#but harris’ thing is her own campaign. and not just being reactionary

[dreamaboutwhathappens]

taylor’s post falls so perfectly in line with the harris-walz campaign rhetoric of not treating trump like he’s this mythological Big Bad

[icaruskey]

Oh my sweet summer child, you grasp at straws to excuse your wanting to play a game that's openly antisemitic and whose royalties will be put towards anti-trans organizations in the UK. Let's break down what you're trying to counter with.

1. If you have ever owned an apple product, you support sweat shop labour

Unless you're able to directly point to where any of your shit is coming from, you're supporting slave labor in some capacity. Part of why the US in particular has moved all their shit overseas is because companies can get away with paying dogshit wages and the like.

This is why there's no ethical consumption under capitalism exists.

2. If you are a fan of bloodborne, call of cthulu, or have read/purchased/enjoyed anything by H.P. Lovecraft, you are racist

Funny you mention Bloodborne, which has a DLC that subverts Lovecraft's racist-even-for-his-time-ness. Also, Lovecraft is dead. Purchasing his works and things based off his works doesn't directly fund his political endeavours.

3. If you enjoy Shakespear, and have anything in regards to him, you support pedophilia

First off, what? Secondly, same argument as above. Even if Shakespeare was a pedophile (seriously, where is this coming from?), he's dead. You're not putting money in his pocket to be used to further his political agenda.

4. If you ever supported the far cry series, you support workplace abuse.

Oh shit, we're back to point one again. Pretty much any game, especially AAA games, subject their workers to abuse. It's a good thing to highlight, especially since video games aren't a necessity, but... oh wait.

Hogwarts Legacy had a reactionary youtuber on their staff. Warner Bros was aware of his channel.

Well shit. He was the lead designer and everything.

5. Ever purchased anything made/owned by Disney? Not only are you racist, you're homohobic too!

Aaaand we hit the same argument again. At least this time, the corporation is still here and actively influencing politics.

It's just also a monolith that's taking over most media and

Hmm, it's gonna be pretty hard to avoid tbh. You can with some work but... it'll be quite a feat. And Disney as a brand is fucking old. There's a lot to criticize modern Disney over without having to go back into the history of it beyond how it still influences things today.

You know what's easy to avoid? Harry Potter. You know what has aged poorly, whose creators have become worse over time despite public pressure? Harry Potter.

You know where your money is going when you purchase the game? Not the people who worked on the game; they're paid. No, royalties are going to JKR and her anti-trans campaigns. And you publicly talking about playing the game gives her the ego that her fans believe she's right.

Oh and let's not forget that the game is literally doubling down on the "goblins as Jewish stereotypes." You're playing ethnic cleansing the game. But yeah, have fun just because it's a nostalgia trip for you. Sure.

As someone who attributes his surviving to adulthood thanks to the HP series but was still able to see the faults in it and put them down by the time JKR went mask off, you're just being weak.

Sincerely, A former Ravenclaw

If we are calling people who genuinely are excited to play a game that is part of an extremely influential novel from their childhood "terfs" or "transphobic" because of the author, alright, okay. Then these I guess also have to be true.

1. If you have ever owned an apple product, you support sweat shop labour

2. If you are a fan of bloodborne, call of cthulu, or have read/purchased/enjoyed anything by H.P. Lovecraft, you are racist

3. If you enjoy Shakespear, and have anything in regards to him, you support pedophilia

4. If you ever supported the far cry series, you support workplace abuse.

5. Ever purchased anything made/owned by Disney? Not only are you racist, you're homohobic too!

Before you say 'it is different.' No, it's not.

Now if you excuse me, I'm going to enjoy being a wizard while still supporting my friends and family in the transgender community.

[tkrr]

The Left isn’t as progressive as it thinks it is

So Taylor Swift is a fan of Kamala Harris, who, let’s hope, will be our next Vice President. I just wanted to acknowledge that, and it really does show that Taylor’s serious about her feminism, because Harris is an absolutely fantastic choice for VP. She was my favorite choice out of the gate for president, but she dropped out before primary season... but here we are. 

I didn’t come here to talk about Taylor though. 

