In a recent NYT opinion piece, James Baker III recommends that the US government and power brokers suspend moral qualms and take the middle or balanced path about Saudi Arabia. Neither hard-line realism—embodied by Trump, Kushner, or oil circles that Baker has served for so long—nor hard-line idealism—à la Zola or Péguy in the Dreyfus affair—. Let ethically-coated material interests trump the defense of human life, be it that of Yemenites or Khashoggi. What is needed is to keep a steady balance between geo-political interests and the “promotion of America’s values.” According to Baker, the major issues for which there is this purported need to keep to a steady middle course are “Stabilizing global oil markets, combating terrorism and countering Iranian regional adventurism.” These three issues, however, if considered historically, are one single large issue: the protection of economic interests of a war-bound kingdom and its protector, interests which have long been those of US energy companies and that of an over-militarized government. Stabilizing global oil markets means continuing to impose a military-backed distribution of infrastructure and profits via dollar-based contracts rather than payments in a basket of world currencies. No Iranian pipelines to the Indian ocean or to northern India. Enormous wealth and world peace are at stake. Combating terrorism is pushing back against radical religious organizations like the Muslim Brothers whose goals include a redistribution of wealth in their countries and striking a difficult, dangerous path towards social justice. Countering Iranian regional adventurism is code for a policy of military containment of the whole area that was inherited from the UK in the fifties. It was made worse by the elimination of Hussein’s dictatorship in Iraq. The policies defended or tolerated by Baker and others have made things awful for everyone. Appeals to a purportedly shared reasonableness fall on deaf ears today when they come from quarters that helped give shape to the present situation.

The US government’s inclination, under present proto-fascists or earlier, more reasonable leadership, is to continue the customary use of overwhelming force in all areas of life by resuming the development of tactical nuclear weapons and freeing them from any oversight. Alarms were recently sounded by Mikhail Gorbatchev or George Schultz. They beg the US government not to withdraw from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty. Will it?

Thinking about these issues and trying to reach something of a “balance” in daily life becomes more and more difficult as I realize how explosive our hopes for justice and dignity can be. Is it possible to live in peace when so many injustices, however distant and repressed, seem to shape one’s being? Peace is often seen as a natural state and an inherited routine. It can become debased as a claim to be left alone. What we need to do, however, is to begin to make peace and seek justice, a costly, difficult, daily task.

Quick bike ride early this morning to the entrance of UCSC to show support for the strike. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) represents 522 employees at UCSC, about 25,000 employees across the UC system: patient care workers, custodians, dining hall employees, building maintenance workers, loop bus drivers, and more. Some of the issues on which UCOP (UC Office of the President) has refused to budge for a year now are: fair wages, decent retirement, health benefits, staffing levels. Please go to Meranze’s and Newfield’s web page (Remaking the University) for detailed information and messages from the unions. UPTE-CWA (University Professional & Technical Employees-Communication Workers of America) and CNA (California Nurses Association) are organizing sympathy strikes for Tuesday and Wednesday 8-9 May. The strike continues tomorrow, starting at 4am. See you there.

The words “evangelical” and “conservative” are waiting to be reclaimed by many more people than those who pretend to be so. Let the latter lose their disguises and power over imaginations and souls. The first word means “good news” and can be adopted broadly since the story, without the necessity of church of any kind, including our modern mega versions, is about the real costs of fostering life and the recognition of everyone in need as self. The second one means “to save.” It has long been clear that so-called conservatives are all but people who save, in any broad financial or bodily sense, except for their own narrow designs. They are on a radical, destructive reactionary mission and movement the “forwardness” of which alone—completely backward looking—justifies itself. I’m struck by the imaginary and literary aspect of the political question. So much money is invested in using words in a proprietary way. I think part of the present work of resistance demands a renewed, stubborn claim on our vocabulary and thinking. They are our most public goods. Words like “god,” “moral,” “Christian,” and many more need to be acid-cleaned. Let’s get to it.

I’ve signed a petition to the Santa Cruz City Council regarding a new parking garage project. In the space for comments I wrote:

Parking garages are behemoth of the past. The advent of intelligent automated transportation, use of adaptable public vehicles, concentration of habitat, all of these and more that you are much more aware of than I am, mean that we don’t need another very expensive, single-use parking garage. What strikes me about parking garages is their lack of adaptability and the weight they put psychologically on the minds and wallets of people, including our children and grandchildren. Nothing else can be done with these expensive constructions than park cars that are going to become part of much more fluid networks. PLEASE, consider the best transportation and public policy management before committing to such a massive, unmovable project.

