“Men meet together for many reasons in the course of business. They need to instruct or persuade each other. They must agree on a course of action. They find thinking in public more productive or less painful than thinking in private. But there are at least as many reasons for meetings to transact no business. Meetings are held because men seek companionship or, at a minimum, wish to escape the tedium of solitary duties. They yearn for the prestige which accrues to the man who presides over meetings, and this leads them to convoke assemblages over which they can preside. Finally there is the meeting which is called not because there is business to be done, but it is necessary to create the impression that business is being done. Such meetings are more than a substitute for action. They are widely regarded as action.

 
The fact that no business is transacted at a no-business meeting is normally not a serious cause of embarrassment to those attending. Numerous formulas have been devised to prevent discomfort. Thus scholars, who are great devotees of the no-business meeting, rely heavily on the exchange-of-ideas justification. To them the exchange of ideas an absolute good. Any meeting at which ideas are exchanged is, therefore, useful. This justification is nearly ironclad. It is very hard to have a meeting of which it can be said that no ideas were exchanged.”

 
John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash 1929 (50th Anniversary Edition: Houghton Mifflin, New York 1979) Pp 139

KEEP YOUR HANDS AND ARMS AWAY FROM THE AISLE; Stay Inside The Vehicle.

The notion of “reaching across” some “aisle” is nonsense.

It is nothing more than notional, really, isn’t it. It is metaphor. It is an abstraction of an abstraction. Go ahead; extend the metaphor. Try to complete it so it actually makes sense: I’ll be reaching across (this) aisle and… what? Furtively handing across a tight roll of large bills? Agreeing to disagree? 

This acknowledges no relationship to real, particular issues, differences, interests or money at stake. Nothing to do with judgments about policies by people in real circumstances. 

There is an aisle, somewhere, we are told, but there sure as shit isn’t anyone reaching across it, especially at this hour of the night. Unless, we hope, it is the brown-skinned Cleaning Staff, reaching for the wet end of a blunt. I suppose there is some kind of “gallery” somewhere, though I suspect it is place where schoolteachers make public school children be quiet. There may be homeless people and stranded travelers sleeping there now…

 The Aisle is something that we will all use to elbow our way to the Exits, when the shit comes down. We’ve all seen it, haven’t we? Isn’t it always in the aisles that people are trampled to death? And they plunge, from the balconies… into the aisles.

 What is intended by saying “reaching across the aisle” makes more vivid sense to me as reaching from the rail of the cacophanous, tumultuous deck of one hideous, crowded ideological ship to the deck rail of another.

 The very image suggests people who have crowded their way on to these particular vessels like sheep or ungulates elbowing their way to perceived safety in the center of a herd. If agitated by rabble-rousers, cows and sheep will shove and crowd and elbow their way onto a Stock Trailer of Doom- or the deck of a ship, for that matter, I suppose. It’s just a degree of stampede, really. Fires will get these started really well, sure thing. And so, it will be one deck or another, we suppose…

 So be careful reaching across this particular imaginary “aisle.” It is a canonical rule of boatsmanship in moving water- never end up standing downstream from a broadside hull- and never, never end up getting pulled into the gap between two heaving, rolling hulls. If there is a sure way to get mashed into a thick, splintery, salty paste, this is it.

We have been fooled enough times to be skeptical that those people reaching across that “aisle” want us over there, on that side of the “aisle,” anyway. We think they may want us down there, between the hulls, as they roll and buck and grind and slam together. Doesn’t it make you a bit nauseous?

(Advertisement appeared on rear cover of National Geographic in 2008)

For a stunningly succinct analysis of the role of technocrats, experts and bureaucrats in contemporary society, please read John Ralston Saul.

Citation: Seuss, Dr.: Batholomew And The Oobleck. New York: Random House, 1949.

“Beecher declared that men “who have been cast down from affluence to poverty should not grunt and grumble, but bear matters unflinchingly. They should never forget that they are men, even though they die of hunger. An Indian, uncivilized though he was, never flinched when fire was applied to his body. The manly way to meet misfortune is to go down boldly to poverty.” (Lyman Beecher was the Minister of the Plymouth Congregational Church in Brooklyn, and the Father of Harriet Beecher Stowe.)

Susan Jacoby: The Age of American Unreason. Random House; New York. 2008. pp. 73

We encourage you, our Reader, to go and have a look at our Definition For A New World Order: “Economy” and The Democracy,” regarding the Monstrous Reification of “The Economy.” Stealing the future is that much more reprehensible when for a generation we are sold the lie that we have an “economy” and that we have a future. We could have done something about it. This is the true hallmark of the con-man, or the insane demagogue. The delusion lasts long enough to ensure complete, irrecoverable desolation and emmiseration. “It is so much easier, so much safer politically, to simply say “You were the victim of a lie,” than to suggest that both voters and their elected representatives, in both parties, must shoulder much of the blame for their willingness to be deceived. It is easy to imagine the chorus of sneers from ignorant talking heads on cable news if a presidential candidate dared to use the word “ignorance” in public.”

