Long Sunday

Total Normality

To the right is the front page of Argentine daily newspaper Clarín, from March 25th 1976, thirty years ago, the day after the coup d'état that ushered in the so-called "Process of National Reconstruction." A "Process" in which some 30,000 would be killed.

Look Now, Pay Later

For a time and  time and time and time and time and time of fear, he already had a few brave words:

Perhaps we should warn you that there is one thing you won’t read, and that is a pat answer for the problems of life. We don’t pretend to make this a spiritual or psychological patent-medicine chest where one can come and get a pill of wisdom, to be swallowed like an aspirin, to banish the headaches of our times.

An Emergent Meritocracy?

Via Alphonse, Al Gore is calling for a renewal of the public sphere.  Invoking the ghost of Habermas, he dares to speak out against the "refeudalization of the public sphere:"

The German philosopher, Jurgen Habermas, describes what has happened as "the refeudalization of the public sphere." That may sound like gobbledygook, but it's a phrase that packs a lot of meaning. The feudal system which thrived before the printing press democratized knowledge and made the idea of America thinkable, was a system in which wealth and power were intimately intertwined, and where knowledge played no mediating role whatsoever. The great mass of the people were ignorant. And their powerlessness was born of their ignorance. American Democracy in Trouble

He goes on to summarize how television, and market based concerns, has come to dominate the "marketplace of ideas."  In fact, Gore believes "it effectively no longer exists."  The absence of this realm leaves those in government without an essential check on their power.

Mythologies

The latest advert for the National Lottery shows two young women walking down a street, one looking chirpy, the other looking distinctly down in the dumps. Whilst the first greets each passer-by or passing dog with a sunny disposition, the second runs into bad luck at every juncture, from catching her heel in a crack in the pavement to having food spilled down her front, so that when her lucky friend goes into the corner shop to buy a lottery ticket she is left a distraught mess outside. The voiceover tells the unfortunate young woman that she is too negative, never takes a chance. And the viewer is left to connect her bad luck with her failure to buy a lottery ticket. Thus a new moral: you, oh recalcitrant customer, you don’t take part in the lottery because you don’t believe you can win; if only you were more positive fate would actually be kinder to you. Why are sales of lottery tickets down? Because of you. You have made your own bad luck. You didn’t take that chance, that one in 5 million chance.