i got my cleaning and groceries done and i'm about halfway through the second debate, which i'm going to run through to get it over with. i should be back to work either tonight or tomorrow.

i don't expect my analysis to this point to be popular, but here it is.

i was expecting the second debate to be a complete disaster, and that's more or less what it is so far. what i'm watching is a lot of people throwing what amounts to a bunch of bullshit at biden, who is carefully trying to assert the actual facts of the matter. now, that's not to say i agree with biden - i don't. i think his policies are awful. - but he's at least trying to get an honest debate in amongst a bunch of people that appear to have no interest in such a thing.

and, i have to hand the entire thing very comfortably to biden at this point, but that means i have to curve everybody up. there's a catch on the curve, though. we'll see if somebody steps up in the second half, but, right now, i'm going to have to give biden a D- and everybody else a well deserved F.

also: it's easy to understand that tulsi gabbard got a lot of hits on this night, but i'm not sure it had much to do with what she said. you know who actually watches these debates, right? yeah. ok, moving on...

i just want to close the thought with an example, though, and it's about what obama did or not do regarding immigration reform.

i watched months - it may have been years - of whitehouse press briefings over 2014 and 2015, and i have a very clear understanding of what actually happened. obama was absolutely deadset on comprehensive immigration reform, but he had absolutely no support from the republican held congress, and this is an almost entirely congressional issue. after trying for years to get a bipartisan bill, what happened is that he finally gave up and passed an executive order regarding the dreamers that is, in truth, of exceedingly grey legality. the actual reality is that the dream act is probably unconstitutional, in the form it became law under (executive order).

so, of what value is there in sitting there and blaming the president for not passing something he had no legal authority to pass? the failure to get anything passed is fully the fault of the republican congress, and that's really simply all there is to it. and, the step that obama made was so drastic and desperate that it would probably be struck down by a proper court. what i watched unfold in front of me was consequently in a parallel reality where facts don't exist. and, biden was the only defender of reality on stage.

i don't think i'd vote for joe biden. but, i'm not going to support a bunch of dishonest politicians that are looking to pull the wool over everybody's eyes, either.

i'll say this again: what's happening at the border is not a failure of oversight, although there is a failure of oversight in motion. nor is it the result of specific cruelty by an insane president, or even just a cynical ploy to win votes. what's happening at the border is systemic, it's by design, and it's not going to be altered by anybody standing on that debate stage. the raids are part of a complicated and very purposeful system of state-managed labour for the transnational corporate sector.

if you don't understand the problem, you can't take steps to fix it, and nobody on stage understands the problem. maybe, for some of them, they're just ignorant. it's possible, it really is. but, for all of the talk about prison-industrial complexes, let me throw this question out there: how much money have each of these candidates taken from big agribusiness?

we'll see what else comes up.

so, i got through the two day bender and while i'll say i didn't have any problems, exactly, it was also maybe not the best way to get through certain parts of it. i was a little fadey for saajtak, after 30 or so hours of drinking and smoking leading up to it. i smoked through more than four packs of cigarettes. it's an issue to balance - i seem to be able to do around 25 hours or so, and i'll get a second wind after, but i don't want to put myself in a situation where i'm seeing a headliner in that state.

the highlight of the weekend had to be a completely ridiculous cover of taylor swift's shake it off, by a local band that you've never heard of called the sunburns. i hope somebody caught a good part of that.

briefly, here's the update on what i did and didn't do:

17:00-19:15 - trey priest @ detroit shipping company.

i'm usually late for most things.

20:00-21:15 - my brightest diamond @ dso courtyard.

it's interesting that she's putting such an emphasis on detroit, because she sounds more like late 80s chicago. the new record might have been a strong wax trax! release in the late 80s, and in that sense it's kind of more of a retro thing. but, it's only retro if you know it, right? if jamie stewart & annie lennox did a collaboration...

21:30-02:00 -  another dimension @ tangent gallery.

i was hoping for a lot of guitar theatrics, but it didn't really happen. i'm not sure if it was the same guy or not, but there were two guitar + dj type performances, both more in the realm of "guitarist jams over techno song he likes" rather than any kind of meaningful integration of the guitar into the set. it actually came off as a gimmick, mostly for show; it was less about integrating the instrument into the sound and more about the idea that a guitarist standing beside a dj just looks kickass and cool.

so, i spent the night composing, and if anybody saw me lost in my head outside tangent friday night, that's what i was doing. i tend to avoid composing when i'm dancing for a number of reasons, and it's actually been a while, but the guitars just completely triggered me. and, trust me: the imaginary guitar solos, as imagined in the mind of the imaginer, were far more intense than what i saw in front of me. there was also some dubstep (they call it 'bass music' now), and it was tedious and boring like it always is, but the fact that i was spending the night composing in my head kind of took the grind out. it's funny that all they really needed to do was put a picture of a guitar on the wall to save the vibe, and that trick won't work if it gets overdone, but i did enjoy the night well enough.

chirp came on exceedingly late and was more interested in playing it safe on this night. i caught parts of their set, but not all of it. i will say that whatever kind of guitar synth he's using is exceptionally good sounding, which is to say that it seems as though the technology has really come up in the last few years, and i should take a closer look into that. the last i checked, they had tracking systems through computer sound cards, but the latency wasn't there yet. i guess that all they'd need to do is put that technology in a phone and ramp it up, which is easy enough to convert into a pedal. so, i'm less surprised on a technological level than i am...i'd just never heard anything that realistic from something on the floor, before. 

02:30-6:30 - late party @ unknown location. i was at a secret party with mostly gay men, and it was very secret, so secret that i'm not really going to talk much about it. even if you could find the place, they won't let you in without a password. or if you look too straight. but i'll say that it was more like a house party, so the cops would really have minimal powers in actually doing much. and i did have some fun there.

i got a little lost after that, but after going around in circles for a bit (which included smoking a large joint and figuring out a way to take cash out of the machine in detroit, something i'd never done before), i ended up back in hamtramck for a little before 8:00. i locked up at ant hall and took a walk down the street to find a coffee, which took me half way up campeau to a diner not far from the cvs. it was almost 8:30 before i got back. sometimes, it's things like this that eat away at your time; sometimes, it's a good way to eat away at it.

9:00-12:00 - dsa meeting @ ant hall.

the head organizers ("leadership") were there an hour early, and you could tell right away that these people were running a political party. indeed, it became clear enough fairly quickly that the actual purpose of the meeting was to present some bourgeois politicians to a crowd that is going to act as campaign volunteers. further, while it's not entirely clear where the platform was written, nobody made any effort in trying to conceal that it was being pushed down from somewhere else. so, this meeting would not be accurately described as an organizing meeting of the political grassroots in the community, but rather as an opportunity for an outside organization to find recruits to carry through with it's cause. it felt less like an organizing meeting (and, it's been a while, but i've been to quite a few.) and more like a ponzi scheme sign-up (which i've been to quite a few of, as well. hey, i was looking for a job. that's the hook.). they passed a collection plate at one point.

i didn't really want to address anybody at the meeting, and i wasn't intending to sign up. i was merely an observer from the temporary autonomous zone; a friendly anarchist that was between parties and really just hanging out for general interest.

but, this group is clearly much more focused and almost career-oriented than anything i'd want to involve myself with. we're talking about strictly vertical organizing with a completely pre-written platform, almost more like it's a franchised extension of a fast food restaurant. so, this is a political party, whether it's calling itself one or not. worse, there is clearly a centralized bureaucracy behind this, and you clearly need to get promoted to a higher position in the hierarchy before you're allowed to meaningfully participate in the process. everything i saw was just textbook bourgeois politics that is directly antithetical to any concept of socialism that is worth discussing. there was even one point where one of the "leaders" stated to the crowd that the candidates didn't have any ideas of their own, to the point that it wasn't even worthwhile to ask them questions because everything they know about the party is in the platform; she really wanted to make it clear that all of their positions are defined perfectly in the platform, and if they win then they owe everything to the party, who would be in complete control.

it was at least well attended for what it was, i'll give them that. the crowd was a mix of people that is hard to define in any specific way, as you usually get at these events. that said, it was noticeably white for an area with a majority muslim population (in fact, many of the people were from ferndale), and they seemed cognizant of how unusually white they were for their region, too. i guess all the brown people were too busy working to show up.

so, i don't know exactly who's "steering" this, but it was clear pretty quickly that it's just some "progressive" democrats that are co-opting socialism as a marketing term rather than any kind of meaningful grassroots movement. a better name for the organization as it exists today should probably be "socialist democrats of america" rather than "democratic socialists of america". and, i'd consequently advise avoiding them.

i was torn between waiting for the bbq and eating early, but by around 12:30 the choice had been made by my stomach. i didn't want to show up at the bbq and eat all the food. so, i grabbed a very thick six-inch at subway (bmt + mozz + bacon) before going to the bbq....

