Ian Welsh

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

Month: January 2021 Page 2 of 4

50 State Protests Fizzle + Biden

By

On January 20, 2021

Comments

The plan was to have right wing protests at all 50 states. I thought that would likely happen, but it has fizzled: almost no one showed up.

I’m not sure if this is due to the disruption of the communication system between right wing activists, or if their will has been broken.

The fizzling is good news. I still see the conditions for a right wing insurrection, but I’d love to be wrong and I’m happy to be wrong about the 50 state protests.

Just as important, perhaps this will convince Biden and Democrats not to do a Patriot Act II: because whether the right has it in them or not, left-wing demonstrations do continue.

As for Biden, he’s stopping the Keystone XL pipeline (the right thing to do, which I say as a Canadian, and Trudeau was a fool to throw good money after bad on it.) Biden is also due to rejoin the Paris agreement. The Paris agreement has always been bullshit, no major nation has come even close to meeting its agreed goals, but Biden does seem serious about the environment, so we can hope for some improvements in US policy.

He’s also, apparently, going to get rid of the border wall, though that’s more show than meaningful. (Plenty of miles of border wall was built before Trump.)

The original optimism on anti-trust has faded, given Biden’s appointments.

As for Trump, it appears he’s going to be made an example of by being driven into real bankruptcy. The bank securing his loans has said they will no longer do business with him. He embarrassed his fellow elites, then he tried for an extremely incompetent coup and made them feel scared. They won’t forgive him for this. As with Martin Skrelli, you can hurt the hoi polloi all you want, but there’s a certain style required.

The next four years, I am quite sure, will be very unpleasant, and not particularly better than the last four years. Biden will be worse for many foreign nations than Trump was (and better for a few, like Iran.)

In the meantime, congratulation to the winner, and to Harris, who won nothing but whose machinations carried her next to the Presidency and who stands a good chance of being President, even before 2024.

Update: The NYTimes has a list of Biden’s first executive actions.

All the content here is free, but subscriptions and donations do help, a lot.

Anti-Terrorism “Meat Grinder” Coming Home

By

On January 19, 2021

Comments

I can’t say it better than this, so…


If you think this will only be used against people you don’t like, you are delusional. This bat will swing left, hard, and hit BLM and Antifa, certainly harder than it hits the right.

What is laughable about this, of course, is that US anti-terrorism has been massively ineffective. So if they turn it loose in the US, it will, indeed, grind up lives, but it won’t stop any serious insurrection, in fact it will create the conditions for the insurrection to get worse.

Robb also observed that the wall are going up in D.C. and it is being turned into a “Green Zone”. The elites, terrified, are retreating from the public and isolating even further. That move never ends well.

Say what you will about Nixon, but he went to see anti-war protestors with only one aide and no Secret Service protection. FDR, after surviving an assassination attempt, removed the secret service officers from in front of his bedroom.

Our current society is ruled by bed-wetters. On the other hand, they have good reason to be scared, because they know that life for Americans has gotten meaner for over 40 years, and they know they are why. (Yes, the oligarchs bought them, but they sold.)

This American foolishness has gone on long enough. Americans have been divided into camps, hating each other and regarding each other as the enemy. And indeed, they are, but only because they have been suckered into fighting.

The people who have done the most harm to red-staters and to blue-staters are oligarchs and politicians. In a sensible world, differences would be put aside and the oligarchy and politicians who serve them would be taken down.

After that, you might find that you have more in common than not, and that the differences which seemed so important are a lot less important than regaining the over $26K of annual income they stole from you and the declining lifespan.

Meanwhile, the oligarchy is gearing up for a war of them vs. everyone who isn’t on their knees. They’ll hit your enemies, sure, but unless you’re on your knees, they’re going to hit you, too.

As for the Trump insurrection, it occurred only because of elite inter-factional warfare. More on that in another article, perhaps.

All the content here is free, but subscriptions and donations do help, a lot.