I sent the following message re. the tax bill’s last spasms to my representatives, Feinstein and Panetta. Please edit, add, circulate, and send:

I know that you don’t support the tax bill and will do all you can to stop it. It will increase the deficit without obvious economic benefits for the nation. Many corporations have accumulated enormous capital that they are not willing or able to invest productively. They should not be rewarded for removing it from the reach of taxation. Furthermore, adding more capital to this capacity by lowering their tax rate will increase dangerous speculation. The economy is working without it, in part because social net protections have been dangerously eroded and provide much cheaper labor, as well as frustration, fear, and anger, whereas they should be strengthened. PLEASE, do all you can to prevent the Republican party from having the excuse of a deficit that this tax bill will soon put even more deeply in the red, an excuse that will likely be used to try and erode even further the social protections needed for a free, productive, sharing, and peaceful society.

This is a comment triggered by the language used in an update on UCSC’s strategic academic planning (EVC M. Tromp’s email of Dec. 1, 2017). Academic planning is a periodic necessity, given demographic changes, scientific evolution, political shifting background, institutional fatigue. No question about that. The language used in the present cyclical exercise is what interests me, specifically the use of the word community that appears at the top of the message, since it is addressed to the UC Santa Cruz community. I take the word “community” to echo a sense of common endeavor and real, practical sharing of work, risk, benefits, in an atmosphere of generous give and take, trust, peace, and respect. It is being used in that sense, I assume, but the insistence on deploying the word everywhere is a correlate of the disappearance at UCSC as elsewhere of the real good denoted by the word. It is now used in all communications because a university like UCSC has effectively become a competing institution of our capitalist world. Like all those other institutions, it still needs to squeeze references to old fashion values in the hope that some juice is left in them (for comparison, think of “fidelity” or “trust”). The logic of development of the school itself and the long-developing hostile political environment—diminished taxes for common, public goods—has done away with the values of “community.” Yet, in a magic gesture not all that appropriate for a scientific institution, it finds itself needing to reach out for the mythic charge of the word and hope for the best. I don’t think that the consultants hired to help with this year’s strategic planning can recharge words like “community” and resurrect its old entangled mojo. Whence then?

Hike along the beautiful Clinton River north of Troy (MI). From the road that leads to it, I see huge suburbs with identical houses, surrounded by greenery and trees. Two levels of salary, it seems to me, from the dimensions of the houses and the number of garage doors, as well as the area of the lot. Here and there, I get a glimpse of the regime above, for example vast mansions on lakesides, or the regime below, usually mobile home parks or very modest houses that preceded these new suburbs built in the seventies to the nineties. Difficult to imagine living there: where to walk to meet others, how to make friends if not in the malls or perhaps places with religious themes punctuating this huge space from at least the tenth mile until the fifteenth or sixteenth. Going to work, to school, to shops, everything has become transport outside oneself. No more “home” where one has the sense of residing, of transforming what one has in what one can be, of appropriating landscape and construction as being of oneself, at least partially. One is more and more intensely projected below and beyond a self that escapes the reach of tools of communication which to the services of research (Google) or of self-promotion (Facebook) add refinement upon refinement of desires of presence that they sell to the highest bidder. The stock market value of these smugglers, carriers and marketers of images and desires, according to what I read recently, is about two trillion dollars, just over half of the annual budget of the US government, or about 10% of the country’s economy (Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet-Google, Facebook).

French

Balade le long de la belle rivière Clinton au nord de Troy (MI). De la route qui y mène, je vois d’énormes banlieues aux maisons identiques, entourées de verdure et d’arbres. Deux niveaux de salaire, ce me semble, à la grandeur des maisons et au nombre de portes de garage, ainsi qu’à la surface du lotissement. Ici et là, j’ai un aperçu du régime au-dessus, par exemple de vastes demeures au bord de lacs, ou du régime au-dessous, généralement des parcs de maisons tractées (= mobilhomes) ou des maisons très modestes qui ont précédé ces nouvelles banlieues construites depuis les années soixante-dix aux années quatre-vingt-dix. Difficile de m’imaginer y vivre: où aller à pied à la rencontre d’autres, comment se faire des amis sinon dans les malls ou peut-être les lieux à thèmes religieux ponctuant cet espace énorme depuis le dixième mille au moins jusqu’au quinzième ou seizième. Aller au travail, à l’école, aux magasins, tout est devenu transport au dehors de soi. Plus de “home” où on a le sens de demeurer, de transformer ce qu’on a en ce qu’on peut être, de s’approprier paysage et construction comme étant de soi, au moins partiellement. On est de plus en plus intensément projeté en-deça et au-delà d’un soi introuvable par les outils de communication qui aux services de recherche (Google) ou de “rapprochement” (Facebook) ajoutent raffinement sur raffinement de désirs de présence qu’ils vendent aux plus offrants. La valeur en bourse de ces trafiquants, transporteurs et fomenteurs d’images et de désirs, d’après ce que j’ai lu récemment, est d’environ deux mille milliards de dollars, soit un peu plus de la moitié du budget annuel du gouvernement des États-Unis, ou environ 10% de l’économie du pays (il s’agit de trois grandes compagnies de messagerie et deux d’électronique: Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet-Google, Facebook).