Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Month: August 2020 Page 2 of 3

Sanders Anoints AOC His Heir

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On August 21, 2020

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There was a lot of furor over AOC speaking at the DNC. First, that she had only a minute, then that she didn’t “endorse” Biden.

Both of these things come down to a simple fact: She was invited by Bernie to nominate him. As such, it wasn’t appropriate for her to talk about Biden. That she had only a minute is because that’s how long the nominations are.

AOC wouldn’t have been invited to speak at the DNC, really, if it was up to the people running the convention, Biden’s people, she wouldn’t have spoken at all.

She was there because Bernie chose her.

AOC is Bernie’s successor: She is going to be the leader of his movement when he no longer is, and this was his last Presidential campaign. She’s the progressive leader now.

It could have been Elizabeth Warren, but she called Bernie a liar and a sexist and waffled on key progressive priorities. AOC, on the other hand, when Sanders needed help most, right after his heart attack, came out, endorsed, and campaigned for him and made a huge difference.

Warren, in her short-sightedness, torpedoed herself in an attempt to win it all now, and then later to maintain viability with centrists. In exchange, she got a DNC speech, and in exchange she gave up her post as heir-presumptive to the progressive bloc. She will never be President.

I don’t know if AOC is a better choice, but she is genuinely charismatic in a way Warren and Sanders aren’t. It will be interesting to see if she can can do more with the movement than Sanders did.

Let us hope so.

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The Extended Emotional Body

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On August 20, 2020

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The simplest way to think of identity and identification is that it creates an enlarged emotional body.

If someone I identify with is hurt, I hurt. This suffering shows up on brain scans, it’s not theoretical.

If, on the other hand, I completely don’t identify with someone else, their pain doesn’t both me. This is why, for example, most slave societies say that slaves are sub-human. Plato believed most slaves were meant to be slaves, and that slavery was only wrong if someone was not naturally a slave. Race theory and so on.

The Romans were refreshingly honest about this, “You’re a slave because you, or the people from whom you are descended lost a war.” They also made it very possible to stop being a slave, perhaps because they didn’t think of slaves so much as “other.” It wasn’t an intrinsic category, you just had bad luck.

This extended emotional body goes beyond people. You can identify with animals and feel pain when they are hurt (Nietzche went insane when a man whipped a horse savagely). You can identify with plants, or with objects and ideas.

People piss on Korans and Bibles and burn flags precisely for this reason: It hurts people they want to hurt. People tell you your ideals are wrong to hurt you or to protect their ideals from harm so they won’t be hurt. Be really aggressive to a believer about how “God isn’t real.” It hurts. Tell an American patriot his country is evil. Etc.

Conversely, if another person we care about does well, we’re happy. If the country we identify with wins a war we may feel good. Or, if we think the war is wrong, we may feel bad. The extended emotional body created by identification gives us vast possibilities for increased happiness. Check in on a sports fan when “their team” wins the championship.

Identification with people and objects and ideas we really have nothing in common with is a large part of how we scaled our societies to grow beyond the number of people we could personally know well. We’re all Americans or Germans; or we’re all descended from the same ancestor; or we all believe in Zeus, and thus won’t attack another worshipper of the greatest of all Gods, let alone the wanderers who are under his sacred guard.

Identity, however, leads to a wide variety of pathologies. We don’t actually know these people, they don’t actually know us, and as for the ideas, well, they may be bad for us, but because we identify with them, we can’t see that clearly.

Identity makes it hard to find truth, because when we discover that something we identify with isn’t what we thought it was, maybe it’s not good or even perhaps, that it doesn’t even exist, it hurts. Humans avoid pain.

Identity also allows us to be manipulated. Odds are, your interests have essentially nothing in common with those of the people who run the Democratic or Republican parties, or the CEO of the company you work for, or the leader of your religion. But many many people identify with these organizations or people and acquiesce to their authority, even when that authority is terribly harmful to them.

Identity is a prosthesis. It lets us do things we can’t do without it. But beyond identifying with people we personally know and like, it isn’t natural, and it is very easily abused.

Everything I write here is free, but rent isn’t, so if you value my writing, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

 

Appropriate Hate (and Other Negative Emotions)

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On August 18, 2020

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There are no human emotions which are always bad. Every emotion is useful in certain circumstances. Emotions are bad when they provide incorrect guidance or they hijack you.

Perhaps you had bad experiences with dogs as a kid, and now you’re scared of them, even though most aren’t dangerous. That’s inappropriate guidance, and, if the fear is strong enough and you can’t pet a friendly dog even though you think you should, you’ve been hijacked.