Staying Happy in Self-Isolation

By

On January 18, 2021

Comments

A reader wrote me to say this article had been helpful to them. Given that the pandemic and self-isolation is ongoing, I thought it would be worth putting back up. (Originally published March 2, 2020.)

There are a lot of guides for this going around, so I’m going to skip most–but not all–of the more obvious advice. You know how to watch shows online, play games, and read books. Catch up on all that reading!

Problems fall into three broad categories: lack of people, other people, and emotional self-regulation. I’ll speak briefly on the first two, but this article is mostly about learning to create your own emotions on demand.

The first issue is if you’re by yourself. People, even most introverts, do need human contact. Isolation is harmful, and long periods of it show as brain damage. The internet isn’t much of a substitute, but as much as it is, make an effort: Don’t stick to text. Get on voice or even video and voice. The more channels you have, the better. I’ve had people I haven’t talked to in ages reaching out to me, this is a good time to reconnect to old friends and relatives you like. Even better if you can do something online together–games or puzzles or whatever. Set up a camera to show the kitchen and talk while you cook, etc.

The second issue is you’re with other people: People are great, but people also suck, and even if you like someone being in the same place as them for two or three weeks when you’re used to seeing them only the evening and the morning can get on your nerves. At the extreme end, I’ve seen anecdotal reports from police that domestic violence calls are increasing.

This is easiest to handle if you’re honest with each other than you need some alone time. Have the conversation, be clear it doesn’t mean you don’t like or love the other person, and consider even scheduling both alone and together time. Some people won’t need this, we all know best friends and couples who love being in each other’s pockets, but if that isn’t you, it doesn’t mean you aren’t real friends or don’t love each other.

The third issue is emotional self-regulation. Most of us have routines, things we do every day. Get up, coffee, light breakfast, drive to work, work, chat with co-worker, have lunch, work a bit more, goof of on the internet, etc, etc. We’ve figured out routines that keep us mostly in the same set of emotional spaces throughout the day. This is like walking with a cane: You’ve set up mood assists throughout the day, week, and year.

When you lose that routine, you lose those assists. You’ve been walking with a cane: Leaning on it, threatening kids on your lawn, and suddenly a dog thinks its a stick and races away and it’s gone.

So you need to learn how emotionally self-regulate without so many assists or you need to find new assists.

Write down things you love doing during the day that you can do at home. Those are your assists. When  your mood is low, look at the list and do one of them.

To emotionally regulate without assists you have to accept that a lot of your moods can be directly controlled. I’m not saying it’s always easy, but it’s mostly not easy because you never learned how; it’s not something our society trains us to do.

Let’s say you want to feel loving. Stand up, close your eyes, and imagine a child you love or a puppy. They’re mad glad to see you, and dash to you, and throw themselves into your arms. Open your arms in a huge hug, then mimic hugging them. Imagine it as best you can.

Practice this both with the physical movements, and entirely in your mind, until you can do it whenever you want and bring up that feeling.

Say you want to feel excited or gleeful. This is an arousal emotion, and can be used to change fear into something positive. Open your eyes as wide as you can, concentrating on lifting them up, and grin! Think of something exciting: Jumping out of an airplane with a parachute, jumping over a wall, playing frisbee with your dog, that time you snuck into some place you shouldn’t have and it was a gas, the first time you learned about something you loved (I remember how excited I was when I first read D&D books in the seventh grade), or remember bombing down a hill on your bike or a toboggan.

The feeling you’re looking for is WHEEEEEE!

When I do this, I often remember the TV show Pinky and the Brain. It always starts with Pinky asking, “What are we going to do today, Brain?” To which Brain replies, “Same as every day! Take over the WORLD.” I say that out loud or mentally.

Any emotion you can normally feel can be activated in this way: Imagine the situation, and either mimic the physical sensations of it happening, or feel them in your imagination. Ideally do both.

So find a memory or experience that reliably brings up the emotions, and watch your body as it moves into that emotion. What does it feel like? What is the face doing? The body? What are you thinking?

Once you know what it feels like, and what the change feels like, you can learn to bring it under conscious control.