Susan Jacoby: The Age of American Unreason. Random House; New York. 2008. pp. 144

When do we call this terrorism? The Kidnap. The Hostage. The Ransom. The Hijack. The Extortion. The flaming wreckage. The despoliation and ruination of innocents.

“They are Leaders.” (They have led us… where?)

“They are Experts.” (They are charlatans in phony wizard costumes.)

“They know what to do.” (They know what to do, all right. Again, and again…)

“They are skilled.” (They are skilled deceivers. They repeat the same colossal theft over and over again.) 

“They take risks. They must be compensated.” (What risk? The risk that they will take their criminal “compensation” and go to another corporation to extort criminal “compensation?” Or the “Public Sector” to steal from the “public?” The fuck they take risks.)

“It is a Competitive job market. They must be compensated commensurately, or they won’t do the job.” (“Competitive?” Like the “free markets?”)

“They are the best in the world.” (They are a unique breed, that’s for sure.)

“They won’t do it if we don’t pay them their millions upon millions.” (What the fuck do you mean, they “won’t do it?” They won’t extort hundred of millions of dollars from us if they don’t extort hundreds of millions of dollars from us? Again? They won’t hijack, plunder and utterly destroy the productive capacity of global enterprise and the livelihoods of the populace?)

“They earn it.” (They have deluded generations of us to believe that they “earn” profits from real growth of real capital in real productive activity. There are no profits. They “Keep” the (real) “Money.”)

“They bring (shareholder) value. It is they who bring value.” (“Value?” Just how do you “value” the automobile industry now? Your future financial security? Our collective national and global security? Any future ecosystemic continuity?)

“They create profit.” (They invent fictitious “profit.” Then they appropriate it and steal it. “Profits?” What profits? Where are they? Huh? Research and development? Innovation? Your retirement fund?)

“The Market establishes their value.” (“The Market.” “The Market?” The market of they and themselves? Or that there ol’ “Free Market” we’ve heard about?)

“Economic ingenuity produced all this good- and produces only good. And such good is a public good- of general and public benefit.” “If it was invented in the financial markets, it produced only profit (and not loss- or “risk”).” The catechism of Strange, Magical Beliefs: That “the value of Things is found in their Market.” That “It “worked.”” (“It” hijacked and killed any notion or residuum of any economic future for us all, and substituted a farcical tissue of invention.) That the “profits” “It” invented were money. (They still “have” the “money.”) That “It” must therefore be ingenious. (Oh, yeah. Like a hundred clever movie heists.) That “It” produces the highest and best social value. The Mystery and Magic of Neo-liberal Financial Instruments:

WE CONFLATE: fiction with “profit” with money with value and productivity and growth.

WE ADDUCE: productivity from growth.

WE ADDUCE: growth from profit.

WE ADDUCE: profit from fiction.

WE ADDUCE: that “It” works.

WE ADDUCE: That “It” is good.

WE ADDUCE: That “It” is good for all.

WE ADDUCE: That “It” is real. All Glory be to “It.” Amen. 

“There is an acute awareness that things do not find their worth just in the market valuation on a given day.”

The Nation 15 Dec. (Cite Edition and Volume) pp. 36. Thank goodness. Hey, Brother Executive, Can You Spare A Dime? Doesn’t this seem like a really stupid time to be standing there with your hand out? When everything is smashed: When the sandbox is full of excrement and putrescence and the toys are all broken: When they stand there, parroting their tired demands for extortionist lootings. Droning the old doctrines about unfettered capitalism and the freedom of the marketplace… Then, brother, they are deluded. They are deranged. They are insane.

Look around you. Look at what they have done, at what they have wrought. Have you not had enough? What further discrediting of delusional extremist fundamentalism could you possibly imagine? Could you conceivably want further evidence of this insanity? How can you… believe? Can you delude yourself that they are not responsible for this? How can they? They are lunatics. This is beyond daring and beyond careless greed. Anybody who will still stand there and tell you, True Believer, that they are magic and you should give them money, shouldn’t be trusted with their own shoes. We, the Editor, certainly don’t want you, dear Reader, to be standing anywhere near them. It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall. When everything has failed and the world is burning and the hostages are all dead… Isn’t that when we kill the terrorists? Don’t we drag them out by their hair and beat them to death with stones? Brother, doesn’t this seem like a really stupid time to be standing there with your hand out?