One of the most disillusioning things in my life was working as director on a public access talk show where a bunch of old New Lefties from the 60s sat around and discussed issues of the day. I did this for a couple of years until the producer and I drifted apart, at which point the 2016 campaign was in full swing and I was getting sick and tired of the constant Hillary-bashing. (She was “ambitious”, you know.) They rarely discussed social issues, and when they did it was usually related to some kind of international relief operation (like the one in Haiti a few years back) or castigating Democrats for turning away from the labor vote. (I don’t think I ever heard the phrase “identity politics”, but...) When Obergefell v Hodges came down from the Supreme Court in 2015, their first show after it happened was yet another rehash of the Israel/Palestine issue. As I was in the early stages of planning my transition, this didn’t go over well with me, but I kept my mouth shut and put up with it for another year. They were of course very concerned with corporate influence, with a regular set decoration being an American flag with the stars replaced by corporate logos. This was not the left I thought I’d be working for.

See, I’d done a lot of work with another producer on a show covering issues relevant to the homeless in our area. That felt good. That was, and is, how I see progressivism -- my contribution might have bordered on slacktivism from the outside, but I was providing a link in a chain for people who actually needed help. Similarly, the producer of the show I was talking about before had used me as director on a show about local public school issues; progressivism to me involves listening to people at risk and helping them reduce that risk. That was what the Civil Rights Movement did, and what groups like the Black Panthers tried to do. Oxfam, Doctors Without Borders, Planned Parenthood, the ACLU, Amnesty international -- this is stuff that matters to people in their immediate, daily lives. I had kept the populist left -- call them Bernouts, fire baggers, the Green Tea Party, whatever -- at arm’s length, but I kind of assumed that these things were priorities for everybody claiming to be on the left. This... did not turn out to be the case. 

What I’ve learned, from that experience and from the last few election cycles, is that the populist left is not on the same page as the activists who are actually putting effort towards directly taking care of people. They talk about labor rights, which falls into that category, but they put other issues, especially civil rights issues, on the back burner. There’s a lot of emphasis on foreign policy, but usually in a very simplistic way that’s clearly still stuck in the Reagan era. (Which is jarring when you hear it from someone who was born after Reagan left office.) When Euromaidan happened in Ukraine in 2014, they bought the Russian government’s side of the story hook, line, and sinker, despite the people noting that the rhetoric came straight out of the USSR’s propaganda playbook. They treated Noam Chomsky, Glenn Greenwald, Julian Assange, and Edward Snowden as gospel, but oddly enough I don’t remember them talking about Chelsea Manning much. (I wonder why. 🏳️‍🌈? Nah, can’t be...) The supposedly “progressive” populist left overall has this kind of tunnel vision, and I can’t help but notice they’ve been replaying the same scripts since the 1960s. The last time I looked at the Green Party USA’s platform, it was such a bizarre mix of things that actually make sense combined with things that were either wrong or outright insane that I realized I could probably never vote for a Green candidate. (That in and of itself is fodder for an article I do not have the time or the energy to write.) On top of all that, there’s the sheer self-destructiveness -- I can’t understand how someone can say that their conscience is clear for voting for third-party if the simple math means their vote made it harder to advance the agenda they say they want.

What it comes down to is that there are two “left”s, and they’re only just barely compatible. I wish I didn’t have to concede the word “progressive” to the populist side, because fundamentally, no matter to what extent they manage to diversify their own base, they wind up sidelining the concerns of marginalized people (particularly black and Jewish people; there’s a link at the bottom of the article written by a black writer for a Jewish audience that I found very enlightening) in favor of centering a “generic” narrative that ultimately comes down to “things white people worry about”. The scary part of this is that because they’re basically reactionary, they don’t realize that the economically-centered message they’re pointing out is not actually as helpful for all citizens as they think it is, and will never admit it. One particular point I’ve made occasionally -- the class narrative is irrelevant for most African Americans. Shows like “The Jeffersons”, “The C*sb* Show”, and “Fresh Prince of Bel Air” were all about wealthy, successful black families; there were working class black sitcoms as well (I wish “227″ had the same staying power as “Golden Girls”), but the ones we remember were all about black families that made it, and one of the stinger lines from the pilot of “The Jeffersons” was Marla Gibbs’ character Florence saying “How come we overcame and nobody told me?” Yes, I’m white. But this is stuff that other white people could find out if they bothered to look into it.

In the end, though, the worst aspect of all of this is the reductionism. It becomes an argument over who’s lefting better than all the other lefties, to the point where “liberal” has somehow become synonymous in some circles with “anyone right of Bernie Sanders”. (Which is really ironic given Kamala Harris’ voting record in Congress, running left of Bernie.) I don’t see too much of the crowd doing that going out and trying to do the things that make people’s lives better directly; it all amounts to telling people how much better things will be Come The Revolution™, but any efforts that fall short of total societal reform *right fucking now* are seen as worse than failure. Once in a great while, some will admit that they think that these are just bribes to the proletariat to stave off the revolution, but to be honest, I don’t think most of them have put that much thought into it. This isn’t the left I want to represent. If your plans don’t start with “first do no harm”, they’re going to have an opportunity cost far too high to be morally acceptable. And if standing on principle means giving up your opportunity to advance a progressive agenda, your “progressive” principles are worthless. 