13:00-21:30 - punk rock bbq @ kelly's.

i came in super early to grab a beer and basically just hung out all day. i had one hamburger and one chicken burger, which for me was part of the reason i went there.

the bands were just kind of there and that's sort of what you expect from something like this, which is really just a bunch of people, most of whom knew each other, and most of which were over 40, having a beer on a patio. people were kind of only vaguely paying attention.

there was an opener that i can't find the name of - i think his name was steve - that did an atonal singer/songwriter thing. i don't grasp this style of music or understand what it's appeal actually is, but people keep doing it because people like it. i didn't understand a word he said, but his vocal tone was like bob dylan with a bad cold in the middle of allergy season. if he knew a fourth chord, he didn't show it off.

womb worm were on next and they did a mildly interesting no-wavy or weeny math-y sort of thing. this appears to be trendy right now. but, what i'd actually like to hear is somebody make it more complicated and that much weirder (the problem is that it's a 40 year old schtick, and it's actually a highly predictable style), rather than a little bit catchier, which is what they actually did.

there was then an all-girl ramones cover band called the whoremones. i'd doubt any of them were born before 1990, and they were kind of more josie and the pussycats, to be entirely frank about it. they did some newer songs by acts they actually like (colleen green was one of them, and that made more sense) as well. i'll admit i digged watching somebody play the classics like i wanna be sedated at that particular point, but it was actually kind of contrived and, while i recognize that this gig may be profitable for them, i do hope they're able to start a band of their own some time soon.

pet psychic kind of just floated by. i may have been a little too stoned at the time. but, i think it was pretty stripped down - like, early beatles stripped down.

and, i only vaguely recall bourbon squirrel, which i think was also pretty stripped back and kind of slow moving. 

the person that organized this show plays out a lot in detroit under the pseudonym of "lady darkness" and seems to perform in a bunch of different styles. she remembered me from the last two day party, as she did an acoustic set at the dequindre cut midway through it (and i interjected into a conversation she was having about joseph conrad). as i've checked out sound samples previously, i was actually expecting something in the realm of glam rock or even hair metal, as that was what the samples had implied, but this was a different animal - more of an art-rock band (with a violin player), which opened up space for the vocals, which were actually a little reminiscent of a mid-90s jarboe, or maybe a pj harvey. i don't think they got across what they wanted to, and they seemed visibly irritated that people weren't really paying attention, but it was a good proof of concept, at least. what i'll say is this: burgers were maybe not the best way to bribe interested parties to see a band of that sort; she might have got a more interested crowd by bribing them with ramen noodles.

the last band appear to have been a punk band at one point, then grown out of it, then rejoined for the hell of it. that's a guess based on the musicianship, the age of the band and the length of time since their last bandcamp release (7 years). it was skate-y, but full of jazzy fills that were designed simply to show off, kind of thing. so, i enjoyed this. and, near the end of the set they did that cover of shake it off that was just absolutely brilliantly absurd.

so, it's around 20:00 and i'm trying to figure out if i give the next band - jimmy ohio and the ultimate overs - a fair chance or not, knowing i won't be staying for the later acts, which i know well and am not really into. the saajtak show just seems more interesting to me. first, i decided i'd finish my beer and go because the band will be on before i finish my beer. nope. so, i decide i'l have one more smoke, and then they'll be on. nope. they started playing right after i bought another beer, and while i didn't end up missing anything at the other show (in fact, i could have stayed at the barbeque a little longer....), i did spend much of the set outside. it had that angular television vibe to it, but as seems to be normal nowadays, was kind of bombarded with glossy pop. so, i didn't get much out of this. and, i left when they were done....

21:45-02:00 - saajtak record release @ ghost light.

there was a burlesque show and a comedy club event in the same venue, so the place was busier than it ought to have been and the first act didn't come on until like 22:30. i think i impressed some of the improv people in the smoking section with a good run on human sacrifice being theoretically permissible. see, if there was any actual empirical evidence of it's efficacy, it would be hard to argue against it under certain scenarios like drought or climate change. however, because i am aware of no evidence that causally links human sacrifice to any sort of measurable outcome, i can't, in good conscience, stand in favour of it. i actually don't really know why i've never done any stand-up, other than it just never really coming up. i know i'd be good at it because i seem to be able to make people laugh more or less effortlessly. the problem i'd come up with is the crowd being too stupid to get half of the jokes. i guess it's an inversion of how people see it, which is a function of market theory: capitalism insists that it's the clown that needs to adjust to the market in terms of being properly entertaining, but i'd insist that it's rather that the educated clown, at least, shouldn't have it's jokes corrupted by the interference of the audience, that the educated clown must persevere until a sufficiently educated audience that can understand the jokes can be found. so, a really talented comedian should spend at least five years playing to empty clubs, because people are invariably going to be too stupid to get the joke the first time through. and, then i'm just running into the same problems i have with my other art projects. one day, though, somebody will get me drunk enough at ghost light to drag me to the comedy club in the back, and i will slay the one person in the room that took courses on the intersectionality of byzantine history and quantum physics. that is how they got the greek fire.

i think i do enough stand-up sitting down here at home, thanks. these posts are 95% stream of consciousness; the difference is solely in the latency problems that exist between my brain and my (one) typing hand. it's less like a bobbing parrot, and more like an anthropomorphized arthropod at the end of my arm that is connected to my brain via a 14.4 baud modem, even though i'm well aware that the wiring in my body is operating at speeds and on levels that we don't truly understand. for example, did you know that your brain can register an impulse for suicide before you are exposed to fall out boy for the first time?

i think we got the point across.

the first band had a guitarist that i've seen pop up in a number of other projects around town that are a little more....sophisticated than the one i saw on saturday night. if somebody were to notate the parts and print them on to a piece of music, the result may be challenging to perform, i'd have to grant the point. but, the presentation, which sounded like a very young kim gordon fronting some kind of john zorn project, was just simply not very compelling. the impression that i got was that they seemed to sort of be playing down to the audience. now, i'm a fan of certain kinds of noise rock that have more structured components to them, but this just wasn't that. if you've seen something like vampire belt, you get the general point, but the truth is that they were really just literally fucking around for a little while and it just came off like they were wasting their talent. let's hope that it doesn't take them too long to grow out of this particular phase because these musicians should be doing something better than this.

i didn't have a lot of interest in the second or third acts.

when saajtak finally came on - and i don't remember what time it was - i was literally having a hard time standing up. i was less drunk and just more tired; i wasn't in danger of blacking out so much as i was just in danger of falling asleep. and, i may have nodded off for a few seconds, while standing in the audience. but, what i remember of the show is that (1) the sound problems they had at mocad were gone. they sounded good, here. (2) they're actually moving in a more abstract direction that is perhaps making lesser use of the singer's ridiculously high level of technical talent. saajtak has always reminded me a lot of a band from the 70s called yes (that i don't actually like that much), but taken to a modern level of technological wizardry. so, the keys/drums duo often has a very wakeman/bruford feel in it's dichotomy between diddly arpeggiation and weird atonality, but the technology in the synthesizer work is updated to feel a lot more contemporary. legitimate advances in prog rock are rare, nowadays, and they're getting close to their maximum shelf date. so, i think you want to get this while you still can.

2:30-07:00 - late party II @ other unknown location. the second show was not as secret, and it may be unnecessary to hide it's location. there were also less people than there were at the secret show, which is curious, but it was more of a mixed crowd. so, there was some dancing and some smoking (and some drinking) and then i left and went home...

even if i could have stayed awake past that point, i was out of cash and didn't want to spend more. and, the eight hour wait for the book club was simply too daunting.

15:00-17:00 - socialist book club meeting @ 2283 holbrook. $0 + coffee.
19:00-00:00 - cherubs + child bite @ small's. $13 + beer costs.

i'm not a substantive cherubs fan, but would have liked to see them. tell them to come back. and, i still haven't seen child bite because it just hasn't yet made sense.

i was back at the tunnel a little before 8:00, hit the renaissance for a large bowel movement, caught the 8:25 bus, picked up some fruit when i got back over and made it home to some spaghetti at about 9:30, and a shower and some good sleep after that.

i need to finish the cleaning that i put on hold last week, do some groceries and get back to finishing up the last journal compilation.

listen: i'll take new age woo over jihad & sharia any day. marianne willamson is not as scary as keith ellison is. it's just a difference of scale.

but, it's at best a step sideways and at worst a massive step backwards to start bringing the kind of language she uses into the discussion.

if she could learn how to rephrase her terms, and what the appropriate socialist concept is for each of the concepts she tries to present, then she might be the ideal candidate. and, in that sense, i can hope that she's the future of the american left.

but, the future of america cannot be in what marx called utopian socialism. thoreau was not a prophet, but a fool. utopian socialism will just lead us back to fundamentalism. and, i'm not getting on a one-way trip to gilead via iran.

she's still scary, and i might have even said that first. but, if she's not interested in learning how to convert her language away from the discourse of spiritualism and into the language of marxism, somebody else should be studying how she's doing this, and step in front of her and do it instead.

and, do i think that kerry would have had a less violent presidency than gore?

yes. and for good reasons.

i know that the revisionists keep going on this, but the fact is that the reason that gore lost to bush is that he couldn't generate enough support on the left of the party because his record was about three degrees too far to the right. al gore was always a conservative in office, from the start. that he would have bombed iraq anyways (and he would have.) is actually secondary to the loss. he lost because he was a moderate conservative, and his opponent was far more radical than he was.

i still don't think that gore would have been that different from bush at all, actually.

kerry wasn't an ideal candidate, of course. but, he at least came from a genuine anti-war background, and there was some evidence that he might have continued on with it.

his tenure as secretary of state, at least, should go down as a rare bright point in history over the last several decades.

and, i'll point this out again.