There’s nothing wrong with using props here, especially in the beginning. If a piece of music reliably brings up the mood, use it. Just be aware as the emotion arises, then try and do it without the prop later.

Like most skills, there’ll be fumbling. New skills take time. Keep at it. You’ve got plenty of time and this is a chance to learn a skill that will make your life immeasurably better long after social distancing is done.

(If readers like this article, I may put together a post on emotional self-regulation while dealing with other people. Other people can be the greatest help or hindrance, but working together in this way is the among the greatest experiences in life.)

The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – January 17, 2021

By

On January 17, 2021

Comments

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – January 17, 2021
by Tony Wikrent

Liberalism and socialism are ineffective against capitalism

Prop 22 Is Here, and It’s Already Worse Than Expected

Alexander Sammon, January 9, 2021 [The American Prospect]

Just a handful of weeks have passed since California’s Proposition 22, a new labor standard concocted by Silicon Valley venture capitalists to lock rideshare and food delivery drivers out of basic employee wages, benefits, and protections, went into effect. It has arrived with a bang.

Already, companies beyond just the usual digital suspects have embraced the new law, which creates a third category of worker for those toiling in the gig economy, neither full-time employees nor independent contractors. That means no eligibility for state unemployment insurance, no guaranteed state minimum wage, stripped-down worker protections, no overtime pay, no sick leave, no workplace discrimination protection, and no right to collectively bargain.

A large number of historians have explained how capitalism and liberalism go hand in hand: self-interest is the bases of the market pricing mechanism. But they usually shy away from addressing a crucial problem that at an underlying philosophical level, liberals are simply not capable of resisting extreme capitalism and its pathologies. Similarly, socialists, Marxists, and communists are philosophically incapable of resisting conservatism and neoliberlism. Philip Mirowski and Corey Robin have some really excellent articles on this; Mirowski in particular explains why von Mises’ conception of markets as a super calculator of value is philosophically impervious to any and all assaults by the left.

I concluded years ago the only way you make conservatism and neoliberalism vulnerable philosophically is to jettison modernity’s separation of politics from economics, and return to a conception of political economy. And then, ask the simple and obvious question: what are the proper principles and policies of political economy for a republic?

… the duty of a republic [is] to control “the selfishness of mankind … ; for liberty consists not in the permission to distress fellow citizens, by extorting extravagant advantages from them, in matters of commerce or otherwise.” Because it was commonly understood that “the exorbitant wealth of individuals” had a “most baneful influence” on the maintenance of republican governments and “therefore should be carefully guarded against…”  — Gordon Wood, The Creation of the American Republic. pages 63-64.

What does it mean to “Promote the General Welfare”? Certainly it should include focusing on increasing the purchasing power earned by the nation’s workers. This would be “demand side” economics, instead of the supply side of focusing on giving more money to already rich investors and waiting for it to “trickle down” on the masses below. Demand side economics was a major issue in the 1930s through 1950s. Coming out of the First Great Depression was recognition by all except conservatives and rich reactionaries that the underlying cause of the Depression had been the failure to fairly distribute income, and hence buying power: working people simply were not being paid enough for them to purchase all that could be produced.  The most progressive and militant labor unions, led by the Congress of Industrial Organization (CIO), framed this demand side issue as “under-consumption.” The most militant union, the United Auto Workers (UAW) — led by Walter Reuther, probably the greatest union leader in American history — began its November 1945 strike against General Motors by demanding a 30-cent an hour wage under the slogan, “Purchasing Power for Prosperity.” This is firmly in the uniquely American economics tradition of the Doctrine of High Wages, which has been written out of mainstream economics.

Only by reviving the ideas of civic republicanism can we avert liberalism’s inability and unwillingness to oppose the depredations of capitalism.

America Abandoned Its Economic Prophet. The World Embraced Him.

