#populist antics

[hjohn3]

The Tory Migration Catastrophe

How Conservative Immigration Policy Will Destroy Its Thatcherite Model

Source: The Financial Times

By Honest John

LIKE A desperate gambler deciding to bet his shirt on one last turn of the roulette wheel, Rishi Sunak has staked his entire political reputation on the latest iteration of the Tories’ Rwanda bill. This is a piece of legislation which has been declared illegal by the British Supreme Court; which has so far cost the British taxpayer £240m with a further £50m due to be paid to Rwanda next year; which is considered as impractical as it is morally questionable and which has seen precisely zero asylum seekers so far sent to Rwanda to have their claims processed. This sad wheeze is going to be dragged before the House of Commons once more, while Sunak desperately claims black is white and that Rwanda can miraculously become a safe country for asylum seekers by the passing of a law in Westminster. The Prime Minister’s determination to turn Tuesday’s vote on the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill into effectively a vote of confidence in his leadership is simultaneously reckless and absurd. Sunak’s desperation to quieten the increasing insurrectionary noises from his party’s right wing in the wake of the dismissal of Suella Braverman, has led him to to invest all his hopes in a piece of legislation for which there is no evidence will succeed in deterring the “small boats” (its stated claim), which will place the U.K. once again in breach of international law and will succeed only in enriching the government of Rwanda, incredulously receiving millions of pounds of British taxpayers’ money for its civic infrastructure, gifted by a country whose own infrastructure is falling apart. It is actually hard to find anyone outside the fevered confines of Sunak’s inner circle who supports the plan or thinks it will work. Apart perhaps from the government of Rwanda itself that is.

It is easy to laugh at the infantile antics of a government that, in any real sense, has ceased to function and to treat this latest act in the Tory psychodrama as the piece of absurdist political theatre it undoubtedly is, but the Rwanda bill is simply the congealing icing on the top of a poisonous cake that the Conservatives have been serving up for years, masquerading as migration “policy”. This is legislation that is as contradictory as it is cruel; as performative as it is populist. For the Conservatives, migration is their key emergency break glass area of public policy. When everything else that they and the succession of hopeless lightweights they have foisted on the country as Prime Ministers, has turned to dung at their touch, they still believe that the prejudice and hatred of “the British People” toward foreigners and immigrants has no bottom level: for Tories you simply cannot go too low on immigration. The Rwanda scheme - when it was first cooked up in the days of Boris Johnson and Priti Patel - had nothing in reality to do with deterring asylum seekers from trying to cross the Channel to Britain; it was all about trying to appeal to a mythical “Red Wall” voter for whom no amount of cruelty, illegality and contempt was too much when it came to migrants. As their polling figures slumped and by election and council election results confirmed their worst electoral fears, the Conservatives still believed that victimising the victims could yet turn it around for them - no matter the dark forces their racist and bile-filled rhetoric might unleash: if they could just once again gaslight the electorate into believing that all the catastrophes of the last fourteen years of Tory rule are, in fact, the fault of incoming foreigners, all may yet be well.

This dismal flirting with the fascist playbook may have resulted in the headline-catching idiocy of Sunak’s latest Rwanda wheeze, but beneath that blather James Cleverley has announced planned measures that are far more significant, far more damaging, and far more frightening than any amount of ludicrous assertions about the Rwanda scheme. Tired of being taunted by Labour and others about the huge rise in legal migration (its net increase topped 600,000 in 2022) despite all the Tory promises to bring the numbers down over the last fourteen years, the Conservatives’ response is to quite literally attack, and potentially destroy, its own Thatcherite economic model.

For over forty years, Tory politicians have extolled Britain’s “flexible” workforce; its deregulated system; its low wage/low unemployment economy and its marketised society. Indeed, for years we were told by politicians on the right and the left that in a globalised world, mobile and non-unionised workforces, cheap production costs, outsourced supply lines and minimal regulation was essential to the easy access, low price, and plentiful supply digital capitalism that has taken hold in Britain. Key to the success of this model has been migrant labour, first from the EU and now from a swathe of sub-Saharan African, Middle Eastern and South Asian countries whose residents have been offered visas to replace the low wage flexible European workers that post-Brexit Britain apparently no longer wants. The legal migrants that the Conservatives are now in such a lather about are an essential component of the Thatcherite economic model they have all been promoting to us for decades. If, as Cleverley maintains, the government wishes to reduce net migration figures by 300,000 in 2024, then that is 300,000 workers not available to drive lorries, deliver Amazon parcels, pick our crops, clean our offices, valet our cars, serve in our restaurants and, crucially staff our hospitals and care homes. By creating a shortage of deregulated low wage labour, the Tories will simultaneously damage large parts of the service economy and drive up wages, and with it inflation. In their desperate belief that hatred of foreigners will somehow save them from oblivion at the next General Election, the Conservatives are prepared to throw overboard an approach to employment and wages that has sustained them for nearly two generations and was one of the driving ideological impulses on the right that drove Brexit. The revolution has truly begun to eat itself.

Apart from the casual abandonment of what has been the essence of right-wing Toryism for years, Cleverley has also managed to introduce the class-based nastiness of the Sklled Worker minimum salary threshold of £38,700 pa that legal migrants and their dependents must meet. This is a measure that will drive families apart, possibly force British citizens, married to foreigners but earning below the threshold, to emigrate to be with their loved ones and cause untold damage to the university sector (one of the few growth areas of the British economy) and the NHS and care sector, already on its knees after years of austerity and disproportionately reliant on migrant labour. It is as if the Tories are not content with the calamities that austerity, Brexit and Trussonomics have already wrought on British society: with this latest episode of ill-thought through prejudicial nonsense, they seem to want to finish it off altogether. I have predicted for some time the implosion of modern Toryism - its Thatcherite ideology a busted flush and its Brexit nationalist makeover lacking in depth or practical solutions; but what I hadn’t bargained for was that the Tories would try to take the whole country down with them.

Never has a government looked more threadbare, pointless, desperate and unlovable. All they have left to offer is hatred, racism and self-defeating vindictiveness. If Sunak’s absurd posturing over his doomed Rwanda bill results in his resignation before Christmas and a January General Election, the “British People” that this band of charlatans and incompetents keep claiming to speak for, but who in reality they do not understand, will breathe a sigh of relief, because we the people will at last be given the opportunity to cast this catastrophic version of Toryism into an electoral oblivion it so richly deserves and from which it will, hopefully, never emerge.