(I had some other points to make involving cancel culture, but it’s 2:30 AM and this is already a rather long post. Maybe I’ll do a second one that includes it.)

The link I mentioned above: https://forward.com/opinion/435826/why-the-left-has-failed-with-black-voters/

[96thdayofrage]

Will Kamala Do the Right Thing?

https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/01/21/will-kamala-do-the-right-thing/

My daughter, a Pakistani American mother of two young children, married to an African American man of Jamaican parentage, is understandably excited about our new Veep-to-be, Kamala Harris. She keeps sending me articles by “desi” women like herself in relationships with Black men, who are excited about this new chapter dawning in American history.

What is particularly poignant for young mothers of biracial kids like hers, is the hope that Kamala’s ascension to the second most powerful position in the country’s leadership, will simultaneously mitigate the anti-Black racism within the South Asian community. Thus, when Sharda Sekaran, a “Blindian” (Black and Indian) young woman interviewed for a recent essay in The Lily that my daughter sent me this morning, interprets Kamala Harris’ election as “a validation of the identity I’ve had to fight for”— how can one not feel elated at the prospect of people like my own darling granddaughter growing up feeling similarly empowered in their identities as Black South Asians for the first time in US history? How can I deny that as a Pakistani immigrant myself, I’ve not seen the anti-black prejudice that one associates largely, if not exclusively with white supremacy, also prevalent in my own “desi”- American community? But the question that doesn’t get raised in these expressions of delight at having one’s “identity” now represented at the highest levels of officialdom, is whether having a “Blindian” woman as Vice President is enough of a victory against the forces of regression. The title of the recent article in The Lily, “Kamala Harris has elevated the Blindian community: ‘It’s a validation of the identity I’ve had to fight for’” —begs the question, is the “validation” that may come from seeing a Black and Desi woman “elevated” to high office really worth all the excitement and anticipation? In other words, is identity politics at the level of representation enough, by itself?

I’m old enough to remember first hand a similar excitement many of us who were new immigrants from countries of the global South like Pakistan, felt when the Reverend Jesse Jackson created his National Rainbow Coalition as a platform for his 1984 presidential run. Just having an African American running for the Presidency generated such a sense of pride and excitement in communities of color, with which I felt a sense of affinity. But this affinity went far beyond race and ethnic identity, and therefore represented something different from that which Kamala Harris evokes. After all, I was neither Black nor male. Having grown up as a child of the Bandung era, motivated by ideologies of transnational solidarity that socialist or left-leaning progressive leaders such as Sukarno, Nehru, Nasser stood for in the so-called Third World, Jackson to me, and to others of my ilk, represented a bridge to those international forebears, including to the two African Americans who attended the Bandung Conference of 1955 as observers, Richard Wright and Adam Clayton Powell.  Jackson’s appointment in 1966 by the Rev Martin Luther King Jr, to serve as the first director of Operation Breadbasket in Chicago, itself an offshoot of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition which was the product of a social justice movement that grew out of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, linked Jackson to King’s own radical agenda and internationalist understanding of the intersectional roots of racial, economic and social injustice. This oppression that his movement sought to dismantle at home, in the USA, was an oppression that King, as well as other civil rights leaders, came to understand as linked to similar injustices faced by brown and black peoples everywhere. Building allyship and solidarity, people like King and later Jackson,  drew inspiration from those fighting similar injustices against the scourge of racialized colonialism in their own countries, and it was this transnational solidarity of purpose that drew youngsters like me to their brand of struggle. To progressive minded folks of my generation, that idea of a political coalition, which invited people of all identities, races, genders, classes and religions to band together to push for a justice-oriented social and economic agenda, one that could counter the racist effects of the conservative era of Reaganomics, was the need of the moment. The concept that appealed to us was “affiliative politics” rather than simply “identity politics.” It was clear to us that just because someone was Black or Brown, didn’t mean s/he subscribed to the Bandung era vision of a world united around progressive values.

