US Politics, October 2018: next week will be even longer

the performative fake normalcy of drinking bud light which they can't even do without short-circuiting
ingraham not stopping for a second to see if the hired chud is okay in her speed to deliver boilerplate whataboutery against the UCLU

it followed an item about an increased number of selfie deaths btw. Nothing political. Just innocently making fun of dead people.

ilx should be 50% less american

Kavanaugh decision necessitates massive, sustained civil disobedience from now until whenever Thomas, Roberts, "I like beer" or one of these other ghouls croaks

I hope nobody who voted to confirm this frat fuck gets a good night's sleep ever again

ilx should be 50% less american

My greatest fear right now is being unable to find a job outside of the US in my painfully cramped subfield. I can't think of a single Western nation I loathe nearly as much. Even fucking Italy and Austria strike me as less pernicious at the moment due to their limited power.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: the fact that there hasn't been a May 68-like general strike all across the country since Trump got elected goes to show how strong the tacit consensus is ('this is a tad excessive, but still acceptable'). The resistance is there, but its numbers are frankly pathetic. The fact of the matter is that Trump represents the democratic will of the American people at the moment; he really does stand for what the majority thinks is tolerable, even though it disagrees with some of the 'finer' points. This wouldn't be a big deal to me if the epidemic were under quarantine, but the US is currently empowering fascism all over the world.

I'm not blaming any of you personally, btw. I just happen to be more convinced than ever that most human beings are ultimately kind of alright with fascism, and not just in the US.

I kinda think almost everybody thinks that fascism is totally bad and unacceptable. Unless... And it turns out a lot of people have really surprisingly low thresholds for when fascism is the least bad option. The 'Never Trumpers' now saying that they've been driven towards Trump because of Kavanaugh would be laughable, if it wasn't both so despairing and so utterly predictable.

It's as if the word 'fascism' were awful and unforgivable but not the thing itself. Same with 'racism', 'sexism', etc.

good mourning

― canary christ (stevie)

damn you!

Top o' the mournin'!

the fact that there hasn't been a May 68-like general strike all across the country since Trump got elected goes to show how strong the tacit consensus is

I think "tacit" is the key word there - I feel like A) it's a lot easier to do nothing now than it was 50 years ago and B) there's a much more palpable sense that resistance is futile - when was the last time civil disobedience demonstrably led to real reform anyway? Which is why the key word in my last post was "sustained" - the pressure has to be unrelenting. It may be that Trump represents the "democratic will of the American people at the moment," But I don't think he represents that same will even 5 years from now. So we've got to find a way to make the bring the future of the American electorate into the present, and obviously to reverse-engineer partisan gerrymandering. That's a tall fucking order. But crazier things have happened.

it’s mourning in america

Just call me Angel of the mourning

The Angel of the Mourning would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the Angel of the Mourning can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: the fact that there hasn't been a May 68-like general strike all across the country since Trump got elected goes to show how strong the tacit consensus is

It's almost like most people are barely keeping all their plates spinning financially and also have personal problems and mental health and health issues oh and by the way depend on the health care they get from their jobs for for their families and children

Go fuck yourself

No excuses for the richest, most powerful country in the world. I'd sympathise if your government weren't fucking the rest of us over as well. Fuck the US, fuck Russia, fuck China, fuck every megalomaniacal Empire. We shouldn't have to put up with your toxic bullshit. I'm out.

I'll work in a general strike between working 40 hours day job and driving Lyft at night cool buddy?

Like you realize everyone here is actually like not rich and not powerful right?

The fact of the matter is that Trump represents the democratic will of the American people at the moment; he really does stand for what the majority thinks is tolerable, even though it disagrees with some of the 'finer' points.

imo shut up

It's like we spend zillions of hours talking about how he didn't win the popular vote, the way that the electoral college, gerrymandering and the Senate disproportionately represents certain states and groups and the dismantling of the social safety net and workers rights and health care and a million voter supression tactics and a million examples of cops straight up murdering American citizens in front of their homes and violent militaristic putdowns of demonstrations in places like Ferguson and it's like are you paying no attention? It's getting into "well if he hit hey why didn't she leave him?" territory

But yeah a general strike that happened 50 years ago in a completely different country and political culture wouldn't work here and now

Or even understand the degree to which there is no safety net here in the US... Like I have a friend I just venmod 40 bucks to that I'm really worried is pretty much homeless now, he got fired from a job at the University and had some mental health problems, I think he's kinda getting by by crashing here and there and busking and ppl kicking him down cash

^this type of thing has happened to people i know as well.

upper miss I get where you're coming from & I think singling America out for poor resistance to trends in political hegemony is naive at best, but to the broader point, it does say something sad -- and something more than "people are busy, overwhelmed, and in no condition to resist at the level that would be necessary" -- that we can't seem to say, you know, either we take the hit collectively now & somehow put a stop to this or it just gets worse

I'm the same as anybody else, at the end of the day I'm looking out for my family & trying not to lose my mind & I'm on my grind 7 days a week I can't show up to meetings where people figure out what exactly rebellion would consist of...like obviously I can't, neither can you, anybody who'd ask that of a working dad is a dick. but still... Juvenal said in the first century A.D. that if people have bread & circuses they won't give that much of a fuck what the government does. mass media age means they can even keep the bread down to the absolute minimum but as long as people are entertained they're unlikely to assert their collective strength.

however anybody who thinks this is unique to America is mistaken.

