Category: Miscellaney Page 5 of 14

R.I.P. David Graeber

On September 4, 2020

So, David Graber’s dead. Author of “Debt” and “Bullshit Jobs.” An anthropologist, anarchist and fierce activist. The link to his obituary is to the Guardian because it amuses me: he stopped writing for them after they helped smear Corbyn for anti-semitism (a charge Graeber fiercely refuted). Somehow they don’t mention that in the obituary.

Debt was and is an important book. Graeber goes into how money was actually created, as debt, and in effect a way to force people to work for money, even though they didn’t want to. (This is a vast over-simplification and you should read it.) Bullshit Jobs posited that about 40% of jobs don’t need to be done or are actively harmful, and went into some details. I don’t own either of them (read them in bookstores), so I can’t refresh my memory, but Debt in particular struck me at the time as important.

Graeber got some historical details wrong, but none of them were sufficient to undo his overall thesis, and he was roundly hated by historical economists for the book.

He has one more book coming out, “he Dawn of Everything: a New History of Humanity,” written with David Wengrow.

When I heard the news of Graeber’s death I was shocked. I didn’t know him, we weren’t friends. But he was doing actual important work, he was fiercely willing to stand up for what he believed right, and the work he was going to do won’t be done now. At age 59, he had probably another 10 years and two or three books, possibly important, in him.

De Gaulle quipped that “the graveyards are full of indispensable (people)” and mostly he’s right, most people’s deaths don’t matter much to anyone who didn’t know them. Someone will replace them who will do about as good a job.

But an intellectual or artist worthy of the name is, in some sense, indispensable. There are works they will not do, and if they don’t do them no one will.

I didn’t know Graeber, and I can’t claim to be personally sad. But he had important work still to be done, and no one will do it now. And without him to defend Debt from its attackers, it will lose luster and importance (because it’s the sort of book which must be destroyed by status-quo defenders, as it suggests capitalism is not what it claims to be.)

May he rest well, and if there is an afterlife, may it be kind to him. He will be missed by people who never knew him.

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Protect Yourself from Political Violence in the Age of Facial Recognition and Doxxing

By Ian Welsh

On August 31, 2020

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We’re seeing a rise in right-wing militia violence, condoned by police. Police themselves are already using facial recognition to identify protesters.

American authoritarianism is likely to follow the Latin American model, which Americans taught in the School of the Americas, and which they have backed for over a century in many countries. It will be combined with elements of how Israelis treat Palestinians, because Israelis train American police departments.

In this model, most of the beatings, “punishment” rapes, torture, and murder are done by militias. The police never catch them (and some are members, as they are already), and, of course, co-operate with them.

This is similar to what’s already going on; various law enforcement seizing people off the street without showing ID, into unmarked vans and cars, except that it’ll be private citizens doing it.

Then, they’ll do to you as they please, and no one will help.

Don’t think that if you’re a squishy liberal rather than a left-winger that’ll stop them. They hate feminists and so on just as much as the left, and all my life I’ve read their screeds about how they want to rape them or hang them from lamp-posts.

They’re increasingly being given the nod, and at some point, this is likely to start happening in earnest.

Don’t think Biden will save you. He might slow this down slightly, but he and Harris are extremely harsh on public disorder, and their administration will only make economic and political conditions worse, creating the grounds for the next authoritarian right-winger, who will learn from Trump but be far more disciplined.

The US’s only real chance of avoiding this future is a “Hail, Mary” — something like AOC winning the presidency in ’24 or ’28.

Might happen, but don’t bet on it.

So, some simple guidelines:

Wear a mask when protesting, always.
Don’t bring your phone with you.
Don’t take pictures of protesters without masks, so they can’t be identified and doxxed. The ability to do both doesn’t just belong to cops — private individuals can do it just fine, and in any case, cops will pass on information to their buddies in the militias.
Use a pseudonym online if you’re seriously left-wing or liberal. This is especially important for women.
Make some efforts to manage your digital footprint, so you’re harder to dox.
Take some precautions in your physical life to secure yourself, possibly including living with people who will fight for you (and you for them).
Prepare to leave where you are and go somewhere else. Somewhere else in the US, perhaps, or somewhere outside the US. Remember that what is actually mostly untraceable is cash.

Perhaps I’m overly concerned or even alarmist. I hope so. But I’d rather give this warning, have some people take extra precautions and not need them, than not give the warning, and see people hurt or killed who might have avoided the fate.

I don’t like what I’m seeing. The right has been itching to really punish the left and liberals for a long time, and all it really requires is that authorities give them the nod and step aside.

That process has begun. It may be walked back, it may not.

Beware.

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A Word to Parents in the Time of Covid

By Ian Welsh

On May 4, 2020

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The pandemic has left a lot of children at home when they would usually be at school, with their parents having to care for them all day.

My parents were alcoholics who loved to argue. Being stuck at home with them would have been hell. But I remember many other children’s parents can think of nothing better, where I imagine it would have been the greatest thing ever.

This is probably the longest stretch of time you will spend with your school age children in their entire lives–and children don’t tend to remember much of the pre-school years.

How they remember this period is likely to define their entire childhood relationship with you. You can view it as a trial and an imposition, as I see so many parents doing, or you can view it as something great; a chance you otherwise wouldn’t have to be with them and to enjoy each other’s company.

I gently suggest you do the latter.

Caring for kids can be a drag and frustrating, I get that, but emphasizing the good parts to yourself will make this period far better for you and for them, and will create a future relationship you treasure.

You don’t want them looking back at when when they spent the most time with you and hating the memory or knowing that you didn’t like being with them. You do want them to remember it as awesome.

