recent reading
Apr. 19th, 2008 12:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jfb- Liberal Fascism. Not Jonah Goldberg's Newspeak classic (You know who else was a vegetarian? Hitler!) but a collection of satirical blog posts and comics from The Poor Man. Sometimes dated, sometimes very funny (if you have enough context), sometimes suddenly devastating, as when the elegant parties of Washington's chattering classes are swept away to reveal the torture regime enabled by their susceptibility to trivia.
- The End of America, in which Naomi Wolf compares the present regime to early stages of the "fascist shift" in places like Pinochet's Chili, Stalin's Russia, and, yes, Nazi Germany. Obviously this is a tricky argument to make (You know who else liked clearing brush? Hitler!), and this attempt is frustrating. Her M.O. is sound: identify common tropes ("develop a paramilitary force") in the early stages of historical fallen democracies, and draw parallels to the current administration. But poor organization makes it hard to stay focused on what she's saying from chapter to chapter, and she undermines her argument with the search for "echoes":
In China, Communist officials subject citizens to three forms of government surveillance, together called the "iron triangle." (Bush referred to three of his aides as "the iron triangle.")
Kind of tone-deaf, kind of dumb, but not even worth mentioning when you have have actual mass government surveillance of American citizens to make your case. - The Shock Doctrine. Naomi (!) Klein traces a pattern in which free market enthusiasts discover they can't get citizens of a free country to enact radical versions of their policies, but the policies can be decreed by fiat while the people are distracted, or terrified, by a crisis. From Chile and other Latin American dictatorships, through South Africa and Russia after apartheid and communism, to Iraq and New Orleans, the pattern is refined and adapted: Societies are destroyed, and multinational corporations swoop in to rebuild, at great fiscal benefit to themselves. It's the grimmest book I've read in a long time, but highly readable, and capable, in the way some things are, of changing the way a person views the world. If the person is me, anyway.
... Agresto also saw a silver lining as he watched the looting of Baghdad on TV. He envisioned his job--"a never to be repeated adventure"--as the remaking of Iraq's system of higher education from scratch. In that context, the stripping of the universities and the education ministry was, he explained, "the opportunity for a clean start," a chance to give Iraq's schools "the best modern equipment." If the mission was "nation-creating," as so many clearly believed it to be, then everything that remained of the old country was only going to get in the way. Agresto... explained that although he knew nothing of Iraq, he had refrained from reading books about the country before making the trip so that he would arrive "with as open a mind as I could have." Like Iraq's colleges, Agresto would be a blank slate.
If Agresto had read a book or two, he might have thoguht twice about the need to erase everything and start over. He could have learned, for instance, that before the sanctions strangled the country, Iraq had the best education system in the region, with the highest literacy rates in the Arab world--in 1985, 89 percent of Iraqi's were literate. By contrast, in Agresto's home state of New Mexico, 46 percent of the population is functionally illterate, and 20 percent are unable to do "basic match to determine the total on a sales tax receipt." Yet Agresto was so convinced of the superiority of American systems that he seemed unable to entertain the possibility the Iraqis might want to salvage and protect their own culture and that they might feel its destruction as a wrenching loss.
I'm looking forward to some light fiction. Any suggestions?
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no subject
Date: 2008-04-19 10:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-20 02:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-20 05:56 pm (UTC)Not really light
Date: 2008-04-22 02:21 am (UTC)Literacy in the USA...New Mexico...
Date: 2008-04-23 04:24 pm (UTC)This reference to literacy (see excerpt following) in New Mexico caught my eye:
"...in Agresto's home state of New Mexico, 46 percent of the population is functionally illterate, and 20 percent are unable to do "basic match to determine the total on a sales tax receipt." Yet Agresto was so convinced of the superiority of American systems that he seemed unable to entertain the possibility ..."
NM's literacy figures show that 1 in 4 adult New Mexicans cannot read/write about the 5th grade level in any language. My students in SC were challenged by reading issues.
In Ukraine, during my Peace Corps tenure, the adults could read and frequently had mastered literacy in more than one language. My experience supported this and so did the official data available. I laugh that my Peace Corps experience was, in many ways, a step up in standards when it comes to literacy (and many other issues as well.)
The USA has an ugly issue rearing its head and we seem to be turning our back to it. More people may be graduating, but they cannot read, write or do simple calculations....
Thanks for letting me rant a bit...
"Ginn"
In Sunny Santa Fe
Read my Journals: www.pulverpages.om
Re: Literacy in the USA...New Mexico...
Date: 2008-04-23 05:57 pm (UTC)Yesterday on NPR I heard this interview (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89844556&ft=1&f=1004) with Shakira (!) about global education for the poor. Seems on topic, but it's not just "around the world" where education needs help.
light fiction
Date: 2008-04-24 04:46 pm (UTC)Re: light fiction
Date: 2008-04-25 04:06 pm (UTC)Light Fiction
Date: 2008-04-24 10:19 pm (UTC)Re: Light Fiction
Date: 2008-04-25 04:06 pm (UTC)Re: Light Fiction
Date: 2008-04-25 04:20 pm (UTC)