Migration may yet be modern Conservatism’s epitaph.

10th December 2023

[girljeremystrong]

25 favorite books of mine for @kerrycastellabate ❤️ 

1.       WE RIDE UPON STICKS by quan barry

about a girl’s high school field hockey team from salem, massachussetts which in 1989 is on a mega winning streak. might it be because the team members have pledged themselves to the dark forces in order to get to state? it’s so fun and the characters are all incredible.

2.       WE BEGIN AT THE END by chris whitaker

the plot isn’t easy to summarize but this is a thriller and a very very good one at that. it’s goto ne of the best characters ever: duchess “the outlaw”. there’s a murder and a murderer on the loose and old friends and sweet siblings and it’s truly a great book.

3.       THE INDEX OF SELF DESTRUCTIVE ACTS by christopher beha

this as close to succession as a book can get. Sam is a sport statician, he gets involved with a rich new york city family. this book is amazing, so much happens and all the characters are great.

4.       THE GIRL WITH THE LOUDING VOICE by abi daré

adunni is a fourteen-year-old nigerian girl who knows what she wants: an education. she’s determined to find her voice. incredible story and so sweet and uplifting and beautiful. i have gifted this book time and time again. i love it.

5.       THE ART OF FIELDING by chad harbach

about henry who gets recruited by mike to play baseball at college and they become very good pals while henry becomes better and better and mike understands his life less and less. great team antics great plot great characters not too much baseball.

6.       DOMINICANA by angie cruz

ana is a fifteen year old girl living in the dominican republic who dreams of moving to america. again this is a very sweet and powerful story. ana is an incredible character that i love so much.

7.       I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS by maya angelou

a wonderful memoir about her childhood in a southern town. this is a classic and i love it. It’s joyful and sad and wonderful.

8.       NOTHING TO SEE HERE by kevin wilson

moving and uproarious novel about a woman who finds meaning in her life when she begins caring for two children with remarkable and disturbing abilities (they spontaneously combust when they get agitated). great and fun and very sweet.

9.       CONJURE WOMEN by afia atakora

a sweeping story that brings the world of the south before and after the civil war vividly to life. spanning eras and generations, it tells of the lives of three unforgettable women. “magnificently written, brilliantly researched, richly imagined.”

10.   A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY by john irving

eleven-year-old owen meany, playing in a Little League baseball game in gravesend, new hampshire, hits a foul ball and kills his best friend's mother. owen doesn't believe in accidents. wonderful story about friendship and destiny. i love this book.

11.   HOMEGOING by yaa gyasi

this book follows generation after generation of descendants of two half sisters born in different villages in 18th century ghana. they go on to having very different fates and so do their children and their children's children. it’s a modern classic! it’s perfect.

12.   BRIDESHEAD REVISITED by evelyn waugh

tells the story of charles ryder's infatuation with the marchmains and the rapidly-disappearing world of privilege they inhabit. enchanted first by sebastian, then by his doomed catholic family. it’s wonderful and wistful and beautifully written.

13.   BELOVED by toni morrison

sethe was born a slave and escaped, but eighteen years later she is still not free. she has borne the unthinkable and not gone mad, yet she is still held captive by memories of sweet home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. it’s perfect it won every big award because it’s incredible.

14.   ALL THE KING'S MEN by robert penn warren

tells the story of charismatic populist governor willie stark and his political machinations in the depression-era deep south. i don’t know but i love this book. it’s a classic and it’s written so well and the story is compelling and i keep recommending it.

15.   SALVAGE THE BONES by jesmyn ward

hurricane katrina is building over the gulf of mexico, threatening the coastal town of bois sauvage, mississippi, and esch's father is growing concerned. this all takes place across 12 days before, during and after hurricane katrina and it is a truly amazing book. a must read! a modern classic.

16.   EVERYWHERE YOU DON'T BELONG by gabriel bump

claude, a black boy from the south side of chicago whose parents both left when he was a child, so he was raised by his grandmother and her friend paul. love this book, its characters and the way it’s written, and especially its dialogues.

17.   THE PROPHETS by robert jones jr.

bout the forbidden union between two enslaved young men on a deep south plantation. isaiah was samuel’s and samuel was isaiah’s. very sad and very maddening, but beautiful.

18.   THE FUNNY THING ABOUT NORMAN FOREMAN by julietta henderson

when 12-year-old norman’s best friend jax dies, he decides the only fitting tribute is to perform at the edinburgh fringe festival as a comedian. his mum sadie will do anything to help him. ooh this is so sweet, it’s adorable and so fun and delightful!

19.   INFINITE COUNTRY by patricia engel

elena and mauro are teenagers when they meet, their blooming love an antidote to the mounting brutality of life in bogotá. once their first daughter is born, and facing grim economic prospects, they set their sights on the united states. beautiful story and very well written.

20.   THE SWEETNESS OF WATER by nathan harris

in the waning days of the civil war, brothers prentiss and landry—freed by the emancipation proclamation—seek refuge on the homestead of george walker and his wife, isabelle. the walkers, wracked by the loss of their only son to the war, hire the brothers. so unexpectedy gorgeous.

21.   BEAUTIFUL COUNTRY by quan julie wang

a beautiful memoir about an undocumented childhood. my favorite book of 2022. magnificent, perfect, sweet, sad, joyful. i love it with all myself.

22.   REAL LIFE by brandon taylor

almost everything about wallace is at odds with the midwestern university town. but over the course of a weekend, a series of confrontations with colleagues, and an unexpected encounter with a straight, white classmate, conspire to fracture his defenses. i love this. this author is so good at building up characters.

23.   MILK BLOOD HEAT by dantiel w. monitz

incredible collection of short stories. left me wanting more but at the same time they are perfectly crafted and beautiful.

24.   HOMELAND ELEGIES by ayad akhtar

truly incredible book, one of the best i’ve ever read. part family drama, part social essay, part picaresque adventure — at its heart, it is the story of a father, a son, and the country they both call home.

