"Othering" and iTunes

Note: I've been reading The Mueller Report and have fallen behind on my blogging. Here's a "two-fer": 

 

"OTHER" AS A CONNECTING WORD

It's not just "'I' and 'the Other'" anymore; some places nowadays one can use "other" as a verb or "verbals": "to other" some group, or engage in "othering" them.

Okay, but a more old-fashioned "other" can be used to connect. My favorite since at least 1984 has been "alcohol and *other* drugs": putting ethyl alcohol back among the recreational drugs, reminding recreational drinkers of ethyl alcohol of their community with other drug users (and alcoholics of their community with other addicts), inviting The Straight People to test overly-broad assertions about "drugs" and "drug users" with their own experiences with, say, Chardonnay.

There's also "humans and *other* animals." We may be "the beauty of the world, / The paragon of animals," as asserted by Hamlet and HAIR, but we're still animals: in 20-Question terms of Animal/Vegetable/Mineral or fancier divisions of Earth's life into Archaea, Bacteria, Plants, and Animals <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaea>. As animals capable of reason and even, apparently, consciousness, it's good to avoid cockiness and to keep our kin and kinships in mind.

 

 

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I-TUNES (BY-GOD: *TUNES*)

On the MacBook Pro I use as a very expensive radio, I listened this morning to a recorded episode of NPR's discussion show _The 1A_ in what may technically be podcast format. The topic was the demise of Apple's iTunes and its replacement by three apps: Video (?), Music, Podcasts. At least until the last five minutes of the show, the word "podcast" occurred only once I can recall, and that was when they named the three replacement apps. At no time did they mention audiobooks (a word Spell-Check rejects).

Interesting given that the _1A_ audience skews old and that as recently as one of the Gulf Wars DOONESBURY could have a gag on US enlisted personnel listening to music while a playlist for their older officers was precisely audiobooks.

Do fish know they're in water? Do large numbers of people walking around in bubbles of their own tunes realize that some people who appear to be in similar microcosms are actually in semi-permeable membranes of words? (And will Apple think it worth their effort to include audiobooks in their instructions for "migrating" to the new apps?)

One bit of irony: The audiobook I'm currently listening to again — on my iPhone operating as a very expensive iPod — is Benedict Anderson's IMAGINED COMMUNITIES. I suspect there are ways in which Apple vs. PC and the various music communities have more reality than, say, The United States or The United Kingdom or the other national "imagined communities" that are at the heart of Anderson's book.

 

"Nation" v. "Republic," Russians, Trump, and "Smoking Guns"

On whether (or not) there's a "smoking gun" in Donald Trump's involvement with the Russians as candidate and/or President—and whether Americans should care:

The US "Pledge of Allegiance" to the flag lumps together the US as "one Nation under God" and "the Republic" symbolized by the flag. Usually conflated in colloquial usage, Nation and Republic are different things (with "the American State" aside for a moment).

If we are essentially a Nation, and especially if that's a White, Christian Nation — possibly in the sense of "I used to be Catholic but now I'm a Christian" (actual quote) — then President Trump is going an impressive job as Leader of the Nation, channeling the will of the *real* American people and resisting corruption by foreigners generally but also by internal elements on the Nation's territory who are not White and/or properly Christian. Or for more inclusive Nationalists, putting a larger Nation first and over all.

For the Nation, going further a Capitalist Nation, Trump's doing business with the Russians is no big deal, and Russian help for his election would be a neutral or good thing since it helped give the Leader authority over much of the apparatus of the State, returning it to the service of the Nation.

If the US is essentially a Republic with a "mixed Constitution" with democratic elements — even liberal-democratic elements — then messing with elections is a very big deal. Also a big deal would be Trump's trying to use agents and agencies of the State to protect his position as Leader. And a really big deal would be the Leader of the Nation asserting himself over the laws of the Republic and State.

Since most Americans are as double-minded on such matters as the Pledge to the Flag is, this division can get murky. At the extremes, though, it's clear enough, and the resolution (if any) may very well start there if and when small "r" republicans try to remove by impeachment or the 2020 elections the Leader of the Nation.