SHUTDOWN AVERTED

Federal shutdown avoided, 2012 budget fight looms YAHOO = window.YAHOO {}; YAHOO.Media = YAHOO.Media {}; YAHOO.Media.SocialButtons = YAHOO.Media.SocialButtons {}; (function(){ var o_facebook_iframe_url="http://l.yimg.com/b/social_buttons/facebook-share-iframe.php?u={url}&t={title}"; YAHOO.Media.SocialButtons.conf = { tracking: { _S: 8903239, pkg: "http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/s\/ap\/ap_on_re_us\/us_spending_showdown", intl: 'us', lang: 'en-US', ct:'a' }, content: { url: "http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/s\/ap\/ap_on_re_us\/us_spending_showdown", title: "Federal+shutdown+avoided%2C+2012+budget+fight+looms+-+Yahoo%21+News", mail_locale: "us", mail_property: "news", mail_meta: "&h1=ap/ap_on_re_us/us_spending_showdown&h2=T&h3=519", print_url: "http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/s\/ap\/ap_on_re_us\/us_spending_showdown\/print" }, c Analysis: So much for change coming to Washington YAHOO = window.YAHOO {}; YAHOO.Media = YAHOO.Media {}; YAHOO.Media.SocialButtons = YAHOO.Media.SocialButtons {}; (function(){ var o_facebook_iframe_url="http://l.yimg.com/b/social_buttons/facebook-share-iframe.php?u={url}&t={title}"; YAHOO.Media.SocialButtons.conf = { tracking: { _S: 85115982, pkg: "http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/s\/ap\/20110409\/ap_on_an\/us_obama_a_test_of_leadership_analysis", intl: 'us', lang: 'en-US', ct:'a' }, content: { url: "http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/s\/ap\/20110409\/ap_on_an\/us_obama_a_test_of_leadership_analysis", title: "Analysis%3A+So+much+for+change+coming+to+Washington+-+Yahoo%21+News", mail_locale: "us", mail_property: "news", mail_meta: "&h1=ap/20110409/ap_on_an/us_obama_a_test_of_leadership_analysis&h2=T&h3=2282", print_url: "http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/s\/ap\/20110409\/ap_on_an\/us_obama_a_test_of_leadership_analysis\/print" }, config: { facebook_iframe_url: o_facebook_iframe_url } }; })(); Share retweet Email Print AP – President Barack Obama waves after visiting the Lincoln Memorial Saturday, April 9, 2011, in Washington. … Play Video Video:President Obama and John Boehner Seal Budget Deal ABC News Play Video Video:Raw Video: Obama visits Lincoln Memorial AP Play Video Video:GOP Address: Spending crisis still looms AP By BEN FELLER, AP White House Correspondent Ben Feller, Ap White House Correspondent – Sat Apr 9, 7:57 pm ET WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama promised to change Washington's ways. Yet he's as caught up in them as ever. As the week began, Obama kicked off his re-election bid with a sunny video of people talking about their hopes and needs, the very image of life outside Washington politics. By week's end, Obama was mired in budget negotiations, canceling trips and scrambling to stave off a government shutdown that could only undermine the public's faith in his leadership. It was the messy business of governing, and how it's going to be in this long campaign for incumbent Obama. Beyond the vision for economic competitiveness he wants to talk about, Obama is chasing a second term while trying to make a deeply divided government work. He got bogged down in legislative tactics in his first two years, even when he won fights on health care and other issues. The goal now is to avoid all that. He can't. In this test of leadership, the White House says Obama wrangled the budget compromise he wanted, spending cuts he supported without shelving his priorities or accepting unacceptable policy changes. His administration portrayed it as an example of bipartisan cooperation of the highest stakes. Yet the government was on the brink of closing, and many people were wondering how that could happen, or why. This is change? The showdown was a reminder that for all a president's powers, there's much beyond control. Think Libya, Egypt, Japan's earthquake, not to mention Iraq and Afghanistan. In this case, the new House Republican majority, led by Speaker John Boehner, seized on a must-pass budget bill to give voice to frustrated voters and tea party conservatives who demanded spending cuts. It was brinksmanship mode again in the capital, where nothing gets done until the deadline. Sometimes not even then. In public, Obama tried to keep it at arm's length. "I shouldn't have to oversee a process in which Congress deals with last year's budget," Obama said as the time got short this week. In fact, he was up to his neck in it. Obama used a veto threat to make clear he would not accept the scope of GOP spending cuts. He said he would accept no more temporary extensions to keep the government running for a few weeks at a time unless there was a broader deal in hand. He kept saying leaders had to act like grown-ups. The White House said his strategy was to stay behind the scenes, work the phones and let his senior aides do the negotiating. That type of role provided an opening for Republicans to question his leadership. It also led to rumblings from frustrated lawmakers in his own party who wanted the president to openly attack the cuts Republicans wanted. The White House figured it would take those hits. It did. A Gallup poll in late March found declining numbers of people who said Obama was a strong and decisive leader: a little more than half of those polled, compared with 60 percent one year ago and 73 percent two years ago. The White House believed that a better result would come if Obama didn't try to overheat the issue. Officials believed that people were worried about gas prices, not a spending squabble and that voters didn't hire Obama to be a legislator. Obama would go public when it meant the most. That was Tuesday. The president suddenly got vocal. He said Americans didn't want games but results. The pragmatic approach is what White House strategists believe will bring back the election-turning independents to Obama. "There are some things we can't control," he said. "We can't control earthquakes; we can't control tsunamis; we can't control uprisings on the other side of the world. What we can control is our capacity to have a reasoned, fair conversation between the parties and get the business of the American people done." But it wasn't getting done, and his voice was not the only one setting the tone. "The president isn't leading," Boehner said Wednesday. "He didn't lead on last year's budget, and he clearly is not leading on this year's budget." Obama met with Boehner and Reid four times in the White House during the week. He still went to the Philadelphia area Wednesday to talk about energy. He looked comfortable, almost carefree, as he laughed with workers at a wind-turbine company about their families and their cars. But Washington had sucked him back in. By Friday, he canceled a trip to Indianapolis, scrapping the attention he wanted to give to clean energy. He scrapped a weekend getaway with his family to Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia. While working to avoid a shutdown, Obama's team thought the White House would come out OK in the public's mind if it came to that. The thinking was that the president had presented a reasonable case of agreeing to spending cuts without going too far, and that people would be angry with Republicans if the government closed up partially over a policy disagreement about abortion. Only when the standoff grew most dire did it end. But the budget mess showed how government isn't supposed to operate. No matter who's to blame, all will be, including a president running for election this time from inside Washington's ways. Analysis: So much for change coming to Washington YAHOO = window.YAHOO {}; YAHOO.Media = YAHOO.Media {}; YAHOO.Media.SocialButtons = YAHOO.Media.SocialButtons {}; (function(){ var o_facebook_iframe_url="http://l.yimg.com/b/social_buttons/facebook-share-iframe.php?u={url}&t={title}"; YAHOO.Media.SocialButtons.conf = { tracking: { _S: 85115982, pkg: "http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/s\/ap\/20110409\/ap_on_an\/us_obama_a_test_of_leadership_analysis", intl: 'us', lang: 'en-US', ct:'a' }, content: { url: "http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/s\/ap\/20110409\/ap_on_an\/us_obama_a_test_of_leadership_analysis", title: "Analysis%3A+So+much+for+change+coming+to+Washington+-+Yahoo%21+News", mail_locale: "us", mail_property: "news", mail_meta: "&h1=ap/20110409/ap_on_an/us_obama_a_test_of_leadership_analysis&h2=T&h3=2282", print_url: "http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/s\/ap\/20110409\/ap_on_an\/us_obama_a_test_of_leadership_analysis\/print" }, config: { facebook_iframe_url: o_facebook_iframe_url } }; })(); Share retweet Email Print AP – President Barack Obama waves after visiting the Lincoln Memorial Saturday, April 9, 2011, in Washington. … Play Video Video:President Obama and John Boehner Seal Budget Deal ABC News Play Video Video:Raw Video: Obama visits Lincoln Memorial AP Play Video Video:GOP Address: Spending crisis still looms AP By BEN FELLER, AP White House Correspondent Ben Feller, Ap White House Correspondent – Sat