25.    THE LOVE SONGS OF W.E.B. DU BOIS  by honorée fanonne jeffers

this is the story of ailey and her ancestor’s journey in america through centuries, from the colonial slave trade to our days. we meet ailey when she is a child and watch her grow up, until the moment when, as a college graduate, she embarks on a journey to uncover her family’s past. a wonderful epic story spanning centuries. loved the character of ailey.

[noisynutcrusade]

Silvio Berlusconi may be gone, but Trump’s still here. The rotten populist legacy is everywhere | Silvio Berlusconi

Opinion The former Italian PM, who combined celebrity antics with rightwing populism, laid the groundwork for Trumpism Mon 12 Jun 2023 06.44 EDT When he hurriedly left the prime minister’s official residence, Palazzo Chigi, for the last time on 16 November 2011, Silvio Berlusconi looked like a humiliated man. Italy’s finances were in trouble, with international investors betting against the…

[chillingcinemachronicles]

the 5 best action movies that redefine the genre. 💥🍿

5. Enter the Dragon (1973)

Bruce Lee had already released three blockbuster action films i Hong Kong, one of which he directed, before joining Robert Clouse’s international star vehicle for Warner Brothers. Focused on a high-profile martial arts tournament mounted by a suspected crime lord, the film not only gave Lee the perfect platform to showcase the physical and philosophical underpinnings of the Jeet June Do style that he pioneered, but features some unforgettable, inventive action sequences (which he also choreographed). Sadly, its impact on Lee’s career was all posthumous, but “Enter the Dragon” both immortalized him as a star and offered a gateway to martial arts filmmaking that audiences outside of China had not widely

Lights, camera, VPNaction! Elevate your movie nights with NordVPN. 🎥🔒secure your connection and Download NordVPN . Click now to unlock global cinematic thrills!experienced.

4. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

Steven Spielberg and George Lucas put their blockbuster brains together to create whip-snapping, wise-cracking archeologist Indiana Jones. The populist duo tapped into their shared love for Hollywood adventure serials, casting Han Solo himself (Harrison Ford) as the snake-averse adventure magnet. His first outing proved a cinematic roller coaster every bit as exciting as John Williams’ galloping score suggests, from the thrilling opening sequence, which finds Indy one unshaven whisker away from being pancaked by a massive boulder, to the infamous ending, where the treasure he risked his life to rescue gets stored away in a giant warehouse. Who’d have thought he’d still be stealing artifacts from Nazis at age 80, four sequels later?

3. North by Northwest (1959)

Its propulsion, its antic air of lethal gamesmanship, and its vision of a lone man outrunning the forces of fate were, in 1959, shockingly new, rendering Alfred Hitchcock’s classic thriller nothing less than the formal and spiritual progenitor of the James Bond series. But it’s in the legendary crop-dusting sequence where Hitchcock, pushing the envelope of danger, reinvented what cinema could be. As Cary Grant’s Roger Thornhill stands in that cornfield, pursued by a propellor plane he must somehow outrun, a set piece, for the first time, splits off from the movie around it to become its own reality. At that moment the seed of all modern action cinema was planted.

Lights, camera, VPNaction! Elevate your movie nights with NordVPN. 🎥🔒secure your connection and Download NordVPN . Click now to unlock global cinematic thrills!

2. Die Hard (1988)

Bruce Willis bleeds in the course of trying to rescue his wife (Bonnie Bedelia) from Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) and a gang posing as deranged German terrorists, who’ve seized her Los Angeles office tower during a Christmas party. Seeing Willis crawling through glass, covered in cuts, makes all the difference in distinguishing his character, off-duty NYPD Detective John McClane, from so many steroid-swollen ’80s action heroes: He wasn’t an invincible killing machine so much as an ordinary man in way over his head (audiences loved him in the role, which redefined the comedic “Moonlighting” star as a tough guy, and the label stuck until his recent retirement). By pitting such a relatable protagonist against Rickman’s snarling, all-time-great screen villain, “Die Hard” found a recipe for infinite re-watchability — one whose holiday backdrop has made it an irreverent annual tradition for superfans who can’t get enough of Willis’ yippee-ki-yay antics, whether it’s crawling through air ducts or dropping baddies from upper stories.

Lights, camera, VPNaction! Elevate your movie nights with NordVPN. 🎥🔒secure your connection and Download NordVPN . Click now to unlock global cinematic thrills!

1. The Road Warrior (1981)

In 1979, George Miller’s “Mad Max” was a Hell’s Angels movie gone psychotic. It was made on a drive-in-film budget but became such a global phenomenon that Miller was able to transform the sequel into something vastly bigger, more scary-cool, more grandly nihilistic. One of the great dystopian spectacles, “The Road Warrior” presents the vision of a civilization reduced to patched-together cars and cutthroat survival. The film’s scrappy kinesthetic genius is that it incarnates the very godlessness of that world by turning it into an existential demolition derby. As Mel Gibson’s Max, in his form-fitting wasteland leather, joins forces with a colony of straggling desperados to escape the Lord Humungus and his hooligan horde, the film gets heightened into the most delirious action sequence ever filmed: an epic car chase of jalopies from hell, with nightmare foes like the mohawked punk Wez leaping from their vehicles onto yours, the whole thing so fearsomely sustained it’s like a single combustible jolt of energy. In “The Road Warrior,” action is excitement, it’s destruction, it’s war, it’s the rusty speeding pulse of life itself.

[daisyiln3001]

Notes on "Love Island: A Flirtation With Surveillance"

My notes taken from this video to potentially be put towards my own writing. Parts in quotes are taken from the video transcript.

History of reality Tv

Reality TV is a tricky genre – associated with, what media scholar Misha Kavka characterizes as “low production values, high emotions, cheap antics, and questionable ethics because it is ‘an unabashedly commercial’ form that mixes the serious traditions of documentary with the entertainment purpose of populist formats.”

Its hard to tell when reality tv was conceived. Kavka belives it was in the late 1980s due to economic dysregulation, leading to broadcasting making cost effiecient entertainment. Reality cuts out the cost of actors. Handheld camcorders were cheaper than studio counterparts, and were more suitable in pursuit of surveilling the people involved. In Kavka’s words, “Out of invention and necessity, reality TV was born.”