- in 2000, i would not have voted for al gore. i would have supported nader. until the end. and, i'll remind you that gore was a very loud voice in favour of bombing iraq, going all the way back to the 80s.
- i did support kerry as a lesser evil in 2004. kerry was a better choice than gore in many ways, but most importantly, in context, as the least pro-war candidate.
- i had no interest in barack obama in 2008. my answer to "clinton or obama?" was kucinich. i would have voted for the greens.
- what is the point in having an election between mick romney and barack obama? how are they different, at all? i would voted for the greens in 2012.
- i very, very weakly endorsed clinton in 2016, under concerns about trump's uncertainty. if the argument is "they're both the same, it doesn't matter who wins anyways, so vote green", then it broke down somewhat under the lack of clarity about what trump was actually going to do. so, for example, he said he was an isolationist, but we didn't know that he really was. on the other hand, we know clinton is an interventionist and an imperialist and has been for a very long time. if that's your issue, it's tempting to vote for trump, as the undefined unknown is better than the defined known, if you are staunchly opposed to it. but, if trump is just blatantly lying - if he's a hyper-interventionalist nazi - then you've been had. i strongly suspected he was lying, so i endorsed clinton.
- i will not support any of these candidates besides bernie in 2020, and i may not even support bernie. the changes he's made in an attempt to appeal to a larger audience have been discouraging. let's see who the greens actually run, first.

that means i would have supported democrats in two of the elections this century (2004,2016) and greens in three of them (2000,2008,2012).

and, i think i've posted here quite a bit that i would not define myself as a democrat, at all.

and, what's the deal with williamson?

she'd be a good speechwriter, if she isn't one already. in terms of memorable statements, she blew everybody else away, and she stated a lot of correct-sounding things (mostly about root causes) while everybody else was focusing on the banality of modern retail politics. she doesn't have the numbers for the moderators to take her seriously, and they didn't. but, in a sense i think she represents the future of the left better than anybody else on stage....both in good ways and bad ways.

she said a couple of things that will likely end any further ambitions she has in politics. you can't use terms like "dark, psychic energy" in a serious audience of any sort and expect not to get laughed out of the room. but, as is usually the case with hippies and other people that exist in the apolitical side of the libertarian left, if somebody could sit her down and work out an actual analysis with her, then she'd probably be quick to get her head around it, so long as she doesn't try too hard to hold on to her charms and spells and idols, as the imperialists pull them out of her hands. in that sense, she both represents hope for the party's future and a cautionary tale of how it may end up, if it's not rescued from the mystics and gurus.

we'll avoid quoting seminal dead kennedy's tunes, for the moment.

so, who won the debate?

bernie gets a C-, i'll give williamson a D- and the rest of them get an F.

Responding to constituents at her regularly scheduled “office hours” last week, Massachusetts senator and celebrated left-wing icon Elizabeth Warren defended her vote to send $225 million of American taxpayer money to Israel for its Iron Dome missile defense system...

ok. that's the closest thing i can get, but if you support the iron dome system, you can't be too opposed to missile defense, as that is what israel is doing with it - testing systems for the empire's eventual use. 

and, if you're not opposed to missile defense then you don't oppose building first strike capability, because that's what it's actually about.

but, i'd like to see a clearer statement.

has warren made a statement on missile defence?

and, in case you didn't know...

number of troops in japan: 50,000.
number of troops in korea: 30,000.
number of troops in afghanistan: 15,000
number of troops in iraq: 5,000

and, also, let me be clear on this point.

the invasion of afghanistan was intended to be a long term occupation of a strategically vital region in the centre of asia. there is no goal to be completed in afghanistan, no end point, no exit strategy. but, that is not a reason to send troops home, but the very reason they are in the first place. so, there will be no withdrawal from afghanistan. ever. you'd might as well be talking about withdrawing from japan or korea, things that will not happen until the empire starts to permanently crumble. as the withdrawal of legions from the frontier in britain marked the end of roman control in the northwest, symbolically if not functionally, an american withdrawal from afghanistan would actually signal that the empire is beyond permanent decline and at the point of imminent collapse.

when candidates start talking about sending troops back from afghanistan at this stage in the process, there's one of two reasons:

1) they have not yet been briefed, and they essentially have little understanding of the actual goals and purposes of american foreign policy. when candidates like this win (and while obama was a candidate of this type, let's recall that he actually ran on bombing afghanistan, not withdrawing from it. his argument against iraq was that it redirected resources away from afghanistan (which is probably wrong, too)), they usually change their tune very quickly.
2) they're deep state and are playing right into the propaganda. and, they're lying through their teeth about it.

or, to put it another way.

if bernie is the revolution, warren is the counter-revolution.

and, it's the counter-revolutionaries that the elite let actually govern.

she may lose the general, but she's clearly the establishment favourite, at this point.

elizabeth warren is a reactionary.

and, it's increasingly clear that bernie is too stupid to realize it.

a nuclear first-strike is obviously bad news, and you want to be more concerned about electing leadership that keeps you (and the world) out of that scenario than about what happens when you're faced with it. so, i could argue i'm in favour of a ban on killing wildlife, but i'm more concerned about changing a culture that has some kind of drive to kill. i don't kill things, but it's not because there's a law against it, it's because i actually, really, honestly don't want to.

it opens up the question, though: what happens if, despite your best efforts, you find yourself face-to-face with an angry bear?

the thing about rules is that there's always exceptions, and this is why i don't actually take elizabeth warren particularly seriously when she offers a no first-strike policy. the senator from massachusetts likes to talk about rules, but her debate performances suggest that she's aware that exceptions to the rules always exist, and that she seems to see herself as the exception to most rules. it's not unique, really. i don't doubt that she'd use them, in the situation that the exception applies, as she understands the specific exception.

my intent is not be insolent or sarcastic, but to suggest that the right policy is to legislate the exceptions, because everybody knows that they're there, and that they have to be there. it's magical thinking to wave them away. so, i'd support developing an updated, detailed, complicated first-strike policy that explicitly denotes when first-strike is permitted as an option and when it doesn't. warren's policy, as presented, is overly simplistic, intended solely for simple-minded voters and very poorly suited for real-world applications.

the other side of the argument is that if you broadcast your first-strike policies then you're opening yourself up to exploitation, but i think that's a misreading of any serious opponent. one of the exceptions in the no first strike policy legislation should be that if the country finds itself up against an opponent with such nefarious motives, then a first strike should be on the table - that would be a foe that needs to be instantly neutralized. you can't debate with an entity that's deadset on destroying you. but, insofar as the opponents are nation-states, at least, this is not realistic. a clear first-strike policy insofar as it relates to them is preferable, so long as the status quo of relatively stable global leadership persists. "so long as"...clauses, conditions. it's complicated, really - it's not a simple thing with an easy plan to fix, although that's good marketing in late capitalism, isn't it?

bernie: it's not me, it's you. we need hard work and lengthy organizing to come together and solve the world's problems. it's going to take generations. but, we can do it if we put enough into it.
warren: don't worry about it, i'll take care of it. i have a simple plan that everybody can understand. just sign here.

but, to an extent, this is the reason america has a commander-in-chief. there has to be somebody there, on the ground, in real-time, who is going to analyze the evidence and make a choice, and that process cannot be clouded by religion or ideology or any other kind of idealism. it must be strictly evidence-based. so, all a policy can do is offer rules of thumb around how to analyze the evidence.

as i understand it, these policies already exist. they could use an update, i'm sure.

did bernie lose in 2016 because he lost the black vote?

it's an accounting problem - you can do the math that way, but it's disingenuous.

he lost the south by huge margins, regardless - white southerners seemed to prefer clinton, as well, and i don't know why everybody forgot that she was first lady of arkansas for eight years. i did a post on this. he just flat out lost the south, through and through. he did terribly with older voters. he did badly with democrats. and, large percentages of his voting base were unable to vote for him, due to the rules around the process.

so, the single biggest thing he needed to do was register, register, register...but that doesn't seem to be happening. the focus seems to be on trying to convince the most conservative block in the country to vote for the most liberal candidate in years. it makes no sense, as a strategy.

he should have doubled down on his strengths, instead of trying to address his weaknesses.

and, i'll tell you what the numbers say right now: while bernie may not have lost in 2016 due to black voters, if things don't change soon, he's going to lose 2020 because he has minimal support levels amongst white voters. and, that was the whole argument for bernie in the first place....

and, i will state this clearly, at least: the single biggest thing that bernie needs to do to turn his campaign around is to get as far away from cenk uygur as he possibly can.

he's a loser. and, he's not intelligent. and, he's not popular, either.

sanders is not finished yet. but the numbers are getting worse and worse, and he's not being beaten by better candidates.

it's true that the media is out to hurt him, but that was true in 2016, too. if he beat the media then, why can't he beat it now?