James Galbraith [Foreign Policy, via Naked Capitalism 1-16-21]

Galbraith’s discussion of the legacy of his father is useful for tearing at the fabric of illusions of today’s failed capitalism. But note that the Galbraithian solution is not to oppose the depredations of capitalism as contrary to the principles of civic republicanism, but to merely build up organized labor as a countervailing power to giant corporations. The rapacious nature of capitalism, embodied so brutally in California’s Proposition 22, is not addressed at all.

Read More

Open Thread

By

On January 16, 2021

Comments

This is for comments on topics unrelated to recent posts.

The Philosophy of Decline and Collapse

By

On January 16, 2021

Comments

By Zhang Bo

By Zhang Bo

For those who think ahead, for those who are empathetic, for those who work for justice or kindness, the world can be a horrible place.

We look around and we see the decline of nations. We see people dying, being tortured, being raped who need not die or suffer. We look to the environment and we see that species are being killed so fast we’re in the middle of a great die-off; or we look to the biosphere and the oxygen cycle and we worry that we could see a collapse of both.

We know that much of the suffering in the world is needless; that there is more than enough food to feed everyone, that many wars are wars of choice which hurt many to enrich a very few, and we know that many who brutalize others are receiving no security or even money in return. We look at how prisoners are treated in jail, and we know that the primitive lust for vengeance is creating monsters for we understand the cycle of abuse: Those who are abused, become abusers.

We see the rise of a surveillance state that may eventually cause the Stasi to look like amateurs and which is already more sophisticated than anything Orwell imagined. We see that the masses of the people in the developed world are being impoverished, generation after generation. And worse, we see our own efforts at stopping all of this fail. We worry that our efforts are not even slowing the worst of it.

And for many of us it hits home closer. We, or our loved ones, are among those suffering: losing our lives, homes, livelihoods, or living lives of despair.

For years, I lived in a state of rage. Not even anger, but rage. Rage at those like Bush and Blair who were mass murderers. Rage at those who did not stop them but could have. Rage at those who believed all the lies, whether those lies were about economics, war, or crime.

I see many who come to my blog, a place where scenarios are explored which are both bleak, and often, very likely, giving into despair or rage themselves. The world is big, the powers that are leading it to ruin are overwhelming, and we look out on a future which seems to get worse and worse the further ahead of us it is. Even countries now on the rise, like China, will suffer massively in the decades to come.

It is perfectly natural to be angry. It is even useful to be angry. Anger or rage are adrenaline shots to the system. They push you to do what must be done; to tell the truth; to push ahead, to tackle the big enemies.

But they are toxic in the long run. Like adrenaline, they are useful for shots of energy, but if you are angry all the time at anything, it will hurt your body and eventually your mind. You will burn out, and if you aren’t lucky, you may burn out permanently or you may die.

Despair is also rational. I am aware of studies which show that depression is about 10X more frequent today than it was about a century ago, based on methodology I find reasonable. Life today sucks. We are almost all close to powerless in our daily lives: We work for wages, without those wages we will suffer greatly, and to get those wages we must do what our bosses say, no matter how noxious their demands. It takes two people to earn a living where it once took one, and wealth and income are collapsing in the first and most of the third world ex-China; while the Chinese are under the immense pressure that industrialization produces.

Anger gets us going, until we burn out. Despair enervates us. We turn often to drugs, whether pharmaceutical or to more subtle opiates like television or computer games. Too often we do not change our circumstances: We see no way out, and en masse we aren’t necessarily wrong. Leave one job, and even if you find another, it will be run by the same sort of people who run almost all of Western business, outside of a few European countries.

All of this is understandable. In a certain sense it is even rational.

But a hot cup of chocolate on a frosty night is still sweet.

As bad as things are, so much of the world is as it always has been. The still contentment of sitting with one you love, saying nothing is still available. The sunset is still beautiful, and if there are fewer birds, their trills still delight.

The flowers are as beautiful, the russet and scarlet leaves of fall still adorn the trees, and a clean drink of water still refreshes. Children playing still bring a smile to my face, and I still enjoy pulling a comforter up and cracking open a new book. There are still beautiful women and handsome men, there is still kindness and charity in the world; there is still art to make and books to write and songs to sing.

