Anti-Salute

McEwan:

"The latest leaked document to garner outrage at WikiLeaks is a "long list of key facilities around the world that the US describes as vital to its national security...

...'An unhelpful development' is a really good way of describing it, IMO. The release of this list doesn't strike me as quite warranting profound alarm, if only because most of the sites on the list would be evident targets for disruption even if they hadn't been officially sanctioned by this document as important to US interests. And terrorists aren't stupid. "World Trade Center" didn't need to be on a list to be a target.

On the other hand, it doesn't seem particularly necessary to hand this list to people who might be interested in causing maximum chaos and/or destruction, nor particularly scandalous if the document had been kept concealed.

So. Unhelpful development. Yeah."

(emphasis mine)

Liberals - not much different from conservatives, but with more gay, black and female. Take it away, Walter Benn Michaels (h/t Shetterly):

"...And once we succeed in convincing ourselves that the poor are people who need our respect more than they need our money, our own attitude towards them becomes the problem to be solved, and not their poverty. We can now devote our reforms not to removing class but to eliminating what we Americans call “classism.” The trick is to analyse inequality as a consequence of our prejudices rather than of our social system, and thus replace the pain of giving up some of our money with the comparative pleasure of giving up (along with our classism) our racism, sexism, and homophobia..."

*

Um, Jack - the two quotes just aren't all that related, fool.

But, yes they are.

No, Jack - they're not. McEwan's just a well intentioned institutionalist liberal. She stands for good stuff, you know. Without McEwan we wouldn't know that rape is like wicked bad, dude; and don't forget that she repeatedly notes that Barack Obama is a corporate tool who's not very good at keeping his promises or loyalties in order. And let's be frank, asshole, she's making a really good point.

Which is what?

That Wikileaks threatens to provide demonstrably bad people - many of whom oppress their women and minorities - with a list of targets, along with a host of other nefarious revelations, that will damage the ability of the government to keep doing governmenty things. Plus, chaos and shit. Don't forget maximum destruction. It's just not necessary to point out the government has security interests - and properties - relevant to the performance of its tasks, because there are people who want to disrupt that work.

What kind of work?

You know, government stuff.

Like bailing out predatory lending institutions and banks, waging resource wars at the behest of transnational energy and defense firms, covering for oil companies that poison entire ecosystems, imprisoning environmentalists as terrorists, militarizing every possible social space, especially at those points of transit which allow for maximum humiliation, handing the Commons over to media concerns, insurance houses, investment firms and extraction industries, fiat executions, rounding up and imprisoning "undocumented workers" fleeing regions run by US state and industry back oligarchies and coup juntas, mandating involuntary consumption of private insurance services, oh unreal gods make it stop already...

But, dude, we so like need the government because without it there would be bad men who treat women poorly, and racism and bullying of gays and shit. What's the problem with you, man? Do you want a world full of sexist rapists and Klansman and homophobes?

Isn't that all going on right now, with the State in charge? Perhaps, because the state maintains these divisive distinctions, where it can, and "ameliorates" them where it must? Isn't it possible that some middle and upper class liberals don't think bad thoughts all the time and get offended by gross displays of social regressiveness? Why does the state work to maintain social distinctions and identities while at the same time working to soften the impact of them in very specific social environments?

Why would that be?

Why would what be, Jack?

Why would it be in the interest of the best government capital has ever bought to maintain race and gender distinctions in some regions, but work to ameliorate the appearance of them in others?

Um...

Could it possibly be because those regions, in territory and in social space, which produce the managerial segments of the ruling class also reproduce the social circumstances necessary to maintaining the capitalist capture of these servants? In some cases, that means an environment of social tolerance which masks an otherwise and ofttimes more trenchantly capitalist set of relations...

Um, dude, rape and racism are bad, guy...

We are in complete agreement, but...

Guy, there is no but. That shit is bad. It's the worst. It makes me sick, you fucking pig fucking fucker.

Take it away again, Walter Benn Michaels:

"...But the inequalities between masters and servants (and rich and poor, bosses and workers) are not produced by racism and sexism: They are the products of capitalism and liberalism. With respect to economic inequality, racism and sexism function as sorting systems, technologies not for producing that inequality but for distributing its rewards. Hence, even the most successful battle against racism and sexism will not close the gap between the rich and the poor; it will just rearrange their sexes, sexualities and skin colours. A France [or US, ~ Jack] where more black people were rich would not be a more economically equal France; it would just be a France with a wider gap between rich black people and poor black people...."

See how this stuff relates, yet?

And do you see why, just maybe, maximum disruption of the operation of the state might help you achieve your admirable goals, without all the resource and drug wars, military rape units and thirty three percent of all black men in prison?