Extreme Makeover: City Edition

Photo credit: Chris Hawley, the superstar urban planner who was so instrumental in allowing this great project to come to fruition in the first place.

The past few weeks have proven to be quite an interesting time for real-estate and urban development in Buffalo and not in that multimillion dollar, ribbon-cutting sort of way.

Grabbing the boldest headlines was Reality TV’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition’s visit to Buffalo. The show undertook a miraculous refurbishment of a rather dilapidated block of Massachuttses St. on the city’s struggling West Side. The Herculean construction of a brand new, eco-friendly, context-fitting house served as the centerpiece of this project that seemed to instantly come and go like the rapid changes in weather we’ve been experiencing around here lately.

This television program typically focuses on helping out destitute families living in a semi-rural and exurban settings. The derelict property in question is usually spaced far enough away from neighbors that the house itself is devoid of any sort of integrative context to the community at-large. What the show accomplished in Buffalo last week on the other hand, was to show that in an actual city a house is not just a standalone abstraction, but rather a delicate piece of a greater organism. Over the past several decades, mainstream American culture, in the name of rugged individualism has thrown the concept of the walkable, densely-populated city under the bus. Having this TV program tackle a living, breathing urban neighborhood was a certainly a breath of fresh air as opposed to fixing up the same old isolated slice of prefab Americana out in the boondocks.

In addition to offering such a stark change in scenery, this EMHE episode will likely throw a vastly more positive light in on city of Buffalo than any Forbes Top-30 list or Anthony Bourdain vignette could ever dream of accomplishing. Seeing hordes of local volunteers selflessly devote their time and efforts to this project will redefine what a “city of good neighbors” really means. Witnessing the methodical, green dismantling of Ms. Powell’s decrepit old house thanks to the guidance of Buffalo ReUse and their nietzschean spiritual leader Mike Gainer will raise new questions about the Darwinistic implications for cities in a nation on the brink of economic and cultural collapse. The impulsive drill baby, drill! mentality of knocking down buildings with a wrecking ball and bulldozer arm was set aside for the first time in the show’s tenure.

Architecturally, the new house will not win any beauty contests, (or AIA circle-jerk awards, for that matter) but it’s certainly a refreshing, heavy step in the right direction in terms of appropriate context and form for a historic integrative community. Before this, infill housing in Buffalo has almost always come in the underwhelming format of sheepish imitations of the cheap, souless, public-realm-eschewing garbage that has been continuously been plopped out in the suburbs for decades. The house stands vertical and proud like a good city building should. The designers could have taken the easy way out and built a conventional sprawling, horizontal house by simply annexing the adjacent vacant lot. Vertical architecture represents a person standing upright, ready to take action and conquer challenges whereas horizonal home is a perfect metaphor for the spazzed-out couch potato whose strongest foreseeable action is what the hell to do next with the remote control. The latter is the architecture of a dissociative locale. Symbolically these comparisons all boil down to the age-old battle between progressive, civilized-values of ordinary people taking the bull by the horns vs. the complacent inaction of a populace waiting to be taken over by some gang of charismatic fascist thugs emptily promising quick fixes for complex problems very few people have a deep grasp of.

Hopefully when this episode finally airs. those couch potato viewers will finally get a glimpse how a tight-knit fabric and engaging public realm of a walkable urban community can go a lot farther toward reinforcing morals and family values than millions of people robotically nodding their head the Glenn Becks and Sarah Palins (or whichever other reactionary demogouge du-jour happens next to spring up out of the fertile astroturf) from the social isolation of their supersized family rooms out on the cul-de-sacs of the flyover metroplexes scattered all about Middle America.

NY-23: The Circus Called, They Want Their Big Tent Back

Sarah Palin: The gift that keeps on giving. That’s the long and short of Democrat Bill Ownens’ victory yesterday in NY’s 23rd Congressional district–a place that’s been electing Republicans nonstop since the days of Lincoln.

