doing, they created a protest march where the usual hangers-on and would-be leaders of protest marches (the Bob Avakian cult, et al.) looked like the backward-thinking nostalgists they were. They rendered the entire patchouli-reeking carcass of post-1970 “counterculture” politics superseded, a “version 1.0” to be remembered and archived but no longer relied upon in everyday use.

The May Day marches, like their April forebearers, proclaim a new “new left.”

A left based on active effort, rather than hedonism.

On unity-in-diversity, rather than separatist “identity politics.”

On working-class solidarity, rather than the supposed superiority of an enlightened few.

On folks getting together to liberate themselves, rather than depending upon some “vanguard” caste to take charge on their behalf.

On building a viable future, rather than bringing back some “spirit of the Sixties.”

There’s a heckuva lotta work still to do in the years to come, both in electoral politics and beyond it.

But we now have the rhetorical and cultural means with which to do it.

…since before the war? Undoubtedly. It was exciting and dynamic, and totally free of the hip-cynical defeatism seen at so many Anglo-American-led protests. It was great to be in the middle of it all.

Make them be about what the old left used to call “the Workers.” Instead of ignoring race/class divisions, make them the focus. Put the people themselves in charge, instead of the retro-“radicals” of the goatee-and-ponytail set. Make them about saving lives, saving livelihoods, and respecting basic human dignity.

(In case you’re wondering, I managed to take these pix on my still-ill camera with the still-troublesome shutter button. More about this later.)

…as hard as I could to avoid falling into a media-defined generational stereotype, it’s happened to me anyway. Yes, I, apparently, am a “Grup.”

No doubt you’ll be hearing about the Capitol Hill house party murder-suicide for weeks to come. I only wish I knew what to say to all my acquaintances in the techno-party world, except: Stay safe. God-as-I-understand-him loves you. Life is just about always worth living. The answers to That Empty Frustrating Feeling don’t come in a bottle, a pill, or a bullet. Be well with one another.

…with Cleveland’s Ron Rajecki, who avows that not every “hip” person, place, or thing in America has to be just like New York.

…data confirm what I’ve always suspected/known–that TV viewers and thinkers are not mutually exclusive sets.

My thoughts upon reading Francis Fukuyama’s NYT Mag essay on the end of neoconservatism: ‘Bout time, I say. Alas, the damage done by this unrepentant gang of imperialist plotters will take decades to heal, and some of the soldiers and overseas civilians injured and maimed and PTSD-damaged by this stupid, stupid war won’t ever be the same.

And sure enough, Fukuyama doesn’t have any specific answers for what should replace neocon ideology, besides something more realist, more multilateral, and less hubris-tainted.

Here’s my highly vague, formless attempt at an answer:

American industrial capital, the real source of power and money propping up our imperially-minded national political machine, is in its endgame, knows it, and is running scared, in aggressive-defense mode.

It wasn’t sex and hedonism that killed ancient Rome. It was the fact that the empire had finally reached further than its infrastructure could hold; while the pagan natives began to successfully fight back, the Roman establishment, which had been built upon the notion of eternal expansion, turned upon itself in corruption and intercene squabbles until the whole thing became progressively less manageable.

I’ve long held that politics is part of culture, not the other way around. Your typical Capitol Hill (Seattle, that is) leftist would interpret all of human affairs as the manipulating machinations of the owner class vs., not the valiant struggle of the workers (Seattle leftists are terrible square-bashers), but the cogent protests of We Who Know Better.

I see a more nonlinear (or at least more multilinear) world. A MISC world.

Our governmental situation is the result of multiple sources and influences. In the case of our current national governmental situation, our supposed “leaders,” for all their swagger and pomposity, are the sniveling whores to their backers.

Who are these backers? Follow the money and you’ll find a few old men with wealth from highly consolidated and/or “dinosaur” industries—oil, mining, drugs, entertainment/media, banking, discount retail, armaments, etc.

These guys don’t like the instability of competitive markets. They also don’t particularly like organized labor, environmentalism, consumer action, or any other impediment to their continued hold on the sources of their affluence.

Add some cold-war nostalgists, some grafters, and some religious authoritarians, and you have not a slick neo-Nazi spectacle but a gaggle of Bull Connors out to hold onto obsolete power through any means necessary.