"While shows like Cops were an early use of the documentary-style, camcorder format, it wasn’t until 1992 with the release of MTV’s The Real World that we’d see today’s format of reality shows become popularized. Inspired by youth-oriented dramas like Beverly Hills 90210 and Melrose Place, producers Mary Ellis-Bunim and Jonathan Murray wanted to create an un-scripted show that would capture the zeitgeist of young people at the time." The Real World had lots of scrutiny, but was an insightful experiment into learning about other cultures, and living through significant events such as the AIDS crisis.

The real world paved the road for shows like big brother and jersey shore. They maintained a "study" like approach, as if they were lab rats. This was effectively captured with the use of surveillance cameras.

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2015 love island is actually a reboot of an existing show. "celebrity love island" aired in 2005 and aired for 2 seasons. It had b list celebrities and a winning cash prize, but was cancelled for low ratings

The new series used regular people. the premise: people are placed into an extravagant villa in Spain and are tested to find genuine romantic relationships to be in the chance to win the £50k cash prize. each week there are challenges, and eliminations in different shapes and forms.

The shows distinction from the get go is the narration. it is an ongoing commentary provided by Ian Stirling, that is self aware and humorous of what is happening. There is less filter as to what is happening - there are no forced sob stories, and the romances aren't forced either.

Conflict is classic to this genre, but in certain parts of the show it is difficult to watch. See Zara Holland, having her miss Great Britain title taken away from her after having sex with another member of the villa. On top of this she was having a hard time connecting with the male contestants, and there was an ongoing joke regarding her always bringing up Miss GB in conversation. Jess Hayes endured endless waves of misogynistic attacks from the other contestants.

"Seasons 2 and 3 are difficult to re-watch with the knowledge that both Sophie and Mike took their own lives. "

Host Caroline Flacks death in 2020 was partly set off by masses of tabloid attacks regarding an incident in her personal life that became widely publicized. "many, including Zara Holland, called for Love Island to be cancelled, citing that the Jeremy Kyle Show had recently been cancelled after only one participant suicide. "

Since 2021 contestants have been given more support with dealing with being apart of the show. Therapy sessions, disclosures about the show, and how to deal with tabloid scrutiny, etc.

But as a result, the shows watchability changes.

Foucault, M. (1977) Discipline and punish : the birth of the prison. London: Allen Lane.

Prison architecture structure called "the Panopticon"

It represents a massive change in state control. It is modern because you cannot see the possition of power, like the monarchy. the prisoners are lead to assume a guard is always in the tower, regardless wether there is someone is there or not, because one cannot see them at all. This is a principle of surveillence.

Reality tv encapsulated the essence of the panopticon as entertainment. Big Brother borrows its name from George Orwells dystopian novel, 1984, that features an all knowing oppressive dictator.

However shows like this are more akin to the Stanford prison experiment than the panopticon. This is because of the explicit surveillence. They know the cameras are there. it is voluntary. they do not modify they're behaviour or police themselves. For reality tv needs the warts and all approach for entertainment value. But for live island, the idea is flipped on its side. though it originates from having the noughties reality tv concepts of having massive emotional breakdowns and outbursts, Love island has become more subdued. Self monitoring is more present, and Love Island has become a truer realisation of the panopticon. The crutial difference for the show is making the powers of control even more invisible. The participate thus enforce their own self regulation to match what they assume is needed of them. But public criticism and the surveillance system are not mutually exclusive. The sinister nature comes from there being no one clear source of power. The power is decentralised and passed around each stakeholder, participants, and creators. This adds to self surveillance, but has also made each coming season more boring.

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Sex became more regulated with each season. in the beginning the sex was much more prominent, largely because the contestants didn't realise the extent of the monitoring. "For example, Zoe Basia Brown of season 1 and her partner Jordan had sex in the bathroom during their stay in the hideaway," under the expectation that it was a private moment. however they had their microphones turned up to full volume, and a lingering camera shot from they room they entered together. They were unaware this moment was captured in such a way until it was mentioned to Zoe in her exit interview.

"In season 2, 19-year-old latecomer Emma Woodham is shown asking a fellow islander if producers can legally show an intimate scene if it isn't under the covers. Receiving no straight answer, she promptly heads to bed, and does the deed with partner Terry over the sheets in full view of all the islanders. Of course, this entire moment was shown on television."

After all of this was made clear, sex became much less apparent. With the earlier seasons there was lots of heavy petting and full montages of them in bed. With later seasons even one sexual act is shocking. This isnt inherently bad. Participants family members are likely to follow their time on the show, and sex can be incredibly personal and private. but in season 1 and 2 the woman had extreme scrutiny and public shaming, such as Zoe losing miss GB. however the later seasons gives participants more of a safenet. 'TV safe sexuality'

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Regulating authenticity.

the mention of the cash prize is taboo. Blatant strategizing is typical of gamified shows. but in love island its largely unheard of. Game playing is lead to speculation.

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Regulating "deviance"

Reality tv tries to make things seem truthful, but they need to keep things interesting. There needs to be narrative and conflict to keep people watching.

In season for Niall Aslam suddenly disappeared from the show. It was later announced that he had to be admitted to a psychiatric hospital after suffering a stress induced psychosis. It was left unknown to the public, but very known to the producers that Naill had autism, and had no assistance. About his experience, Niall says, 'I was ITV's performing monkey – made to do things I didn't want to. It ended in me being desperately ill'.”

What the cases of Niall, Amy, and Faye show us is that both the producers and the public have the power to crack down on behaviour they perceive as deviant – and any neurodivergent person or person whose mental health falls outside the norm, is seen as unable to appropriately regulate themselves under what is expected of them. They are either removed from the show, voluntarily eject themselves from the villa , or, with guidance, regulate themselves accordingly.

The contestants are regulated by a code of conduct that keeps them marketable enough to keep TV interest, but not so unregulated as to receive public abuse. To be a game player on love island is to be perceived as social deviant because all other shows in the genre are predictably forced. The partipants play a role of what the public expects them to be: hot, dumb, and open to love.

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Always be regulating

""Amy Hart has since characterized the contestants of Love Island as “hard workers who deserve a regulated and unionised industry,” - and she raises an interesting point.""

