I thought I could avoid politics, but I can't. I just can't. Politics control us--as Huey Newton said, everything is political including our food. My intelligence tells me to skirt WAR and just ignore it and soon it will go away--yeah sure!--and I'm not supposed to be paranoid about OUR (the USA) time's a'coming--like the British Imperialists got theirs--and since the Industrial Revolution began in the late 1800s, the USA, the white-controlled USA that is, has been an Imperialist nation, too. It seems all politics leads to a "my dog's bigger than your dog" attitude and then when a nation wins a war it begins to believe it is invincible, "the greatest nation in the world!" "a nation risen up by God himself" "our armies are invincible" "we are the world's policemen!" and then they start strutting the strutting-eagle aspect of our legends being anthropomorphized--posturing, which is what those that outclass We the People and those who harshly rule over us see us as fodder for their political invasions and occupations--they lord over us--our president sneers at us--Dick Cheney tells us to go fuck ourselves--but then that's why the Capitol is on a hill--that's why the wealthy love to live in penthouses or on high-floors--far above what is beneath them--the New World Order castles and manors. We the People of the United States are suckers for the antics of these spoiled-brat rich bastards--and here I go--these "lords of the manor" who get us into these Sociological messes--a weak-physique Theodore Roosevelt, for instance, creating the Spanish-American War to prove what a powerful MAN he was and he created that war based on perhaps our own military blowing up the USS Maine in Habana Harbor--a war in which Teddy Roosevelt, the once-weakling boy, poses as a calvary charge leader--charging up San Juan Hill with his cowboy roughriders and later we Sociologists find out that was a staged charge--filmed by Hollywood--then weak-ass Teddy went on proving how STRONG and TOUGH a bastard he really was by taking our Great White Fleet around the world to show that he had political strength whether he personally had physical strength or not--speaking softly (which Teddy didn't do if you've ever heard a recording of him speaking--there's a film of him giving a speech, too) and carrying his big stick (which means he had a little dick) and saying "Bully!" There's a great satire on Teddy Roosevelt in the great old b/w movie Arsenic and Old Lace--the wonderful Archibald Leach (Cay-ree Grant) in the lead role with some of the best character actors and actresses in the business including Boris Karloff playing the crazed sisters's even more insane brother and his sidekick the wily and oily wonderful Peter Lorre--who drank himself silly over the roles Hollywood forced him into after he made his fame in the famous German film "M" as a serious actor--Hollywood downgraded poor old Peter to grade B roles--still Peter acted his ass off even in those type-casted roles. And before we forget, it was the filthy rich Herbert Hoover who got us into the Great Depression; and it's his Hoover Institution (funded by the Hoover Foundation) at Stanford in Palo Alto who gave us Condo-Leasing Rice--notice how all rich-ass people form foundations--check it out--watch the Bill Moyers PBS teevee show and watch how many rich couples's foundations sponsor him--it's amazing--at least 15 different rich couples's foundations sponsoring old Rev. Bill--all capped off by the John and Catherine MacArthur Foundation--the gold mine when it comes to obtaining a grant! Benefits depend on the rich. Charity depends on the rich. Painters depend on the rich. Musicians depend on the rich--in terms of symphony orchestras, ballet troops, etc., you get the picture. And old Herbert Hoover's riches have gone into the creation of many right-wing endeavors, especially in political science. I roll on with my growling--at least I'm not barking up a tree--or AM I? Though I would think it fun to just howl away alone in a beautiful woods somewhere off in the dream-world USA or Erewhon or Shangra-La--the paradises of writers--those who are forced to use their brains every day.