As Wired magazine once said, power corrupts, obsolete poewr corrupts obsoletely.

Replacing a couple of this machine’s political stooges won’t change things enough.

More importantly, the very sociocultural presumptions of the Seattle left won’t change things; but then again they’re not meant to.

So what will?

A new way of thinking, or at least a different way of thinking.

For one thing, we don’t have to bash Christians anymore. Progressivism is more Christlike than the fear and bigotry propagated by the sleaze machine.

And we don’t even have to bash capitalism, either; at least we don’t have to confuse the current U.S. economic system with capitalism.

As some of my Libertarian friends (with whom I have other arguments that are outside the scope of this discussion) point out, the influence-peddling and palm-greasing that characterize today’s federal system aren’t the purist rule of business values but the mercantilist collusion of corporate and governmental power.

Real prosperity, for workers, managers, investors, and the rest of us, will return as our current economic and industrial infrastructure is replaced, piece by piece, with something saner.

This is big-big-big picture talk, at which I’m less comfortable than I am with very specific topics.

So bear with me.

But for now let me posit one thing: Politics, particularly oppositional politics, isn’t the answer. It isn’t even the problem. It’s a symptom.

Today’s essay goes out to all my sports-hating, square-hating, mainstream-society-hating good pals on Seattle’s Capitol Hill.

Despite everything your subculture’s taught you to believe, it’s OK to like football.

Yes, American football.

Yes, that game you’ve hated ever since your dysfunctional public high school ordered you to love it. That game so beloved by the jocks who bullied you and the cheerleaders who ignored you. That game you’ve ever since associated with everything you despise about everybody in America who’s different from you.

As I wrote in this space a month ago, it’s time to stop hating everyone who’s different from you. Way past time, in fact.

Time to learn to see the world through other eyes. To learn new experiences and new passions.

And this week’s Super Bowl can provide a great opportunity to do all that and more.

First: Take a new, different look at the game itself. Appreciate its complexity and its intricacy.

Baseball has been described as a game of control vs. chaos, with the defense in control. American football is a game of order vs. entropy, with the offense on the side of order. The offense, essentially, tries to make things happen; the defense tries to make things not happen.

The highlight reels like to celebrate the achievements of individual stars catching that pass, kicking that long field goal, making that out-of-nowhere tackle. But football’s really a game of precision group choreography. On any given play, each of the 22 players on the field has a role in the execution or the interruption of a preplanned play. If the offense works in sync and everything else works out, points are scored or yards are gained. If the defense is smarter or luckier, points aren’t scored and yards aren’t gained. In no other major US sport is individual prowess less important and cooperative work more important.

And that includes cooperative work among different races, socio-economic classes, and religions. In schools and communities that are truly integrated (not merely desegregated), the football team’s often been one of the first places where different students have learned to work and live together.

(I won’t even hardly mention the role of athletic scholarships in helping a lucky few to rise above their given station in life. Without his, Starbucks mogul Howard Schultz might have never gone to college, and East Coast media know-nothings would have one fewer stereotype to make about Seahawks fans.)

One taboo remains, at least on the field—openly gay players. Today’s pro sports world is more accepting of lesbians than of gay men. I’m sure it’s at least partly due to the old stereotype that gay men are somehow less than fully masculine. That, of course, is just plain silly–in all my years on and near Capitol Hill, many (if most most) of the most macho men I’ve known have been gay.

And I’m sure that, given time and a few brave people, that taboo will also fall.

For now, the game has its share of gay and lesbian fans, who’ll enjoy Sunday’s great spectacle as well as anyone.
As previously mentioned here, I happened to see the Seahaws/Redskins playoff game in a small neighborhood joint with one other man and 13 women, some of whom were making coy little “passes” toward one another during the commercials.

Some of these women were quite vocal about showing off their knowledge of the game—guessing what the next play would/should be, reacting loudly to great game play or lousy officiating. Other women in the group simply enthused over the sights and sounds of the game. They may have preferred the in-person company of other women, but they still got a kick out of seeing big men running and jumping and throwing and crashing into one another and being interviewed afterwards in their undies.