Chronic negative emotions are also bad. If you’re angry or scared almost all the time, that has negative effects on your health.

That said, even an emotion like hate has utility, if it’s correctly pointed. People like the person below have a problem.

Hate exists to tell you when someone is a threat, and you should do something about it. It often is hijacked, as with Americans thinking that foreign leaders like Putin are the primary threat, when it’s their own leaders who kill and impoverish them. When hate operates correctly, it points at actual threats.

Trump’s bungling of Covid and the economy has killed over 100,000 Americans. It’ll kill hundreds of thousands by the end. Somewhere around 30 percent of renters can’t make their payments; many of those will wind up homeless. That’s not all his fault, but a lot of it is.

Trump’s actually dangerous to a lot of people, and hating him is an appropriate emotion. Being consumed by it isn’t, but wishing that Trump would die of natural causes is entirely reasonable. (Granted, Pence might be worse, but you can hate him too.)

Emotions have purposes. Hate is meant to tell you who is a threat. Anger is meant to tell you that someone is doing something they really shouldn’t be doing. (This is one reason why, in spiritual communities which say one should never be angry, abusers manage to get away with abusing for a long, long time.) Jealousy tells you you’re falling behind and not living up to your potential.

All of these negative emotions can be inappropriate or hijacked or chronic and be bad for you, of course, but all of them also have a purpose in a healthy individual.

For that matter, positive emotions can be inappropriate. If you’re so happy you don’t notice a threat, that’s a problem that could get you dead.

Anyway, the main problem with hate and anger is that they are easily hijacked and hook onto targets who aren’t actually dangerous, but merely “foreign.” As with the companion feeling of loyalty, most of modern “leadership” is hijacking tribal emotions and pointing them in the wrong direction. Loyalty to Biden or Trump (both evil men who have done, and will do, horrible things) is insane unless you’re directly part of the gravy train.

We humans have very badly fucked up our emotional guidance systems. They’re supposed to point you towards what’s good for you and warn you about what’s bad for you. Trump is bad for almost everyone, and so is Biden. So are most Democratic and Republican politicians, almost all CEOs of major companies, and so on and so forth.

So go ahead and hate them, just don’t let it be chronic or hijack your ability to make decisions. It’s definitely appropriate.

The people who are dangerous to you and who have, over 40 years, impoverished Americans, are your own leaders. Hate threats, they are a threat.

Everything I write here is free, but rent isn’t, so if you value my writing, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

“It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way” Redux

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On August 17, 2020

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So last year, I published a collection of essays (free for now) with commentary. They’re clustered around why are world is, in many ways, shit, and what a better world would look like.

I haven’t pushed it much at all, but there are a lot of new readers, and if you enjoy my writing, well, I’ve been writing online for 17 years or so, and these are my picks for some of the most important essays. There are also two essays never published anywhere else, one of which concerns how to evaluate your risk from climate change and the collapse of neoliberalism. (Said collapse having sped up since the book was published.)

Get “It Doesn’t Have To Be This Way” here.

Everything I write here is free, but rent isn’t, so if you value my writing, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

 

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – August 16, 2020

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On August 16, 2020

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by Tony Wikrent

 

The pandemic

Do Masks Work Or Not?? Proving Whether Masks Stop Covid-19 Transmission with Uncle Rob [YouTube, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 8-11-20]

If you know someone who insists wearing masks does not work, or COVID is a hoax, get them to watch this, And remind them they have responsibilities, not just free-dumbs.   

Lee Nackman, August 13, 2020
Lee Nackman is president of the Progressive Caucus of the North Carolina Democratic Party
This is a two-step proposal to save America: (1) Defeat the virus by a serious lockdown and (2) help people through it by giving them plenty of money to meet their needs (and possibly more) during the lockdown.
It gives money directly to the people and it gives every working-age person the same amount regardless of whether or not they “need” it. This keeps the program simple, free of excessive bureaucracy, and fair. It costs a lot but delivers a lot. It puts decision-making about what businesses to support in the hands of the people who know best, not in the hands of lobbyists and campaign contributors. Both Democrats and Republicans should like parts of it.
[Reuters, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 8-12-20]

“Farmers routinely make changes to their acreage intentions as the calendar advances, substituting in different crops if the weather mucks up their original plans. But leaving the ground bare is new territory for U.S. farmers who typically plant fencerow to fencerow, trying to squeeze profit out of every available acre. The most recent acreage data from the government showed corn and cotton plantings in particular were far below initial expectations, with corn seedings in June dropping the most from March in 37 years. The coronavirus pandemic caused many farmers to give up on their corn crop before it was even in the ground.”