Apr 9, 7:57 pm ET WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama promised to change Washington's ways. Yet he's as caught up in them as ever. As the week began, Obama kicked off his re-election bid with a sunny video of people talking about their hopes and needs, the very image of life outside Washington politics. By week's end, Obama was mired in budget negotiations, canceling trips and scrambling to stave off a government shutdown that could only undermine the public's faith in his leadership. It was the messy business of governing, and how it's going to be in this long campaign for incumbent Obama. Beyond the vision for economic competitiveness he wants to talk about, Obama is chasing a second term while trying to make a deeply divided government work. He got bogged down in legislative tactics in his first two years, even when he won fights on health care and other issues. The goal now is to avoid all that. He can't. In this test of leadership, the White House says Obama wrangled the budget compromise he wanted, spending cuts he supported without shelving his priorities or accepting unacceptable policy changes. His administration portrayed it as an example of bipartisan cooperation of the highest stakes. Yet the government was on the brink of closing, and many people were wondering how that could happen, or why. This is change? The showdown was a reminder that for all a president's powers, there's much beyond control. Think Libya, Egypt, Japan's earthquake, not to mention Iraq and Afghanistan. In this case, the new House Republican majority, led by Speaker John Boehner, seized on a must-pass budget bill to give voice to frustrated voters and tea party conservatives who demanded spending cuts. It was brinksmanship mode again in the capital, where nothing gets done until the deadline. Sometimes not even then. In public, Obama tried to keep it at arm's length. "I shouldn't have to oversee a process in which Congress deals with last year's budget," Obama said as the time got short this week. In fact, he was up to his neck in it. Obama used a veto threat to make clear he would not accept the scope of GOP spending cuts. He said he would accept no more temporary extensions to keep the government running for a few weeks at a time unless there was a broader deal in hand. He kept saying leaders had to act like grown-ups. The White House said his strategy was to stay behind the scenes, work the phones and let his senior aides do the negotiating. That type of role provided an opening for Republicans to question his leadership. It also led to rumblings from frustrated lawmakers in his own party who wanted the president to openly attack the cuts Republicans wanted. The White House figured it would take those hits. It did. A Gallup poll in late March found declining numbers of people who said Obama was a strong and decisive leader: a little more than half of those polled, compared with 60 percent one year ago and 73 percent two years ago. The White House believed that a better result would come if Obama didn't try to overheat the issue. Officials believed that people were worried about gas prices, not a spending squabble and that voters didn't hire Obama to be a legislator. Obama would go public when it meant the most. That was Tuesday. The president suddenly got vocal. He said Americans didn't want games but results. The pragmatic approach is what White House strategists believe will bring back the election-turning independents to Obama. "There are some things we can't control," he said. "We can't control earthquakes; we can't control tsunamis; we can't control uprisings on the other side of the world. What we can control is our capacity to have a reasoned, fair conversation between the parties and get the business of the American people done." But it wasn't getting done, and his voice was not the only one setting the tone. "The president isn't leading," Boehner said Wednesday. "He didn't lead on last year's budget, and he clearly is not leading on this year's budget." Obama met with Boehner and Reid four times in the White House during the week. He still went to the Philadelphia area Wednesday to talk about energy. He looked comfortable, almost carefree, as he laughed with workers at a wind-turbine company about their families and their cars. But Washington had sucked him back in. By Friday, he canceled a trip to Indianapolis, scrapping the attention he wanted to give to clean energy. He scrapped a weekend getaway with his family to Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia. While working to avoid a shutdown, Obama's team thought the White House would come out OK in the public's mind if it came to that. The thinking was that the president had presented a reasonable case of agreeing to spending cuts without going too far, and that people would be angry with Republicans if the government closed up partially over a policy disagreement about abortion. Only when the standoff grew most dire did it end. But the budget mess showed how government isn't supposed to operate. No matter who's to blame, all will be, including a president running for election this time from inside Washington's ways. onfig: { facebook_iframe_url: o_facebook_iframe_url } }; })(); Share retweet Email Print AP – President Obama poses for photographers in the Blue Room at the White House in Washington after he spoke … Play Video Video:Government Shutdown Averted: Obama Announces Deal ABC News Play Video Video:Government Shutdown Avoided ABC News Play Video Video:Planned Parenthood and the budget fight AP By JIM KUHNHENN, Associated Press Jim Kuhnhenn, Associated Press – Sat Apr 9, 9:16 am ET WASHINGTON – A last-minute budget deal forged amid bluster and tough bargaining averted an embarrassing federal shutdown, cut billions in spending and provided the first major test of the divided government that voters ushered in five months ago. Working late into Friday night, congressional and White House negotiators finally agreed on a plan to pay for government operations through the end of September while trimming $38.5 billion in spending. Lawmakers then approved a measure to keep the government running for a few more days while the details of the new spending plan are written into legislation. Actual approval of the deal is expected in the middle of next week. "Americans of different beliefs came together again," President Barack Obama said from the White House Blue Room, a setting chosen to offer a clear view of the Washington Monument over his right shoulder. The agreement was negotiated by Obama, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. The administration was poised to shutter federal services, from national parks to tax-season help centers, and to send furlough notices to hundreds of thousands of federal workers. All sides insisted they wanted to avoid that outcome, which at times seemed inevitable. Shortly after midnight, White House budget director Jacob Lew issued a memo instructing departments and agencies to continue normal operations. Boehner said the deal came after "a lot of discussion and a long fight." He won an ovation from his rank and file, including the new tea party adherents whose victories last November shifted control of the House to the GOP. Reid declared the deal "historic." The deal marked the end of a three-way clash of wills. It also set the tone for coming confrontations over raising the government's borrowing limit, the spending plan for the budget year that begins Oct. 1 and long-term deficit reduction. In the end, all sides claimed victory. For Republicans, it was the sheer size of the spending cuts. For Obama and Reid, it was casting aside GOP policy initiatives that would have blocked environmental rules and changed a program that provides family planning services. Not all policy provisions were struck. One in the final deal would ban the use of federal or local government funds to pay for abortions in the District of Columbia. A program dear to Boehner that lets District of Columbia students use federally funded vouchers to attend private schools also survived. Republicans had included language to deny federal money to put in place Obama's year-old health care law. The deal only requires such a proposal to be voted on by the Democratic-controlled Senate, where it is certain to fall short of the necessary 60 votes. The deal came together after six grueling weeks as negotiators virtually dared each other to shut down the government. Boehner faced pressure from his GOP colleagues to stick as closely possible to the $61 billion in cuts and the conservative policy positions that the House had passed. At one point, Democrats announced negotiators had locked into a spending cut figure — $33 billion. Boehner pushed back and said there was no deal. During a meeting at the White House this past week, Boehner said he wanted $40 billion. The final number fell just short of that. In one dramatic moment, Obama called Boehner on Friday morning after learning that the outline of a deal they had reached with Reid in the Oval Office the night before was not reflected in the pre-dawn staff negotiations. The whole package was in peril. According to a senior administration official, Obama told Boehner that they were the two most consequential leaders and if they had any hope of keeping the government open, their bargain had to be honored and could not be altered by staff. The official described the scene on condition of anonymity to reveal behind-the-scenes negotiations. The accomplishment set the stage for even tougher confrontations. House Republicans intend to pass a 2012 budget in the coming week that calls for sweeping changes in the Medicare and Medicaid health programs and even deeper cuts in domestic programs to gain control over soaring deficits. In the Republican radio address, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., warned of a coming crisis. "Unless we act soon, government spending on health and retirement programs will crowd out spending on everything else, including national security. It will literally take every cent of every federal tax dollar just to pay for these programs," Ryan said Saturday. That debate could come soon. The Treasury has told Congress it must vote to raise the debt limit by summer. Republicans hope to use this issue to force Obama to accept long-term deficit-reduction measures. ____ Associated Press writers David Espo, Andrew Taylor, Erica Werner, Julie Pace and Ben Feller contributed to this story. ___ Online: Obama weekly address: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/ap/ap_on_re_us/storytext/us_spending_showdown/41020567/SIG=10s7oir5b/*http://www.whitehouse.gov/ GOP address: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/ap/ap_on_re_us/storytext/us_spending_showdown/41020567/SIG=11dd369tp/*http://www.youtube.com/republicanconference Analysis: So much for change coming to Washington YAHOO = window.YAHOO {}; YAHOO.Media = YAHOO.Media {}; YAHOO.Media.SocialButtons = YAHOO.Media.SocialButtons {}; (function(){ var o_facebook_iframe_url="http://l.yimg.com/b/social_buttons/facebook-share-iframe.php?u={url}&t={title}"; YAHOO.Media.SocialButtons.conf = { tracking: { _S: 85115982, pkg: "http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/s\/ap\/20110409\/ap_on_an\/us_obama_a_test_of_leadership_analysis", intl: 'us', lang: 'en-US', ct:'a' }, content: { url: "http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/s\/ap\/20110409\/ap_on_an\/us_obama_a_test_of_leadership_analysis", title: "Analysis%3A+So+much+for+change+coming+to+Washington+-+Yahoo%21+News", mail_locale: "us", mail_property: "news", mail_meta: "&h1=ap/20110409/ap_on_an/us_obama_a_test_of_leadership_analysis&h2=T&h3=2282", print_url: "http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/s\/ap\/20110409\/ap_on_an\/us_obama_a_test_of_leadership_analysis\/print" }, config: { facebook_iframe_url: o_facebook_iframe_url } }; })(); Share retweet Email Print AP – President Barack Obama waves after visiting the Lincoln Memorial Saturday, April 9, 2011, in Washington. … Play Video Video:President Obama and John Boehner Seal Budget Deal ABC News Play Video Video:Raw Video: Obama visits Lincoln Memorial AP Play Video Video:GOP Address: Spending crisis still looms AP By BEN FELLER, AP White House Correspondent Ben Feller, Ap White House Correspondent – Sat Apr 9, 7:57 pm ET WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama promised to change Washington's ways. Yet he's as caught up in them as ever. As the week began, Obama kicked off his re-election bid with a sunny video of people talking about their hopes and needs, the very image of life outside Washington politics. By week's end, Obama was mired in budget negotiations, canceling trips and scrambling to stave off a government shutdown that could only undermine the public's faith in his leadership. It was the messy business of governing, and how it's going to be in this long campaign for incumbent Obama. Beyond the vision for economic competitiveness he wants to talk about, Obama is chasing a second term while trying to make a deeply divided government work. He got bogged down in legislative tactics in his first two years, even when he won fights on health care and other issues. The goal now is to avoid all that. He can't. In this test of leadership, the White House says Obama wrangled the budget compromise he wanted, spending cuts he supported without shelving his priorities or accepting unacceptable policy changes. His administration portrayed it as an example of bipartisan cooperation of the highest stakes. Yet the government was on the brink of closing, and many people were wondering how that could happen, or why. This is change? The showdown was a reminder that for all a president's powers, there's much beyond control. Think Libya, Egypt, Japan's earthquake, not to mention Iraq and Afghanistan. In this case, the new House Republican majority, led by Speaker John Boehner, seized on a must-pass budget bill to give voice to frustrated voters and tea party conservatives who demanded spending cuts. It was brinksmanship mode again in the capital, where nothing gets done until the deadline. Sometimes not even then. In public, Obama tried to keep it at arm's length. "I shouldn't have to oversee a process in which Congress deals with last year's budget," Obama said as the time got short this week. In fact, he was up to his neck in it. Obama used a veto threat to make clear he would not accept the scope of GOP spending cuts. He said he would accept no more temporary extensions to keep the government running for a few weeks at a time unless there was a broader deal in hand. He kept saying leaders had to act like grown-ups. The White House said his strategy was to stay behind the scenes, work the phones and let his senior aides do the negotiating. That type of role provided an opening for Republicans to question his leadership. It also led to rumblings from frustrated lawmakers in his own party who wanted the president to openly attack the cuts Republicans wanted. The White House figured it would take those hits. It did. A Gallup poll in late March found declining numbers of people who said Obama was a strong and decisive leader: a little more than half of those polled, compared with 60 percent one year ago and 73 percent two years ago. The White House believed that a better result would come if Obama didn't try to overheat the issue. Officials believed that people were worried about gas prices, not a spending squabble and that voters didn't hire Obama to be a legislator. Obama would go public when it meant the most. That was Tuesday. The president suddenly got vocal. He said Americans didn't want games but results. The pragmatic approach is what White House strategists believe will bring back the election-turning independents to Obama. "There are some things we can't control," he said. "We can't control earthquakes; we can't control tsunamis; we can't control uprisings on the other side of the world. What we can control is our capacity to have a reasoned, fair conversation between the parties and get the business of the American people done." But it wasn't getting done, and his voice was not the only one setting the tone. "The president isn't leading," Boehner said Wednesday. "He didn't lead on last year's budget, and he clearly is not leading on this year's budget." Obama met with Boehner and Reid four times in the White House during the week. He still went to the Philadelphia area Wednesday to talk about energy. He looked comfortable, almost carefree, as he laughed with workers at a wind-turbine company about their families and their cars. But Washington had sucked him back in. By Friday, he canceled a trip to Indianapolis, scrapping the attention he wanted to give to clean energy. He scrapped a weekend getaway with his family to Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia. While working to avoid a shutdown, Obama's team thought the White House would come out OK in the public's mind if it came to that. The thinking was that the president had presented a reasonable case of agreeing to spending cuts without going too far, and that people would be angry with Republicans if the government closed up partially over a policy disagreement about abortion. Only when the standoff grew most dire did it end. But the budget mess showed how government isn't supposed to operate. No matter who's to blame, all will be, including a president running for election this time from inside Washington's ways. HE DEALT WITH THE REALITY SUPERIMPOSED ON HIM SKILLFULLY IN THE BEST WAY HE COULD. PRAGMATISM SUPERCEDED THE THREAT OF A SUPERVENING IDEOLOGY COME WHAT MAY. WISDOM WAS GENERATED BY THE PREIDENT BUT NOT INVOLVEMENT IN A NO WIN TUG OF WAR OF OPPOSING INTERESTS BUT EXERTING A WINNING EDGE OF PRAGMATISM AND EXHORTATION WHICH GOT THE JOB DONE OF COMPROMISE WITH OUT THE EMOTIONALISM OF OBNOXIOUS IDEOLOGY WHEREIN SUPREME LEADERSHIP WITH NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE ODDS OF BEING IN CONTROL BUT NOT OBVIOUS CONTROL. IT IS CLEARLY DEMONSTRATED IN THE CHAIN OF EVENTS AND THE SEEMINGLY AD HOS RESPONSES OF THE PRESIDENT, YET IN CONTROL OF THE EVENTS.

THE LIGHT THAT NEVER GOES OUT,ETC

The writing below is the extent our secular mind can come to in making sense in a world that G-d has hid his face from and it would really impress upon our souls the conclusions that Nick has come to even if in peremptory fashion.a rekindled romantic light is an admission not to give in to a darkness "which comprehends not" the exile of our wanderings. It is the light hidden by the divine, a light too blazing for us to be blinded by, without a doubt.We live in an ellipsis of despair of our own subliminal devising,and hence of our own making, Nick Meador. http://www.supraterranean.com/2010/05/24/the-light-that-never-goes-out/# http://www.nickmeador.org/essays/ In short, this film made me miss feeling completely and utterly alive. I think the sensation is usually described as the loss of innocence, but somehow that doesn’t fit here. I don’t think innocence is necessarily lacking in the many adults (at least, other than by extrapolation to society as a whole) who have retreated from the outer world, safeguarded by their beliefs, their televisions, and the locks on their door. In the zombie-fied glare that dominates most of our so-called activity, I don’t see a gap of innocence; I see the slow victory of death, mashed together with untended guilt and regret. The other popular explanation most would offer is that this is what it means to “grow up.” I’m not convinced by that either, mostly because of the persisting juvenile state in which the human race has currently settled. * * * Certain visionary writers and spiritual leaders have suggested that it’s possible to reinvigorate that state of heightened awareness and persist in an appreciation for the privilege of life. (500) Days forced me, through pure emotional assault, to consider that prospect in my own life. Yes, the hardships are ridiculous, the world does seem to be getting worse instead of steadily progressing, and some days I’m glad I don’t have a loaded gun in my home. But there’s still love, there’s still music, babies still laugh, daffodils still sprout early each spring, and Orion still dons his diamond-studded belt each clear winter night. Romanticism doesn’t work as an ideology, a paradigm to understand all the workings of our civilization. Furthermore, our culture has lost most of its faith in the romantic pursuit, cordoning it off to mass-marketed movies, sitcoms and paperback books. Perhaps this is just my way of not ruling out something that felt so true earlier in my life. Though I can’t deny that it’s been present all along, albeit in a subdued, damaged form. And in a way all the strife, loathing and bloodshed seem to happen in response to our romantic ideals not manifesting themselves automatically. Maybe the romantic spirit is still a worthwhile aspect of Western culture (or of human nature) – maybe we’ve just lost track of it. It could be that the last decade was a painful but necessary transitioning period, a pessimistic winter extending from the nuclear winter that was never consummated by the Cold War. It seems every day there are signs of a greater awareness of humanity, fostered largely by the Internet and, to a lesser extent, by psychoactive drugs. People seem to have a sturdier conviction that we are here for good and there will be no exit, nor any sanctuary. Now our only task it to build the garden that’s been stuck in our collective dreams, the one that has always seemed to be our lost place of origin, not our imminent destination. That nagging sense of guilt we’ve felt for millennia – that is surmountable. Just as Tom longs to regain his love with Summer, we lament the loss of the summers of our youth, the season wholly representative of innocence. But like Tom did, we’ll inevitably see that the innocence was never gone, that its loss was an illusion – a temporary injury, perhaps one that encourages adaptivity in us. That insight is how Tom opens his heart to a woman named Autumn – a simple enough plot device, but one that’s all too relevant. After all, to see the purity of human life once summer has passed it to recognize that the purity is an inextricable part of what it means to be alive. * * * I’m still not convinced that any of this is preordained. I think of it more in terms of a natural progression. It’s the way of our evolution. If not, we would have blown each other up by now. What I’m suggesting is the possibility that Summer was right, that the outcome of their love was meant to be. Even the most secular of scientists could admit that natural processes happen in the world with total disregard as to our foresight or comprehension. What’s required is a willingness to open oneself up, time and time again, in the face of disaster and adversity. Then maybe our notion of the romantic will be transformed from a joke to an actual possibility, with all the layers of false beliefs stripped away to expose the core aspect of humanity that lies therein. That thought is best represented in the film by a classic Smiths’ song – the one playing on Tom’s headphones when the main characters first connect. Since it was written in 1986, the song has revived an endless number of shriveled hearts, thanks largely to Morrissey’s calming British croon and his repeated declaration: “There is a light that never goes out.” So here’s hoping it never does. Similar Posts: Film Review: ‘Up in the Air’ by Nick Meador The Science of Disasterology by Nick Meador A Reflection of One’s Genetic Architecture by Nick Meador A Supraterranean Manifesto by Nick Meador The Self-Directed Initiation of a Writer by Nick Meador

ULTERIOR MOTIVES WILL ULTIMATELY BECOME LISHMA THROUGH REPENTANCE

Today's Tanya Lesson Nissan 4, 5771 · April 8, 2011 Likutei Amarim, end of Chapter 39 Listen Online MP3 Download וכשעוסק שלא לשמה ממש, לשום איזו פניה לכבוד עצמו However, when one engages in divine service explicitly not lishmah but for an ulterior motive of self-glorification, כגון להיות תלמיד חכם וכהאי גוונא as, for example, in order to become a scholar, and the like, אזי אותה פניה, שמצד הקליפה דנוגה, מתלבשת בתורתו then this motive, which is derived from kelipat nogah, clothes itself in his Torah study, והתורה היא בבחינת גלות בתוך הקליפה and the Torah studied for this motive is in a state of exile within the kelipah; לפי שעה, עד אשר יעשה תשובה, שמביאה רפואה לעולם but only temporarily, until he repents, since1 “Repentance brings healing to the world.” שבשובו אל ה׳, גם תורתו שבה עמו For when he returns to G‑d, his Torah returns with him from kelipah to holiness. ולכן אמרו רז״ל: לעולם יעסוק אדם וכו׳ שמתוך שלא לשמה בא לשמה בודאי Therefore our Rabbis, of blessed memory, said,2 “One should always engage [in Torah and mitzvot, even shelo lishmah], for out of shelo lishmah he will certainly arrive at [study and observance] lishmah, שבודאי סופו לעשות תשובה, בגלגול זה או בגלגול אחר since it is certain that he will ultimately repent, whether in this incarnation or another, כי לא ידח ממנו נדח because3 “No one banished from Him by his sins will remain banished,” but will ultimately repent. The Alter Rebbe thus perceives two novel insights in the statement that one should always engage in Torah and mitzvot even shelo lishmah, etc. (a) Progress from shelo lishmah to lishmah is a certainty, not a possibility, since every sinner will ultimately repent (— and the Alter Rebbe therefore adds the word “certainly” to the quotation); (b) Not only will the person advance from the state of shelo lishmah to lishmah, but even the Torah that he studied shelo lishmah will be elevated, so that it attains the quality of lishmah; for when one repents and returns to G‑d, his Torah “returns” with him. The aforesaid applies to one who engages in divine service for an ulterior motive, strictly shelo lishmah. אך כשעושה סתם לא לשמה, ולא שלא לשמה, אין הדבר תלוי בתשובה But if one acts neutrally, neither lishmah nor shelo lishmah, then the matter is not contingent on repentance. אלא מיד שחוזר ולומד דבר זה לשמה, הרי גם מה שלמד בסתם מתחבר ומצטרף ללימוד זה, ופרחא לעילא Rather, as soon as he reviews the subject lishmah, then even that which he had studied neutrally soars on high, attaching itself to and joining his present study, מאחר שלא נתלבש בו עדיין שום קליפה דנוגה since no kelipat nogah had yet clothed itself in [his previous study]. Because his earlier study was not motivated by selfish reasons, the Torah studied is not in exile within the kelipah; it merely lacks the quality of lishmah. This fault is remedied by reviewing the subject lishmah. ולכן לעולם יעסוק אדם כו׳ Therefore, “A man should always occupy himself [with Torah...even shelo lishmah, for out of shelo lishmah he will come to lishmah”] — the Torah that he studied will itself be elevated to the level of lishmah. In this case, the lishmah “comes” automatically when one reviews his studies; it is not contingent on repentance (as it is in the case of Torah studied for personal motives). וכן הענין בתפלה שלא בכוונה, כמו שכתוב בזהר The same is true of prayer without kavanah, as discussed in the Zohar.4 When one recites the prayer once again, this time with kavanah, his earlier prayer ascends as well. Further in Tanya, the Alter Rebbe states that even if from all one’s prayers throughout the year, only one full prayer with kavanah can be assembled piecemeal (from one part of prayer said with kavanah one day, another part on another day, and so on), this one prayer is sufficient to elevate all the prayers of the entire year. For even where specific kavanah is lacking, the prayer is endowed with the comprehensive kavanah that one is praying to G‑d. FOOTNOTES 1. Cf. Yoma 86a. 2. Pesachim 50b. 3. Cf. II Shmuel 14:14. 4. The Rebbe notes: “It would seem that the reference is to Zohar II, 245b.” Today's Tanya Lesson Nissan 3, 5771 · April 7, 2011 Likutei Amarim, middle of Chapter 39 Listen Online MP3 Download The Alter Rebbe now proceeds to amplify his previous statement. והיינו אפילו אם אינו עוסק שלא לשמה ממש לשום איזו פניה, חס ושלום This inability of one’s divine service to ascend to the Sefirot applies not only where one’s motive for engaging in Torah and mitzvot is actually shelo lishmah (“not for its own sake”), i.e., for some ulterior motive, heaven forbid, in which case one is actually serving himself, not G‑d, and his service surely cannot ascend “to stand before G‑d.” אלא כמו שכתוב: ותהי יראתם אותי מצות אנשים מלומדה It also applies even if, as the verse describes it,1 “Their fear of Me was like commandments of men done by rote,” פירוש: מחמת הרגל שהורגל מקטנותו meaning [that one serves G‑d] out of a habit acquired in his youth,2 שהרגילו ולימדו אביו ורבו לירא את ה׳ ולעבדו having been trained and taught by his father and teacher to fear G‑d and to serve Him, ואינו עוסק לשמה ממש but he does not really do it for its own sake [lishmah]. כי לשמה ממש אי אפשר בלא התעוררות דחילו ורחימו הטבעיים, על כל פנים For it is impossible to serve G‑d truly lishmah without arousing one’s natural fear and love, at least, להוציאן מהסתר הלב אל הגילוי במוח ותעלומות לבו, על כל פנים by bringing them out from the concealment of the heart into revelation, as least in the mind and the latency of the heart. If one cannot arouse his natural love of G‑d to the point where it is actually felt in the heart, he must try, as discussed above, to arouse it at least so that it be felt in the conscious mind and in the substratum of the heart. Even this low-level arousal can produce a will and resolve to study the Torah and fulfill the mitzvot. Thus, the resulting divine service contains (at least to some degree) the force and kavanah of his natural love, since it was this love that created the resolve which he is now implementing. If, however, one does not produce even this minimal level of arousal, the love, although naturally found in his heart, has no bearing on his divine service, and he cannot, therefore, do this service lishmah (“for its own sake”). כי כמו שאין אדם עושה דבר בשביל חבירו למלאת רצונו, אלא אם כן אוהבו או ירא ממנו For just as one does not do something for his fellow, to carry out his [friend’s] will, unless he loves him or fears him, כך אי אפשר לעשות לשמו יתברך באמת למלאת רצונו לבד so, too, is it impossible to act truly for G‑d’s sake, solely in order to carry out His Will, בלי זכרון והתעוררות אהבתו ויראתו כלל, במוחו ומחשבתו ותעלומות לבו על כל פנים unless he remembers and arouses his love and fear of G‑d to some degree — in his mind, thought and the latent level of his heart, at least, if he cannot arouse these emotions openly in his heart. One who observes the mitzvot out of habit, however, lacking even this minimal arousal of love, cannot be described as serving G‑d for His sake even though his performance is impelled by no ulterior motive. וגם אהבה לבדה אינה נקראת בשם עבודה בלי יראה תתאה לפחות, שהיא מסותרת בלב כל ישראל, כמו שכתוב לקמן Furthermore, [the arousal of] love alone, without [the arousal of] at least the lower-level fear of G‑d hidden in every Jewish heart, is not called “service”, as will be explained later. Divine “service” connotes the relationship of a servant to his master, whom he serves chiefly out of fear, unlike a child, who carries out his father’s wishes mainly because he loves him. When one performs a mitzvah out of the love of G‑d alone, without fear of Him, he is indeed acting for G‑d’s sake — but he is not serving Him. FOOTNOTES 1. Yeshayahu 29:13. 2. The Rebbe explains that the Alter Rebbe uses the word “youth” judiciously. Were he referring to a habit acquired when one grew older (as described in ch. 15), then it might well be said that the lishmah at the outset of his service (before it became a habit) elevated his current service as well. This would be similar to assembling piecemeal — from all one’s prayers throughout the year — one complete prayer with kavanah, which would suffice to elevate all the prayers of the entire year. (See end of the present chapter.) The Rebbe queries, however, whether the lishmah of one’s youth is indeed similar to the aforementioned example of prayer, and whether this was indeed the Alter Rebbe’s reason for using the word “youth”. The Rebbe therefore offers an alternative reason. In the normal course of events parents train their children in the observance of Torah and mitzvot. This training (unlike an adult’s unthinking habituation to doing good deeds) is laudable, for the Torah commands us: “And you shall teach them to your children....”

