[Xmca-l] Re: fact and fake

Tue Feb 21 12:38:52 PST 2017

Berkeley Repertory Theater did a very good production of “It Can’t Happen Here” last season (November). There apparently was an original adaptation by Sinclair Lewis himself, done in 1936 with a co-author John Moffitt. The people at Berkeley Rep (Tony Taccone, specifically, Artistic Director) didn’t think it was good enough so they did a new one, working very fast (this is info from progam notes), one day ahead of rehearsals. The result was really quite good. One of the nice twists is that at the end of the play, the one-time liberal newspaper editor, Jessup, who has made it across the border into Canada, slips back into the US and disappears into what is foreshadowed to be a large underground resistance. But theater is a slow form of art (the Broadway blockbuster “Hamilton” got its first hint of public visibility in 2009, when a set of rap poems about Alexander Hamilton were performed at the White House by playwright Lin-Manuel Miranda) and plays to an audience that can afford $50-$100 tickets. 

H

Helena Worthen
helenaworthen@gmail.com
Berkeley, CA 94707
Blog about US and Viet Nam: helenaworthen.wordpress.com

> On Feb 21, 2017, at 11:24 AM, Peg Griffin <Peg.Griffin@att.net> wrote:
> 
> PS, Mike, you'll be glad to hear that the DC Public library has 74 holds currently pending for the 9 copies they have of "It can't happen here!"  Woo Hoo!
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of mike cole
> Sent: Tuesday, February 21, 2017 12:43 PM
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: fact and fake
> 
> One thing on my list of actions is to remind people of the mid-1930's in the world, and in the US in particular.
> 
> In reminding myself of that time I have found it interesting to take up Sinclair Lewis's 1935 book, *It can't happen here.*
> 
> Perhaps not the best of Lewis's writing, but he was in a hurry. The message seemed urgent. I find it interesting bed time reading.
> 
> You can get the idea from the wikipedia entry:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Can't_Happen_Here
> 
> And cheap copies abound.
> 
> Mike -
> 
> PS - Off later to an event where a congressman is going to be too busy to be at his own town meeting. Working on a sign. "No representation without taxation."
> 
> 
> On Tue, Feb 21, 2017 at 8:26 AM, Peg Griffin <Peg.Griffin@att.net> wrote:
> 
>> Just on record, David, a rejection of your parenthetical: "(People who 
>> actually live here should correct me if I am wrong.)"
>> You are wrong but correcting you is far down on the list of "should"
>> actions, so far down that simply saying it is sufficient.
>> Peg
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-l-bounces@ 
>> mailman.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of David Kellogg
>> Sent: Tuesday, February 21, 2017 9:31 AM
>> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: fact and fake
>> 
>> Andy and Alfredo:
>> 
>> I'm in the USA right now, my first visit in three years. I don't want 
>> to understate the depth of the ideological changes: there has clearly 
>> been a remarkable coarsening and vulgarization of the national 
>> discussion, and there is undoubtedly a normalization of racism well 
>> underway. But when we speak of the new regime as a significant source 
>> of material, real suffering for working people, I can't think of any 
>> assault on the livelihood of workers that wasn't first pioneered by 
>> the "pragmatic progressives" of the previous administration. In other 
>> words, at least so far, the changes seem more at the level of faith, 
>> and the facts point to continuity. (People who actually live here 
>> should correct me if I am wrong.)
>> 
>> Take for example the two issues Andy raises. First of all, "Last Night 
>> in Sweden" appears to simply be another instance of the president's 
>> watching late night television and confusing a report on crime in 
>> Sweden with an actual terror attack occurring in real time. When you 
>> look at the transcript of what he says, it is quite possible that the 
>> confusion is not in his mind but only in his language: he actually 
>> MEANT to say "if you look at the what WAS happening in the report I 
>> watched last night in Sweden" and the syntax was too much for him. 
>> This is the kind of poor language that happens all the time in 
>> everyday discourse, including that of the head of state; it's just 
>> that thanks to a combination of poor impulse control and new 
>> technology, we now get all this confused and confusing language in an 
>> unedited form. This is a semiotic change indeed, but it's not a 
>> material one in the sense that nobody has yet died over it, either in Sweden or in the USA.
>> 
>> Secondly, Obamacare seem to be as far as ever from being repealed; 
>> there is a basic contradiction between the ideological commitment of 
