Again and again ...

The employeer goes into the market place and offers employmebnt.  The employee can take it or leave it.  Forget negotiation.  

Employers negotiate all other expenses such as but not limited to raw materials,  the cost of prostitutes, and the amount of bribes.  But, for some reason in the schizophrenia of the owners and management,  employees don't count.  Unlike Princess Camilla and horses, they can't paw the ground with their front feet to count.

But, O M G when employees organize to negotiate for wages and benefits the stuff has hit the fan.  The unions are foreign, subversive, and unhholy.   Like the song says
"... I've been slandered.  I've been  libeled.  I've heard words I've never heard in the bible..."

So when I suggest that labor  unions represent a stratagy by which people gain power in the market place, senile old men grab their golf clubs and come a hobbling dragging their  care givers  -- usually underpaid and black -- with them.    

Surthermore, when I suggest that failure to pay a fair wage and continue to tolerate slum landlords amounts to wealth transfer from the lowest segment of society to the wealthiest, the same group of the senile try and shout through their asthema, emphasis, and  COPD.  They lack the strength to pick up their portable oxygen tanks and throw them at me.  
    

Institutions And What?

I like reading historical novels.  In such, plot and such take precedence over history and accuracy.   

In one novel set in the Civil Ware, the author puts words in the mouth of John WIles Booth.    Allegedly Booth complained that Lincoln had destroyed Southern institutions.  

What institutions, other than slavery, cried  I,  as I let from my relaxed position.    I could not imagine institutions other than slavery.

So, I asked a most scholarly and thoughtful friend of  mine to fill in the blanks.  I did so while we lunched.  No, it was not Ms. Otis.   

The friend replied, though not in song,  that the conflict had brought an end to the exclusive agrarian nature of southern culture and economy.  Land ownership ceased to serve as the cheif and only element b y which a person secured their status in society. That owenership also served as the basis for an aristoracy which had also ceased.  

The land needed folk to work it.  If slaves did not do that work, who would?  Without that work, who would wrest  the agricultural wealth from the land? 

In the new South, moeny and invesments either took the place of land or stood along side of land as sources of wealth.  And, with wealth came social status.   

All through reconstruction the North controled the flow of money.  Land redistribution, or attempts at it, broke up the holdings of the old southern familys.  

As late as 1935, a repost ordered by FDR showed that more that sevety five percent ( 75% ) of financial matters and industrial wealth belonged to northern owners. 

Before the War, folk generally identified themselves as coming from V ermont or Virginia.  After, folk called themselves Americans.  Before, the phrase was These United States.  But, after folk said as today The Unived Sates.

Ban Reading Again ... Ein Wenig Verständnis

In reading a novel involving Isreal and Palestinian identity,  a set of ideas emerged into consciousness. 

One such idea stands out.  That idea posits that the conflict in Isreal has a number of cultural components. The cultural componant although parallel  to religion, originate in Israli and Arab culture.  The cultural aspect  can stand apart from the religious aspect.  

A look at several elemts and how they differ bwtween the two cultures will suffice. 
Take the attitude toward women.  Traditional Arab culture limits a woman's role in the tribe.   She seldom appears in public without a male family member.  She often appears veiled.  Her role consists first and foremost in bearing children.  

Israli cultre, by contrast , allows  women the same freedom of action as one might find ibn Europe and the United States.  The woman's role has many diverse and optional elements.  She chooses the ones which she wants to live with.   Sub-groups such as the ultrea orthodox  groups  have more conservative approaches to a woman's life style.   But, these conservative groups lack the rigor found in Arab applications of life style.

Land use serves as another mark by which to differentiate between the Israli and Arab cultures.   Many of the Palestinian Arab groups, whether displaced or otherwise, restrict land use to something close to subsistance farming.   Olive trees and sheep form the foundation of the economy in places.   This approach infuses the attitudes of many Arabs regardless of what the individual or family group actually does. 

 Israli farming practices relay on a broader range of crops.  The Israli settlers have made the desert bloom in many places.