""The islanders used to laze in bed, wander around the villa, and hang out like they were on vacation with friends. Now they’re all woken up at the same time with blinding fluorescent lights. They almost always convene in the garden area during the day. And they’re only allowed two drinks at night. It’s almost as if they’re clocking into a job, and the show is capitalizing on the benefits of their labour. And if we’re to conceptualize the islanders as workers who willingly enter the villa, then we can also conceptualize Love Island’s duty of care to the islanders as a sort of corporate wellness strategy. It’s almost as if the show, in its progression towards being more sanitized and nurturing, has started treating the villa as a workplace, providing its employees with an ethics of care and protection. But the expectation of self-monitoring, and of self-preservation still lies mostly on the shoulders of the contestants. In applying these corporatized therapy programs, the producers shift attention away from the exploitative apparatus that is inherent to their show.

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short essay by philosopher Gillez Dekeuze Update to Faucaults idea of deciplinary society. Dekeeuze argues that we are moving away from a society of decipline, into a society of control. You are encouraged to embraced that you are being watched everywhere. the illusion of being more free, but less free than we've ever been before.

It used to be known that participants of early seasons of the show, once out of the villa, had cosmetic plastic surgery. However with later shows the contestants are coming into the villa having already had these cosmetic procedures. It's as if they are already regulating themselves for a perceived public.

"This is the greatest trick of the society of control - while the villa is a confined space where the Panopticon can take shape, a workplace for the contestants to generate revenue - the society of control has made it so that they clocked in on the project of self-regulation long before they entered the villa. "

this is why love island is so important. "it’s an instructional tool - a microcosm of a much greater, much more insidious system of surveillance that permeates our everyday lives. Love Island is a study in the society of control - it’s an experiment in the way power becomes invisible and thus seeps itself into the facets of everyday life. It’s a constant push and pull of market forces."

"Love Island has gone down a path of hyper-commodification, subdued and obedient contestants and ultimately a show that looks nothing like the show we knew and loved." The show is boring - the true goal of the panopticon all along, to placate its victims.

"Love Island is a perfect case study in the ethics of using power and control for entertainment purposes. Maybe the trajectory of Love Island has predicted a trajectory for our greater social world. A world that is completely mappable, where people are easily tracked, and where each individual willingly adheres to the rules of the game – what that game is exactly, we have yet to find out."

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It is clear that the video is a very thought out essay! The sources used can be used in my further research, and i look forward to connecting this video essay with what i have to say about surveillance.

[bigcat947]

Brackenfell High School: WCED condemn EFF’s ‘divisive, populist antics’

The Western Cape Department of Education (WCED) have charged that violent altercations between members of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) and parents of students who attend Brackenfell High School in Cape Town are the result of the Red Beret’s continued attempts to “sow further division with populist antics”. เครดิตฟรี  welikesexy

[hacash]

I am still abso-fucking-lutely mind-boggled that the current Tory attack on Kier Starmer consists of ‘ohoho isn’t he boring, isn’t that laughable, who would want such a boring prime minister.’ As if headline-grabbing prime ministers whose antics everyone is constantly talking about have served them so well in recent months.

(All I’m saying is, it says a lot about this current crop of populist Tories that they see ‘boring and competent’ as a devastating insult.)

[antoine-roquentin]

Like the US president, Jair Bolsonaro has raged against the quarantine implemented by his own government and has just dismissed his level-headed health minister, Luiz Henrique Mandetta. A few days after the first shutdown measures were announced in São Paulo, the president blatantly defied them by encouraging his supporters to attend a mass rally on March 15, filling part of the megalopolis’s wide Avenida Paulista in support of Bolsonaro and against Congress. Covid-19 is just a gripezinha (sniffle), he insists, while heading a campaign on social media to reopen the economy under the slogan “Brazil cannot close.” On Sunday, he headed a second small rally in the capital of Brasília, where social distancing was replaced by manic jostling to get close to the president, along with chants demanding that the army intervene to get people back to work.

Bolsonaro has dismissed as “hysteria” the lockdown measures, implemented swiftly in Brazil despite the president’s rhetoric. “Let’s face the virus like men, not kids,” he urged, as he visited a Brasília street market last month. Perhaps the only head of state able to out-Trump Trump in sheer recklessness and social-networked delirium, Bolsonaro has mobilized his three loyal sons, two of them members of Congress, to help peddle conspiracy theories concerning China and snake-oil remedies such as chloroquine. Ironically, Bolsonaro, 66, was lucky to escape infection on March 7, when he attended a neoconservative get-together hosted by Trump at his Mar-a-Lago mansion in Palm Beach, after which several members of the Brazilian delegation came down with severe symptoms.

The terrifying implications of such a cavalier approach to the pandemic in a country with a stretched health care system and vast slum cities where social isolation, and even the routine precaution of washing hands, is an impossible challenge, soon forced the Brazilian establishment into action. When Bolsonaro—following the Trumpian script—announced that he would reverse the lockdowns in São Paulo, Rio, and other cities, the Supreme Court reiterated that under Brazil’s federal system, it is state and city authorities who decide such matters. Leaders of both the Senate and Chamber of Deputies supported Mandetta, while governors like João Doria in São Paulo and Wilson Witzel in Rio—allies of Bolsonaro in the presidential elections of 2018—maintained the city lockdowns. Justice minister and super judge Sérgio Moro, who led the “car wash” anti-corruption probe and sentenced former president Lula da Silva to nine years in prison, dared to defy the president whom he had helped into power.

The other super minister in the Bolsonaro government, billionaire financier Paulo Guedes, whose global investment funds are now staring into the abyss, also seemed skeptical of Bolsonaro’s antics, despite his concern that the lockdowns and a pandemic-driven 5 percent drop in GDP this year (an IMF forecast) might scupper his plans to privatize the Brazilian economy. Pots and pans were banged from the balconies of locked-down apartment blocks in middle-class districts of Rio and São Paulo in protest against Bolsonaro, just as they had been five or six years before against the soon-to-be-impeached President Dilma Rousseff. Like Trump’s health adviser Anthony Fauci, also a doctor, Mandetta had emerged as a voice of reason, with better ratings in the polls than Bolsonaro’s, and appeared to have cleverly outmaneuvered the president. At least, until his dismissal last week.