In a myriad of ways, there is still beauty and happiness to be found in the world. We are not the first culture to face decline. The Roman Empire went through multiple periods of decline and stoics and epicureans debated how to live the good life in an evil world. The Chinese practically had dealing with declining and corrupt imperial eras and warring states periods down to an art: When no good could be done in the world, one returned to one’s private life to write poetry, drink wine, and care for those close to one while refusing as much as possible to be complicit in the evil of the times.

Others strove still to be of public service, to hold off the rush of night for a few more years, or even a generation, knowing that what came after would be worse.

But I say to you now this: Endless anger or despair, or a mixture of both do you no good. Soon, they do do your enemies no harm (and yes, they are enemies) and they serve not your chosen cause unless you’re willing to risk permanent burn-out.

And besides, where’s the fun in being miserable?  No matter how bad the times, there will always be good periods,  moments and beauty and happiness in which to delight. The wine is as sweet in evil times as good; love is perhaps even sweeter in times of despair; and beauty never dies and can always be found, if only, sometimes, in our own minds.

It’s banal to say we’re here for a short time, but it’s true. Fight the good fight, to be sure, but then delight in the sensual pleasures and love this world offers.

And give yourself permission to quit. There are seven billion people in the world. It’s not on all on you. The graveyards are full of essential men: The world will continue without you, and it’s not all on you. Take the breaks you need, even quit if you must. Above all, don’t let the bastards see you sweat, and don’t let them take away your enjoyment of the real pleasures that life offers.

(Originally published October 27, 2014. Republished March 27, 2017. Republished March 10, 2018, and Jan 16, 2021)

If you enjoyed this article, and want me to write more, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

You Can Always Get Half the Population To Hate The Other Half

By

On January 15, 2021

Comments

So, there was a lot of violence, relatively speaking, during the Trump administration, though most of it was cops beating BLM protestors. (Generally violence erupted after police started it, though there were exceptions.)

There is going to be more during the Biden presidency, because Republicans don’t believe that Biden won legitimately. These numbers seem to be around 70% or so. Meanwhile Biden is unlikely to fix the economy, though hopefully he will get Covid get under control (an effort which will be hampered by the incompetence and stupidity of Governors, including many Democratic ones like Cuomo,)

My voice is small, the heyday of the blogs is done, but I will gently suggest that “cooling it” might be wise over the next few months. The fact is that the election wasn’t stolen. If it was, I would say so. You simply cannot get to the votes Trump needs with fraud allegations. The worst things the Dems did were actually voter suppression of third parties (keeping them off the ballots with specious bullshit), but Republicans routinely engage in totally egregious voter suppression of their own.

Biden is not going to be a bad President for Red America. He’s bending over backwards to try and appease Republicans. A lot of Democrats think this is a mistake, but this is how it is.

America is strongly polarized. Terribly so. Stories of family members turning in relatives for the Capitol storming are routine.

This is BAD. When you get to the point of families narcing each other out, you’re in a really bad place nationally.

Both sides are convinced that they are in the right. Republicans are, yes, wrong, but we live in media bubbles. I saw a stat that after Fox called the election for Biden it then continued calling the election in doubt hundreds of times. West coast elite techies came down on the side of Democrats, which is going to pay some awful dividends even if it was the right decision (because this has made them a partisan branch of government making decisions that should be made democratically. Places like Faccebook, YouTube and Twitter are Commons, and that they are privately owned does not change that fact.)

If you don’t want this to spiral out of control, find a way to cool it. I am one of the few blogs left who is read by both sides, even though I’m a left winger.

The people who are responsible for this are the people who have spent 40-50 years dividing America. Fox and conservative talk radio started it, places like MSNBC continued it by creating partisan media for centrists (there is no left wing media of significance, Jacobin and WSWS don’t cut it.). Matt Taibbi’s summary of how this happened is essential reading.