…claims solitary car driving makes people both more conservative and more antisocial: “The extreme libertarianism now beginning to take hold here begins on the road. When you drive, society becomes an obstacle. Pedestrians, bicycles, traffic calming, speed limits, the law: all become a nuisance to be wished away. The more you drive, the more bloody-minded and individualistic you become. The car is slowly turning us, like the Americans and the Australians, into a nation which recognises only the freedom to act, and not the freedom from the consequences of other people’s actions. We drive on the left in Britain, but we are being driven to the right.”

Well, that certainly helps explain the continued strength of hate-talk radio in this country (commercial radio in the US is primarily aimed at drivers), and also the local hate-talk stations’ obsession with gutting public transit and enforcing a car-only transportation system.

• 1. Thank goodness for Saturday banking.For various reasons I won’t elaborate here, I was out of cash on NYE afternoon and didn’t have a debit card. But the Washington Mutual branch in the Harvard Market complex was open until 4. Hence, I was able to attain my required potluck-dinner contributions.
• 2. Be careful what you wish for.With a little time to kill between the bank’s closing and the potluck’s start, I found myself at one of the Pike/Pine Corridor’s newly smokeless bars. Among the few patrons was a local guy who’d moved to New York three years ago to pursue an acting career. He admitted to having been one of those Capitol Hillers who’d snootily despised everything about Seattle that wasn’t sufficiently New York-esque. “I used to hate the way Seattle drivers were so timid and cautious when I lived here. Then on my first day back, I was walking across the street and almost got sideswiped… Something’s definitely different about Seattle these days.”
• 3. Am I getting old or what?The potluck took place in a beautifully restored duplex on east Capitol Hill overlooking the Arboretum. The other guests included musicians, painters, arts promoters, grad students, and public-school teachers.

  In prior years, this gang’s range of conversation topics would have included aesthetic theory, global politics, unfair state budget cuts, and whether the local economy would become any less pathetic in the coming year.

  This time, the group (including myself) was pretty much obsessed with such more mundane subject matter as real estate investment, career schmoozing, and the best private schools to ship their own kids to.

  When I was a young adult in the 1980s, I’d scoffed at the characters in the movie The Big Chill as examples of what I would never, ever become. Am I becoming more like that anyway?

• 4. New Year’s resolution number one: Don’t become a Big Chill person.
• 5. New Year’s resolution number two: Be kind to Big Chill people.The coming year might, just might mind you, bring a long-overdue opportunity for political change in this nation. If it’s to occur, it’ll have to be from the ground up, not from the politicians down. That means we’ve got to build an all-inclusive popular movement. And that means we left-O-center types have got to reach out to the widest possible swath of potential compatriots. And THAT means sacrificing one’s own sense of subcultural superiority.

  In other words, treat people who are different from you as your equals. Yes, I mean “those” people too.

  Even people who watch television, drive cars, and eat meat.

  Even straight white males.

  Even football fans.

  Even people who live in less funky neighborhoods.

  Even people who don’t want to have sex with you.

  Even your co-workers.

  Even timid drivers.

  Even people who like to talk about real estate at New Year’s parties.

  I don’t say it’ll be easy, just necessary.

• 6. Expect a lot of strangeness in the coming year.The path of history isn’t always linear. There are reverses, backlashes, and unexpected developments out of nowhere. Twenty-ought-six might be one of those turning-point times. This nation’s long march toward censorship, bigotry, war, greed, and inequality could get at least partly turned around.

  But even if that happens, it might not be pretty.

  Many innocent people could be caught up in political and corporate scandals. More soldiers and civilians will die in meaningless wars. Whole sectors of the economy could get wrenched, particularly if oil prices go back up or if the so-called housing “bubble” goes boom.

  But you know the old curse, “May you live in interesting times.”

…notes that Americans’ freedoms are being attacked from the inside, not the outside.

…big business and its wholly-owned politicians have so thoroughly and deliberately disassembled America’s social and economic infrastructure that we’re not a “superpower” anymore. That might actually be a positive thing. Let Time founder Henry Luce’s “American Century” pass into history, along with the “We’re Number One” chants, those expensive and bloody crusades on behalf of “democracy” (i.e., oil), the trashing of everything noble and hopeful about the human species in the name of shareholder value, and the glut of special-effects-leaden sequel movies in the world’s cinemas. Let’s go back to being one country among many.