Even the armed forces—well represented in the Bolsonaro cabinet—seemed prepared to intervene against the madness of President Jair, despite the Bolsonaristas’ calls for military action in favor of the president. A report in DefesaNet, an online media outlet used by the military to get its message out, said that effective control of the government’s strategy on Covid-19 had devolved to the chief of staff, Gen. Walter Souza Braga Netto. “The president will thus be able to behave democratically as if he did not belong to his own government,” explained DefesaNet, a contorted phrase that perfectly captures the Brazilian establishment and military’s paternal approach to Bolsonaro’s childish outbursts.

When Mandetta was confirmed in his post after Bolsonaro’s initial threats to oust him, many concluded that the lunatic had been removed from control of the asylum, or at least the intensive care ward. “The general feeling here is that Bolsonaro is a puppet,” remarked an employee early last week at the country’s state development bank, BNDES, whose role in successfully fending off the global economic crisis in 2009 will be sorely missed this time, after Guedes’s decision to downsize it. But the removal of Mandetta, and Bolsonaro’s paranoid appeal to his base Friday to help him fight off an alleged coup attempt orchestrated by Doria in São Paulo and Rodrigo Maia, the head of the Chamber of Deputies, suggest an alternate reading. Could the president glimpse opportunity in the chaos?

“There is method in the madness,” explained the anthropologist Luiz Eduardo Soares in an interview. Soares is co-author of Elite da Tropa, a gripping 2006 account of police brutality and extreme-right-wing death squads in Rio’s favelas that was turned into two blockbuster films, Elite Squad and Elite Squad 2. Soares, whose latest book, O Brasil e Seu Duplo (Brazil and Its Duplicate), explores the origins of Bolsonaro and Brazilian neofascism, says Covid-19 will either stop the Bolsonaro project in its tracks or accelerate its progress. “Bolsonaro has been advised to deny the threat of the pandemic,” said Soares. “He feels sure of himself, in part because he’s mimicking Trump. But his authority has diminished, and he’s in danger of becoming a lame-duck president only a year into his term.”

But the president has a plan. Behaving, as the generals suggested, “as if he did not belong to his own government,” Bolsonaro may be able to escape the blame for the devastating economic crisis now unfolding. A brutal recession triggered, as elsewhere, by the pandemic, comes after seven years of stagnation. Even before the pandemic, 60 million Brazilians had fallen back into poverty (defined as earning less than $5 a day) after the advances of the Lula years. “The plan is to transfer responsibility and accuse the others for allowing the tremendous crisis which we are going to encounter,” said Soares.  

The worsening social conditions will undoubtedly create fertile ground for Bolsonaro’s bid to capitalize on discontent. A survey cited by piauí magazine found that 72 percent of Brazilians have enough savings to cushion lost earnings for just one week before entering serious hardship, and 32 percent already report problems buying essential goods like food. “We are staying in, but food is scarce, and without work there is no money,” said a mother of two who lives in the enormous Rio favela of Rocinha, where at least 50,000 inhabitants are packed into the hillside above Ipanema and Leblon. “Practically everybody in the favela works in the informal economy, so the lockdown doesn’t really apply here; businesses are open but close earlier. People are wearing masks; there is little information,” said Macarrao, a rapper from Cinco Bocas, a favela in the North Zone of Rio, whose daughter has Covid-19. “She got treatment fairly quickly,” he added. This may not be the case now. Epidemiologists at five important institutes in Brazil forecast recently that the health system could reach the point of collapse by late April.

The Bolsonaro government has guaranteed a basic monthly income of 600 reales ($112) to those with no income, but the electronic application has failed, and long lines of people—practicing scant social distancing—have waited outside the public savings bank Caixa Econômica, only to discover that their transfer has not arrived. In any case, $4 a day is a pittance, and Guedes seems reluctant to take any other measures to soften the blow for Brazil’s poor, even though he has passed tax cuts for business. There is a logical link to Guedes’s neoliberal stance, as millions descend into poverty and hunger, and Bolsonaro’s populist plan to blame it all on Mandetta and the governors of the two big cities: Both governors are potential rivals for the next presidential elections, and Bolsonaro will use his media to pinpoint them as responsible for the hardship.

While registered cases of the coronavirus in Brazil are 40,000, the real figure is probably over 10 times that, as indicated by the current unnaturally high mortality rate. According to official data, by the end of last week some 2,600 people had died from the virus—low compared with Europe and the United States, but Brazil is late in the curve. And Brazil’s intensive care units are fast approaching capacity, just as they have in Europe. Manaus, the Amazon metropolis where the reports of contagion in the indigenous territories make harrowing reading, is already at 100 percent capacity and is transferring patients to other sites. A survey by the University of Pelotas in Rio Grande do Sul, in the south of the country, estimates that there are at least seven times more cases than the official figures suggest.

Bolsonaro will try to build a strategy from his base of support among evangelicals and people in the orbit of the police and military. Evangelicals have been another element of the Covid-19 denial, but they are fired by conviction rather than nonchalance. Edir Macedo, the billionaire pastor whose TV networks are used by Bolsonaro in preference to the establishment Rede Globo, said the WHO’s warnings on Covid-19 were the “work of Satan.” “Our position from the first moment has been to keep the churches open, because God will defeat the virus,” said Washington Reis, the evangelical mayor of the Rio working-class district of Duque de Caxias last week. Days later, God had spoken, and Reis was hospitalized with Covid-19. The tactic may be working. Bolsonaro appears to have maintained support in the pandemic, despite the pot banging and international horror at his stance. A poll by Datafolha last week showed that 36 percent of Brazilians believe his management of the health crisis is “good or great,” slightly more support than before the pandemic. And 52 percent say he’s capable of leading the country through the crisis.

There may even be a second phase to Bolsonaro’s strategy of leveraging Covid-19 to stay in power, said Soares. “Building on the contradictions of his own government and the coming crisis in the health system and the economy, Bolsonaro may be hoping for some kind of a social explosion in the streets,” he said. “That would create the conditions for a state of emergency and the end of democratic institutions that are still blocking the path of Bolsonaro’s basic project: a dictatorship and the perpetuation in power of his family.”