i'm going to tell you what the narrative is going to be if he ends up losing badly in the first few primary states, and i'm laying this down now because i think the campaign needs to get their head around it in order to turn things around.

after 2016, bernie was (rightfully or wrongfully) criticized for running a campaign that had too many white people in it. now, i think everybody that knows his policies knows he wants to legislate in favour of everybody, and that the conclusion that he was tilted towards white voters due to the composition of his campaign was unfair. but, he reacted by replacing a lot of people that were hired due to their qualifications with a lot of people that were hired due to their skin colour, or what religion they have, or where they were born. and, frankly, it shouldn't be surprising that replacing merit with background has sunk his campaign.

bernie is losing because his team sucks. and, he has time to figure that out.

now, that doesn't mean he should fire everybody and replace them with people that are white, as that would just be repeating the same problem. but, the campaign is going to need to do a comprehensive survey - who was hired because they deserved it and who was hired to increase diversity? and, they're going to need to correct it, and make sure they don't keep doing it.

i promise you that this will be the narrative, if he loses. and, it's probably the right one, too.

i just want to clarify a point.

it's easy to look at what i've written here and say "she's calling for solidarity with trans activism, but she won't, herself, stand in solidarity with muslims or gamers. hypocrite!".

and, as always, what that means is that you're a conservative, and i'm not. allow me to explain.

what you're doing is creating a false equivalency by throwing all of these different minorities into a box and standing up for "minority rights". so, to you, these are all the same thing, and i'm clearly contradicting myself. but, that is a textbook classical conservative position that is usually attributed to de tocqueville. it's a right-wing approach to the scenario.

i reject this - i don't want to put everybody into this big box, and i don't think that standing up for "minority rights" is the fundamental issue, at all. rather, i'm going to pick and choose which minorities i'm going to stand with, based on whether they reflect the values i have or not. and, while trans activists reflect my values, muslims and gamers (with caveats in both scenarios) most certainly do not.

rather, if i were to stand up for muslims just because they're minorities, then i'd be being a hypocrite, as well as dishonest and inconsistent, because i have absolutely no common cause with them whatsoever.

it essentially goes back to the basic difference between the left and the right, once again. the right believes in a world of harmony, where everybody gets along in shared diversity because they know their place and they keep to themselves. the left, on the other hand, believes in a world that is defined by perpetual conflict between interests and classes, where people need to align against each other in order to advance their own causes.

the simple answer is that i'm on the side of people arguing for equal access to services, and i'm not on the side of people using religion as an excuse to deny it. and, this is actually a good example of the growing contradiction evolving in front of us between real leftist equality and this kind of phony neo-liberalism that thinks "diversity" is a worthwhile excuse to deny it.

no, seriously.

if democrats are smart, then they'll actually build a bridge to nowhere. make work projects for all. dig ditches, and fill them back in. that way, when the republicans get elected, they can fight like to hell to keep funding for the bridge to nowhere (it's the jobs), while things like healthcare spending and social security are left off the radar.

like i say: they're going to govern, and when they govern they're going to cut. so, you set up a decoy for them to attack...

i also watched a bit more of the debate, and i want to make a general comment about financing and universality.

in the long run, somebody like klobuchar is probably right: if you're going to have private universities, and wealthy people are going to spend a lot of money to go to them, then it doesn't actually make sense to bail them out when they get into huge amounts of debt. that's trickle-up economics, it's a backwards transfer of wealth.

but, this is a very long war, and sensible issues around financing should be left to the republicans, not the democrats. and, i'll tell you why...

supposing that the democrats win and bring in universal health care and wipe out student debt, they will eventually lose office, and almost certainly be replaced by the republicans when they do. if the republicans come into office and inherit a sound fiscal situation, they're still going to have to push through cuts to satiate the blood lust in their base. remember: republicans don't really care about deficits, what they care about is demonizing groups of people and then attacking them when they get into office. so, they have to carry out the public execution - they have to feed the captives to the lions. so, all that democrats are really going to accomplish by being fiscally responsible is forcing the republicans to make deeper cuts. the base needs it's blood.

if, on the other hand, the democrats pile up their legislation with excessive spending, then they're giving the republicans something to cut out when they win the office back, whatever office it is.

and, of course they will win the office back. and, no, you can't convince "moderates" to vote against them. nor will democratic voters punish their own for overspending. this is all relative, so it's just a question of where you place the scales.

so, democrats should really, seriously be pushing for and trying to legislate the most expensive, bloated plans they can come up with. that is, they should earmark areas that can be cut by future republican administrations by overspending in their own bills. as the party of spending, the democrats are in control, here: they determine what gets cut in the future, by what they legislate in the present.

liberals in canada can learn a similar lesson by observing the ford government. they're literally eliminating disability. well, the previous government was too fiscally responsible - there wasn't an easy target to attack. if the wynne-mcguinty government had focused less on deficits and spent more recklessly on frivolous projects, ford would have been able to make easier cuts.

and, if obama had pushed through more extensive spending when he had control of both houses, trump wouldn't be cutting food stamps. he'd be cutting programs for pet insurance, or something.

and, i just want to have it recorded somewhere that it is obvious that a gun buy back program is a way better idea, if you are concerned about results, than gun control legislation. bernie's ideas on guns seem to lack the overwrought kneejerkism that has become fashionable in the democratic centre.

there are more guns than people. so, if you institute a serious crackdown on sales, you're just opening up a black market where supply greatly outstrips demand. removing the regulatory/oversight process might even have the result of depressing the prices.

there are sane and reasonable things to do around sales, but you have to accept that their effects will be minimal on actually preventing real crime. a policy to actually get the existing guns off the streets is a way better idea, and something nobody else is talking about (to my knowledge) in their collective rush to get to the podium first to blame the nra.

so, i watched the rogan interview, and bernie was actually pretty snappy with him when he asked stupid questions.

listen, at the end of the day you need to be able to face your critics. it's even a fundamental principle of justice that you be able to face your accusers. so, there's some value in bernie showing up and saying "hey. you say that shit to my face.". i think rogan gets that, maybe even better than most.

and, bernie is not a cloistered member of congress, either. he will reach out and work with people he broadly disagrees with in order to get things done. that's his record, it's more pragmatic than idealistic, and it's a a mindframe that will help the country in the end. if you want good trade policies and you want lower prescription costs, at least, it's probably going to be necessary to work with some subset of republicans. they may even be more willing to sign on then some democrats.

and, it's a good opportunity to catch him in a slip, too, right. i mean, that's probably the actual reason warren won't do a fox town hall - there's a fear they might catch her agreeing with them on economic policy, on the record.

so, i don't even want to throw the argument out that you have to do it to reach categories of voters. that's true enough, but it's not really addressing the concern. what i'd rather suggest is that, if you're afraid of your candidate having a tete-a-tete with joe rogan, you may want to look deeper into yourself and ask why that really is.

except that it's too cold to sleep in here.

i'm going to get up, get something to eat, run the hot water and go from there. maybe i'll nap a little later, instead.

and, if i'm going to have a long weekend, i need to force myself to sleep in until the late morning, at least. my schedule is cycled around the other way, right now.

i'm past my cut-off, so i should be able to eat a nice meal when i wake up. and, with that, i've successfully removed a week's worth of calories. am i feeling ok?

well, i was trying to lose about 5-10 pounds, but i'm not measuring myself. i don't have a scale. i look like i've lost that extra bit of belly fat, which was the difference between flat (i.e. normal) and almost bulged (i.e. a scary change). and, lying flat on my back, i'm back to concave, which is normal. if i went from in the 140s to in the 130s, that gets my bmi back down to 20ish, as well, which is closer to where i want it.

yes, i'll be drinking this weekend, but i'll try to keep it (mostly) to beer. and, i'll be biking. and dancing. this was a blip, i expect.

but, i mean, if i wake up on monday and there's an issue, i'll just do it again.

so, this is the response i got from the oiprd on july 17th:

I am sending this email to let you know, the investigator has completed your review and it will be sent to our legal counsel next week for the finalization.

that would suggest to me that a report is on the way, and i did indicate at the time that it seemed strange that it didn't go to a panel.

this is the response i got on august 8th:

Last I can see in our file, this went to our panel just yesterday. So now we wait for the drafted decision.

so, which is it?

i know that it sounds paranoid to suggest that i'm being fucked around by the police oversight committee, but i'm just looking at the evidence in front of me and coming to clear deductions around it. they've been entirely inconsistent and totally dishonest from the very start.

i don't know when to expect the report at this point, but there's not much that i can do so long as they keep stringing me along, except sit tight and wait it out. the only thing with a meaningful statute on it was the human rights complaint, and it's been filed; there are no statutory time restraints on filing a charter challenge, and if the delay is due to the oiprd then the judge should accept that without much push back.

if i'm right, and they're just dragging their feet, then it will just help my cause, in the end.

so, i've been trying to avoid commenting on the jessica yaniv case, but i think the situation has gotten out of hand.

in ontario, which is not bc, the human rights code prohibits discrimination in five specific areas: employment, housing, services, unions and vocational associations and contracts. her claim is that, by being denied a brazilian wax (which i am only foggy on the actual details of) due to the existence of her male genitals, she is being discriminated against by a number of businesses on the grounds of her gender identity. further, she seems to believe that the root cause of the discrimination is religious observation, and she's probably absolutely right about it.