I (like so many others) sense a trend developing and I certainly like what I see. The hard-right, batshit, wingnut faction of America’s conservative movement has undertaken a Stalinesque ideological purging of moderate viewpoints the GOP—a party they believe should completely reflect their own interests without an inch of wiggle room for more moderate ideas. The national party apparatus is effectively allowing the loony wing to shrink the once-grand ol’ party down to a reactionary, nativist regional party.

Guess what? The circus called—they want their big tent back. The Theocon faction is doing so well at trying to force all GOP candidates to tow the reactionary line of opportunist, demogaugic schmucks like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Michele Malkin and Sarah Plain. Dudes, keep it up—because of people like you, the Democratic party may soon swell to an unprecedented girth.

These “purist” carpetbagging interlopers apparently have no problem shitting upon an important, old-timey tenet of conservatism—respecting local values. In a nation this vast, two generic national parties can in no way account for myriad regional political flavors. Republicans in the Northeast have classically been liberal or moderate on social issues. Democrats down South once had no shame in promoting Jim Crow and fighting the Civil Rights Movement. Once upon a time in NYC, Republicans were often cross-endorsed on the now-defunct Liberal party ballot line with nary a muss or fuss. I have a newsflash for the Theocons : Here up North, conservative-minded folks are more concerned with things like excessive taxation and government largesse rather than how many gays can be burned at the stake or how to use government to tell women what they can and can’t do with their own bodies. Your brainless tactics will do nothing but help fissure your fragile–souless party into two outflanked factions.

Perhaps this trend will finally reveal to the majority that the Republican party is an emperor wearing no clothes. Since the 1960s Southern Strategy, the GOP became a two-headed monster of two completely contradictory ideologies—secular laissez faire capitalism and Southern bigot religious populism. Boiled down to their deep ideological foundations, these two idea systems just don’t work together but with the aid of political consultants and demogouge pundits, people can be brainwashed into believing just about anything. The Christian “love thy neighbor,” and Ayn Randian “Greed is good” sure make strange bedfellows. In theory, of course.

Alls’ I know (as we Upstaters like to say), is that things are starting to get real interesting. Who could have predicted this particular brand of change?

Election Yawn

Tomorrow will go down in the books as being one of the most underwhelming election days I can remember. The prospect of dragging my ass down to my friendly neighborhood polling station just to yank levers for a Sheriff and County Comptroller doesn’t exactly ignite epic feelings of civic engagement. I can take an educated guess that many of my peers will share a similar sense of indifference. Most will probably not even bother voting.

Granted, most local elections are frustrating yawners. But in this one there isn’t even a semi-important executive vote to cast. Because of the way the national two-party system catastrophically retards state and local elections, WNY and much of NYS has been left under the yoke of a hyper-dysfunctional one-party regime. The “opposition” party—we won’t go there–it has become more and more a tragic joke on the national stage. Because of this, we’ll be stuck with the same opportunist schmuck in City Hall for another 4 years. Tomorrow, Byron Brown will be a shoe-in–all the fun took place in the primary election. That’s all fine and good but consider how very few people come out to vote for non-presidential elections. Having a crucial race take place during the primaries makes it even worse if the people are too ambivalent to even make it out on election day proper.

Sometimes I even question why I still follow politics or any else thing that matters for humanity. On top of the mountain of mass entertainment options currently out there, with Al Gore’s great invention coupled with that godsend known as BitTorrent, people like me have even less of a reason to give a shit about anything of remote consequence. In just month or two I’ve managed to watch nearly three seasons of Mad Men episodes.

Back to things that matter. There is one innovate idea myself and some friends have discussed: non-partisan elections. This is a simple solution that might help get a lot more people interested in state and local politics. Let’s face facts, the two-party bullshit doesn’t scale down very well below the level of national politics. In our case, the D/R duopoly doesn’t take into account the political realities of the Northeast. Ditto for the West Coast and Upper Midwest. Even down south and out on the prairie, the people’s political aspirations are likely a bit more nuanced (probably in ways I don’t even want to know) than the simplistic hegemony of big red.