Right and center and left have been divided into tribes by the masters. The simple fact is that there is only one enemy, and that is the oligarchy. Everyone who isn’t in the top three to four percent is oppressed by them. They have used culture war to divide. The elites who supported Trump don’t want regular people to be better off: they’re willing to give them anti-abortion policies, sure, but they don’t genuinely want to pay them more or give them more rights.

The same is true of the elites who support centrists: the “Resistance”. Silicon Valley regularly engages in activities meant to suppress wages (the late, sainted, Steve Jobs put together an agreement they wouldn’t hire each other’s engineers, for example.)

Almost no members of the oligarchy support the left: BLM and Antifa have little actual support. They get some nods, but note that Democratic Mayors and Governors, with few exceptions, still let the cops crack down on them terribly and Biden’s response was “we should give the cops more money.”

If the people who stormed the capitol had been successful in overturning the election, it would just have been a victory for one set of nasty elites over another set of nasty elites.

The actual problem in America is people aren’t sharing a reality any more. This isn’t just isolated to Republicans; they’re wrong about the election, yes, but Liberals (centrists) have been terribly propagandized too. Remember the BS story about how Russia was paying bounties for the Taliban to kill American soldiers. It was obvious BS, at the time, and still treated seriously. There have been many such stories floated in the Liberal press, keeping Liberals in a frothing rage at Russia and Trump for the entire Presidency; insanely angry and unable to think even as Democrats voted for almost all of Trump’s bad bills and Democratic governors like Cuomo fucked up the Covid response terribly.

Killing each other; hating each other, at the behest of oligarchical factions is insane. Doing a coup based on lies (as opposed to a revolution based on truth) is insane and self-destructive.

You have an enemy. It is only your fellow Americans because they have been lied to for 40 years. This doesn’t mean they aren’t dangerous to you now, of course, but remember the cries of the Capitol protestors; their anger,  when they realized that most of the cops were still willing to fight them.

The cops work for the oligarchy. The red-teamers thought the cops were on their side. Oh, they’re more sympathetic, yes, but they work for the Man.

Divide and keep conquered is the oldest playbook in the hands of ruling classes. America has been riven by it and may be destroyed by it.

Look past the hatred (often well deserved) and see the enemy: the one that manipulated you into hating each other so you wouldn’t go after them. The one who stole $26K in wage increases from you over the last two generations.

Someone’s pulling your strings, and you’re dancing like puppets.

All the content here is free, but subscriptions and donations do help, a lot.

 

Laura Poitras Fired From The Intercept

By

On January 14, 2021

Comments

She has an open letter on her firing from the Intercept. I believe her. Poitras is a legend, and put her ass on the line repeatedly. She is perfectly correct that the Intercept was built on her and Greenwald, because of their coverage of Snowden. This is undeniable.

It is also undeniable that the Intercept completely screwed over Reality Winner, asking the government to confirm the validity of the documents she leaked to the Intercept. It then let Greenwald (who was not involved) take the blame for years.

I suggest reading the whole letter.

Here’s one takeaway, from both Glenn and Poitras: you can’t hire other people to be in charge of your creations.

This is the same mistake that university faculties made: hiring administrators to run the universities, till the administrators wound up in control and turned faculty into employees, and, increasingly, badly treated ones.

The Intercept was built on Greenwald, Poitras and Snowden.

Once they were no longer needed, they were gotten rid of, because they have, even if you disagree with them (and I disagree with Greenwald on some important things, like Citizen’s United), integrity.

Easily replaced journalists who know their position in the pecking order are so much easier to deal with.

Greenwald and Poitras remain legends, and the CEO of First Look will be forgotten long before they are. His rewards, as with all who sell their souls, must come from the fruits of his betrayals.

Unless Poitras is straight up lying, the people who should have been fired aren’t her and Greenwald, but the Intercept’s Editor-in-Chief Betsy Reed and First Look Media’s CEO Michael Bloom.

All the content here is free, but subscriptions and donations do help, a lot.

 

Page 2 of 4

Previous

Next

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén