I just want to bring a couple of very interesting essays to your attention, both of which serve as useful correctives to the recent news coverage of the ‘financial crisis’.

The first is by one of my favourite people, the late Robert Anton Wilson. (If you haven’t read Prometheus Rising or Quantum Psychology yet, you really should). Here he looks at the relationship between schooling, sexual neuroses and economics, and the social implications thereof.

What I Didn’t Learn at College - Robert Anton Wilson (1961)

The second is from H. L. Mencken, that great repository of witty quotes. He basically takes the probably controversial (but perfectly sensible) approach of looking at the political economy of economics. Thanks to A Tiny Revolution for getting it online.

The Dismal Science - H. L. Mencken (1922) (It’s near the bottom of the page, you’ll have to scroll down)

So I thought I’d post some videos from the protests against Prop 8, passed on Nov. 4th banning gay marriage - because, well, it’s pretty cool to see communities galvanize themselves for justice like this. (Via)

It still boggles my mind that Prop 8 went through. If we ever needed evidence that heteronormativity still dominates life then this is it. As a collective society we seem to make so many fundamentally unsound assumptions. If a newscaster says, “Gender issues” - that’s taken as “Women’s problems”. If they say, “Racial issues” - that’s equated to “Black problem”. And “Sexual orientation” - “Gay”.

This ‘Othering’ of so many people really lays the basis down for hatred. And I’m not sure a lot of people really know why they hate other human beings so much. It’s usually evidenced by falling back on things like, “It’s just not right!”

I think some good (and compulsory) thought exercises would go like this… Contemplate that:

- Male is a gender

- White is a racial category

- Straight is a sexual orientation

A Mother’s Grief: This woman had lost her son in Iraq. She wanted people to know that it was not unpatriotic to be against the war and for Obama. Cedar Rapids, Iowa, 2/11/2007. © Callie Shell / Aurora for Time

I’ve been up all night, and I’m not even American. I went straight into a lecture only a few hours after the results came through, and everybody there seemed to have done the same last night. We can stop worrying about the election for a few years, finally. Hopefully, assuming nobody pulls any weird shit on us.

Our lecturer this morning even took it upon herself to make a speech at the start. We did a show of hands for: those who stayed up, those who managed all night, and those who cried like babies. I’m happy to say that around 80% of all us stuck our hands up and kept them there. Anyway, this got me to thinking about how the entire world has become so drawn into this particular election, there are a few reasons but I don’t think any of them do all the explaining on their own. It was such a combination of hatred for the current administration, tied in with the military-industrial complex and the fake ‘War on Terror’. The prospect of the first African-American President. But, a recurrent feeling I think a lot of people have had over the past 8 years goes something like - Why does it feel wrong that we don’t get a vote?

Also, Rupert Murdoch appeared on the BBC at some point yesterday and revealed how worried he was about Obama’s economic strategies. Duh. Were we supposed to feel sorry for him or blindly listen to him, oh mighty white man in a suit? No surprise that today’s Sun headline is “OBARMY ARMY”. Oh, or that Fox was the station to report on that video of a black community youth group endorsing Obama as though they were some secret agents about to take over the world. But really, that’s just your basic angry black man racism, I guess we should have expected it. Doesn’t make it any sweeter, but yeah it was probably going to happen.

So anyway, I leave you with what must be one of the most phenomenal speeches at the right point in time that I’ve ever heard (and yes, I shed a tear or two):

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This video is quite shocking, if only for revealing the extent of things.

The speakers are John Howard, then PM of Australia, and Stephen Harper, now PM of Canada. As you can see, within 2 days of each other, they give identical speeches to their respective parliaments, both calling for their countries to join the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Let it be known that any coincidence theorists commenting on this post shall be hereby laughed at - and maybe also detained indefinitely in our secret prisons - for propounding their silly views. (Incidentally, synchronicity theorists will not be laughed at, although I think in this case, the conspiracists have it).