This then, is my real concern regarding the “identitarian validation” that the figure of Kamala Harris represents for so many black and brown, and particularly Black-Brown, or “Blindian” folks in the USA today. What exactly is being validated, and what function does such validation serve? What is the political vision that Kamala Harris stands for, and which we are obviously endorsing, if we use her as a representational/identity crutch? Those who have followed her career as a public prosecutor, point out her disappointing record on achieving criminal justice reform which would actually have meant something concrete to her constituents of color.  For instance, Don Conway writing for the World Socialist website in an article entitled, “Who is Democratic Senator Kamala Harris?” reminds us that

Lara Bazelon, former director of the Loyola Law School Project for the Innocent in Los Angeles, wrote in a New York Times op-ed, “Time after time, when progressives urged her to embrace criminal justice reforms as a district attorney and then the state’s attorney general, Ms. Harris opposed them or stayed silent.” Donald Specter, executive director of the Prison Law Office, stated in a Daily Beast interview, “As far as I know, she did very little if anything to improve the criminal justice system when she was attorney general.”

Not only has her record on social justice issues internal to the USA been dismal, but it is important to understand that these are intimately linked to how she has positioned her political affiliations abroad, in stark contradiction to the morally-driven positions her Black predecessors of the Civil Rights era upheld. Thus for example, she has said nothing that would rile up the Indian American community of rich donors who contributed significantly to her campaign, and most of whom are supporters of the right wing Modi government in India. For instance, when asked a question in September 2019 by a Kashmiri American woman as to what her position was on the human rights abuses being perpetrated against Kashmiris as a result of Modi’s policies, Harris gave the most tepid of responses, saying vaguely that she would ensure Kashmiris knew that “we are watching.” Not once did she mention Modi by name, or even India as a state committing violence against Kashmiris by being an occupying force. King, were he alive today, would, I’m quite certain, have strongly condemned Modi for his anti Muslim and anti-Dalit policies. Perhaps Harris’ reluctance to say anything definitive on Modi’s regressive, authoritarianism is tied to her open support of the Zionist agenda, as she is on record for having stated time and again, her great admiration for Israel, which she visited with her millionaire husband Doug Emhoff and reported only that she was “impressed” by the amazing architecture of the Supreme Court building in Tel Aviv. This is a building that surely symbolizes anything but justice for its Palestinian citizens or for those Palestinians whose territories are under occupation by Israel and where despite countless UN resolutions to the contrary, Israel continues to build more and more illegal settlements.  Yet she believes the country is “a beautiful home to democracy and justice” (Arab America, Jan 30, 2019). When asked by the NYT (June 19th, 2019) whether Israel meets human rights standards, she responded, “Overall, yes.” This, despite the fact that Amnesty International’s Annual Report from 2019 states categorically, “Israel continued to impose institutionalized discrimination against Palestinians living under its rule in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT).”

If someone insists on whitewashing injustice abroad (Israel, India)—one must and will, end up whitewashing it at home. Pushing a representational agenda built around identity politics alone, becomes a reactionary move, not a progressive one. So while I “get” the emotional uplift provided by this election especially to young women who come from similar mixed race backgrounds as Kamala Harris, I believe we need to stop playing identity politics. Instead of “identifying” with people just because they “look” like us—we need to ask, “what is their politics”? Interestingly, her father, Donald Harris, whom she rarely mentions, was a man who gained popularity with students at Stanford as a “Marxist scholar,” and was accordingly criticized by establishment voices there (who weren’t keen on giving him tenure) as “a pied piper leading students astray from neo-classical economics,” according to a 1976 story in The Stanford Daily. He was seen as a threat by some of his colleagues, because his brand of politics, in which solidarity around issues of class and racial justice clearly take precedence over heritage and identity, was anathema to the ruling class ideology in capitalist USA.  It is therefore hardly surprising that he was not amused by Kamala’s comment responding to a question she was asked when she was still a Presidential candidate in 2019, about whether or not she’d ever smoked pot. Her joking response, in an interview with The Breakfast Club, possibly intended as an attempt to win over voters, was, “Half my family’s from Jamaica. Are you kidding me?” The “joke” apparently, did not go over well with many folks, including her father, who in a statement to Jamaica Global Online, wrote:

My dear departed grandmothers (whose extraordinary legacy I described in a recent essay on this website), as well as my deceased parents, must be turning in their grave right now to see their family’s name, reputation and proud Jamaican identity being connected, in any way, jokingly or not with the fraudulent stereotype of a pot-smoking joy seeker and in the pursuit of identity politics. Speaking for myself and my immediate Jamaican family, we wish to categorically dissociate ourselves from this travesty. (qtd in Harpers Bazaar.com my italics)