i think she has a strong case in principle, but it's less clear what the proper remedy is. the defense is trying to argue that she's trying to force specific employees into waxing her balls, but this is a disingenuous position. rather, what the law says in context is that the business has a duty to accommodate, which probably means that they'd have to hire employees willing to perform the service. that said, it's not particularly clear to me why a business doesn't exist to cater to the queer market, as you'd think waxing services for testicles isn't such a particularly obscure request within a particular community.

you have to pull back the layers of complexity and specificity, here, to get to the meaningful point. so, one of the things the court is going to ask is whether she had other options or not. the issue with the cake in detroit comes up, where maybe the owner was technically discriminating against the queer couple but the correct answer was to just go to another store, because there are lots of places that make cakes and you'll find one eventually. there's lots of pro-queer spaces in detroit, trust me. then, you can go on the internet and attack the business for being transphobic and hope it hurts their business. that's what i did with the works in detroit, and i won the argument at the end of the day - they've since disappeared, and i haven't had any problems since. it was a terrible place that the city got into a rut around, and the city is better off now that it's gone.

so, you should expect the court to rule that a violation occurred, but that's not the same thing as expecting them to come up with a clear solution. if she's asking for monetary compensation, it would have to be in the form of emotional damages, and it's not clear how that is defined. and, the only way they're going to order a company to hire somebody to perform the service is if there isn't another company on the market that already performs the service, which i think is doubtful. so, she might be right in principle, but her legal action is nonetheless probably ill-advised and winning the case may not come with any concrete benefits.

but, these are legal questions and the court will figure them out.

what is more concerning to me right now is that jessica appears to be being targeted by the religious right in her community, which is what she said was the root cause in the first place, and who are predictably using the police to carry out their oppression. whether you agree with her lawsuit or not, she needs solidarity and support from the broader community, right now.

i remember reading an article back in 2000 that claimed to have evidence that there were enough seniors that cluelessly voted for george hw bush (and i mean out of genuine confusion) to swing the state and therefore the election.

i agree with kinsella: this is absurd. it's more like we never got rid of harper, really. but, how many voters (of a certain age) are there that aren't entirely sure which trudeau they're actually voting for?

canada's senile population is growing at a pretty fast rate. you have to wonder.

https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/warren-trudeau-ad-actually-a-load-of-hooey

windsor, which is just south of detroit, is the southernmost city in canada, and has the second warmest average temperatures (behind victoria, bc). this weekend appears to be a concrete example of how those averages work out.

according to the forecast, i'm like 20 km south of where the jet stream is dipping to. so, i'm just south of the returning cold front and will just barely miss it. it's going to be much cooler this weekend in other major canadian cities, like toronto and ottawa and montreal. sudbury, which is about as far north as minneapolis, may even dip below ten degrees.

the nice graphic in the forecast doesn't measure the uncertainty, which i suspect is high. if that jet dips a little lower, we could be in for a nasty surprise; if it stays a little higher, those overnights could be better than forecast.

who programmed nice overnights on sunday and monday, though, instead of friday and saturday? da fuck? i guess if i get stuck on sunday...

there's not a drop of rain in the forecast, so i'm very tempted to have a very long weekend. 

i am familiar with sam & leo and am not surprised to see them offer a more diplomatic, if essentially identical, analysis of the text.

no, really. it's the same reaction, almost point-by-point, just using far less flamboyant language. and, i swear i didn't read this, first.

https://socialistproject.ca/2017/01/b1353/

so, an ideological leftist would actually argue in favour of automating the service sector as much as possible, insofar as we should have one at all, in order to emancipate the workers from that kind of dehumanizing and pointless labour.

nobody should spend their life behind a cash register, or locked away in a kitchen.

i'm going to bring you back to the plot for a minute, though.

why, exactly, don't we have service sector unions?

well, to begin with, we actually do. in fact, they're some of the biggest unions still standing, it's just that they're a function of the employment environment. so, for example, the janitors and food workers at carleton university are absolutely unionized, and i watched them strike more than once at my lengthy stay there. but, you have to understand that this is somewhere where the higher paid workers - the profs - build relationships with the serving staff, and that's probably key to the whole thing.

why, though, don't we have more unionization in the service sector? why don't we have a fast food workers union the way we have an electrical workers union?

well, stop for a minute and ask yourself what socialism actually is. is it just a tactic to raise wages and living conditions? or is it a way to place property in common, under the argument that you can't provide for a proper accounting of labor?

i've made this point before: it doesn't make sense to collectivize the mcdonalds and redistribute the hamburgers. rather, it makes sense to smash the fast food industry altogether. and, that is your actual answer: socialists will broadly argue that we won't have fast food after the revolution, and there's consequently nothing of any tactical value in seizing worker control of the restaurants. now, the farms on the other hand...

so, don't misinterpret me. i'm not calling for a movement to organize the service sector; what i'm calling for is a movement to abolish the service sector.

one of the best things we can do at this point is provide alternate living arrangements. i've never been so desperate as to work a full time fast food job; i've always been lucky enough and resourceful enough to find a way out. but, if given the choice, i'd certainly rather live on a kibbutz. i would imagine that i'd be more interested in a way out than in a way up.

a real revolutionary movement should be able to see these kinds of industries as what they are, which is complete capitalist excess, and try to help people out of them. then, we can build an army with the people we emancipate.

but, i have a lot of art to do make, first.

and, i suspect i'll spend sunday morning quietly enjoying a coffee, if i show up there at all.

yeah, so i'm really not going to get into the specific examples about specific unions fighting for specific things; it's all very reactionary, politically, and none of the case studies provide for much of anything useful when it comes to building a real, revolutionary movement outside of the constraints of the workforce. it's just all about workers fighting for benefits within the context of existing capitalism. if anything, her interest appears to be in trying to take ideas from revolutionary politics and apply them to labour organizing, which is pretty much the definition of being a reactionary.

she basically just sets up this false dichotomy between mobilizing and organizing, then runs through a series of what are really rather frivolous discussions about it. it consequently has this kind of academic aesthetic to it, but it's too silly on it's face to be serious scholarship. i could spend a lot of time trying to disentangle the nonsense and word salads and working out and correcting the underlying logic, but it would essentially be a waste of time; at the end of the day, nobody is really going to disagree with observations such as that a successful revolutionary movement has to be run by workers itself (that is, in fact, a tautological statement.), or that the social revolution has to come first or much of anything else that she has to say. but, a lot of her analysis is ridiculous, in the sense that she assigns causes to personalities rather than systemic pressures. in one baffling section, she talks about how smashing the communists in the ctu was a great accomplishment, then fails to tie doing so to the loss of militancy in the union.

her discussion of power in the introduction was not meaningfully extrapolated upon, so my hypothesis was not borne out. there is not any kind of interesting theory of power explored within the text, at all.

rather, the text is a reformist analysis by what appears to be a textbook progressive/conservative. there's no meaningful socialist analysis in the text at all. there's almost no discussion of class. and, i think i'm mostly interested in observing how these people that organize under the socialist label can explain away wasting their time with such an obviously anti-revolutionary text.

but, i've been through this before, and i've learned my lesson: just because the group calls itself socialist doesn't mean that it actually is. but, i can wait and talk to people and judge them as individuals, like they should be judged.

it seems obvious that they picked this text to try and expand their movement. i can imagine that i'm going to walk into a group of people that have been organizing together for a long time and can't figure out how to attract new recruits to the cause, so they picked this up thinking it might help. are they doing too much mobilizing and not enough organizing? well, drop the attempt to redefine the terms for a second and just read that in english and tell me if you think it's coherent or not. in the end, a group like this needs to ask the question: why aren't any actual union members showing up at their meetings? why is it just a bunch of students and unemployed people? where are the rank and file?

and, the answer is as obvious as is possible: the decline of the revolutionary left is a function of the success of the union movement. somebody making $60,000+/yr with good benefits doesn't need to be helped out of their oppression by a benevolent arts student.

these groups need to focus on what is in front of them. america has a major housing problem, and i see it every time i go over there. social benefits are far too low. people don't have access to health care or education, and they're stuck working dead-end jobs that don't pay the rent. these are your foot soldiers for the revolution - not the union rank and file, who are too busy watching tv to organize or mobilize or, really, do anything else at all.

i might not even make it there. we're looking at a long weekend.

she seems keen on going after this "saul alinsky" character, instead of foucault. but, as far as i can tell, she's tearing down a strawman.

....because in all of my years of organizing and agitating out here on the radical left, i've actually never heard anybody talk about saul alinsky. we talk about foucault, we talk about chomsky, we talk about davis, we talk about the black panthers, etc, but alinsky is just not an influence, anywhere, at all. i've never read anything he's written, and i've never seen him cited by anybody except the news papers trying to smear obama with him.

maybe it's a problem of distance, a problem of degrees to the left; maybe saul alinsky is the opponent to the right of my opponents on the right and so i'm firewalled from him in a realistic sense, but, whatever it is, this is a discussion that isn't real to me.

i'm also beginning to realize that the text is being written almost solely from a reformist perspective, and that "progressive reformist" would not be considered an insult by the author, but rather an acceptable identity. see, i guess we'll have to see what the democratic socialists of america think about this, but maybe i'm operating on a misunderstanding: i would assume that people walking into a dsa meeting would consider themselves a good distance to the left of anybody calling themselves a progressive, and that they would consequently consider somebody identifying as a "progressive reformist" to be more of an opponent than an, at best, temporary ally. i could be wrong on that point. i guess we'll see the reaction.