So, yeah. Just imagine steeping into that voting booth and being able to pick candidates without those otherwise ubiquitous Ds and Rs attached to their names. For once it might be possible for people to have to actually do five minutes of research before choosing a candidate in a local race. It’s so each to pull levers in auto-pilot mode when all the candidates are neatly arranged in those vertical partisan columns. I can only imagine how nice it would feel tomorrow if Lord Byron had a viable opponent.

Afghanistan = Fantasy Nation

Wait, why the hell are we still over there?

This issue was brought to light in a story published the other day about a US Govt. official and former Marine Captain, Matthew Hoh, resigning his post and critically calling into question that burning question I posed above.

But last month, in a move that has sent ripples all the way to the White House, Hoh, 36, became the first U.S. official known to resign in protest over the Afghan war, which he had come to believe simply fueled the insurgency.

“I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States’ presence in Afghanistan,” he wrote Sept. 10 in a four-page letter to the department’s head of personnel. “I have doubts and reservations about our current strategy and planned future strategy, but my resignation is based not upon how we are pursuing this war, but why and to what end.”

Any Joe Schmoe these days knows the puppet regime the US set up in Kabul barely has control over the capital itself, much less a single hectare of land outside the city.

But many Afghans, he wrote in his resignation letter, are fighting the United States largely because its troops are there — a growing military presence in villages and valleys where outsiders, including other Afghans, are not welcome and where the corrupt, U.S.-backed national government is rejected.

Which calls into question: What the fuck is Afghanistan in the first place?

Afghanistan is a fake country. That collection of lines on the map is utter bullshit. For the past century or so, this fragmented, geographic patchwork of tribal lands has been hallucinated as a single nation through the eyes of the vivid Western imperialist imagination. Like many other so-called nations Winston Churchill triumphantly pulled out of his cavernous rectum, Afghanistan is a non-country that the western world can’t seem to grasp as anything but as the kind of post-colonial country that should stay as-is on the world map forever.

Too many others to speak of here: Somalia is now really two different countries (well, the chaotic hellhole in the South barely constitutes anything) but the Western elites have a stick jammed too far up their collective ass to recognize the stable Somaliland in the north as being its own sovereign nation. Iraq–we won’t go there–it should really be the poster child of fantasized nation states. And the worst is just about every country in Sub-Saharan Africa–the imperial Brits and their Froggie sycophants really went to town drunkenly scribbling up lines on a map that would do the best damn job creating nations comprised of antagonistic tribes who strive to mass-murder one another. They even pulled this shit where white people live: Post-Iron Curtain, The fantasy of Yugoslavia was presumed to live on despite myriad ethnic conflicts and bloody population movements. Finally, it was just the summer before last that Condi Rice blathered on about preserving Georgia’s “territorial integrity” despite the fact that North Ossetia (Ossetians speak an Iranian tongue that’s not at all related to the Georgian language) constitutes an ethnically homogeneous and completely separate region from Georgia-proper.

Speaking of the Russkies, it’s kind of ironic that we can look just to the north of Fantasystan to find examples of real nations formed many decades after the post-colonial world atlas dance party. After the breakup of the Soviet Russian Empire, a whole slew of natural states containing the endearing stan suffix formed in what was previously a collection of mostly Turkic-populated provinces of said Empire. Nations like Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan are built around the majorities of a single ethnicity unlike the fantasized nations which were set up to minimize the challenge of natural resource plundering by developed Western countries.

Which brings up my final point–if there is a single, logical reason why the US is still mucking around in Fantasystan, it’s because of natural resources–any student of realpolitik knows this–it’s the economy stupid! For fuck’s sake, it’s not like the West ever really gave two shits about nation-building.

Recession Rage: “Hell, It Takes Even Eli Manning Six Years to Make a Hundred Million Dollars!”

It’s about time we start seeing this sort of populist rage. The teabaggers peasant hate squads are still convinced that billionaire plutocrats are the best thing since sliced bread.

Public Opt-Out: More For Us!

Normally, I have been a staunch opponent of “compromising” on healthcare reform. With the supposed progressive party having a Congressional majority, it seems both spineless and imprudent to chip away at a reform bill that’s already more thoroughly chewed up than the White House dog’s favorite frisbee.

However, there is one compromising idea that doesn’t sound so bad–the ability for individual states to opt out of a public option. If this ends up becoming reality, red(neck) states can revel in their triumph of “states rights” liberty, while the sane, progressive states can actually enjoy the fruits of existing within an industrialized nation without having to “compromise” with the wingnut element of society.

Both conservative and liberal Democrats seem to be open to a new public option proposal floated by Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Tom Carper (D-DE) to allow states not to participate in the plan if they decide they don’t want to.

A Baucus aide tells me “Senator Baucus will look closely at this proposal, as well as other proposals, and could consider supporting them as part of an overall package as long as it achieved his health care reform goals while getting 60 votes.”

Along the same lines, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) told Politico that he likes the idea of leaving the decision up to the states.

If the residents of the culturally-backward redneck states want to keep on getting fucked in the ass (without any socialized lube) by the corporate healthcare racket, so be it. Let em’ all eat all the partially-hydrogenated Sara Lee cake they desire. They get to learn first hand the consequences of continuing to elect corporate stooges who don’t hold any of their real interests at heart.

Texas has the highest rate (24.1%) of uninsured people out of any state in the union. The great people of the Lonestar State can be comforted in knowing that their mighty teabagger utopia won’t be messed with by intrusive programs that might audaciously help make their compadres healthier.

Admittedly, I have a hard time envisioning a scenario in which the Lone Star State doesn’t opt out of the public option. Texas has a preponderance of elected Republicans who simply don’t want the people of Texas to have access to health care. Governor Rick Perry openly advocates for leaving the nation. Why should we expect him to opt in to a public option? Whether via the Republican Governor, Republican-majority State House and Senate, or Republican-majority Congressional/Senatorial delegation, I fail to see how Texas–home to the highest rate of uninsured residents of any state in the country–manages to stay opted in. Granted, this proposal is far from being complete or specific. But unless there is a component that strongly compels every state to participate, this latest compromise could end up hurting the Texans who need this reform the most.

People in Red States basically rely on Federal policies to mitigate the harm perpetrated on us by our own elected officials. Because we live in Texas, because we’ve been gerrymandered into a scenario where both houses of our legislature and Congressional delegations are majority-troglodyte, we might not end up with the same right to access care as folks in states with sane representation at any level. And while this is a pretty strong argument as to why we need to elect more Democrats in Texas at the state and local level, it’s not OK for more of our people to suffer needlessly while we work towards doing it.

The last time (likely for good) I was in Texas it was to visit my bible-thumping grandparents about 15 years ago. Grandad seriously believed that god put dinosaur bones in the ground to “confuse us” and “test our faith.” Again, let em’ eat cake.

To fellow Progressives, this refurbished concept of “states rights” might seem a bit revolting at first. But never fear, a little old-fashioned decentralization would help our nation make great strides in chipping away the death grip monopoly an ever shrinking roster of mega-corporations wields over all of us little people. The Oligarchy (the top 1% of the country’s wealth) that runs virtually every facet of our modern society relies on having one big all-powerful federal government they can manipulate with minimal effort. When power is dispersed, it’s harder for these centralized, monolithic institutions to control all the levers so efficiently.

Oil Apocalypse: This Could Happen to Us

This video can come off as being a tad sensationalist but there are a few important things to learn from it. Primarily, this piece provides food-for-thought in terms of how fragile our modern techo-enhanced civilization really is.

A staggering 10% of all the crude oil on the planet is shipped to market through a tiny strait in the Persian Gulf. A small gang of enterprising malcontents likely wouldn’t find it all too hard to disrupt his shipping jugular. Just imagine the shock the global economy would immediately feel if such a large volume of oil output suddenly went offline.

When it comes to energy, our society is run almost completely by fossil fuels. America’s way of life is so critically dependent upon timely deliveries of the black crack that any major disruption will render much of the population mentally disemboweled indefinitely.

Imagine post-oil crash life in America’s crown jewel–the suburbs. People who live in these place are almost completely dependent upon automobiles for virtually every errand, not to mention the stultifying commute to their shitty, soul-crushing jobs. Without oil, American Suburbia’s initial function in the post-crash era will be that of one great coast-to-coast salvage yard. “Thrifting” will take on a whole new meaning and certainly become the new American pastime.

Bill Maher on Climate Change Denial

And the rest of us need to get in this game, too. Because when the “teabaggers” find out that Obama is acting all Al Gore-like up there in Copenhagen, they’re going to say that it’s more of his socialist agenda, and that he’s taking his marching orders from Sweden. Because they don’t know that Copenhagen is in Denmark.

Required Viewing for Change

If there was to ever be a blueprint for how to properly (sustainably) carry on the project of human civilization, it should be based on the viewing of this eye-opening, mini movie called The Story of Stuff that sums up our consumerist, wasteocracy economic system that is severely threatening Planet Earth’s ability to sustain large human populations on her surface in the future.

After watching the video, the burning “Where do we go from here?” question seems to call for a critical answer. How will we evolve? Which cultural and economic attributes need to be weeded out for the greater good?

Notes from the Gulag: What is Hard Work?

“Hey Dima, I been busting my balls nonstop for months and months on end breaking up this rock-hard pile of govno and all I’m gonna get is an untimely death-by-typhoid.”

“Da, Da, Vanechka. Ya znayu, eta pravda! I’ve been freezing my scrawny zhopa off and all I’m gonna get is this lousy t-shirt.”

One of the most commonly occurring components of reactionary, “individualist” American groupthink is the constant invocation of the idea that all redistribution of wealth is bad because one feels they work a heckuva a lot harder than those lower down the economic totem pole. The I work hard meme isn’t to dissimilar to the I’ve got mine, to hell with everyone else mantra that has clouded the healthcare debate. Much of this boils down to age-old class chauvinism and tribalistic insecurity being disguised as a “I do more hard work than you” pissing contest. How do we define work anyway? What makes work hard? Does simply logging a lot of hours on the job inherently mean one is entitled to a better life?

Meet the biggest whiner and pisser of them all–the 9-to-5 office grunt. In my time, I’ve met more of them than I care to recall.

I’ve worked in many white collar office environments full of these pricks who fancy themselves as being the creme de la creme of hard workers. Many of these desk jockeys have no clue what real hard work entails. Their duties consists of such arduous tasks like inputting information into a computer, manipulating numbers on spreadsheets, gabbing on the phone, kissing their boss’s ass, and utilizing a remedial level of bullshitting aptitude to justify their existence in the office. From what I’ve observed the average office drone preforms maybe three-five hours of actual work over the course of an eight hour day. People in management positions get away with even less, since socializing is a part of their job and it can be rather difficult for the casual observer to differentiate gabbing from real work. And don’t get me started on meetings!

So, back to the office drone. They have so effective hammering it into your head time and time again that $god$ helps those who help themselves. That’s right, you insecure shit. If you just work hard enough, kiss enough ass, act like you put in those extra nine yards, it may be YOU who is the one with your own enclosed office! You will be the big dog with big plush chair to sink your fat ass into. That hot coworker three cubicles over who otherwise wouldn’t give you the time of day out on the street now has to pretend you’re something a few echelons up from the complacent slob you really are. If you play your cards right, maybe she will need to use your flaccid little dick as a grip on that slippery corporate ladder. Yes, YOU can become the even bigger dog–the one who can come and go freely from the office during work hours. You can be the one the company wastes ridiculous sums of money on so you can jet set all over the country to play golf with other big dogs.

Except, no. Sadly, you’re neither charming nor good-looking enough to convince three layers of superiors that your shit don’t stink. Keep dreaming. Keep working so damn hard. Just be sure not to keep your head up too high. Piss off the wrong office personality and you’ll be out on the streets rubbing shoulders with those people you currently despise so much for not working as hard as you. No job and you’ll be just one catastrophic illness away from living in a tent city.

These pampered idiots couldn’t even begin to imagine what hard work entails! For a greater portion of the history of human civilization, the majority of people were subjected to incredibly hard work just to survive on a daily basis. The masses toiled in the fields, slaved over frivolous public works, and performed a litany of other humiliating tasks just so a tiny, elite slice of society (by divine right!) could sit around on their asses all day and produce more inbred children to carry on the torch.

