“Recently criticism has begun to recognize more widely and to analyze in more detail the ways in which far-ramifying commercial organization makes for the dominance of herd standards. We have been shown, for example, how the syndicating of newspapers and magazines degrades their contents to what will please the majority; how, through the box-office, the majority dominate theatre, moving picture house, even opera and concert; how, in dealing with the careless and the gullible, advertising and propaganda tend to be substituted for intrinsic quality. On Justice Holmes’ ideal of ‘doing a thorough piece of work into which he put all his strength, and leaving it unadvertised’ an Englishman’s comment was ‘Can you imagine anything more un-American?'”
-Daniel Gregory Mason, “Artistic Ideals I. Independence.” The Musical Quarterly. v. 12, No. 1 (January 1926), 1-7.
Tag: American
Watches & Time
“You Americans have the watches, but we[, the Taliban,] have the time.”
-A captured Taliban fighters quoted in Ryan C. Crocker, “Why Biden’s Lack of Strategic Patience Led to Disaster.” The New York Times. August 21, 2021.
The 1619 Project – The New York Times
“The 1619 Project is a major initiative from The New York Times observing the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are.“
—https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/1619-america-slavery.html
American Concentration Camps
“No, Trump is not doing any of this because of illegal immigration—an issue that had been in decline for a decade before took office. His iceboxes and dog cages are part of an explicitly nationalist project. The goal is putting the country under the control of the right kind of white people. Trump has made it clear that he wants to stifle all non-white immigration, period. And the reasons aren’t hard to figure out. His administration just got caught using a literal question of immigration to suppress opposition votes and boost “Republicans and Non-Hispanic Whites.” The GOP simply can’t win national elections without doing that sort of thing anymore.
And as history shows, when a leader starts putting people in camps to stay in power, it doesn’t usually end with the first group they detain.”
—Jonathan M. Katz, “Concentrate on the Camps.” The Long Version. May 31, 2019.
Check out Dorothea Lange’s Censored Photographs of FDR’s Japanese Concentration Camps, if you want a point of comparison.
Open Question: Is the prison industrial complex in the United States a system of concentration camps?
cafebedouin.org 