OK--sorry, folks. I am not too intelligent a human being though my wolf instincts (you can read that as "animal instincts") are the source of what intelligence I do have; I am not an intellectual; what I am is a Sociologist in the true meaning of the word--the way the French intellectual who invented it intended it to be--his name was Auguste Comte (he was the French Socialist and weirdo Henri Saint-Simon's valet and later was editor of many of Saint-Simon's books--and Saint-Simon influenced Comte in the creation of his Theories of Positivism and Saint-Simon's writings also influenced Karl Marx's veering toward a form of Socialism he and Engels called Communism--Saint-Simon believed an elitist group of philosophers should control politics), and Comte called himself a "positivist" and in his first book, Cours de philosophie positive (The Course of Positive Philosophy) he invented the word "Sociology." A simple explanation of Comtean Sociology: it is based on what Comte called "The Law of Three Stages." The three stages of society are 1) Theological: events are attributed to supernatural forces; 2) Metaphysical: natural phenomena are thought to result from fundamental energies or ideas; 3) The Positive: phenomena are explained by observation, hypotheses, and experimentation. That last one is the one that hooked me. Comte classified the Sciences on the basis of their increasing complexity and the decreasing generality of application in ascending order, the order of which to Comte was mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, and finally Sociology. Each science to Comte depended (in part) on the science that preceded it--hence all sciences contribute to Sociology--the end science--the accumulation of all science. The intention of Sociology is to bring harmony and well being to the World Gestalt. Comte's piece de resistance was his 1877 book called Systeme de politique positive (Systems of Positive Polity). In this book Comte reached the conclusion that religion was a greater science than Sociology--WHAT! No, but here's his catch, Comte's religion was a religion void of metaphysical implications--Comte's religion WORSHIPS HUMANITY! Wundebar! Thus Sociology is a humanitarian philosophy, what the US Holy Rollers refer to as "secular humanism"--and there ya go, folks, old A. Comte's religion: secular humanism!
Sociologists by nature are diarists, notetakers, and therefore journalists--and they are certainly encyclopedists--empiricists--and that's what attracted me to Sociology--it dealt with the observing of common senses and basing your decisions in life on such--the basics behind "yes" and "no"--the ability to measure what you are empirically investigating out of curiosity--yes, curiosity is what should motivate the Sociologist's view (the studier of the social order, society, the community, a Gestalt--in Sociology we use the German words Gemeinshaft and Gesellshaft (from German sociologist Ferdinand Tonnies and extended in the work of Max Weber) for the two types of human social interactions--an overview, as if from up above looking down (like from off a town's water tower or church steeple (how about Hawthorne's great story about a church steeple?), and from that an accumulation of numbers is gathered, a random sampling of numbers is taken representing those numbers on which to base an already observed phenomena, to prove it with summations, like how does the presence of a lunatic asylum in a middle-class neighborhood affect the goings-on of that neighborhood?--or you could say the building of a superhighway that will split in half a former viable Gestalt neighborhood--and all those numbers (representing "facts") are crunched down into frequency modulations which turn into percentiles random and cluster patterns (the marketing industry developed out of Sociology), deleting the outliers (the oddities), mapping everything precisely through charts and graphs, giving dimensions to the whole, then with the microscope you bring the macro down to particular observable size and from that you draw a whole bunch of hypotheses that you then have to test--same as a biologist (the Sociology of Nature) observes his specimens and chops them down into specimens of specimens and observes the total working of the whole from its parts on up--and Sociologists are collectors of specimens and write books based on their research of their many specimens. Sociologists are collectors! They are collectors of everything--especially books--collections of words (linguists are Sociologists)--Sociologists lust to acquire huge libraries containing books on every subject that is covered by the World Gestalt--and a Sociologist tries to avoid getting complicated, dissecting knowledge into understandable bits and pieces--there's a Sociology course now called "The Archaeology of Knowledge"--how wonderful is that!--Sociologists are trying to rescue things from being lost in the abstract--and as a Sociologist I love the abstract like puzzlers love the more difficult jigsaw puzzles--the abstract to a Sociologist is to be broken down, interpreted into concrete figures--and now we're back to Statistics, where all Sociologists begin their apprenticeships. You see, everything in life can be identified. Human beings started speaking in order to identify things--that's all our evolved religions are, identifiers--that's all--and psychologists (a Sociology also) identify and categorize the individuals in those identified areas of the Gestalt--like the City of Chicago was studied by Sociologists while it was being rebuilt after the Great Fire that totally wiped out downtown Chicago. Soon Chicago became an American hub of Sociology, eventually the University of Chicago (yep, check it out, former UChi graduates include Milton Friedman, the Trickle-down Theory and Free Market Economist, and Paul Wolfowitz, the Neo-Con thinker who I don't know for sure but I'll bet was a sociology major)--Political Science certainly came out of Sociology--Neo-Con philosophy comes out of Sociology--Marx was certainly a Sociologist, so Communism and Socialism come out of Sociology--and Chicago became a breeding ground for Sociologists, like the two great ones, Ernest W. Burgess and Robert E. Park, and eventually my favorite Sociologist of all of my studying time (my apprenticeship), my favorite among the two who I held and still do in the highest regard, one, Dr. Byron Munson, my Urban Sociology professor (he ended up af the University of Illinois at Champagne-Urbana working with Population Zero Sociologist Philip Hauser), but second, my very favorite of all time, from the University of Chicago, and he had studied with Park and Burgess, Dr. Rosser B. Melton. My first class with Melton he introduced himself and then said, "My intention is not to shock you, but one of the first things I'm going to lecture on is that there is evidence that proves your greatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgrandmother was a mudcat!" I immediately said, "This is the class for me; this guy's a god-damn genius--I'm gonna soak his brain matter of all its firmament!" And I did. And Rosser B. Melton started off teaching me Economics 101--this was a time when Economics was Sociology--my B.A. was in Sociology and Economics--my graduate studies were in Sociological and Economic Theory. Soon, however, Economics went over to the School of Business--and in going over there, Economics took Statistics with it. My first Sociology classes were in the Industrial Arts Building. We were considered a part of the Liberal Arts Department. By the bye, Sociologists love computers and the Internet--the calculations that are possible using all the reference and measuring devices you can find there--plus all the encyclopedic information available--plus a lot of on-line Sociology courses are offered--a really good Sociology site is this one run by the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand (it contains a truly great glossary of Sociology terms)--New Zealand, a country that has an interesting political system--the American Single-Tax theorist, Henry George, is very popular in New Zealand and a lot of New Zealand towns have adopted George's single-tax theories in managing their county or city governments.
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www.soci.canterbury.ac.nz/resources/glossary/index.shtml
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This was intended as an unacademic post that's suddenly turned academic all started when Sunday morning I made the mistake of watching regular old cheap-ass commercialized-to-the-bone commercial television. Well, I got roped into it--using an Old West expression that I'm thinking of looking it up in Mencken's American Language but I can't deviate from my point any more--talk about stream of consciousness--or how about stream of unconsciousness! I'm a stream-writing maniac--maniacal writing, too (and by the way, writing is Sociology and writers are Sociologists and I was writing before I went to college and discovered Sociology)--but then have you ever been close enough to feel the hot breath of a wolf growling on your face! That leads to a manic response--sorry, like a. thornton said, "I haven't bad breathed anybody"--YET!