THE PROGRAMMED HOUSEWIFE WM BURROUGHS THE NAKED LUNCH AND THE ROLE OF PROPAGANDA

http://www.realitysandwich.com/no_so_comfortable The following is excerpted from the upcoming book In an introduction to Propaganda, Mark Crispin Miller explains that the word "propaganda" only took on a negative connotation after WWI, because the British and American governments used it in heavy doses to maintain the appeal of Western democracy in opposition to the rising fascist and communist governments. The fact that we now think of propaganda as a despicable activity is "a paradoxical result of the war propagandists' winning enterprise: for the propagandists had themselves besmirched the word by using it always and only in dark reference to the enemy." (6) But originally it simply meant disseminating information in support of a cause. . This is the second excerpt to appear on Reality Sandwich. Read Part 1 here. The twentieth century was littered with warnings about the rise of technology and machinery in society. This became the general context for how we thought about "dehumanization," whether we were talking about manufacturing cars by robot instead of manpower, creating music with synthesizers instead of traditional instruments, or communicating by text message instead of talking face-to-face. But discussing whether these phenomena are "good" or "bad" won't be of much use without a proper understanding of how the human being has been "dehumanized." To find that, we need only look at the supposed epitome of post-modern life in the West, the realm we call suburbia. Suburbia is merely one arm of a machine -- one part of a bigger process, from which all other parts (e.g., pollution, deforestation, Third World plundering, etc.) are largely invisible. In that way, the suburbs are like a veil drawn over the broader reality of the world we live in, contributing much to our feeling of "unreality" over the past seventy years. This low-density living arrangement appeared as an alternative to the hustle and bustle of the urban environment. But really the suburbs are built on the same principles of mechanization that exist in the city. This machine runs on an addiction, which is to say that humanity is addicted to a process of dehumanization. And since these detrimental aspects are so hidden from view, suburbia poses one of the greatest threats to our survival as a species. We had hoped that this mechanized life would be better than the kind that came before it. Now we're forced to live with it no matter how we feel. After all, we have to make a living. And honestly, what would we all do if we didn't have jobs? We'd just be bored all day long, wasting our time watching TV...right? Really? Or are we dependent on a system that demands our servitude in exchange for another day of life, so we tell ourselves it's a necessary system in order to evade the straight jacket? The word "addiction" carries a connotation of narcotic drugs, but chemical addiction is only one type among many that proliferate today. Psychological addiction -- particularly the kind built on bio-survival anxiety -- may be an even more dangerous type, especially when it happens without the slightest bit of awareness on the part of the victim. Since all types of addiction share certain dynamics, it would be to our benefit to examine the case of "traditional" junkies. William S. Burroughs, a founding writer of the Beat Generation, developed an opiate addiction (starting with morphine) by at least 1944. (1) In an introduction to his 1959 novel Naked Lunch included in the "Restored Text" edition, Burroughs gives a brief rundown of the "junk" system -- the illicit opiate market, including heroin, morphine, and other drugs of that class -- to help explain his intentions for writing such a gritty book. Though he sticks to a discussion about drugs, one can't help but wonder if he intended it to be a microcosmic view of capitalism itself. Burroughs writes, "Junk is the mold of monopoly and possession," (2) and he marks three principles of the business: 1. Never give anything for nothing. 2. Never give more than you have to give (always catch the buyer hungry and always make him wait). 3. Always take everything back if you possibly can. (3) All it takes is a perceptive eye to see junky behavior in any shopping mall in America. We could even call the shopping mall the dominant paradigm of suburbia, where people try to buy a sense of personal worth -- a temporary "fix" that only lasts so long. The utmost example is likely that gross display of consumer frenzy we call Black Friday, when people trample each other to get the best holiday deals after eating obscene amounts of food. More generally, a good shopping find momentarily cures that ailment of feeling incomplete or unclean. One gains a sense of pride over a smart purchase, whether it's a stereo system on sale, groceries discounted with coupon clippings, or even second-hand clothes at the local thrift store. While the popular image of an "addict" or "junky" prevailing since the 1950s has been one of a wraith-like creature wasting away physically, the factors behind junk really correspond to a more universal economic system. Because of that, Burroughs seems to have predicted our mega-mart culture of endless price cuts and absent salesmen. "Junk is the ideal product... the ultimate merchandise. No sales talk necessary. The client will crawl through a sewer and beg to buy... The junk merchant does not sell his product to the consumer, he sells the consumer to his product. He does not improve and simplify his merchandise. He degrades and simplifies the client." (4) Of course, Burroughs didn't actually predict today's consumer culture in the industrialized Western world, for this system was already well established by the time he wrote his novels. Edward Bernays, widely considered the father of the public relations industry, explains these exact sort of tactics in his 1928 book Propaganda. Before World War I, most advertising carried a tone of marketplace bartering in which the marketing team used a fairly direct approach to highlight the benefits of a product or service. Bernays's "new propaganda," on the other hand, employed knowledge of group psychology and the hidden workings of society to navigate a more sneaky route to the customer's wallet. "Instead of assaulting sales resistance by direct attack," writes Bernays, the public relations counsel "is interested in removing sales resistance. He creates circumstances which will swing emotional currents so as to make for purchaser demand." (5) In an introduction to Propaganda, Mark Crispin Miller explains that the word "propaganda" only took on a negative connotation after WWI, because the British and American governments used it in heavy doses to maintain the appeal of Western democracy in opposition to the rising fascist and communist governments. The fact that we now think of propaganda as a despicable activity is "a paradoxical result of the war propagandists' winning enterprise: for the propagandists had themselves besmirched the word by using it always and only in dark reference to the enemy." (6) But originally it simply meant disseminating information in support of a cause.