"When the structure is the workplace, the official leader of that structure, the company’s chief executive, declares war on the employees at the first hint of a unionization effort"

no.

the class war always exists. management declares war on labour the moment that they're hired, and organization is required to protect them from these perpetual attacks by management.

the management class exists and survives solely by stealing labour from it's employees, in the terms of underpaying them. that is the definition of capitalism. it will always seek, by any means that are allowed to it, to increase the quantity of this theft, and to further enforce as much inequality as is possible. it is not reacting to employees, it is constantly acting aggressively against them, and there is nothing that employees can do to stop this aggression besides organizing into unions so that they can defend themselves.

a minor point in context? no. it lets out a capitalist bias, and a naivete about power.

you can imagine the meme, right?

writes book about how activists don't understand power.

 

doesn't understand power.

i want to wheel myself back, though, and point out that there's a difference between trying to mobilize in the context of bourgeois politics (where you have to pay attention to things like demographic majorities in geographic riding boundaries) and trying to mobilize in the context of revolutionary politics (where these borders don't meaningfully exist). and, that is itself a difference between how a union operates and how a social movement works.

so, the march to birmingham, for example, attracted people from everywhere - it didn't matter where you were from, it mattered only that you were there. then, when everybody went home, they elected some more racists in these districts. so, where the movement was able to make a difference at a higher level of government, it utterly failed to enact meaningful change at a local level.

so, you have to ask yourself what you're doing, too. if you're trying to take control of the house of representatives, you're going to need union support, and you're going to need to adjust to their privilege, kind of whether you like it or not. but, if you're trying to act independently of the existing system and enact actual revolutionary change outside of it, you have to come face to face with the realities of how class exists inside of labour politics in the twenty-first century.

the next thing she does is try to define mobilizing differently from organizing, as though we can snap our fingers and an organized movement will appear.

i take the point that she's making: often times left-wing agitators end up as this group of people that are essentially walled off from society. the movement really only exists in their own minds. i know this well because i've been there. the occupy kids were the same thing as the iww kids were the same thing as the idle no more kids were the same thing as the student strike kids, with minimal differences. these weren't different groups, but rather a way for a single group to organize it's own thoughts. but, it's not  like we didn't know that, and it's not like that was something that we decided upon or even wanted.

what is more real is to point out that what we wanted to do was what she calls "organize", but what we had no other choice to do was what she called "mobilize", and the reason that we had no choice was that we didn't have enough support. we didn't have the people and we didn't have the resources because we didn't have the interest.

so, it doesn't make sense to argue that mobilizing is a failed strategy. when mobilizing is effective, it becomes organizing merely by expanding the number of people involved. and, that's really what the difference between mobilizing and organizing is, as she defines it - the question of how many people you can actually rally to the cause, which is the question of how effectively you're actually mobilizing.

a more productive thing to do here consequently wouldn't be to define organizing and mobilizing as different ideas, and then say that mobilizing is the wrong thing to do and organizing is the right thing to do. rather, the crux of the problem is in realizing that we're just not actually getting through to people and/or that the people we're getting through to don't have the time or ability to agitate. in order to substantively organize, we have to more effectively mobilize.

so, that is the meaningful question in front of us: how do we more effectively mobilize?

and, i know people are going to look at me blankly and state "social media", but i'm not sure that that's really the right answer. what we need to do is look at this idea of power, and ask whether mobilizing well paid union workers even actually even makes any sense or not. if the question is "how do we mobilize a worker that already owns a house due to victories won through previous generations of struggle?", maybe we're not asking the right question.

maybe we're not even mobilizing the right people, and maybe that's why our organizing isn't getting us anywhere.

i do want to point out that she starts the book by talking about how liberals don't understand power, which i think is a kind of a red herring, but, more importantly, that she then neither cites foucault nor angela davis even once.

how do you write a book about activists not understanding power in 2016 and manage to not even cite foucault once? i mean, you'd think you'd at least tear him down, which is what i would do. how can you completely ignore him? he's the source for understanding power on the left.

unless i've answered my own question, right?

i should read it first, but i suspect that this is going to essentially be a regurgitation of foucault, and that's why you start your book off like that. "you've never read foucault. let me sell his ideas to you.".

that's a hypothesis, not an accusation. let's see how accurate it is.

so, the reading at the socialist book club - which i've never been to - is Jane McAlevey's "No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age".

it's not even 200 pages, so i should be able to give it a good read this morning. and, this is actually kind of what this blog is actually for, so i'll post some comments about it as they come up....

i haven't read this or heard about it previously, but a quick google search indicates that it's not presenting any new ideas, and i'll have to see how it's summarizing old ones. to begin with, i'm reminded of the famous response to the pharoah that there is "no royal road to geometry", something that the internet currently wants to apocryphally attribute to euclid, but that i remember being attributed to heron. there's a subtle point, here, that i should explain more fully: the point that the mathematician, be it heron or euclid, was trying to get across to the greco-egyptian pharoah, ptolemy, was that his privilege and status and wealth and power was not going to help him understand better, he has to work it out like everybody else. this is a sentiment, fwiw, that was not extended to napoleon, who was granted a theorem by the academy to demonstrate his superior abilities in the field of reason. you really can't underestimate the importance that these values of equality played in greek's indigenous democratic culture, can you?

the point that the geometer, be it euclid or heron, was getting across to the pharoah should perhaps not be lost on middle or upper class organizers that i know from experience think they are intellectually and at times even morally superior to these rank and file workers. and, it's a point that is perhaps at the center of the catastrophe that is the contemporary democratic party in the united states - everybody needs to work together, and everybody needs to work hard, if we want to get something substantive done.

but, somebody with an anarchist background isn't going to find much insight in these arguments that vertical organizing practices are at the centre of the problems the labour movement has been having, or that there seems to be a discerning lack of revolutionary potential in the union rank and file. i've been making these arguments in this space for almost a decade now, even if much of it is yet to be reposted, and i'm really just taking notes on malatesta, and to a lesser extent on gramsci. a contemporary socialist thinker that will be remembered in the future and that has been making these arguments forever is richard wolff. so, is this going to be worth reading, or is it just a summary of existing points?

we'll find out, i guess.

but, i'm more interested in the discussion, obviously. i'm a little bit apprehensive in involving myself in american party politics - i cannot vote in the united states, and do not even live there - but something like the dsa should have an internationalist character to it that transcends that kind of thing. i'm happy to be the anarchist in the room, if it comes to it.

but, let's see what the book actually says.

one more crazy weekend, then?

i need to check the weather, carefully.

so, i can't promise i'll show up to all of it, but these are my picks.

fri:
17:00-20:00 - trey priest @ detroit shipping company. midtown. $0 + beer costs.
19:30-22:00 - my brightest diamond + marcus elliot @ dso courtyard. midtown. $0.
22:30-02:00 - another dimension @ tangent gallery. newtown. $15 pre-sale + beer costs.
02:00-08:00? - there are two options for secret show #1 until an unknown time in the morning. i can't post here. the cops are savage, lately. but, look around. $10?

if i stay, i'll then eat, and i'll pay around $10.

sat
10:00-12:00 - august dsa meeting @ ant hall. hamtramck. $0.
14:00-20:00 - punk rock bbq @ kelly's. hamtramck. $7 + beer costs.
20:00-01:00 - saajtak record release @ ghost light. hamtramck. $10.
01:30-08:00? - there are two options for secret show #2 until an unknown time in the morning. i can't post here. the cops are savage, lately. but, look around. $15?

if i stay, i'll then eat again, and i'll pay around $10.

sun:
12:00-14:00 - opera 101 @ voigt park. boston-edison. $0.
15:00-17:00+ - socialist book club meeting @ 2283 holbrook. hamtramck. $0 + coffee.
19:30-00:00 - cherubs + child bite @ small's. hamtramck. $13 + beer costs.

you're just numb after that, aren't you?

have another grape. they're good for you.

on second thought, i found exactly what i was looking for. and, i bet bono is jealous. i'm not this edgy in real life, though. i could keep going, but i don't want to turn your ears to clay. and, you're mullin' over why i'm doing this, too.

i'm sorry. really.

i am almost certainly not going to go out on friday afternoon and come back on sunday night. but, at this point, i have enough planned that i could.

we'll see what feels right.

and, i'll wait until next week before i do groceries.

when you haven't eaten in a while, pictures of greasy food start to look particularly appetizing. mmmm.

actually, i've had some fruit salad and i've been drinking coffee (with chocolate soy) all week. so, i'm not fasting. atheists don't fast, they at most toy with bulimia. i'll hit my target on friday morning, but i actually want to avoid having a giant plate of spaghetti when i do.