The call for a coup against Congress—pitched, at Sunday’s rally, at more extremist elements in the armed forces—may be a first step in this direction. By first denouncing an alleged coup plot against his own presidency, allegedly planned by Congress and the big-city governors, and then calling for military action in his defense, “Bolsonaro is following the example of many authoritarian presidents, starting with Hitler in 1933,” writes Nabil Bonduki, former São Paulo culture secretary, in an article in Folha de S.Paulo. “The allegation of an attempted coup is thus the pretext for a coup planned by the president himself.” The idea might sound fanciful, and as paranoid as Bolsonaro’s own rhetoric. But the former army captain was a reluctant recruit to democratic politics even before the devastating arrival of Covid-19.

Bolsonaro’s close links to right-wing militias made up of former military police and firemen, which run whole swaths of the West Zone of Rio, may help. “The militias have always been close to the Bolsonaro family, and now they are becoming more ideological, part of a Bolsonarist movement. They could help in a coup if he wants that,” said Soares. The militia Escritório do Crime (the Crime Office) is known to be implicated in the assassination of left-wing Rio city councilor Marielle Franco over two years ago. To square the circle of fascism and Covid-19, reports are just out that the militias in Itanhangá and Rio das Pedras, adjacent to the kitsch beach resort of Barra da Tijuca, where the Bolsonaro family has its base, are forcing businesses to stay open during the lockdown so they can continue to charge for protection.

as ian kershaw points out, the latin american cold war governments that were called fascism don’t really correspond with the italian and german examples because they lack the mass movements that brought hitler and mussolini to power. they, like salazar and franco, used symbols of fascism to exude power, but did not share the key characteristics of the movement. for instance, the nazi party numbered in the hundreds of thousands before it took power, while the falange only had 10,000 members at the outbreak of the spanish civil war. bolsonaro, in contrast, has a mass movement behind him, with the parties that back him having membership in the millions. his supporters are not older men, like most conservatives, but men in their 20s and 30s who are willing to go out and rally and brawl for him. like nazis, they have developed an intellectualized but conspiratorial and religiously-imbued notion of national salvation from international threats. they are often armed and control territory, with more favelas actually being under control of paramilitary groups than drug gangs.

on the other hand, many definitions of fascism, particularly on the left, require an economic component. a crude form of trotsky’s theory of fascism essentially labels these groups as pinkertons who took over a state, who come when the rate of profit is low and force labour to give up more of its share of national income. brazil is indeed experiencing a low rate of profit, but its labour movement is not well organized enough to seriously defend its prerogatives from a traditional state-backed approach. it can be pointed out that PT, which was attempting such an approach, was removed from power by those who viewed the party as defenders of labour. this grouping, based in the traditional military power centres of the brazilian regime, did not have any real support on their own among the brazilian populace, with temer’s government having a 5% approval rating. bolsonaro was seized upon by this grouping because it offered the chance for a government that largely agreed with its goals but could muster a far greater base of support among the populace. this partially mirrors the rise of hitler, who was also seen by supporters of the former military dictatorship as their ticket back into such a situation. the combination of hitler’s love of the military contrasted with the disdain of him by actual military figures (hindenburg called him “the little corporal”) can be seen in the current bolsonaro-generals dynamic. it took the nazi party leadership a year and a half to subsume the military to its own prerogatives, while bolsonaro has done far less in that time. however, bolsonaro’s base has been primed for a coup they view as a countercoup, with rumours of a military takeover having spread across the pro-bolsonaro blogosphere starting in march along with rhetoric of defending him from such an event.

[cathkaesque]

The coronavirus conjuncture

Following Lukashenka’s typically populist attitude to coronavirus, both the opposition and the Belarusian authorities linked anti-government sentiments to the state’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Opposition commentators joined western media in an orientalising ridicule of the Belarusian authorities’ decision to avoid lockdown, focusing on the president’s antics and ignoring the actual effort of the country’s healthcare system. Lukashenka was blamed for denying the threat of the virus; state agencies were accused of hiding the real scale of the pandemic and of lacking the capacity to fight it. By contrast, grassroots activism gained respect for helping Belarus’ healthcare system to cope. However, it has not been so much the epidemiological situation itself, as its economic and ideological consequences that have fuelled the current popular discontent.

As I explain elsewhere, Belarus has generally coped well with the spring wave of the pandemic due to fast roll out of its vast medical resources. Since June, the number of new infections has been going down, and now Ukraine, which introduced a draconian lockdown in March, lists Belarus as a “green” country alongside Sweden.

This is where the parallels with Sweden end. Although the Belarusian authorities kept the country open in order to preserve its economy, economic support measures were introduced belatedly - this put the main burden of the economic fallout on workers. While middle and small businesses were offered deferrals on interest payments and other preferential measures, the situation of workers in Belarus has worsened. Not only were there no additional payments to supplement falling wages, but employers were given the right to temporarily transfer their workers to other jobs or another employer on a short notice. People’s incomes also suffered from forced part-time work and forced vacations

This epidemiological conjuncture has aggravated the longer trend of state-promoted work precarisation. This tendency started in 2004 with the introduction of fixed-term contracts, which now cover over 90% of Belarusian employees, a unique situation in the post-Soviet space. This trend was compounded by the introduction of a “social parasitism” tax in 2015 - an annual deduction for a long-term lack of official employment that seemed like a return to Soviet practices, but was meant to stimulate employment in the country’s low wage sectors and broaden its tax base. These and other employment flexibilisation measures were finally systematised in a new Labour Code adopted last year.

Thus, the Belarusian working class has been gradually deprived of bargaining power at workplaces and placed in direct dependency on the state and private employers. Although almost every worker belongs to the Federation of Trade Unions of Belarus, they rarely find protection from this state-affiliated body. The Federation’s chairperson Mikhail Orda is in charge of Lukashenka’s electoral team, which pushed some union members to leave the union in protest, as happened in 2011. Interestingly, in response to the current situation, the largest non-affiliated union has promised a miners’ strike.

In parallel, since 2009, the Belarusian authorities have accelerated their support of private initiatives, not least through Valery Tsepkala’s offshore High-Tech Park outside Minsk. For the last seven years, large industrial state enterprises have been laying off workers, who have, in turn, been picked up by the private sector, mostly in retail trade and services. The latter now account for 45% of Belarus’ labour force.