Palestinian   Arab culture has a long history  rooted in the same reghion.  It , also, like many old cultures, has a fatalistic character.   This character fosters a much stronger resistance to change than the israli culture.  Although, Judaism and it's practice has existed for some five thousand years, the people who practice it have experienced  uprooting and dispersal.  Thus, have Jews had to reinvent themselves time and again over the ages.  Their  religious has afforded them a consistant identity.   But, at the same time,  Jewish culture has not had the opportunity to grow fatalistic as Arab culte has.


The differences between the two cultures  covers every aspect of life.    Israeli culture appears more flexable or open to change While at the same time  maintaining an identity through religeous identity.  

Although, Islam has spread  through out the world and has vast populations adhering to it's tenants,  the current trend of fundamentalist rigidity among Palestinians  and Persians appears to come from  the age of the culture and not just the religeoun.   Radical elements using this rigidity have sparked the resistance to the state of isreal., 

This writing does not attempt to cover  everything.  Laziness stalks all existence and wins.  The goal points at a broader perspective in the analysis of the Israli Plestinia conflict.   It purposes to redirect the question from religeon to a broader frame of culture.   The writing does not find any value in violence, terror,  or persoanl self-destruction 

The hope lies in the possibility  of choosing to look at the perspective and life of another.

... Whatever ...

Recently, a friend laid his disuse of  Zimmerman's little toy  at the feet of all of us who use

Too much liberal politics says he.   Yes, Well.  Zimmerman's little toy didn't exist in 2000 - 2005 or something.   So he and the world did not share in the vitrfiol, invective, and general appallingly ill tempred rant against Bush (43).  I indulged in this rant.  I enjoyed myself immensely.   

I have grown older but not wiser.  I refrain now out of a loss of energy resulting from the ageing process. 

Additionally, the present occupant of the Oval office whom I call the Junta presnts such an image of horror.  This almost makes me think that the Bible's  Book Of Revelations which exists onhly in the King James for all those in the know.  

Now that's a image:  rRump as beast -- anti-christ.

Conflicted

I find myelf conflicted with regards to opposing the present Junta occupying the oval office. 

Part of me believes that it will pass in four years.  That, our country / nation can survive this. That, his followers will not listen to anything we have to say.  So why shout  about it all.

A second part of me recognizes that the present Junta in the oval office should know and understand that large numbers of patriotic citizens disapprove of the Junta and all its works. 
Like big time? 

For me the Jury has not made up itls mind at this pointe. 

Here And Now: A Failure In Both Intelect And Manners

The constant attack on tRump as mentioned ABC agent resembles O C D ..

 

Shrill beyond belief. Imitates neo-facist skwack radio.

 

Insisting  on your point of view to the exclusion of others resembles Stalin style propaganda not reasoned discourse.

 

I did not learn this in college.  Neither did you.  

Shame on you.

On American Crass Brass

I always wondered about 
Mailer 's The Naked And The Dead  &
and Jones' From Here to Eternity.   
Why all the fuss:  The prizes?
  

A Town Like Alice by  Nevil Shute  showed me the answer. 

Shute wrote On The Beach.   In both novels he uses a polite kind of writing that the modern american reader who has grown up on Batman and Superman way too antiquated.  This, provided that one knows what antiquated is.   The which I doubt.   But, the afore mentioned American novles are anything but polite.  The two novels seem to go out of the way to offend. 

Dear friends reading this, I can hear you say, "So":  A needle pulling ....

All three novels deal with World War LL   themes.  No one could say that WWLL was polite, nice or anything other than hell.   

The two American novels read like the war was:   Rough, hell and fatal for all too many.  

Shute's book reads more like a dower report of a provincial  tea on the lawn thing of which our cousins acrross the pond are so fond.  

And there you have it.  Take an older conventinal style of writing and write about hell.  Or, use a style which reflects the utter mess that the subject matter is.   

 

Now, for an extra three points, boys and girls, what did I leave dangling in the last sentence?