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The Lesson of Thanksgiving

By Ian Welsh

On November 28, 2019

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Thanksgiving might be the most important American holiday, with only Christmas in competition. It’s become a very commercial holiday, and even here in Canada it seems every store has a “Black Friday Sale” sign up, which is odd, because our Thanksgiving is on a different date.

The story of Thanksgiving is that the Puritan settlers were having a hard time, and the natives helped them out, and they had a big feast together to celebrate the harvest.

Initial settlement in North America was hard. Settlements failed, and agricultural techniques imported from the Old World didn’t work well. The Puritans might well have died if the natives hadn’t helped them out.

Of course, what the Puritans and British colonists later did to the natives was basically wipe them out. And, in fact, Thanksigivng became a holiday when the scalps of natives were literally kicked around, and Thanksgiving was given for murdering them.

The… wages of charity. It’s hard to look at Thanksgiving and not think that the natives would have been better off if they hadn’t helped at all. Indeed, if they’d done everything they could to wipe out every European settlement.

But there is a twist to the story. The Puritans, of course, were religious fanatics. Their brand of religious fanaticism not being welcome in England, another brand of religious fanatic being in power (from the Reformation on, from a modern point-of-view, practically everyone was a religious fanatic), they headed off to a place where they could practice in peace and act like complete assholes to each other.

But the Puritans whom the natives helped, the Pilgrims who had that Thanksgiving dinner with them, it turns out they weren’t personally monsters.

Having figured out how to survive in North America, more Pilgrims came. These new Pilgrims became the majority, and they despised the Godless Natives. The old Puritans defended the Natives and objected to the bad treatment and were so stubborn about it that they wound up excommunicated, and excommunication, in Puritan society, was a big deal.

Charity and kindness, it appears, did work, but only with those who experienced it. And those people, alas, quickly became a minority and could not protect their native friends.

It’s hard to draw anything good from this, but I do find it encouraging that at least those who had personally received kindness were willing to fight and suffer for those who had shown them that kindness.

And that’s about as much good as I can find in Thanksgiving’s foundation myth.

As for the present, I hope American readers are enjoying their Thanksgiving, or at least the food. Whatever the past, we can try and make something good (I typed “food” originally, which seems appropriate) from the present.

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Simple Humanity

By Ian Welsh

On October 2, 2019

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Was reminded today of a barista at a Starbucks I used to frequent, who at the end of the night would give out sandwiches which would otherwise be put in the garbabe, and fill up cups with drinks which would otherwise be poured down the sink.

A very simple kindness, and one which was against company policy.

Good man.

Remembering 9/11

By Ian Welsh

On September 11, 2019

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I was working that day, in an office. Everything ground to a halt, and management gave up and opened an auditorium with a large screen playing the events as they happened.

After it was all clear, I turned to a co-worker and said “Jesus, I hope they don’t attack the wrong people.” He thought the idea was absurd.

Well, we all know how it turned out.

Most of the attackers were Saudi citizens, and it still smells to me like a Saudi operation. Certainly, if any country was going to be attacked, it should have been Saudi Arabia, the source of the poison which has corrupted Islam throughout the world.

As for the US, its soul was always rotten, but after everything Bush Jr. did–his re-election in 2004 was sickening– Americans knew, and enough of them were OK with it.

The US did change after 9/11, however; the Patriot Act was vile, evil, authoritarian, and almost no one voted against it. The war in Iraq was a simple war crime, and every senior person involved in it is guilty of the same crime that most of the Nazis were hung for at Nuremburg. I’d include everyone who voted for the enabling act, myself.

If the 2000 election theft hadn’t happened, 9/11 likely wouldn’t have happened, and even if it had, the aftermath wouldn’t have been as bad. Plus, Gore would have worked on climate change.

It’s all a clusterfuck, and it started with Bush v. Gore and 9/11.

Oh, and Bin Laden won. He got the US to do things that weakened it badly. That’s what he wanted.

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Eliminationist Rhetoric

By Ian Welsh

On July 18, 2019

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Real polarization in a country happens when different factions don’t accept the other faction has a right to exist.

When you say “traitor,” or “Go back home,” or “You don’t belong here,” what you’re saying is that someone doesn’t have a right to exist in your country. Traitor, in particular, is a strong word: Traitors are subject to the death sentence.

As long as I’ve been watching American discourse, there’s been a lot of it. It was almost completely on the right wing, but there is now some of it on the left.

Eliminationist rhetoric is dangerous, because it makes your fellows into enemies. It is the precursor to war. It is the statement: “If I could get rid of you (and killing is fine), I would.”

You see it in a lot of countries with problems. I’m always astonished at just how much the opposition in Venezuela hates Chavistas, for example. Many of them really, really want to kill them. They consider them illegitimate traitors.

The US has always had an “America First” bunch who aren’t just isolationists (US isolationism would be fine by me). They really, truly hate colored people, Jews, “liberals,” “Commies,” and so on. If they could, they’d hang them from lamp-posts.

But understand clearly that when you start saying “Nazi” and “Fascist,” you’re damn close saying that it’s okay to kill those people as well, because killing Nazis is justified.

Of course, if they are Nazis and close to taking power, well, perhaps they should be killed? You’d cheer for the Germans if they’d stopped Hitler in a huge purge, wouldn’t you? (This isn’t a way of saying don’t oppose Nazis, and that’s the dangerous thing about it.)

Seems to me the US is on a dangerous road. It’s entirely possible that this too will pass, but I see a lot of hate that’s reaching dangerous levels.

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Happy Independence Day

By Ian Welsh

On July 4, 2019

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US Constitution by KJD

It’s sometimes unclear to me whether the US has been more of a good thing than a bad thing, but Happy Independence Day. Remember to thank the French–there’s a fairly strong case that without them, the US would have lost the War of Independence.

But every powerful nation has committed their share of atrocities, so, well, so be it.

Enjoy the day.