#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

[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/

[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.