Marginalia, Trivialities & Suchlike
Well, I had a whole post prepared about the ravings of John Kelly in regards to the American Civil War, but anything I might have said has since been eclipsed by people far smarter than me.
I’ll leave it at this: Read a fucking book.
I haven’t beaten on Facebook for a while, so let me remedy that.
Virginia Heffernan writes in Wired magazine, comparing Zuckerberg’s shrugging, “Aw gosh, we’re just an apolitical platform” with the gut wrenching reckoning Leslie E. Robertson put himself through after the collapse of the Twin Towers in 2001. Robertson was the chief engineer in the Twin Towers project and wondered after their collapse what he might have done differently, whereas Zuck . . . well, after the election, he said it was “crazy” to say that Facebook could have influenced the vote, and then he went on walkabout trying to get to know American hoomans.
Facebook is indeed a new world order. It determines our digital and real-world behavior in incalculable ways. It does all this without any kind of Magna Carta except a vague hypothesis that connectivity is a given good. And yes, it’s largely unregulated, having styled itself as nothing more than a platform—a Switzerland pose that lets it seem as benign as its bank-blue guardrails, which stand as a kind of cordon sanitaire between Facebook and the rest of the unwashed internet.
In 2006, a college kid talked me off Myspace and onto Facebook by insisting that Facebook was orderly while Myspace was emo and messy. That kid was right. Facebook is not passionate; it’s blandly sentimental. It runs on Mister Rogers stuff: shares and friends and likes. Grandparents and fortysomethings are not spooked by it. Like the animated confetti that speckles Facebook’s anodyne interface, our lives on Facebook—the bios and posts—seem to belong to us and not to the company’s massive statehouse, which looks on indifferently as we coo over pups and newborns. (Or is it a penal colony? In any case, it keeps order.) Facebook just is the internet to huge numbers of people. Voters, in other words.
Further into her piece, Heffernan quotes Siva Vaidhyanathan, who has written a book about Zuckerberg and Facebook. Vaidhyanathan says that Zuckerberg may well have been better off had he finished college, as it may have addressed his lack of “appreciation for nuance, complexity, contingency, or even difficulty.” Adding that “He lacks an historical sense of the horrible things that humans are capable of doing to each other and the planet.” Sound like anyone else we know?
Quiet time in 2017 seems to get interrupted by two things: sitting next to your partner reading the news of the day and one of you ejaculating1 either
I suppose we should be thankful that the “Oh my Gods” are outnumbering the “Oh noes,” but it’s a hard way to live, ya know? The first thing I do upon waking each morning is check my iPad for overnight news alerts, hoping there are none. They’re bound to come through the day (like today’s alert that employers are largely off the hook for including birth control in their health insurance packages. Why? FuckifIknow. It’s certainly not because Trump is a prude or a typical sex-fearing evangelical, maybe just another case of undo-what-the-black-man-did, is my best guess), so it’s a relief when the screen is blessedly blank before my first coffee. Someone remind me why health care (via insurance) is linked to employment again, because that is some stupid shit right there. Oh, and while we’re at it, how come dental care is not health care when it comes to insurance?2
But back to the “Oh my God” that prompted me to write this. Last night, after dining with many senior members of the military (and their plus-ones, who must have had fantastic feelings of ambivalence about being invited to the White House, but this White House), Trump, in a photo op, commented that this was the calm before the storm, and when asked by the press what he meant, replied, “You’ll see.” Presidenting by reality show rules, ain’t it grand? And it makes for an awesome night’s sleep, let me tell you. Will we bomb North Korea? Invade Mali? You’ll see. Tune in tomorrow.
1 I am trying to rehabilitate this verb to include definition number two in common conversation again.
2 I know the historical reasons for this, I just want to know who thinks they still make sense in the 21st century.
Here’s a long excerpt from Michael H. Little’s review of Rush’s “A Farewell to Kings.”
Once upon a time, in that purely mythical land called Canada, a power trio called Rush sat down and said, “Let us abandon our blues-based approach to rock, and mold a new reality, closer to the heart. Featuring lots of Renaissance Faire type 12-string guitar shit and long and meandering conceptual songs featuring unnecessarily complex time signatures and lots of cool glockenspiel and dumb fantasy lyrics that will blow 14-year-old minds.”