Reading the above jeremiad I have to assume it’s already November 7 and the Democrats have failed to take back the house?

it's hard to have a general strike when most workers don't have unions and in a larger sense are terrified that capital doesn't even need them

Xpost jc
Yeah would not disagree with any of that and I could definitely do more than I do...I early voted yesterday at lunch which felt like at least a small concrete thing.

Though for real I do think our work based health care system is the most evil method of social control, like literally you think ok play along or you and/or your family won't get health care, it's fucking barbaric.

Xpost I'm sure the US democratic party as currently constructed retaking the lower house of our legislature will totally fix things

What positive changes resulted from the May '68 general strike, honestly? The most successful examples of civil disobedience I can think of are the Indian independence movement and the Civil Rights movement and neither of those situations seems comparable to the present-day US. xps

like we spend zillions of hours talking about how he didn't win the popular vote, the way that the electoral college, gerrymandering and the Senate disproportionately represents certain states and groups

We don’t spend hardly enough time talking about any of this. Every time it’s brought up it gets slapped down by a flash mob of asinine putzes making little variations on the theme of WELL WHATCHA GONNA DO NERD, CHANGE THE RULES? Which is nothing more than the self-flagellating progressives’ version of the insipid “it’s a republic, not a democracy” bullshit you hear from worthless libertarian onanists.

If we think representative democracy is how to solve some of our scariest problems, then we have to establish representative democracy and then defend it. The method of allowing the court to call the 2000 election has to be deemed illegitimate and prohibited from ever happening again. The district maps of 2010 have to be completely redrawn. The senate has to be elected by nationwide proportionality. The electoral college has to be disintegrated. The district and the occupied territories have to be enfranchised. These systemic issues are all directly linked to our current state of affairs and I see almost nobody actually working to address any of them.

also lol wow @ pomenitul being full of shit

changing the senate is the only one that seems impossible

there's your 28th-31st amendments.

(28) The district maps of 2010 have to be completely redrawn.
(29) The senate has to be elected by nationwide proportionality.
(30) The electoral college has to be disintegrated.
(31) The district and the occupied territories have to be enfranchised.

tombot/m bison 2020

Pretty much

Sund4r, to name but a few: minimum wage went up by 35%, other salaries by 10%, a 4th week of paid vacation was added, company-specific union chapters were implemented, sexual attitudes loosened up, the youth acquired the right to be taken seriously, feminist discourse became more mainstream, etc.

(32) Danny from Steubenville, Ohio must get that thing on his neck looked at, immediately

xpost

It's alright, dear neighbours, I'd be in denial too if I were you. After all, your country is so utterly special, none of us could ever fathom what it's like to be in your shoes. I'll be sure to apologise for being upset with your choices once all hell truly breaks loose.

where do u live dude?

xpost this was also before wages stagnated for 4 decades

xxpost are you fucking larry appleton

pomenitul, i feel your anger. there's a lot of prerequisite steps before american goes into "general strike is a viable strategy" territory. historically we had multiple waves of extremely effective anti-left repressions (Red Scares, COINTELPRO) and our children get very little education in the history of labor organizing. the civil rights movement is pretty much the extent of our cultural knowledge of mass movements, and even that has been co-opted and sanitized, presented as sort of episodic moments of intense individual expressions sparked by powerful charismatic leaders as opposed to a sustained, centuries-long resistance undertaken by broad social groups in solidarity with one another. we teach kids that the first amendment protects the rights to assembly and speech, but we do not practice that. american youth are extremely isolated and segregated from one another, so opportunities to build solidarity are limited. we have an intensely individualistic culture where our fiercest political battles are over creating opportunities for individuals to succeed (i.e. affirmative action) and not creating a good life to preserve the dignity of all.

in short, americans don't know how to strike because no one is teaching them.

minimum wage went up by 35%, other salaries by 10%, a 4th week of paid vacation was added, company-specific union chapters were implemented

Thanks, didn't know these were negotiated to end the strike. Good to know. These do all seem like concrete labour issues so idk if this method would work wrt issues like terrible Supreme Court nominations, political corruption, or repressive immigration policy. (I do think there are present-day analogues to the more abstract things you list, e.g. BLM and MeToo.) xp

eat my ass pomenitul

O for a Democratic House paradise

Americans really don't risk stuff for the general good unless guns are involved

Though for real I do think our work based health care system is the most evil method of social control

OTM

Changing the subject to something more productive, I thought this was a reasonable series of predictions:

With Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation likely tomorrow, here a few thoughts on what this might mean for the next 5-10 years of Supreme Court action. (Thread.)

— Orin Kerr (@OrinKerr) October 6, 2018

Of course, since the odds are actually pretty good, relatively speaking, I want to know how radically a future 6-3 conservative court might behave.

btw amendment-wise i'm willing to move from "abolish the senate" to "make the senate democratic" if it has more of a chance. scale the number of senators to state population, at least a LITTLE bit. paint it as just another step, following the 17th amendment, in *keeping* the sacred checks and balances (having one body that's elected less frequently and has more weighty enumerated responsibilities) while making it more democratic.

also: impeach the president