Miller also points out that Bernays primarily lists examples from his own propaganda work for clients, while using passive verbs to bypass the reader's suspicion. To get the public to buy more bacon, Bernays hired doctors to promote it because of how dependent people are on the advice of physicians. For a piano manufacturer client, he suggested working with the real estate industry to put a music room in newly built homes. The public relations counsel "appeals perhaps to the home instinct which is fundamental. He will endeavor to develop public acceptance of the idea of a music room in the home. ...lifting the idea of the music room to a place in the public consciousness which it did not have before. [...] It will come to [the homeowner] as his own idea." (7) Bernays was busy serving major clients throughout the 1920s, when companies such as General Motors, Procter & Gamble, John D. Rockefeller, and General Electric paid propagandists enormous sums of money to help turn public opinion in their favor. The "new propagandists" had a few advantages. One was that, as Bernays writes, "Men are rarely aware of the real reasons which motivate their actions." (8) At the same time, people believe that they know the reasons for certain -- the result of a self-deception faculty in the human psyche. Another advantage was that the new propaganda industry had worked the psychological concepts of Bernays's uncle, Sigmund Freud, into its arsenal. "It is chiefly the psychologists of the school of Freud who have pointed out that many of man's thoughts and actions are compensatory substitutes for desires which [he] has been obliged to suppress." (9) Insights into group psychology proved the most rewarding for the fledgling public relations industry. "Trotter and Le Bon concluded that the group does not think in the strict sense of the word. In place of thoughts it has impulses, habits, and emotions. In making up its mind, its first impulse is usually to follow the example of a trusted leader." (10) The universality of such a phenomenon suggests that individual human beings tend to automatically surrender their own ability to make decisions -- what we'd call a rational thought process or problem-solving faculty -- and instead default to whatever leadership is in place. Though the model was still relatively vague, Bernays understood that a group reacts most to clichés, symbols, and formulaic phrases. It didn't take long to turn this knowledge into standard practice. "So the question naturally arose: If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it not possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing about it?" (11) Bernays had been influenced by the ideas of journalist Walter Lippmann, especially the notion that "the manufacture of consent" was required to keep a modern democracy in functioning order. (12) The overarching point of Bernays's story is that, for almost 100 years now, an entire industry has devoted its energies to turning the consumers of a capitalist "democracy" into addicts who feel a psychological compulsion to spend money on products and services, regardless of actual necessity. Of course, because of the business interest at stake, it would have been dangerous for the public to know anything about these tactics. Propaganda formed a symbiotic relationship with any financially motivated organization that depended on public opinion, be it government, corporation, or church. What Bernays called "new propaganda" has now split into the roles of public relations, advertising, marketing -- even, to a certain extent, sociology and legislative lobbying. So it's no stretch to say that psychological awareness among the public would have been a very direct threat to all parties involved. As a result, students today are lucky if they get to take a single psychology class in high school or college -- and even if they do, it's an almost useless kind of psychology with no real-life application whatsoever. That's evidenced by the fact that allmost people know of Freud is the "id, ego, superego" model of the human psyche -- or his "oral, anal, and genital stages" of development. On top of that, Freud's followers were a particularly dogmatic bunch who focused almost entirely on repression caused by denied sexual impulses, lowering the general appeal of psychoanalysis. Furthermore, most people haven't even heard of Carl Jung or other important psychologists. Luckily books preserve the knowledge that we require to understand our predicament. Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique appeared in 1963, serving as a major contribution to the civil rights movement that helped define the decade. Friedan noticed a strange paradox in which American women -- allowed for the first time in world history to vote, own property, attend college, pursue a career, and generally develop as full adult individuals -- were continually being pushed into a very narrow role, both in the family and in society as a whole. That role was essentially defined by a commercialized image. Friedan asks, "Does the image by which modern American women live also leave something out...? [...] This image -- created by the women's magazines, by advertisements, television, movies, novels, columns and books by experts on marriage and the family, child psychology, sexual adjustment and by the popularizers of sociology and psychoanalysis -- shapes women's lives today and mirrors their dreams. It may give a clue to the problem that has no name, as a dream gives a clue to a wish unnamed by the dreamer." (13) Friedan notes that the consumer culture was arranged in a way that not only made it difficult for a woman to achieve her true potential; it also made it very easy for her to drop out of college, marry a guy with a degree and job lined up, and start making babies. Yet at a time when everyone should have been showing concern about such matters, Friedan saw this as a nearly unspeakable topic. Friedan wonders, "Why is it never said that the really crucial function, the really important role that women serve as housewives is to buy more things for the house. ...the perpetuation of housewifery, the growth of the feminine mystique, makes sense (and dollars) when one realizes that women are the chief customers of American business." (14)

While Friedan sensed that "powerful forces" were engineering the mystique, she tried to remain pragmatic as evidence piled up suggesting some concerted capitalist scheme against women everywhere. She imagines corporate executives and psychologists having a secret meeting and plotting to "stop this dangerous movement of women out of the home," but then writes it off as an impossible fiction. (15) Her opinion: "It was not an economic conspiracy directed against women. It was a byproduct of our general confusion lately of means with ends; just something that happened to women when the business of producing and selling and investing in business for profit...began to be confused with the purpose of our nation, the end of life itself." (16) Friedan was correct about the misplaced priorities of consumerism, but to say that no secret meetings ever occurred might be too cautious. After all, in her imagined scenario she lists some of the very companies that Miller mentions in the introduction to Propaganda -- General Electric and General Motors in particular -- who actually had been running campaigns for decades, not only to turn people into sedated consumers, but into ones with preferences that fit their own specific business model. Since Friedan never once refers to Bernays, it seems that she wasn't fully aware of the historical prominence of the propaganda field. However, she did visit Dr. Ernest Dichter at the Institute for Motivational Research, her account of which practically contradicts what she said before about the unlikelihood of a conspiracy. She says Dichter, a man in possession of 300,000 studies of individual consumers, was "paid approximately a million dollars a year for his professional services in manipulating the emotions of American women to serve the needs of business." (17) (At the time of my writing, that would be the equivalent of slightly more than $7 million.) (18)

DICHTER AND THE WOOING OF THE AMERICAN HOUSEWIFE BY MANIPULATION INTO THE ADDICTION/SICKNESS OF BEING SUPER CONSUMERS

Dichter built his business on the finding that American women influenced about three-quarters of decisions on how to spend household money. His job was to maintain that figure by creating the circumstances for women to feel fulfilled in their position as housewives, whether it was a part- or full-time role. While he didn't actively campaign against their efforts to seek work outside the home, he could heavily sway their behavior inside of it. Primarily this was done by making home upkeep activities dependent on buyable goods. "Properly manipulated...American housewives can be given the sense of identity, purpose, creativity, the self-realization, even the sexual joy they lack -- by the buying of things." (19) As one of Dichter's reports says, "The feeling of creativeness...is an outlet for the liberated talents, the better taste, the freer imagination, the greater initiative of the modern woman. It permits her to use at home all the faculties that she would display in an outside career." (20) At the time, the desire for liberation in life and work was flaring up among all groups who had been historically oppressed. So a correlative goal was to make the housewife feel like a professional, as opposed to a servant in her own home. This propaganda of the 1940s and ‘50s was really hinged on the need for security -- or, to put it another way, on the anxiety aroused when a feeling of security was not obtainable. The manipulators took this knowledge and directed their efforts at younger and younger cohorts. "It was discovered that young wives, who had only been to high school and had never worked, were more 'insecure,' less independent, easier to sell. These young people could be told that, by buying the right things, they could achieve middle-class status, without work or study. [...] The main point now was to convince the teenagers that 'happiness through things' is no longer the prerogative of the rich or the talented; it can be enjoyed by all, if they learn ‘the right way,' the way the others do it, if they learn the embarrassment of being different." (21) And the methods of reaching these young women were seemingly extracted right out of Bernays's handbook, with group leaders, school faculty (teachers and guidance counselors), and TV advertisements playing huge roles. "This is the big market of the future," as Dichter says, "and word-of-mouth advertising, along with group pressure, is not only the most potent influence but in the absence of tradition, a most necessary one." (22)