>> the government to ensuring the speedy death of those who cannot afford 
>> treatment and stability in the insurance markets. The latter is still 
>> very much predominant, just as it predominated over the (weak) 
>> ideological commitment of the previous regime to expanding health care 
>> to include everyone. What the current head of state actually SAYS 
>> about health care has, at times, gone well beyond that weak 
>> commitment: "GREAT healthcare for EVERYBODY".
>> For a while, Republicans in the Senate were trying to interpret that 
>> statement as "potential access" to everybody who can pay for it, but 
>> this was dropped when the insurance markets responded negatively.
>> 
>> I think that this basic factual continuity combined with constant 
>> breaches of faith is the source of the tension and excitement that Alfredo mentions.
>> The previous regime liked to speak of being workmanlike and practical, 
>> with an emphasis on getting things done, and if anything the regime 
>> was actually rather proud of its inability to communicate the wonky 
>> facts of their supposed accomplishments to working people. The 
>> argument was that good policy would eventually make for good politics, 
>> and if it didn't, then it was better to have the former than the 
>> latter. But the argument for human equality is an argument of good 
>> faith, except in the trivial sense that we all have more or less the 
>> same physiological hardware: the argument for human equality must now 
>> be made on emotional grounds and not in the language of "facts".
>> 
>> Precisely because the Obama regime was, at bottom, so right wing, 
>> opposition to Obama was increasingly focused on the "fact" of his race 
>> alone. And precisely because the current regime is so outspokenly 
>> white and at the same time so amateurish, incompetent and utterly 
>> incoherent, it is able to convey the bankruptcy of white supremacy to 
>> white people in direct, emotionally accessible ways that were 
>> impossible for Obama. This is not progress towards a de facto 
>> equality, but it seems to me to be the harbinger of a giant leap of faith.
>> 
>> No matter lies, and all lies matter.
>> 
>> David Kellogg
>> Macquarie University
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> rea
>> 
>> On Tue, Feb 21, 2017 at 12:16 PM, Alfredo Jornet Gil 
>> <a.j.gil@iped.uio.no>
>> wrote:
>> 
>>> Totally relevant, Andy. As you say, it's so interesting to follow 
>>> how issues of faith and truth will be unfolding and changing in all 
>>> sectors of society. This has been going on for quite long time, I 
>>> think, not only about Trump but more generally with regard to 
>>> socioscientific issues such as climate change. But, perhaps 
>>> fortunately, it seems this is turning into crisis (and hence 
>>> change), with those same features becoming more exacerbated. It's 
>>> scary and
>> exciting at the same time.
>>> 
>>> I've been (as many of you) following the multiple testimonies and 
>>> analyses that are emerging in the media, intended and unintended, 
>>> lots of working-over in the form of analysis. It's amazing how much 
>>> material for analysis and how many actual analyses are being produced.
>>> Is as if as history was shaking, so too was consciousness shaking, 
>>> producing more and more.
>>> 
>>> Alfredo
>>> ________________________________________
>>> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu 
>>> <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of Andy Blunden 
>>> <ablunden@mira.net>
>>> Sent: 21 February 2017 02:43
>>> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
>>> Subject: [Xmca-l]  fact and fake
>>> 
>>> The Washington Post has a series of interviews with people attending 
>>> Trump's rally where they were the first to learn of the Swedish 
>>> terrorist attack in Trump's imagination, planted there by FOX News.
>>> The faith of these Trump loyalists seems unshakeable, though the 
>>> resignation of Flynn was causing a little difficulty, but I wouldn't 
>>> put it more strongly. It was still the fault of the "mainstream 
>>> media".
>>> 
>>> Is there no point beyond which Trump can step where fact and fake 
>>> can be distinguished from trust and favour? In the discussion we had 
>>> around his Inauguration Day speech I suggested it would be people 
>>> getting ill and discovering that they had lost the coverage they had 
>>> under ObamaCare.
>>> 
>>> I would be interested in hearing early anecdotes of people who are 
>>> Trumpistas up till now but who change their mind and what it is 
>>> which does the trick. It seems almost like we have to discover a 
>>> hole in political space-time to escape this black hole!
>>> 
>>> Andy
>>> 
>>> 
>>> --
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>> Andy Blunden
>>> http://home.mira.net/~andy
>>> http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-makin
>>> g
>>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
> 
> 