Kamala Harris has talked effusively about her bond with her mother, and spoken proudly of her Indian “heritage” (that identitarian label again!)—and while part of it is understandably, because of the fact that after the parents’ divorce, she and her sister were brought up largely by her mother, it is also worth considering that the mother, a well-known medical researcher who was actively involved in the Civil Rights movement alongside her boyfriend, later husband Donald, was nonetheless, no Marxist. As Chelsey Sanchez, writing in Harper’s Bazaar reports,

Baron Meghnad Desai, an economist born in India, recalled meeting the couple before a dinner party to the Times. She was “fiery and radical but not Marxist in any sense,” while Donald “did take a serious interest in radical political economy….”

Indeed, as the titles of many articles and books Donald J. Harris published over a prolific and distinguished scholarly career indicate, his view of economics is intimately tied to the politics of decolonization and a critique of capitalism as a system that exploits Black people in the United States.  I’m quite certain that titles such as the following would not sit well with the centrist image Ms Harris has assiduously cultivated in her pursuit of a political career, and most certainly her prosecutorial history would not wash over well with a father who has written these articles:

+ “Marxian Exploitation and Domestic Colonialism: a Reply,” Review of Black Political Economy, 4(4), December 1974, 89–90.

+ “Capitalist Exploitation and Black Labor: Some Conceptual Issues,” Review of Black Political Economy, 8(2), Winter 1978, 113‑151.

+ “Economic Growth, Structural Change, and the Relative Income Status of Blacks in the U. S. Economy, 1947‑78,” Review of Black Political Economy, 12(3), March 1983, 75–92.

Further, Herb Boyd writing for The Amsterdam News last year informs us that Donald Harris also published a tribute to Malcolm X shortly after the latter’s death, which appeared in the Kingston Sunday Gleaner, a Jamaican newspaper. The article is a “mini-biography” of Malcolm, which describes details of his life that at the time were largely unknown since the posthumous publication of Malcom’s autobiography was still in the offing. Harris—Kamala’s father—is effusive in his praise for Malcolm’s radical vision and commitment to structural change in America:

Malcolm…was no ordinary Muslim-convert. He brought with him into the movement not only an awareness of personal hardship and injustice but also a passion to convert others; a determination to change the environment of his people; a sharp analytical mind and the consummate skill of a public speaker and debater.

Boyd then goes on to inform us that in his daughter’s memoir, The Truths We Hold: An American Journey,

…there is no mention of Malcolm and her longest reflection on her father is merely to note his ancestry, the weekend visits when she was very young, and his academic career (Amsterdam News my emphasis) .

Once again, we are brought back to this notion of “ancestry,” “heritage,” “identity.” But this is what we must confront, and help our children to do the same: a sense of identity that is only skin-deep, is not an identity to hold on to, to tout as a badge of honor or pride.

And so, my Blackistani granddaughter, like other “Blindians”– needs better role models than what’s on offer through Harris today. I look forward to teaching her about the importance of affiliative, rather than merely skin-deep, identity politics. And maybe, we can hope, that over the course of her Vice Presidency, Harris will learn to do better than her record to date; maybe she will figure out how to Do the Right Thing, after all. The first step in that direction would be to acknowledge the radical political vision of her father.

[bambamramfan]

“Read another book”

One of the most common refrains in left-of-center twitter has been people making jokes about the current political situation via Harry Potter or Game of Thrones (often but not always, liberals with a focus on identity politics) and leftists looking for a fight responding with “read another book!” and denunciations of this sort of pop-culture focused political analysis. (Freddie deBoer was an obsessive of this particular contrarianism.)

My blog started as a 30 part series analyzing the political implications of the Star Wars Prequels, so I’m not exactly neutral in this fight.

But it’s also true that these tweets trying to serve as a rallying cry equating voters for Hillary Clinton with Dumbledore’s Army are repetitive and banal. They seem to be failing in a particular way, over and over again, that does invite some generalization.

And the distinction you want to make is between Immersion vs Analysis.

SMG:

The longer answer is that the memes reflect an extremely pervasive nerd ideology.

Nerdism places incredible emphasis on continuity, so a film that eschews this is incomprehensible. Note how, despite the film being incredibly stylized, the conversation over Fury Road is dominated by plot synopses and descriptions of the worldbuilding. Things like Max's ability to predict the future are ignored. When the ultimate objective is to catalog plot points on wookiepedia, the fact that Optimus Prime disappears between shots is a threat.

