“Which Self-Organizing Leviathan?” A: That One, the One on the Right.

By Kerry Mitchell

Do I wish to see the State?[1] Can I imagine what it would be like to see it? Does the State have a face and could I see its face and live? Or, like Moses and his vision of God, can I only hope to see the State’s backside?[2]

I have seen the State's backside.

--

I started with a question. Where is the State? I admit it’s a strange question. It asks for specificity and boundaries and promises description, even clarity. I asked it of a long walk through the city. Where, as I walked, could I see the State, locate it, describe it?

Streets: they wouldn’t be possible without the State. The State demands a certain quality of the streets. It builds, organizes, repairs, names.

Vehicles: they are licensed by the State, their physical qualities regulated -- seat belts, brakes, emissions.

Drivers: also licensed by the State. They are tested, monitored, evaluated, punished.

But none of these things is the State itself. The State is behind them, acts on them, conditions them.

I kept walking.  Long Island Rail Road. It’s an organ of the State, a unit within the Metropolitan Transit Authority, itself a corporation operating under the authority of the New York state legislature. It’s more State than the vehicles and the drivers (private corporations and individuals). It’s more State than the streets (which are more State than the vehicles and people). That helped. There were things that appeared to be more State than others. But they were still not the State.

Watching the Leviathan watching YOU

In an interview for Our Kingdom, Quentin Skinner discusses liberty, liberalism, and the surveillance state. 

Skinner talks about LIBERTY, but not just about freedom from State power.

The power of corporations seems to me capable of posing a serious threat to liberty, in particular through their capacity to put pressure on states, especially developing states. Suppose a corporation wants to invest in a country but finds that its environmental laws, or its labour regulations, are inconveniently demanding. It can easily put pressure on the relevant government, especially in the case of developing states, to give it a break from these obligations. There need be no threat to refuse investment unless these special privileges are granted. It may be enough that the government is aware that the investment could be lost unless special privileges are granted for it to agree to grant those privileges. The government is placed, in other words, under an obligation to behave in a servile way that may also be undemocratic in that various laws that have been agreed by the people’s representatives may have to be set aside. Nor is this only a problem with respect to the power of multi-national corporations in their dealings with developing states. Think of the tax breaks that multi-nationals are given in this country, and the recent revelation that some are allowed to get away with paying virtually no corporate tax at all.

Much of the interview focuses on the surveillance powers of the LEVIATHAN.  While other critiques of the NSA et. al. tend to focus on the state's violation of your privacy, Skinner points out that liberal concerns about State coercion fall short of making a good argument against overreaching surveillance because they focus on the kind of coercive power that might not appear to exist in, say, reading your email.  He tries to reorient the conversation to include the freedom of people to express themselves in civil society and not only to be protected from the State.

The Taco Bell Waffle Taco is Big

The Taco Bell Waffle Taco is BIG

And if you are lucky it might be near YOU.

The price is SMALL: 89 cents.

In her review, Erin Jackson laments that the waffle taco did not meet her expectations.

The worst offender? The sausage patty, which I can only assume is supposed to be pork. With its bouncy, rubbery texture, sheen of grease, and lack of any discernible animal origin (at least, from taste alone), a better descriptor would be brownmeat. The flavorless and weirdly airy eggs weren't much better. This may be the only fast food product in history that would be vastly improved by substituting the protein component for Taco Bell's seasoned ground beef.

Do you BELIEVE?

My God, David Brooks, John Modern, the Leviathan, and You

In his recent My God, David Brooks, John Modern notes:

To be clear, such Leviathanism does not merely signal the presence of power, hierarchy, injustice, and bad things impinging but—and perhaps more importantly—that the world, at base, does not give a flying fuck about you or your fate, family, and friends, but may actively be working to ensure your obliteration. (This is what I have gathered from watching the news at night, from reading history, etc.)

Sounds pretty clear, etc.