i stopped this morning to clean, and in turn stopped cleaning to do a grocery list, and then stopped the grocery list to research shows this weekend, because i didn't want to buy food and then go away for the weekend. if the very hot weather here is being pushed away by the return of that low winter jet stream, the issue should resolve itself, but my fridge here is a little bit low on power and doesn't keep fruit as well as i'd like it to in the humidity. everything's in tupperware, but it's only a half answer. and, no, i'm not turning the fucking a/c on. if i'm going to be away all weekend, it will make sense to wait to get groceries....

i'm iffy on a show on saturday night, but would kind of like to get to small's for a show on sunday evening. i don't expect that i'll actually go all the way to small's just for a few hours, though. and, i can't find a saturday overnight...

i'm leaning towards a no, but we'll see how it goes.

in the mean time, i'm struggling with a stench in this apartment that i can't trace. first of all, i don't know what the smell is. i'm down to three possibilities. the first is that the guy upstairs is storing garbage in his house, and i think that's unlikely - but if he is, then i'm smelling it rotting. the second is that.....he has a black lab. black labs are going to poop, and it's not their fault. so, he has a giant pail of dogshit around somewhere or other, and that's what i'm smelling. and, the third is that i'm smelling him, through some combination of garlic-y food and poor hygiene.

if i could figure out where it's actually coming from, i could begin to react, but it's the same as it was when i was smelling him smoking - i can't figure out how it's actually getting in.

i crashed around 17:00 or so while ruling out a show at the tangent gallery on friday. you can imagine that electronic music with live guitars is fundamentally intriguing to me, but you can't fix bad dubstep with tasty guitar licks. i could maybe see myself getting into some of this "bass music" as idm if it's orchestrated properly, but you just can't dance to it, and it's not fun when it's stripped down. i had this discussion last week about dubstep: in theory, dubstep for 100-piece orchestra would be phenomenal, but the talent just doesn't exist in the genre. these brostep dudes just don't know shit. if they did....but they just don't. i might change my mind if the weather is nicer than forecast. but, for now, i'm going to finish my run through seeking sunday options to see if i can construct a saturday aft---->sunday eve fun day, and then adjust my grocery list as required.

i should be back to finalizing the sept rebuild, one way or the other, by the afternoon.

i've actually been kind of clear on this point, over and over again. but, the internet operates on memes, and people get judged by how they look.

that's why i withdrew to this space - i was becoming representative of something i wasn't, because people picked up on a fantasy that wasn't rooted in reality.

i identify as a punk, but it's a philosophical thing, and what i'm referencing are bands like dead kennedys, black flag and bad religion, and to a lesser extent bands like the clash, the sex pistols and the more fringe-y stuff like crass. i understand the thing about the ramones touring england, and i know the ramones got their sound from detroit, but, to me, punk started in the uk and became fully formed in california before branching back out to places like seattle and new york. so, when i talk about punk rock, i mostly understand it as a west coast phenomenon. i would use the term hardcore, but i think converge and the nyhc scene are fucking terrible, and i'd just be misleading people about it (although, i love sonic youth). so, when i say 'punk', what i mean is an attitude that exalts individualism and reason over the collective herd mind and is massively skeptical of authority and power; what i don't mean is this kind of bad attitude that you associate with the kids that like to skip school, eat pizza and get drunk on weekdays. i know the terms are not as clear as they were in my day, but that latter kind of nihilism is what i would associate with the term metal. it's fallen away from that, to the point that the term has been co-opted, but punk was in many ways initially a very real reaction to the nihilism and excess of glam and hair metal, despite it currently being largely subsumed by that excess and nihilism. so, you won't see me at these kinds of drinking parties, because the way i understand the term punk is as more or less the anti-thesis of that. and, i'm not going to get along with people with bad attitudes, like that. i'd actually rather go to a dance club, because i'll get along with the people there, and their positive hippie vibes, way better than i'm going to get along with a bunch of depressed, angry, hateful nihilists.

and, i'll state this yet again: i am too young to be truly gen x, and too old to be truly gen y. i would prefer to identify as gen x, but i don't have the life experiences. and, i've spent my whole life trying to avoid millennial attitudes and millennial people.

if i was a little older, i would have moved on the one hand from punk to grunge and on the other hand from industrial to rave music. and, while i insist i would not have gone to woodstock, i probably would have gone to lollapalooza (back when it was actually run by janes addiction); it's really alternative rock as an extension of punk rock that i can meaningfully identify with, rather than punk itself. but, i'm still too young for that, as i'm too young to remember the free parties in the uk.

my first concert was the smashing pumpkins in a hockey arena in 1996, when i was 15. but, my first real concert was gybe and labradford at the babylon in ottawa on the slow riot.. tour in 1999, when i was 18, and that is my actual scene. this was an eclectic scene that went by various terms such as post-rock, math rock, psychedelic rock and, at times, was even just referred to as prog. but, it came out of the punk scene in terms of ideology, even as it reached elsewhere for musical ideas.

post-rock, as a genre, was in truth heavily influenced by the first wave of emo bands in the 80s and 90s. and, i had records by bands like sunny day real estate in the 90s, too. but, by the time "emo" hit it big as a co-opted corporate rock term for a bunch of bands that looked like poison and sounded like silverchair, i was way too old to have any interest in it. one simply doesn't get into "emo" in their early to mid 20s, which is how old i was when it came out. i thought it was a childish and stupid trend, a complete destruction of punk rock, and i've been vocal about the point for fucking ever.

and, since then, it's been a constant struggle to sort through mountains of crap to try to find a decent rock band here and there - one i've actually often abandoned.

so, that's what it's like to exist in the cusp, and i guess that all i can do is repeat myself: i was too young for grunge and too old for emo, but just right for post-rock, which is a different kind of animal in it's abstraction. and, what that means is that when i do go looking for a rock band, the sound i'm looking for is older rather than younger, because that's where i'm actually coming from.

ok.

so, i'm done the first run on september, 2013. i'll need to double check for consistency and completion, run a spell check, etc, but it should be ready to post in 24-48 hours.

right now, i'm going to get to cleaning some things and some other stuff and then get back to it after i take a shower.

it's not clear at this point where the lesser evil sits and it won't be for a while.

but, don't expect me to fall in line.

i will continue to think critically, and i will continue to resist.

it's just important to recognize that the threat to queer communities does not explicitly come from "christians" or "republicans" or "conservatives" or "the right", but that these are rather different ways to articulate the real threat, which is patriarchy.

and, we don't protect ourselves from patriarchy by aligning ourselves with groups that continue to uphold it.

i don't pretend that i'm on trump's side when it comes to many things, and i fully grasp that he'd be happy to toss me off a cliff to get a sandwich. i mean nothing to him.

but, i'm not going to make false allies with muslims and gamers, groups that i do not like any more than i like christian fundamentalists or nihilist republicans, and that i recognize would offer me no more solidarity than trump would. the muslims would kill me on the spot, and the bros would mostly like to beat the shit out of me. these are not allies, not even temporary ones - they are opponents, and not even hidden ones.

rather, i have to look at the situation relatively and try and figure out where my best interests are, and they're really not in this growing conservative movement that passes itself off as a "progressive" movement. this is a coalition of people with deeply socially conservative attitudes that poses a serious threat to a liberal order. you have to understand that america does not have a left, it has a choice between the nihilists in the republican party and the conservatives in the democratic party, which is why the "right" often seems more open to free expression. if i have to, i will align with nihilists before i align with conservatives, all the while realizing that it's a terrible choice.

where the muslims and bros want me dead (literally or figuratively), trump just wants to turn me into an election foil. it's a shitty choice, but it's a big difference.

obviously, i want to support a genuine leftist movement. but, as this window closes in front of me, i'll need to make the choice i need to make to survive.

it's not that dissimilar to how i view marriage.

i suppose that if we're going to have marriage as a state institution, then it should be open to anybody who applies. it's only fair, really.

but, i'd actually argue for the abolition of marriage altogether. so, marriage equality just strikes me as a way to break up the radical edge on the queer movement.

i mean, there's something discriminatory about the policy, clearly, and i guess i have little option but to oppose it on an abstract level.

but, do i want to fight for the rights of queer people to join the military? no. that doesn't interest me at all.

i'm going to state this as simply and succinctly as possible.

i actually think that queer people should be carrying out a permanent, unconditional boycott of anything to do with the military-industrial complex. that is, i would argue for a total, voluntary withdrawal of all queer people from the army. and, i do believe that that there is something inconsistent about holding to a queer identity, and joining the army.

i would consequently have little concern about somebody telling me i can't join the military. yes, please?

that is all.

i don't have kids, so i understand that i'm missing context.

would i take the games away from my own kids? what i want to say is that i'd raise kids that wouldn't want to play them. i mean, i never wanted to play; i was often around them, but i never had any real interest in them. i know it's not that easy...

i guess what i can honestly state is that i can be fairly confident that i wouldn't buy them games, no matter how much they'd ask. i just wouldn't do that to them, i'd consider it negligent. and, they could cry and yell and scream, and i wouldn't give a fuck - i have good headphones. this point i'm confident on: i would not give the games to them, so i would not have to confiscate them. and, to the extent that i could screen gifts from relatives, i'd screen any kind of video games out.