There are also elaborate fantasies of Bay as a despotic sexual harasser, which overwhelm and terrify the Tumbler subset of nerds. In this view, Bay is responsible for the theft of society and we can have a pure liberal multiculture if we simply eliminate people like him through advanced twitter shame-campaigns. Reddit MRAs call meme-repetition 'signal boosting'. In Fury Road, Immortan Joe is exactly such a Michael Bay figure: he loves big cars, explosions, and literally holds Rosie Huntington-Whiteley captive. So Fury Road provides a variant on 'Joss Whedon' liberal feminism, where we enjoy Joe's evil - but only so long as he's badly beaten up at the end. Have your cake and eat it.

This is part-and-parcel with the above. Nerds demand an immersive franchise universe (e.g. the 'MCU', the Star Wars EU, the Alien 'Quadrillogy'.) and ideological purity. Oppression cannot be presented as systemic. It must always be a moral threat from 'outside the universe'. Luke Skywalker is 'natural', and Jar Jar Binks is an artificial imposition by Lucas, the degenerate.

(The same phenomenon occurs when a superhero is recast as black, or female. The normal crass commercialism of comic films is suddenly unacceptable, suddenly perceived as an artificial imposition by 'SJWs'.)

It is immoral for Bay to depict a woman as powerless. Megan Fox's character 'dresses like a slut', but not in an 'empowering' way. Even though, in the films, this character trait stands for her misguided attempt to escape poverty by selling herself, class-ignorant nerds vacillate between slut-shaming Fox and demonizing Bay. The skimpy clothes in Fury Road are acceptable because they are imposed by Joe.

As I noted much earlier in the thread, Fury Road's narrative structure is identical to the entire 6-film Star Wars series - but condensed into a single film, scrubbed of objectionable/satirical content, and presented in chronological order so that it ends with the triumph of the liberal rebellion. The meme-elevation of George Miller to greatest living filmmaker is likewise a condensed, inverted version of the ridiculous meme-demonization of figures like George Lucas and Shyamalan.

People who literally do not know what cinematography is now write book-length fantasies about how 'lazy' JJ Abrams is, or devote entire webseries to debating whether Matthew Vaughn is racist. It's a false progressivism based around punishing celebrities' perceived sins - lust, greed, sloth, etc. - via endless twitter campaign.

No nerd has ever gotten insanely mad at (say) Wim Wenders or Jane Campion, and nobody gave a thought about Miller when he made Babe and Happy Feet. But once someone makes a film in a science fiction/superhero franchise universe... God help us all.

And most of these “rallying cry” tweets and macros can be read as the same desire for immersion into the franchise universe. What Hogwarts House are you? Or more politically, don’t you want to be there when Harry defeats Voldemort? Because your fight is just like the fight of the good guys vs bad guys in that franchise.

This is usually bad and I agree with the dismissal of it.

But if you’re using the art for actual analysis, that’s great. That’s what art is for. It presents a subjective truth about the world, that we can use to understand our own circumstance.

For instance, in Harry Potter, you could write about how Slytherin represents a fantasy of the reactionary elite who want membership to be determined mostly by birth, whereas Gryffindor represents a meritocratic elite, that definitely posits some people as better, more important, and worthy of special treatment above others, but instead of merely being based around birth, allow in special exceptions for people smart enough, hard working enough, or charismatic enough.

(There’s exceptions to these, like Slugworth or Diggory, but these are broadly the camps the people from those houses stand for -- with Ravenclaw being the weirdo-uselessly-smart-people, and Hufflepuff being everyone-else-who-has-nothing-but-eachother.)

This makes Gryffindor of course, analogous to Western capitalism. Most people are oppressed, but there is hope for the Hermione’s of the world, etc.

See, I wrote a bunch about Harry Potter, but none of which is about a desire to be in that world. In fact it’s a resignation that we are already in that world.

Do that, and you can write as much about Harry Potter as you like. Hell write a 10 page tumblr post on the way movie Dumbledore says one line, that’s can still be interesting and insightful.

***

(This doesn’t mean immersion is a guilt-inducing sin. Fan fic and RPGs are often about immersion. That’s great as entertainment. Just don’t try to sell it as political activism too, unless you’re critically engaging with the work.)