THEMES OF THE ESSAY SUMMARIZED

While it may seem like an outdated example, the methods used to manipulate the post-war housewife are now employed to control every demographic. Television had pervaded America by the time Friedan published her book, making it possible to sway the perceptions of millions by appealing to the same "group leader" vulnerability. Soon it was possible for everyone to "learn the embarrassment of being different" by the time they got to kindergarten. The most effective tactics are the most invasive -- that is, they dig deepest into one's bio-survival anxiety and territorial ego drive, but without the target noticing. The propaganda comes gift wrapped in a warm, fuzzy package -- and only later do we discover the anthrax inside. This public relations nightmare is a cannibalistic system that's eating away at our dreams of an egalitarian society, piling shit on top of shit on top of shit, selling souls to sell more souls to sell more souls. The difference between Friedan's time and our own is that the middle class is now dissolving. But given that the suburban middle class -- what Friedan called the "Comfortable Concentration Camp" -- depended on the arrested development of millions of human beings, that might not be such a bad thing. Every new generation raised in this environment experiences a more "unreal" version of human life. Friedan notes this trend in her book: "I do not think it is a coincidence that the increasing passivity -- and dreamlike unreality -- of today's children has become so widespread in the same years that the feminine mystique encouraged the great majority of American women...to give up their own dreams, and even their own education, to live through their children." (23) This statement basically predicts the coming of my own ADD generation. We can't figure out how to turn off the machine, so it's only natural to want to flee. And since there's not much possibility of an outward escape, we're fleeing inward -- into our own subconscious minds. Bernays's progeny started catching up with that in the 1980s, prescribing Ritalin and, later, Adderall, in an increasingly desperate effort to keep us plugged into their machine. When we look at the consumer system around us, it's tempting to think that it was once a healthy system, and that it suddenly got out of hand. But in reality that consumer system was based on manipulative psychological tactics from the very beginning -- equivalent to building a socio-economic system out of a "junk" addiction. As we evolve, we'll have to figure out how to outlaw the sort of propaganda activities that turn us into dehumanized consumer-automatons -- that is, if we want to remain human at all.

NOTES: 1. Charters, Ann. Kerouac: A Biography. 1973. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987. pp. 55-56. 2. Burroughs, William S. "Deposition: Testimony Concerning a Sickness." Naked Lunch: The Restored Text. New York: Grove Press, 2004. pp. 199-206. 3. Burroughs, W.S. Ibid. 4. Burroughs, W.S. Ibid. 5. Bernays, Edward. Propaganda. 1928. New York: Ig Publishing, 2005. p. 77. 6. Bernays, E. Ibid. From the introduction by Mark Crispin Miller. p. 14. 7. Bernays, E. Ibid. pp. 77-78. 8. Bernays, E. Ibid. p. 74. 9. Bernays, E. Ibid. p. 75. 10. Bernays, E. Ibid. p. 73. 11. Bernays, E. Ibid. p. 71. 12. Bernays, E. Ibid. From the introduction by Mark Crispin Miller. p. 13. 13. Friedan, Betty. The Feminine Mystique. 1963. New York: Dell Publishing, 1984. p. 34. 14. Friedan, B. Ibid. pp. 206-207. Italics hers. 15. Friedan, B. Ibid. p. 207. 16. Friedan, B. Ibid. p. 207. 17. Friedan, B. Ibid. p. 208. I found the names of both Dichter and the institute in the footnote on p. 429. 18. "CPI Inflation Calculator." Bureau of Labor Statistics. Accessed on 2/21/2011. http://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm 19. Friedan, B. Ibid. p. 208. 20. Friedan, B. Ibid. p. 214. Italics from original report. 21. Friedan, B. Ibid. p. 219. 22. Friedan, B. Ibid. pp. 220-221. 23. Friedan, B. Ibid. p. 288