And true to their word our power-prog triumvirate went on to forge their creativity, and the result was 1977’s A Farewell to Kings, which depending on how you look at things is either one very deep prog-nasty foray into the philosophy of the lamentable Ayn Rand or one of the greatest comedy albums of our time. The great thing about A Farewell to Kings is you can’t lose . . .
I like the majestic opening of “A Farewell to Kings,” but I withdraw my allegiance the moment Lee opens his Big Bird mouth. Alex Lifeson plays some great guitar shortly thereafter, but like I said before: I’m simply incapable of putting up with Lee’s pipes long enough to get to Lifeson’s playing. “Cinderella Man” is Ayn Rand set to music; our Cinderella Man shows his riches to the poor as an incentive for them to get up off their lazy asses and work, because sharing his wealth would be, well, immoral. This Rand person would have gotten along wonderfully with Donald Trump . . .
I used to hate “Closer to the Heart” until I realized that it was one of the funniest songs ever to make it onto FM radio. Now I know its words by heart and turn it on whenever I need a laugh. Its sincerity of message is altogether risible, especially when one realizes that in Ayn Rand’s world what getting closer to the heart really means is embracing laissez-faire capitalism and utterly rejecting ethical altruism. Fuck the poor! . . .
The Village Voice’s Robert Christgau called A Farewell to Kings-era Rush “the most obnoxious band currently making a killing on the zonked teen circuit,” but can 30 million Rush fans (I just picked that number out of a hat) really be wrong? Yes and no. I will forever hold that the combination of Lee’s voice and the band’s preening progressive rock impulses are the very definition of obnoxiousness. But Rush seem to mark a necessary stage in the development of many young music fans, in the same way that Frank Zappa did in mine. What I find worrisome are those who never outgrow them. To these folks all I can say is, it’s time to mold a new reality, you know, closer to the heart. Closer to the heart!
A couple of things here: Little is dead-on is his estimation of Rush’s audience, at least relative to my own experience. I had a friend growing up who got turned on to Rush when he started playing in his own band in high school; me, I was indifferent. I liked “Moving Pictures” when it came out, but I think some of that was a sink or swim reaction, because it was everywhere at the time. But after that surge in airplay, I assumed my posture of indifference to Geddy and the boys, while my pal continued to sing their praises. Then one morning in the ninth grade I listened to Red Barchetta (you know, really listened, maaaaan) before leaving for school and it bowled me over. Looking back, I realize it was probably because it’s a song about a kid driving a bitchin’ car, and I was obsessed with getting my driver’s license and gaining all the freedom I was certain it represented. And so I came to own Rush albums, including “A Farewell to Kings.” The song Closer to the Heart got a good amount of airplay around this time, and I admit to a certain zeal for a well-placed glockenspiel, so I was good with it.
Thankfully, I neither knew anything about Rand’s objectivism, nor did I give Rush’s lyrics too much thought. I say thankfully, because I can picture 16-year-old me becoming an obnoxious Randian. That’s one bullet of youth I managed to dodge. I made it to college before someone caused me to read Rand (The Fountainhead), and my reaction was a shrug and a slight wish that I had the time back. The most Randian member of Rush, Alex Lifeson has himself moved past the ideology , and I guess I pity him in that for most people, their brush with objectivism ends up amounting to a couple of second hand paperbacks, some barely remembered “deep” discussions with friends and maybe an objectivist-leaning essay answer in college, but for Lifeson, he’s got that phase immortalized on vinyl.
I still have my Rush vinyl, and I’ll never get rid of them. Do they keep the young man in me alive? Maybe. Or maybe it’s just good to know that I can find some tasty glockenspiel licks should the need arise.
It should come as no surprise that a man who demands loyalty from others, but gives none himself would tuck tail when the going gets rough. But for their sakes, I hope all the (as yet) un-indicted co-conspirators are paying attention to how Trump reacted when his man Luther Strange was beaten in the GOP primary for one of Alabama’s senate seats. The Beast of Twitter deleted the now embarrassing tweets in support of Strange. Of course, dummy doesn’t understand that the internet is forever. In fact, I’ll go ahead and commemorate them here too:
That’s a stalwart leader right there.