[rupertacton]

RUOBAL ETOV

I'm in Baxter's Court on Mare Street. Day before Thursday the 8th of June. 2017. What am I doing? Not applying for jobs. Fuck it. Can't concentrate. Everything. Confused. Vote Labour sticker on the 2nd hand Ralph shirt. Shit coffee. Dreaming of a better future. Nightmare visions of division. We have always been divided. Us and them. Me and you. Here and there. Be here now. No. Not me. I'm voting. Don't know why. Always do. Everything changes but you. But nothing. Deep fucking state we're in. The Deep State in a deep state. Arm everyone. Radical deradicalisation. Totally fucking radical dude. Arsenal. Millwall. The classic dichotomy. It's not that. Never was. I've crossed London Bridge thousands of times. Troubled bridges. Turbulent waters. Pont de la Tour. What's the point? Intern me first. My turn. I do not share your shared values. Do not share that with me. Not interested. Fucking cops everywhere. Reading my emails. Tapping my dreams. I dream of Friday not being shit. Every simple question. The answers are complicated. Extreme rationalists. Silicon roundabout reactionary fuckheads. Neither Left nor Right. Always right. Without fail. They, hate, our, way, of, life. WAYS OF LIFE. RIGHTS OF WAY. Pluralism. Tolerance. Most people just want to live a peaceful life. MORE ARMED POLICE. No. I stand for law and order. As long as it doesn't apply to me. As long as I get to choose my transgressions without punishment. Vote tactically to stay in the EU. Vote tactically for more years of those cunts. They don't really like you. They wouldn't get a round in even if they had the fucking bunce. Which they do. Rolling in it. Coffee is cold. I drink it anyway. How can I escape? Escape the shit opinions. My own included. I AM ALWAYS WRONG ABOUT EVERYTHING. Take. Take. Take. Hot takes. Cold coffee. Keep calm and drink tea. Run through fields of wheat. Fields of gold. Twee fucks on miniature railways taking us to model concentration camps. I LOVE EU. I don't. You value that over everything else? Reassess your fucking values. Old people are not the enemy. The North is not the enemy. Enemies within. Enemies of the state. The state can do better than paying private companies to do what the state did. It worked. It can be reformed. The state must be destroyed. Apart from the bits we need. The weak deserve protection. Anything else is fascism. Sorry if you don't class yourself as that. Sorry. Not sorry. LOL. Crypto-memetic-libertarian-neo-reaction-alt-Nick-Land-LD50-nihilist-ancap-manosphere-hipster-cunt-fuckwits. Not important. Not significant. But there. Right there. Right at the heart. The right at the heart. Analysing. Guilty feats of algorithms. Sorry. They will all jump in bed to defeat the common enemy. Us. I'm cynical. Sarcastic. I'm sincere. I sincerely love the young people who can tell what's up. Don't infect them with your cynicism. Your grown up opinions. They want housing. They want a country that gives a fuck about them. What is better about what you want? Is it that you already have it? Is that it? That's it. Ask yourself those hard questions. Don't shy away from the answers. Just because you liked some rap music in the 90's. You did pills. You went out and got shitfaced. You smoked some fucking spliffs. You listened to some dub. You like proper left wing politics. You are tired of identity politics. It has ruined your fun. Your right to free speech. Your right to pontificate on problems that aren't yours. You can't bring yourself to vote for THEM because of HIM. Because what? Because anti-semitism? Because Abbott? Because Brexit? Because you are definitely not a Tory? Because shambles? Because lack of talent? Because mediocrity? We would probably have a right laugh down the boozer. We would probably agree on a lot of things. SUCK IT UP. Ask yourself some very hard questions. And suck it up. Take it on the chin. HOPE. HOPE. HOPE. FUCKING HOPE. I can't stand it. I'm not a fucking doorstepper. Activist. But. Thank. Fuck. Some. People. Are. I can offer a kind of support. Support in kind. New Labour. Blue Labour. Dr. Who Labour. Harry fucking Potter Labour. Old Labour. Momentum Labour. Militant Tendency. Satire Labour. If you identify as left wing and you are going to vote Tory what the actual fuck are you playing at? Playing. You watch the fucking West Wing and think it's reality. House of Cards. It will come crashing down around everyones ears. LOL. People will die. I was working in Westminster last summer and I wish I'd punched Liam Fox in the face. Regrets. I've had a few. There is a clear choice. Terms that I don't really want to hear anymore. Echo chamber. Virtue signalling. Strong and stable. Coalition of chaos. Enough is enough. Enough is enough already. Y