--REPEAT: I was roped into watching teevee this morning by accidentally surfing onto Paula White preaching her hillbilly gospel in her hillbilly way (rock-a-billy really)--she's from Tupelo, Mississippi, and she preaches as though she is Elvis, and this morning Paula was wearing a red dress--not only bull-charging red but form fitting, too, and I was reminded that Paula does have a sweet Holy Rolling ass--"Thank you, Jesus, nice ass, Paula!" And sometimes Paula (remember, she divorced her husband on the stage of her Church Without Walls in Tampa before her congregation of Floridian idiots) shows her bounteous chest, too--and being the hillbilly gal she basically is she is into money, big cars, icy hot jewelry, and designer clothes--and she considers herself a "modern" woman--and I'll admit, to an old Texas lad, Paula's a good-lookin' piece'a ass "even though she is a preacher!" One vicious rumor I recently read on the Internet had our own official The Daily Growler pastor (not a preacher you notice), Pastor Melissa Scott, down in Tampa at Paula's church doing one of Paula's "Life Design Conferences" and afterwards Pastor Melissa Scott and a male preacher she met there ran off to Costa Rica for a week of Holy Rolling in the hay in those hot tropics that demand hot love--I can imagine how hot a week that must have been for the male dude--he must have been shoutin' "Glory" all over the protected compound they were partying at--I mean, come on, how heavenly is banging Pastor Melissa Scott! I mean while you're coming in her you got to be shoutin' "Praise the Lard" all over the damn place--and when you get back to your church, you gotta sort'a brag to some of your elders that you banged Pastor Melissa Scott down in Costa Rica for a fun-filled week. Bangin' Paula White (Trash), I think, might take several tabs of Ecstasy and a whole lot of rasslin' energy--she reminds me of the flautist I once tried to seduce--to get in her pants meant first I had to endure a wrestling match--she demanded it--you had to pin her and get her to say "Uncle" before she'd then turn totally Geisha-sweet and easily submissive--but damn that wrestling match, and this girl was 6 feet tall and as slender and taut as the flute she played with such fire, and she was a tough one to pin--but, and I shouldn't brag, I f_____--hell, I won't brag--I'm going to remain a Sociologist today--though old Brother Sociologist, Alfred Kinsey, certainly did bring "free sex" for awhile to this country, until a Canadian gay stepped off that airplane back in 1981 and eventually let AIDS loose on us and put a quick end to my generation's "free love" attitudes. "A condom! Never! I'll do without first!" And I have. Fuck fucking! I stoically say, "I don't need sex anymore." I rationalize, "Besides, I had the best free love ever in my heyday--dating 5 women at once one time--I can repose among my sexual memories and those wonderful and beautiful and so dear-to-me women who meant so much to me during those moments--so Sex Therapy is Sociology.
And first up on the Sunday morning news was the Soviet Union--oops, I'm sorry, Ronald Raygun made Gor-boo-shelf "tear down that wall," didn't he--or did he?--seems like it's the same old Soviet Union trying to get old Joe Stalin's home state of Georgia back in line--come on, Leninism isn't dead--Russia has to be jealous of China's wild Capitalistic progress! Remember as Communist countries China and Russia had an ongoing border conflict! Leninism vs. Maoism--the "Go ye into all the world and spread the gospel" theory vs. the "Build up your defenses in case you are attacked from outside"--the reason the ancient Chinese built the Great Wall, to keep intruders out (Barbarians--which is how Mao considered the Leninists)--legendary traditions getting in the way of innovational progressive balls'a rollin' Positivism. Harmony cannot be had when you have clashes! Peace is impossible when you are constantly paranoid about being under attack! Like we're becoming in this country! Paranoid as hell. And now Bush is revealing the real reason he wanted to put missiles in the Czech Republic (which John "Nutjob" McCain still calls Czechoslovakia)--Bush & Cheney knew Georgia was gonna go after bringing the outlaw state of South Ossetia (pronounced according to L Hat, "ah-say-sha" and not like you're hearing it pronounced on the snooze--just like the NBC yokels are mispronouncing Beijing all day long during the Olympics) back into the Georgian fold against the wishes of the Russian-leaning Ossetians so the Georgians went in to take 'em back and there was the Russian army and soon, hot damn, 2,000 just-plain Ossetians are dead and 40,000 are homeless and the US, as usual, is encouraging the Georgian Army, well-armed by the US War Machine, to go against the Russians--a so-called "cease fire" was supposedly in operation today (Monday), but no such luck for the Ossetians--the fighting is still going on.
[As of the morning of August 12, the Russian Army has successfully (for them) split the nation of Georgia in half--remember, the Russians are basically white people! And Putin is still running the show--and Putin's former KGB and he's a ruthless little prick and he hates our little prick Georgie Porgie Bush--who ain't out of office yet, folks, so don't be relaxin' and saying "it looks like we've won in Iraq, I don't even know where Georgia is in the USA much less the one they're talkin' 'bout on teevee, and we are winning the war in Afghanistan, so hell, let me start worrying about how I'm gonna pay my mortgage"--did you ever stop and think how it's all related? And if you have, then you're beginning to think like a true Sociologist!