beyond that, i'd have to recognize and acknowledge a deficit of control. i think i'd have the right to decide what i give to the kid as a gift as that is my own will, and the right to opt to give them other things, but i wouldn't have the right to interfere at too great a level beyond that. and, if i were to end up with a kid that wants to live in some other person's house and rot their brains out with game systems all day, i'd have to accept it and let the kid go.

but, i would hope that the issue just wouldn't arise, that i'd raise a kid that is inquisitive and thoughtful enough to think that video games are boring......because they are boring, and the fact is that the smart kids will get that on their own without being forced away from them.

i'm sorry, but trump is good at picking targets.

i'm simply not going to stand up for gamers. no solidarity at all...

i guess that my position is that if this is an excuse to shut down the gaming industry, which i'd like to see shut down anyways, however bad an excuse it really is, then i'll take it for what it is.

read a book. play guitar. do anything but that...

would i support a ban on video games?

i would consider it to be about as effective as banning guns, namely not very. but, it may have a more net positive cultural effect. the gaming industry is really, truly a scourge on society and, whether it's responsible for mass shootings or not, it's not having a very positive effect on young men. i'd be happy to see the whole thing evaporate.

as mentioned over and over again, i don't believe in banning things. but, if a movement were to arise to ban gaming, i wouldn't be likely to stand in solidarity with the people opposed to it, either. i'd be more likely to stand back and let it happen, sort of thing.

nor would i consider a proposed ban on video games to be something that i'd vote against, if i otherwise liked a candidate's positions on other issues.

to be clear: i don't think that the gaming industry is the cause of anything, but i think it's popularity is a symptom of a fundamentally sick culture and a fundamentally broken society. i want to get at root causes.

but, i actually wouldn't want to interfere with an anti-gaming movement, at all. good riddance, if it comes to it...

what was osx86?

when i first bought the new recording pc back in early 2007, i wanted to cover all of my bases, so i initially intended a four-way boot process: xp-32, vista-64, debian and osx86. i built the machine with this goal in mind, explicitly.

it didn't take long for me to scratch vista off the list. i didn't have drivers for my older hardware, and it just didn't seem worth the effort. xp was faster and more stable and i could nlite it, whereas i was stuck with a buggy vista that i knew wasn't tested right (because i worked vista tech support, at the time). but, i hung on to debian for a while, until i needed the extra hard drive space.

osx86 was the last to get dropped on a machine that still runs an nlited xp-32 and, at this point, probably always will. the logic was that i might run across some music software that was mac only, and i would consequently need some way to get to at least a unix-like environment to run it.

but, it never actually happened, and, by mid-2013, i'd decided that it was never going to happen. so, i wiped the drive to get some extra space.

running the apple os on a pc isn't so strange anymore, since they started shipping on x86 architecture. the problem nowadays is not the processor, but a proprietary bios chip that you need to get around. but, at the time, there was a small community dedicated to figuring this out, and i was able to get relatively far on what i had.

you can read about that here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackintosh

or, if you want economic language, which you might falsely think is more rigorous (economics is not a science. sorry.), the way to describe what i just said in economese is to point out that the health care industry is a classic example of what is called a market failure.

first, let's make sure we understand what a market failure is:
https://www.econlib.org/library/Topics/HighSchool/MarketFailures.html

and, here's your google search:
https://www.google.ca/search?newwindow=1&ei=qx1JXfiFKYnu_QbO-YH4CA&q=health+care+market+failure

so, that's why you can't do that.

what?

it's on youtube, actually.

good history lesson.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitchen_Debate

so, what's with this idea that you can just put single payer healthcare and private insurance on the table and have them compete with each other? isn't that reasonable? won't the best option work out?

this is an idea being pushed by buttigieg mostly, by i think also by o'rourke.

in canada, as well as other countries like the uk, we call this a two-tier health care system. and, we call it that for a reason - because we know the private insurance packages will provide better choice. see, and i think this is the cultural difference that probably explains why americans don't have a public system in the first place....

if you tell canadians or brits or most other europeans that a two-tier system will offer greater health care in the private sector, we'll react by saying that's unfair. so, we will reject the two-tier system because it offers an inequality of outcome, and we believe to our core that this is something we should all have equal access to. i haven't seen a study, but i'm not convinced americans will have the same reaction. rather, i might expect americans will prefer the option that gives them greater access over their fellow citizens, because they care more about maximizing their own self-interest. fuck your neighbour, right? that's the american way.

i consequently realize that i need to be a little bit careful about the language that i'm using, if i'm addressing a mostly american audience.

we have a case study, namely quebec. quebec was a french colony that was conquered by the british in the french & indian war, aka the seven years war, a mere couple of years before the american revolution. in a sense, it's kind of like texas or california - an area that was initially settled by a more latin culture, in our case french and your case spanish, before it was absorbed by the anglo-american empire. i don't know what kind of lingering influence that latin civil law has had in the southwest (or southeast, including florida....or, i guess just south including louisiana), although i can say i've never heard of a case in texas or florida or california being adjudicated over civil law, but the british largely let the french keep their language and laws upon the conquest. it's tricky, and i don't want to present myself as an expert in the topic. i'm a loud, forceful advocate of the common law system as fundamental to the existence of the freedoms that we enjoy in the west; i don't think we'd have this thing called western civilization if it was left solely to the civil law. but, the point i'm getting at is that quebec has a parallel system of law to the rest of the country, so sometimes things are determined a little bit differently there.

and, a few years ago, the highest court of jurisdiction in quebec, specifically, actually declared the single payer healthcare system (which is, by definition, a monopoly on health insurance) "unconstitutional" under the quebec bill of rights. so, it's unconstitutional in quebec, but not in all of canada. and, the reason they did that was that the complainant successfully argued that it prevented people from accessing health care through parallel channels, when forced to wait in line for care through the official channels. what the court actually did (and this is based on the precedent in our abortion jurisprudence, r. v. morgantaler) was give the state a choice: increase funding to cut wait times, or give people the choice to buy their way around it. see, the reason it was deemed a human rights violation is that the monopoly on insurance, in conjunction with the wait times, amounted to a denial of service (which was the same argument they used to strike down the abortion laws). so, they'd either need to cut the wait times down or give the patient an ability to buy around it, to alleviate the human rights violation. many, many observers believe the intention of the court was to increase funding (and while judges are powerful in canada, they don't have power over the purse, that's up to parliament), and that the parliament took it as an attack on their own powers, and suspended the law out of spite.

so, in quebec, and in quebec only, you have a two-tier system. and, that means we have data. and, you know i like data.

it's pretty brutal, actually. average wait times in quebec, which are what the ruling was supposed to address, are now, by far, the highest in canada. there are doctor shortages. it's a catastrophe. and, that is all happening while the private industry is posting shorter wait times and more comprehensive care.

again: would an american see that as a problem? that's not clear to me. but, canadians recognize that the two-tier system separates care by ability to pay. it essentially allows people to buy their way into the front of the line. so, you have one system for the rich which is very fast and exclusive because it siphons resources out of the public system, and another system for everybody else that is underfunded and slow as fuck.

so, can you set private and public insurance against each other and expect them to compete on a market and determine which is better? it sounds like something nixon would say to khruschev, and it's based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what competition is, as well as a fundamental misunderstanding of how the health care industry works.

it sounds reasonable at first, i get that. but, please do your research on outcomes of a two-tier system, including comparing quebec to the other provinces in canada. and, ask yourself that question: do you want a system with equality of outcome, like the rest of the developed world? or do you want a system that you can buy yourself a special place in, if you can afford to do it?

when john mccain or donald trump or al gore or hillary clinton or whatever other politician or talking head goes on tv and threatens to bomb iran or iraq or whatever other country is disobeying american dictates this week in order to fuel endless expansionism, imperialism and genocide, that is a real, concrete expression of the roots of gun violence in your country.

we know the romans were barbaric. but, we don't ask why, because we know why - the romans could not have been the romans, any other way. they were a violent, warlike people that experienced aggression as a fundamental extension of who they were, as a civilization. so it is with america.

but, the country is completely blind to these truths. so it goes.

you have a country full of young men that lock themselves in their rooms and fantasy about slaughtering people.

do you think that's healthy?

you can't have the fucking debate until you can fucking define it.

coercing people to choose between "the people" or "the nra" is disingenuous and stupid. we are not with you or against you; public policy is not a binary choice. i will not be manipulated like that, and i'll tell anybody that tries to to fuck right off.

i am on the side of science, data and reason and this is all very clear from an analytical perspective rather than a contrived, emotional or politically-driven one: the united states does not have a gun control problem, the united states has a gun culture problem, part of which is reflected in the existence of the nra and, yes, part of which is reflected in the popularity of violent video games and violent movies. banning games will not work any more than banning guns will; you're missing the point. banning things never works in any context at all. you can't ban guns any more than you can ban drugs or sex or immigration, you have to look at the root causes, and the hyper-capitalistic imperialist bloodlust that the country was founded on, in genocide and slavery.

that is why you have a gun problem, and you won't address it until you stop denying it.

right now, you don't even seem to understand how to understand it. and, you are consequently doomed to continue on in failure.