Tribe. Tribal politics. Bit heavy on the politics this. Sorry. Bit light on the psychedelic urban prose poetry. Not enough football. Not enough bants. Not sorry. I want it all to be over as much as you. By the time you read this it probably will be. I'm going to get pissed either way. Wondering whether to get lunch here. Private enterprise steps in where the state now fears to tread. If Wetherspoons did community centres. They do. This is one. Just across from the Town Hall. Local government. Labour Councils heavily involved in social cleansing. It's not going to change overnight. Fucking hope it changes though. Lambeth. Southwark. Hackney. Etc. Blood on your hands. Difficult choices. I wouldn't want to make the choices. Still dealing with legacy of that fucking woman. Just old enough to remember being dragged out on marches. The impotence of the campaigning left. She fucking hated London as well. Not just the industrial north. Just there were more rich people here. Not as simple as that. I know. But it is. Bunch of people just walked in. Tories Out t-shirts. Time to start MI5 files on all of them. You fling around the numbers. What does terrorist sympathiser actually mean anyway? Invasive species. I'm an invasive species sympathiser. Parakeets. Grey squirrels. You name it. Love them. Kill them all. Badgers as well. Foxes too. The bloodlust never ends. Blood me. Soak me in it. Initiate me into your rituals. Occult forces at work. Deep Patriotism. I have legitimate concerns. Not ordered lunch yet. Still mulling it over. Lost in a sea of joyless opinion. Genuinely wonder if they've ever felt anything close to actual joy in their sad lives. Can't even watch a fucking pop concert, a moving, beautiful, attempt to help actual children come to terms with the horrific nature of the world around them and give them some hope, without spewing out their bile. Then they can't take it when people, rightly, call them cunts. I don't even want to put their names. FUCK THEM. ALL OF THEM. They love terror. They love death. Just like the people they claim to hate. We need hope. We need a new approach. The ways that weren't working before are still NOT WORKING. This is a chance to change. The first time I've ever felt a genuine choice. This is what is going to hurt so much. But for now. I wasn't a supporter. Still have reservations. But for now. One hundred. From zero. Real quick. Too much at stake. VOTE LABOUR ON THE RALPH SHIRT. Real policies. Boringly real policies. That would make a difference. I don't think that would have happened under someone else. I was up for getting rid. I was wrong. I WAS WRONG. Whatever the result. This fucking election. I truly want it to blow up in her face. Already has. Blown up in all our faces. Literally can't talk to anyone. Shit campaigner. Very easy to say if she still wins it's because of the current opposition but doesn't really stand up to any serious analysis. Doubtless that will be said though. I respect that. Just wish that the last two years had been years of unity. Both sides haven't covered themselves in glory. One side is definitely worse though. Internal machinations. Coups. Apparently though it's the fault of the people who voted him in. TWICE. I've moaned about him. Called him and his people incompetent. Weak. I apologise. The shit they've had to take. SORRY THIS IS FUCKING BORING. I'm fucking sick of it all. I want to be out in the outskirts. Routes through fields. Allotments. Edibles in my blood. Alternate realities. Intrigue. Fictions. Borges. J Hus in the headphones. Lib Dem boi paigon. I can't stand them. Fuck the other side. It's on sight now. Sites. Not on the maps. Blank spaces. Parapolitics. Back to the planet. Undercovers. Under the covers. Deep cover. Twins. Giving birth. The children of people who stole the identity of dead children. This is what they do. Professional. Give them more powers. Shoot to kill. I'm losing it. Losing the thread. Threads. Nuclear war. Discharge. Truth theories. NWO. Same old shit. SOS. SAS. Dipset. Diplomatic Immunity. Diplomacy. Foreign policy. Arms. Armshouse. Almshouses. Housing. Social Care. Healthcare. Dignity. Hope. Youth. Age. Hard borders. Troubles. Troubling. The past lives on. History is back again. A man just sat down. Says loudly: ANOTHER DAY IN THIS FUCKING SHITHOLE. Starts talking to the girls at the table next to him. They are talking fucking politics. They are all voting. Voting Labour. Do what they are doing.

ENTHUSIASTICALLY VOTE LABOUR. GRUDGINGLY VOTE LABOUR.

HOLD YOUR NOSE AND VOTE LABOUR. DESPAIRINGLY VOTE LABOUR.

TRIBALLY VOTE LABOUR. FOR THE FIRST TIME VOTE LABOUR.

DON'T VOTE FOR THEM LOT.

VOTE FOR OTHER PEOPLE WHO AREN'T THEM LOT IF IT KEEPS THEM LOT OUT.

VOTE FOR ME TO SHUT THE FUCK UP.