This column serves up fish caught by casting our hook into the waters of recent correspondence—fish that we think will be good for you, either for information or for provocation to think about something new, or about something old but from a different perspective.The Supreme Court ruling in Citizen's United has resulted in a government bought by wealthy corporations.
Democracy is supposed to be ruled by people. Corporatocrazy is the "merger of state and corporate power." The Court's decision is giving us a corporate oligarchy. The Court effectively allowed power to be transferred to a small number of wealthy people (the Koch brothers, Walton, Pope, Adelson, and others). We are outsourcing jobs in the name of smaller government. Entities society needed for the common good are now outsourcing to monopolies of privatization. These corporations do not have public interest as a priority, nor do they have the same level of accountability.
Corporations are not people. Our democracy should not be for sale.
Politicians have to understand that our founding fathers made us, through our votes, the employers, and the politicians our employees. The way it is now, with the PAC ads, we might as well have Romney wear red shorts and Obama blue shorts, and have them jump in a mud pit and wrestle for it on reality TV. That's how ridiculous it has become.
Apparently, Romney and his accountants have figured out how to turn his wife's dancing horse into a business, and in 2010 deducted more than $77,000 of its expenses on their tax return. Who knows how much in other years?
It seems to me that if Romney is elected, all of us middle-class slobs can start deducting our expenses for pets, boats, vacations, stamp collecting—you name it. So long as we can call it a business with a straight face, it's OK with Mitt.
Watch your thoughts, for they become words.
Watch your words, for they become actions.
Watch your actions, for they become habits.
Watch your habits, for they become character.
And watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.
Politics stinks. All of it. Just my two cents.
ReplyDeleteI can't say that I strongly disagree.
DeleteMorris, this recurring feature is my favorite. Great addition to your blog.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to share some comments on today's piscine platter:
* The Citizen's United fish is typical of the alarmist fluff we've been hearing about that case. The ruling "has resulted" (past perfect)? So we're already in bondage to the big contributors? Somebody will be elected that wouldn't have been elected otherwise? The imbalance that the writer fears is only a problem if one of the principal contenders doesn't have enough money to get his message out fully. If the contenders can meet that mark, all the extra money is nothing but overkill.
* Yes, politics has become ridiculous, but the electorate is getting exactly what it wants. Don't blame the politicians; they're just obliging us.
* I wonder if Romney deducted the damage that dog vomit and excrement did to the top of his family car. Perhaps this is why he won't release his tax returns from years ago.
* The writer of "Watch your thoughts..." is clearly a captive of the illusion of free will.
Ken, I'm tickled that you like the column. It has, surprisingly, turned out to be harder to "write" than I anticipated.
DeleteFor example, you probably saw the "first edition" that came out at 8:03 a.m. (Eastern time). It included an item that I later deleted as in questionable taste because of its very personal nature and the possibility that some readers might, with a little research, discover who the person was who hanged himself.
Then, while watching The Iron Lady, the movie that I'll review on Sunday, I heard Meryl Streep (doing something way beyond a mere impersonation of Margaret Thatcher—as one of the actors was reported to have told his wife after a day's work when she asked what it was like working with Streep: "My dear, I spent the day with Margaret Thatcher.")...I heard Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher say the "watch your thoughts" lines. Yes, the illusion of free will...the movie reminded me that Mrs. Thatcher was even more conservative than I was otherwise remembering.
Yes, I construe "correspondence" as liberally as necessary to meet the column's needs. No Thatcherite I.
Actually, Thatcher was quoting her father when she recited the "watch your thoughts" line. (My son watched the movie last night, and this point came up at lunch today.)
DeleteI think we should acknowledge that the philosophy the lines express is powerful and, if Thatcher took her father's saying as much to heart as the movie suggests she did, it might have played a fairly strong causal role in shaping her life.
Ironic perhaps? Believing your will is free has causal consequences.
Believing it isn't free does too.
I'd parse your conclusion a little more, Morris. I believe that my opinion about the freeness of my will affects practically none of my day to day behavior. I think I'm hard-wired to act as though my will is free. I think you and 6 billion others are, too. But my opinion of free will as an abstraction does have causal consequences. For example, if X murders Y, the questions about whether to punish X and how to punish X become much more difficult.
ReplyDeleteKen, I agree that the effects of "no free will" are potentially huge in morality and law, and Harris (and others) argue that they ought to be.
DeleteI think I understand why you distinguish "free will as an abstraction," but "no free will" seems to be a fact, however inclined we ordinarily are to disbelieve it (and perhaps are in some sense wired to do so). But remember that we can re-wire ourselves to some extent; isn't that one of the functions of a liberal education (as opposed to conservative indoctrination)?
I have both theoretical and personal reasons for my statement that believing you have free will (or not) has consequences; that is, that the belief makes a difference in what you do. In theoretical terms, I think you'll agree that beliefs affect what people do. That being so, I don't think we can except beliefs about whether we have free will or not.
You seem to "except" them because you don't think that we can believe we don't have free will. I disagree, and that's where my personal reasons come into play. It's not easy, however, to "introspect" one's lack of free will. I grant that. (But it's not easy to introspect one's free will either; Harris writes compellingly about the impossibility of seeing one's free will in action.)
It's a lot easier to notice "not free" in other people's behavior (as you see them doing over and over and over again even things that you've pointed out to them many times and told them to please stop doing them). Conversely, we can remember the shoes' being on the other feet and another person's telling us over and over and over to please stop doing this or that.
While I think that I'm right about our being able to believe that we don't have free will in very personal (not abstract) terms (sometimes I can feel the reality of this, but so far only faintly), I am not fluent yet in talking about it cogently. If I live long enough and remain mentally competent (assuming that my mental competence hasn't ended already), I may write more persuasively about it at some future date.
Morris, from time to time a thought comes along that whacks us alongside the head. We realize that our spouse is a stranger, our job sucks, Republicans are soulless bloodsuckers, etc. The impact is such that our lives take a sharp turn. The new path, of course, is not chosen by free will. The new stimuli enter the matrix of our beings, and our direction changes accordingly.
DeleteThere's a small set of whacks, though, that produce very little change because little can be done as a consequence. The illusion of free will is one of these. Sure, you might go mad from the thought and begin living on the street corners of Mebane with a concertina and a tin cup, but more likely you'll simply tell someone else about it and discuss it online. The idea will recede into the shadows of your consciousness.
The only effect of this whack that sticks with me is the perception that I and my brethren (and cistern) are automata. Oddly, this humanizes them for me, and I can't help but see our crimes, misdemeanors, and failings in a somewhat different light.
I have to speak up about the "dancing horse." I haven't read anything about this tax return deal but I do know (from watching the Olympic coveragae on NBC) that Mrs. Romney (no clue what her name is) bought a very expensive horse that her riding instructor is using in the Dressage competion in Olympics. Mrs. Romney herself has MS so I don't think she is getting much personal use out of the horse, if she even rides it at all. I have no idea what the nature of these "business expenses" are for the animal but I would not be so quick to judge that they are absurd. If they had a million dollar boat in charter, $77k in expenses would be quite reasonable. What income did she declare as generated from the horse? Anyway, I think there is more here than meets the eye.
ReplyDeleteCarry on. :)