And what's this mess in Georgia really about? Why OIL, folks. What did you think? What do you expect when you elect an Oilman and Oilman's son president of the USA--and an Oilman for a vice president--an Oilman president whose father was an Oilman and whose Unka Dick is an Oilman and whose Saudi Arabian brothers and sisters (remember Prince Bandar Bush?) are Oilmen. Oil rules! I grew up, and again I emphasize this, in an environment (Texas) ruled by Oilmen. They are land-grabbers! They are foreclosure experts. And they are criminals when it comes to drilling for oil or stealing mineral rights from local Yahoos and rubes--blah, blah, blah, it's an old story (and a Native American Nation as I type this is suing the US government for billions of dollars due to the government stealing their oil-rich lands from them so that Native Americans could be living in shacks while several oil wells were pumping like mad in their back and front yards)--written about back in the 60s by a Texan reporter named Joe Goulden. Plus, our president is a FAILED Oilman. His father was actually a FAILED Oilman, too, with his Zapata Offshore Drilling Company--and, aha, up pops the word offshore drilling! The oil companies don't need offshore drilling to drill on American soil. They have plenty of land they can drill on but they won't--they say the cost of drilling in the US is too expensive--they have to drill so deep--yeah, shit, yeah, bullshit--the oil companies just want to takeover more public lands--free use of public lands by the way--of which they already have 10 million acres of We the People's public lands on which they have permission to drill. And did you know Exxon-Mobil at this time when they are making the world's greatest-ever profits will be paying at most, according to a great American, as far as I'm concern, a man named Charles Kerrigan, probably 5% of those profits in taxes--and you know how they get away with that? By not bringing profits made outside the US into the US--by banking it offshore--therefore only what they bring back into the US is taxed by the IRS. Why do you think Halliburton moved their headquarters to Dubai? Aha, you see, Halliburton's Eureka!-like profits they are making off the illegal war in Iraq are banked in Dubai now--no taxes in Dubai for oil companies--come on, the Dubai Royal Family have so much oil money they can piss away ultrabillions on follies!
And why is the fighting in Georgia about oil? Because of an oil pipeline that runs from the Caucasians down to the Black Sea right through, where?, you guessed it South Ossetia--and who does Georgia sell its oil to--who?--you should have guessed it again, of course, the good ole USA. And Russia needs oil just like we do; just like China does. Are you watching the Olympics? Are you seeing how the Beijing air is so polluted it looks like there's a fog hanging over all the outdoor venues--a thick fog through which the NBC cameras cannot see very well--did you know NBC paid 30 million dollars to rent space in the specially built Olympics communications tower the Commie Chinese built to exploit the Olympic Games coverage?
Oh, but, hell, we have another WAR to bullshit over. Hot damn, is there another Cold War a'comin'?
I love war--war is a part of Sociology.
thepositivegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler
PS: I had intended today's post to be a put down of the Disney-manufactured family boy band the Jonas Brothers and how they and their dopey googlie-eyed teenage-screaming-mimi fans were desecrating a New York City public park--Bryant Park, the fat little public park that sits right behind the main New York City Public Library on Sixth Avenue (or the Avenue of the Americas, which a true New Yorker never calls it)--and how great Bryant Park used to be before mayors Krotch & Mussolini Giuliana allowed a city hustler type to build a trendy overpriced restaurant right behind the library where Jo Davidson's statue of Gertrude Stein used to sit and I was wondering since I hadn't been in Bryant Park since they ran the bookstalls out of it and gave it over to the Fashion Industry and rock concert promoters, etc., if that statue was still exhibited in the park or had it been moved? I obviously didn't publish it--and it was scathing, too--I did "bad breath" on The Disney Group and Jew-hating Walt Disney and unfunny Mickey Mouse and all the Mickey Mouse Club creations forced on us over the years, Grade B talent like Annette Fuckacello and Frankie Avalon--and lately such moral charmers as Britney Spears, Ricky "Menudo Molested" Martin, J Lo and her third or fourth husband--oh, see how riled up I get when thinking sociologically of the Disney Entertainer Manufacturing Company? tgw.
Jo Davidson's "Gertrude Stein"--as Gertie used to sit in Bryant Park--see the park in the background.
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