“How The Pandemic Humiliated Critics Of Medicare for All” 

[Walker Bragman, Too Much Information, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 8-14-20]

 “When the novel coronavirus first arrived in the United States, it spurred on remarkable message discipline among America’s political class. The consensus that emerged on both sides of the aisle dictated that no matter what happened, Americans ought to be glad they do not live in a country with socialized medicine…. [N]ow, just a few months later, these arguments completely and utterly fail. New infections are still surging in the U.S. while countries with national health care programs have long since gotten a handle on the virus. On Tuesday, the U.S. reported more new COVID cases in a single day than Italy, France, and the U.K. reported last month combined, and roughly 45 percent of their total deaths.”

Strategic Political Economy

“The Reason Americans Don’t Trust Experts — Economists

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Open Thread

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On August 15, 2020

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Feel free to use the comments to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts.

The Left-wing “Shit Sandwich” Dilemma

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On August 14, 2020

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Kamala Harris and Joe Biden each have terrible records. There is no reason to believe they will do much that is good, and every reason to believe they will do much that is bad.

Trump will, at least for Americans, probably be even worse. (It is less clear he will be better for foreigners.)

The issue is simple, both choices are bad choices.

The left-wing dilemma is simple: If you always vote Democratic, then why should they give you anything? If, however, you don’t vote Democratic, Republicans are likely to win and they are generally even worse (though not in every way).

If you vote, you’re stuck with the choice of endorsing a shit sandwiches. One has slightly less shit and a single leaf of lettuce, but they’re both shit sandwiches.

The “Don’t Eat a Shit Sandwich” vote happens, usually, in the Democratic primaries. This time and last, the “Don’t Eat a Shit Sandwich” candidate was Bernie Sanders. His offering was a spam sandwich. He lost because Obama convinced every remaining candidate except Sanders and Biden to drop out — all nearly simultaneously.

Thanks, Obama! You sure deliver!

So now the choice is simply which shit sandwich to vote for or whether to not vote. Not voting doesn’t mean you don’t get to eat a shit sandwich, it just means you aren’t saying, “Yes, please feed me a shit sandwich!”

Shit sandwich eating is, alas, compulsory, unless you are rich. Rich people are a bit stupid, not understanding that having to live with people, 96 percent of whom eats shit sandwiches, is gross.

What tires me out, beyond the obvious (mmmm, shit sandwich!) are the people who pretend, every election, that the Democratic Presidential candidate is not a shit sandwich candidate.

Don’t try and tell me that Biden is offering brie and thinly sliced apples on a croissant when I can see that what’s in his hand is a shit sandwich.

Anyway, it’s almost time to decide which sandwich to eat. The only forbidden option is not eating.

Everything I write here is free, but rent isn’t, so if you value my writing, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

Biden Picks Kamala Harris as VP

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On August 12, 2020

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The two most important consequences of this decision derive from the fact that Biden is old and almost certainly senile.

This means that Harris stands a good chance of becoming President if Biden dies or his incapacity cannot be concealed, even with the best drug cocktails.

If that doesn’t happen, Kamala is odds on to be the next Presidential candidate of the Democratic party.

Kamala is ruthless and ambitious, a hard person willing to do whatever it takes to win. That might be acceptable, but her ruthlessness has been used mostly in favor of doing evil. (Here’s a rather long list.)

Particularly comic-book-villain-evil was fighting to keep someone she knew to be innocent in prison. You have to be particularly twisted to do that.

Of course, Wall Street is thrilled, they know they can’t lose. Trump/Pence win, great! Biden/Harris win, great! If either President dies, the person who replaces them will take great care of rich people whose money comes from parasitical rentierism and direct financial subsidies from the Federal Reserve.

Biden/Harris will be worse in foreign affairs than Trump has been (despite the screams). Domestically, they’ll be somewhat better, but will keep the shovels feeding trillions to the rich going. American decline will continue. In four to twelve years, odds are Donald Trump’s true successor, the competent authoritarian “populist” will win, and that’ll be all she wrote.

The US has been offered many off-ramps (the most recent being Sanders, twice) and refused them all. Decline will continue until it is irreversible (it may already be), or until Americans accept that right-wingers aren’t going to produce good results, whatever their party, gender, skin color, or sexual orientation.

Everything I write here is free, but rent isn’t, so if you value my writing, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

 

 

 

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