What they don’t realize is that the 9-to-5, keyboard-tapping, hard work regimen is really one big free ride. The lifestyle you’re accustomed to is largely a product of things far beyond own labors. The luxuries are numerous. Being able to drive your own massive steel box on wheels to traverse frivolous stretches of terrain on a daily basis, live in a stand-alone house you don’t have to share with other families, numb your brain with electronic entertainment, and the ability to travel great geographic distances for recreational purposes is all a result of what society- at-large enables you do. Simply being born in an industrialized nation like the USA grants you so many luxuries (like the ones listed above) a majority of the world’s population (the real hard workers) will never have access to. Being born into a working or middle class family in this country means that with modest personal effort, you’ll be guaranteed a life of high material consumption and protection from all the pesky little dangers that historically plagued most of humanity day-by-day.

The big free ride comes from all the energy resources we extract from the earth.One barrel of oil equals 23,200 hours of human work output. That’s a hell of a lot of virtual slaves doing all that hard work so you never have to get any exercise. There’s a damn good reason we use horsepower as a unit of measurement. Oil is so densely-packed with energy that the human effort involved in extracting the stuff from the ground is far surpassed by what we ultimately get out of it (and subsequently why most so-called alternative fuels will never cut the mustard). Hard work, my ass. Oil is the closest thing to free energy that humanity has ever discovered. No oil means your rotund figure would instead be a scrawny stick still toiling in the fields, getting baked out in the sun. No cars. No insulated houses. No more vacations. No more XBOX 360 and the big flatsceeen on your oversized drywall partition. Life would suck and you would be resigned to doing more hard work than you could ever imagine!

But still, with all this awesome free shit, you’re still having to spend 8 hours a day in a fluorescent-lit twilight zone. What gives? Machinery and automation was supposed to relieve us of having to work so damn hard in the first place. Why most both parents toil away for 40 hours a week? What does all this hard work really amount to?

The gross domestic product (GDP) is plummeting at the same time that jobs are disappearing. Why should there be any connection between the two? If society produces 10% less, why don’t we all just work 10% less? Didn’t things work like that for hundreds of thousands of years of human existence? When people figured out easier ways to get what they needed, they spent less time doing it.

It’s called “leisure.” Leisure is essential for a democratic society involving people in all aspects of self-government. Instead of working frenetically to produce “stuff” that we don’t have the time to enjoy, wouldn’t we be better off with less “stuff” and more time of our own? Research repeatedly shows that, once important needs are met, additional belongings bring no additional happiness. Yet work is strongly related to stress.

Yes, a logical brain would assume that our unprecedented creation of material wealth should manifest itself in better lives for all. Greater happiness and security across the board means less crime, suffering and insecurity. Having more free time means less stress and increased happiness, at least for someone who doesn’t have such a shitty family life that they spend more hours cooped up in the office just to avoid being home. Then again, a nasty home life is often a product of too many people working too damn much in the first place.

So many people, especially Americans, don’t seem to posses the ability to contemplate the effects their own mundane actions have on a society-wide scale. It’s all the reptilian-brained me, me, me. Yes, humans are individualist creatures. We all have unique personalities and this wonderful gift called free-will. At the same time, we are also insanely social animals. We love to fit in with a group and feel accepted by others. For hundreds of thousands of years, a strong group has meant survival and security. Individualism and collectivism must be kept in a delicate balance like yin and yang. If everyone is left to be completely greedy and not help one another out, society as a whole will be a rather ugly place.

Our materialist way of life is nihilistic and will only lead to a downward spiral of resource depletion, which will in turn just cause more human misery and suffering. American hyper-individualism has no real values at its core, just more and more ego-stroking and chest thumping with no tangible objectives for the greater society. All that hard work we do enables us to distract ourselves with more disposable junk that will keep the debt/slavery cycle going until there is no fresh air left for any of us to breathe. Maybe if we all worked a little less harder and learned to enjoy our lives and respect each other a little bit more, there will indeed be some of that fresh air left for all of us.