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Social contract
The other day I ran into an interesting article about the current political situation in the U.S. of A. (see here) that got me thinking again about the social contract and the viability of democracy. I've never been that sold on democracy since I don't have that much confidence in the sense of the common man. The "genius" of democracy is supposed to be that, collectively, we can make better decisions than we would be able to make individually. Time will tell how that works in the 21st century, but I still haven't given up hope.Last summer I was open to voting for Sanders, though I was not a Sanders enthusiast. At one point I was considering the possibility of voting for Trump in the primary here to prevent Ted Cruz from getting the nomination... and I still stand by that preference. (For the record, I voted for Sanders in the primary because I thought he had the best chance of defeating Trump. I still stand by that choice as well, though I was pleasantly surprised by Clinton winning the popular vote in the general election. However, I suspect a great many of the most ignored Americans don't bother to vote. If everyone was required to vote, I suspect Trump would have won the popular vote as well.) I voted for Clinton in the general election because there's no way I could have voted for the Golden Cheeto, but I have to acknowledge that Clinton would have done nothing to make the problem -- that we've not been dealing with since at least the 1970s -- any better. The Clintons, Bushes, and even Obama, have all been part of the problem.
The problem, I now think, is the failure of America to abide by crucial aspects of the social contract, in particular the requirement to give a shit about the success of the average American. This applies to the "forgotten" white middle and lower classes, but also to the now feral people I see on the streets every day. Also people of Color! Even the best liberals have only been interested in the common people -- or their rights and status -- in general, not in the success of individual people.
Will Trump address this? Probably not, at least not successfully -- though both religious and fanatically political associations are often quite good at this, so he still could surprise me -- but I would like to hope that the Left will respond by taking up Sanders' banner and sincerely trying to address and even solve this problem. Though to be honest, I'm no more optimistic about this than about Trump. But that's what needs to happen.
There's a famous quote about the U.S. needing periodic revolutions (should have been by Thomas Paine, but I can't find it at the moment). The point being that the American Revolution ought not be a one and done proposition. As a Burkean conservative, I have reservations about this, but it's true that governments at least require periodic reforms. The tendency of man is to sink into policies that favor the wealthy and clever (like Sutpen, I suppose) and screw over the common people. Since it's unreasonable, apparently, to expect the favored to notice this and level the playing field, it seems to be the role of the common people to finally say, "enough," and force the favored/ruling classes to give in. That is what I see happening with Trump.
Viewed in this way, I have to say it is indeed genius. What better way to say "This is how little we think of your Bushes and Clintons and 'qualified' leaders. We're going to put an orange, business failure/ entertainer in their place." The Democrats tricked us all with a very attractive candidate (Obama) last time and we fell for it, but he was really just more of the same as far as his policies went. Better than Bush or Clinton, but not substantially better. I'm tempted to borrow Sarah Palin's lipstick on a pig quote here.
Entropy 2
Take an economic system. Say you're Sutpen raising cotton and you produce bales worth an amount $X. These bales are shipped to Cressbrook Mill where the cotton is spun into thread. Now, thanks to the work of capitol and those orphans, the cotton is worth $X+Y. If it is then transported to California where it is dyed indigo and turned into jeans (ignoring for the moment that transport costs were too high for this in the 19th century) you get a product that is now worth $X+Y+Z.I admit that it would be difficult to continue this entropy reducing trend unless you have access to a time machine that could bring worn out jeans to, say Tokyo today, where they might have an inflated value. Or you could have a skilled quilter turn the worn jeans into a prized quilt. So it gets increasingly difficult and in fact unlikely.
This is almost the lesson of the "Cradle to Cradle" idea for recycling. Cradle to Cradle is an economic or resource equivalent of a perpetual motion machine, a state of affairs where entropy stays constant.
Absalom
p294 ...Not two of them [Shreve and Quentin] in a New England college sitting-room but one in a Mississippi library sixty years ago... and they -- Quentin and Shreve -- thinking how after the father spoke and before what he said stopped being shock and began to make sense [that Charles Bon was Henry's brother], Henry would recall later how he had seen through the window beyond his father's head the sister and the lover in the garden, pacing slowly... to disappear slowly beyond some bush or shrub starred with white bloom -- jasmine, spraea, honeysuckle, perhaps myriad scentless unpickable Cherokee roses -- names, blooms which Shreve possibly had never heard and never seen although the air had blown over him first which became tempered to nourish them. It would not matter here in Cambridge that the time had been winter in that garden too, and hence no bloom nor leaf even if there had been someone to walk there and be seen there since, judged by subsequent events, it had been night in the garden also. But that did not matter because it had been so long ago. It did not matter to them (Quentin and Shreve) anyway, who could without moving, as free now of flesh as the father who decreed and forbade, the son who denied and repudiated, the lover who acquiesced, the beloved who was not bereaved....This is such interesting fiction. Everyone busy composing the story. Or rather the author busy composing versions of the story from a variety of perspectives and giving those character/perspectives leave to re-imagine the setting. You can even imagine them all working together to dream up the best story and best presentation of the story.
I wonder if anyone has ever tried to tell the actual story as concisely as possible. I bet you could do it in a page or two. Where Martha Grimes gets distracted by characterization, Faulkner seems to get distracted by the telling of his stories... and how Southern is that. Unlike with Grimes, I'm pretty confident Faulkner knew exactly where he was going to end up. The telling is like a seduction.
p302 "...who would in return surrender all his miseries and follies and misfortunes to the lice and fleas of Coke and Littleton..." Sir Edward Coke? I really have no idea what this means.
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