RETURN OF THE AGE OF MIRACLES Hester Panim

We will have the miraculous again in grander vistas we have ever imagined possible. For those who love God, the coming miracles are past conception and past imagining. Hester Ponim will have come to an end as we know it. WE HAVE NOT MATURED AT THAT POINT TO MERIT THE RETURN OF OPEN MIRACLES. That is why we only have the still small voice of G-d. Note the following excerpt from an email I received from Chabad. Question of the Week: Why don't we see miracles today like the Jews saw in the story of Chanuka? And don't tell me that every day is a miracle, childbirth is a miracle, the sunrise is a miracle, blah blah blah. I am talking about splitting seas, dead people coming alive, voices from heaven type of miracles. The really supernatural stuff. What happened to that? Why did the people of biblical times get all the special effects and we don't? Has G-d retired? Answer: Have you ever wished you were a child again? Don't kids have it made? Their parents do everything for them. The child is hungry and amazingly food appears in front of them. They hurt themselves and the parent is immediately there to kiss them better. They are lovingly put to sleep at night, and taken out of bed in the morning. It is a comforting and secure existence. But it doesn't last for long. As the child develops and grows, the parents gradually withdraw. A baby becomes a toddler, they can walk on their own two feet, feed themselves, and look after some of their own needs. Eventually they will grow to be young children, and can even go out of the house for the day, without their parents, and go to school. Then they become teenagers, when they assert their independence even more. Teenagers often brush off their parents' advice, because they have to find their own way, and they think that they know best. As difficult as it is, the parents have to accept this as a part of their child's maturation process, and to some extent allow the teenager to make some silly mistakes. Otherwise they will never grow up. The parents have to let go, because only then can the child finally grow up, and become an adult. Then, as a developed and mature adult, they can relate to their parents with respect and understanding. They don't need their parents to clothe and feed them anymore, they can do that themselves. But they can enjoy a relationship that is even deeper and more real, because now, as an adult, they have grown to appreciate what their parents have done for them. That they are the person that they are due to the love and attention that their parents devoted to them. Humanity has taken a similar course. In the early days, G-d was like a loving parent, very apparent and obviously looking after us. He spoke to people to give them directions, He intervened by doing miracles to save His children from harm. The wicked were punished immediately, and the righteous rewarded. That was the era of humanity's infancy. We had yet to develop the spiritual tools to relate to G-d in any subtle or sublime way, so He spoon-fed us with open miracles. As humanity developed spiritually, so G-d withdrew His open manifestations in our lives. As a parent allows their child more and more freedom, so G-d removed His open interference in world affairs. But of course, while the parent may not interfere, they never really withdraw their love and attention. They oversee every move their growing child makes, and quietly influence their child's life direction, albeit from the sidelines. Similarly, as time has moved on, G-d is just as present as before, pulling the strings of history and human destiny this way and that, but not in such an obvious and obtrusive way as through a miracle. He hides behind the coincidences and daily occurrences that seem on the surface to be quite normal. But on reflection, they are not. The hand of G-d is clearly there. Over the last couple of centuries, humanity went through an adolescent rebellion. We threw off the yoke of our Heavenly Parent and sought independence. Belief in G-d was seen as a childish crutch and an immature myth. But our generation, having learnt from the adolescent mistakes of modern history, is starting to mature. We are realising that our Divine Parent's values are not so bad after all. And we as a generation are seeking to reconnect with G-d and true spirituality, not as children who need miracles to convince us, but as spiritual adults, who can discern the magic behind the everyday, and the Divine within the mundane. We are finally coming of age. Perhaps this new thirst for G-d is the greatest miracle of all. Rabbi Moss http://www.torah.org/learning/perceptions/5770/netzavim.html# Hester Panim "I will become very angry at them on that day, and I will abandon them and hide My face from them. They will be devoured, and plagued by many evils that will distress them, and will say, `Do we not suffer because God has left us?' " (Devarim 31:17) This week's PERCEPTIONS video can be accessed at: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=3F6A94F387BE70E5 Hester Panim is a commonly used term in the Torah world. Literally, it means "hiding face," but it refers to concealed Divine Providence, not the lack of it, just the concealment of it. For, a fundamental of fundamentals is that God always runs the world, even recreating it anew each moment. It's just that, when we merit it, we get to watch Him do it. Well, not exactly see Him recreate the world each second, but to at least see or sense that He is behind everything. Today, the average person either doesn't believe in God, or at least doesn't believe that He is involved in the everyday affairs of man. He lives his life as if God has little if any interest in his life at all, and therefore lives as he sees fit. Even religious people may have difficulty being real with the reality of God operating on all levels of existence at every moment. They may believe that He is always watching and keeping track of our behavior for the sake of the Final Day of Judgment and Eternal Life, but as far as everyday life is concerned, He has better things to do than actually help or deter man's daily activities. One of the fascinating things about Hester Panim is that it does not affect everyone the same way. Indeed, two people can be standing side-by-side, and yet not feel the same level of impact of Hester Panim, one strongly feeling the Presence of God while the other feels and acts as if God is billions of miles away, at least. This is why Dovid HaMelech can say: Should you but conceal Your face, I would be confounded. (Tehillim 30:8) Conceal not Your Presence from me ... (Tehillim 27:9) both verses implying that God did not conceal Himself from Dovid HaMelech, though He did from others. This raises the question about the true definition of fear of God. Is fear of God only the basis of a belief that God keeps track of all that we do, and will one day judge us for it, or is one's sense of Godly involvement in everyday life a part of it as well? In the case of the former, it is easy to forget about God during times of spiritual crisis, but in the case of the latter, it is impossible to forget about God at any time. With Rosh Hashanah just next week, b"H, this is an important question to address, since our understanding of the concept of Hester Panim determines how reliable we are as people, from God's perspective. This not only affects out judgment every Rosh Hashanah, but it also affects how intimately God is prepared to work with us in everyday life. What exactly is Hester Panim? When it comes to something in the physical world, hiding can be a local thing, or it can be that, for all intents-and-purposes, that which is hidden might as well not exist at all. For example, there is a solution for every problem, but sometimes it remains hidden for generations, and though it may be eventually discovered, its discovery will not help the many generations that are long gone. But, when it comes to God, hiding can only be a local thing. This is because the entire existence exists within God, and even should it cease to exist, God will always exist. Therefore, by definition, to be aware of anything in Creation is to be aware of God on some level, the only question being, on which level? For, as it is well known, man possesses both a subconscious mind and a conscious one. As if life wasn't complicated enough already, as much as we may be aware of at any given moment in time, there are things going on in our minds that we are not cognizant of, even though they affect how we perceive things and our reactions. Psychiatry, a huge and generally lucrative profession, is testimony to that, and it often tries to bridge the very large gap between the subconscious and conscious mind of a person, especially when they are in conflict with one another. Furthermore, the Talmud tells us that, just prior to birth, an angel teaches us the entire Torah, after which he makes us forget everything by tapping us on the upper lip just before being born (Niddah 30b). What is the point, if we're going to be born without that knowledge in the end anyhow? Because, obviously, we are not born without the knowledge, but rather, it remains with us, on a subconscious level. The point of learning Torah, as we have discussed in the past, is to draw that knowledge, idea-by-idea, from the level of the subconscious mind to the conscious mind. And once we do, there is always a sense of, "Ahaaaah," as if we are merely recalling something we had already known, but simply forgotten. Outreach, therefore, is not about teaching Torah anew to unaffiliated Jews, but about bringing what they already known on the subconscious level to the conscious mind. The more a person does this, the more attached they feel to the knowledge, and the more they become one with it. Eventually, lifestyle changes because personal perspective has changed, reducing the effect that doubt, and therefore Amalek, can have on the person. And, all of that knowledge is really just knowledge about God. If it remains on the level of the subconscious, then God remains on the level of the subconscious. As more of the knowledge is brought from the depths of the subconscious to the conscious mind, the more conscious a person becomes of God, and the more he can relate to His reality even on the level of the body. Hester panim, therefore, is really all in the mind. But, that doesn't mean that it is imaginary. In fact, it is like what happened to Pharaoh when God hardened his heart: the result may have been a harder heart, but it was his head that God worked on. For, a person responds to reality based upon his perception of it, and his perceptions are based upon his assumptions about life. If you know what they are, then you can create situations that will compel a person to perceive reality a certain way, and therefore, respond in a particular way. This is what makes conspiracy possible. Human beings have to work very hard to conspire against people successfully, because they can't know every last assumption people have about life, and therefore, they cannot dictate every perception they will have. They can only work in a general sense, which is why some people are able to detect conspiracies and break through them. But, for God, it is a different story. He knows everything and controls everything. He knows exactly how people think and He can manipulate reality completely and perfectly in order to take advantage of people's assumptions about life, so that they will be compelled to see things as He wants them to. And that is the basis of Hester Panim. So, for example, if a person's desire to partake of this physical world overcomes his desire to be close to God, then God will present the world to him in such a way as to make it appear he can have what he wants and not worry about repercussion. He may have to contend with man-made laws and rules, but occasionally, when he gets away with what he has taken illicitly, it will truly seem as if he succeeded. And, if people come to worship science as a religion of agnosticism, using it to question the existence of God or His involvement in Creation and history, then the world will appear scientifically in such a way as to feed such people's assumptions about the physical world. As the prophet warned: For the ways of God are straight; the righteous walk in them and sinners will stumble over them. (Hoshea 14:10) How do two people walk the same path with dramatically different results? It must be that one sees safety where the other sees danger, benefit where the other sees loss, potential gratification where the other sees misery, and when it comes to Hester Panim, one sees randomness where the other sees Divine genius. It must be that the two of them have two different sets of assumptions about life. Taking advantage of people's mistaken assumptions about life and about God within it is what Amalek does best. As Rashi points out, he divides the Name of God, but as Kabbalah explains, that means that he makes life appear Godless to those who can be duped. That is why the Torah says about Amalek: He confronted you on your way, and attacked the feeble stragglers who trailed behind you, while you were tired and exhausted. He did not fear God. (Devarim 25:18) Feeble, but not physically feeble, but spiritually so. They were the ones who could be impressed, or intimidated by Amalek's smoke-and-mirror's routine, because they had not done their homework to spiritually inoculate themselves against Amalek's psychological attack. To such intellectual stragglers, God seemed distant at the time, at best. The good news is that, if Hester Panim is a matter of the mind, then man can work with that. If when God hid Himself he really hid from everyone equally, and not just in the recesses our mind, then righteous and evil alike would have to live with the same spiritual reality, though the former would trudge forward spiritually like loyal soldiers, learning Torah and performing the mitzvos because that is what Torah-Jews do, rain or shine. In fact, sadly, that is the way many Torah-Jews live today, leaving God hidden on other, deeper levels of consciousness. I'm not talking about people who sin as if God is not watching, for that is not being a Torah Jew, even if, on the outside, they look like one. Everyone has their weaknesses, and people who believe that Torah came from Sinai are no different. However, they have a tougher time giving into weakness, and if and when they do, they know that they have to do teshuvah for it. But imagine sneaking up on some close friends, who happen to be waiting for you, and not knowing that you are in the room, they talk about you. To your delight, they have only good things to say, but not knowing that you are in the room, they do not connect to you the same way as they normally do when you are before them. Indeed, if you remain hidden long enough, eventually they are bound to forget about you. The same thing is true about many Torah Jews who do everything they can to do the will of God, but connect to Him as if He is not in the "room." Their loyalty to God and His Torah, "in the meantime" is admirable, but their sense of His Being is lacking, evident by the lack of enthusiasm they have in general, and when performing mitzvos specifically. Though they would never willing transgress the will of God, they don't show the proper enthusiasm when observing it. That was what Dovid HaMelech wanted to avoid. He wanted to feel the Presence of God wherever he went, as if he was in the House of God seven days a week, 24 hours a day. On Rosh Hashanah, we are evaluated for how hard we tried to make this reality our own, and rewarded for how successful we were, by having an even greater experience of Shechinah - Divine Presence - in the upcoming year. Last week, I had an interesting experience. I was called up for an aliyah, after which I stood to the side while the next person, called up after me, had the Torah read to him. As is my practice, I held on to the top of the Aitz Chaim closest to me, while following in the Sefer Torah as it was read (as opposed to in a Chumash). I love looking into a Sefer Torah. However, this time, as the one reading continued, it began to occur to me how fortunate I was to be there, that I believed in Torah, and that I was able to live by it. I felt so fortunate to be part of a minority of people in the world today who know that Torah comes from God via Mt. Sinai and Moshe Rabbeinu, and some tears began, on their own, to well up in my eyes. And, for that brief moment, I had a tremendous feeling of Shechinah. When I thought about the experience later, I was amazed at how intense a moment I was able to create by a single thought, albeit at the right time in the right place. I was amazed at how easily Hester Panim can be turned on or off, controlled by what a person believes and thinks about in life. Perhaps it was a moment that was made possible because it is Elul Zman, when God comes closer to us, but it is an insight that I have resolved to try and implement the rest of the year as well, starting, God willing, with this Rosh Hashanah. Wishing all of you and your families a happy and healthy new year, filled with only good things. Thanks for reading. Kesivah v'chasimah tovah. Pinchas Winston