The opposition’s economic platform, which caters to supporters of Valeri Tsepkala and Viktar Babaryka but is rarely discussed publicly, offers a more radical and straightforward continuation of Belarus’ current policies through mass privatisation, further deregulation of employment and marketisation of welfare. However, these measures are disguised under populist rhetoric that is paradoxically drawn from the arsenal of the 2017 “parasite” protests against the state’s neoliberal tendencies.

Competing populisms

Three years ago, Belarus’ “non-parasite protests” were triggered by the state’s introduction of a tax on long-term unemployment. But these rallies were directed against state-imposed labour precarisation, dismantling of the welfare system and their ideological justification. Though perhaps a distant memory for some, today’s electoral campaign draws heavily on the 2017 “parasite tax” protests”.

As I argue elsewhere, 2017 was a populist protest against a neoliberal variation of state populism. This neoliberal inflexion of the dominant populist discourse developed simultaneously with the pro-business drift of the Belarus state, and imagined “the people” as entrepreneurial subjects who must “get undressed and work” instead of waiting for the state’s mercy (like the undeserving “social parasites”). The populist response of the protesters during the “parasite protests” consisted in asserting a more inclusive concept of “the people” who deserve respect and social rights by the very fact of their citizenship.

Belarus’ traditional opposition failed to appropriate the 2017 protests, but today’s electoral campaign bears a clear imprint of that “people’s populism” from three years ago. The now jailed blogger Siarhei Tsikhanouski, whose wife Sviatlana is currently the face of the opposition, continued the activity of his fellow blogger Maksim Filipovich, who gave voice to the protesters against the “social parasitism” tax in 2017. The main themes of the 2017 protests, the demands of dignity and economic inclusion, thus entered the current narratives of the opposition.

These narratives stress Lukashenka’s disdain for his voters, his derogatory phrases about a “a lazy, spoiled people”, and assert an inter-class unity under the banner of the “I/We are 97%” slogan. Svitlana Tsikhanouskaia’s recent talk on national TV re-enacted these themes: she said her husband Siarhei listened to “simple people” who live in dire conditions while their bosses drive expensive cars, and that’s why he was currently in jail.

[berniesrevolution]

After a scorching summer of discontent, Donald Trump’s endless tweets and scandals have given Democrats their best chance to retake Congress since George W Bush’s second term. And yet, insurgent progressives are not limiting themselves to dethroning Republicans: they are taking aim at corporate-friendly Democrats within their own party, too.

Amid an upsurge of populist energy that has alarmed the Democratic establishment, a new wave of left-leaning insurgents have been using Democratic primaries to wage a fierce war on the party’s corporate wing. And, as in past presidential primary battles, many Democratic consultants, politicians and pundits have insisted that the party must prioritize unity and resist grassroots pressure to support a more forceful progressive agenda.

Not surprisingly, much of that analysis comes from those with career stakes in the status quo. Their crude attempts to stamp out any dissent or intraparty discord negates a stark truth: liberal America’s pattern of electing corporate Democrats – rather than progressives – has been a big part of the problem that led to Trump and that continues to make America’s economic and political system a neo-feudal dystopia.

Dislodging those corporate Democrats, then, is not some counterproductive distraction – it is a critical front in the effort to actually make America great again.

Right now, there are eight blue states where Democrats control the governorship and the legislature, and five other blue states where Democrats have often had as much or more legislative power than Republicans. These states, plus myriad cities under Democratic rule, collectively oversee one of the planet’s largest economies. Laws enacted in these locales can set national and global standards, and in the process, concretely illustrate a popular progressive agenda. Such an agenda in liberal America could rebrand the Democratic party as an entity that is actually serious about challenging the greed of the 1%, fighting corruption, and making day-to-day life better for the 99%.

Instead, though, liberal America has often produced something much different and less appealing: Democratic politicians who constantly echo courageous populist themes in speeches, news releases and election ads, and then often uses the party’s governmental power to protect the status quo and serve corporate donors in their interminable class war.

Take California: a state where Democrats control the governorship, every state constitutional office and a legislative supermajority. With healthcare premiums rising, polls show 70% of Americans support the creation of a government-sponsored healthcare system. Considering that Canada’s healthcare system first began in its provinces, California would seem a perfect place to create the first such system in the United States. There is just one problem: Democrats are using their power to shut down single-payer legislation as they rake in big money from private insurance and drug companies.

On the opposite coast, it is the same story. A solidly Democratic New York, Connecticut and New Jersey have declined to take up single payer, and have also refused to pass legislation closing special “carried interest” tax loopholes that benefit a handful of Wall Street moguls. As those tax breaks drain public revenue, state officials simultaneously plead poverty in justifying cuts to basic social safety net programs – even as they offermassive taxpayer subsidies to corporations such as Amazon and play host to an endless series of pay-to-play corruption scandals that see wealthy campaign contributors enriched at the public trough.

Even in deep blue Rhode Island – where Democrats are so dominant the 113 member legislature has only 17 Republicans – then-treasurer Gina Raimondo and her fellow Democrats chose to stake their brand on a plan thateviscerated retirement benefits for teachers, firefighters, cops and other public sector workers. Raimondo, a former financial executive whose firm received state investments, also shifted billions of dollars of public workers’ retirement savings into politically connected hedge funds and private equity firms that charge outsized fees, but often generate returns that lag a cheap stock index fund.

Every now and again, this grotesquerie spills out into public view in ways that cannot be ignored. In New Jersey, for instance, state Democratic lawmakers who spent years slamming Republican governor Chris Christie for refusing to pass a millionaires tax quickly delayed and then watered down the same tax proposal when Democrats reclaimed the governorship. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Hudson river, New York Democratic governor Andrew Cuomo shut down an anti-corruption commission, his top aide was later convicted on corruption charges – and yet Cuomo was rewarded with support from top Democrats as well as an endorsement from New York Times higher-ups right on liberal America’s editorial page.

Now sure, if this behavior was just limited to either side of the country, it could be written off as the effete fiddling-while-Rome-burns antics of the coastal elite. Things, though, aren’t much different in the middle of the country.

Here in Colorado, where Democrats have been winning elections, the party machine joined with Republicans in 2016 to help the insurance industry crush a universal healthcare ballot measure. At the same time, the administration of Democratic governor John Hickenlooper – a 2020 presidential hopeful – has threatened to sue local communities that try to regulate fossil fuel development.

(Continue Reading)

[likementor]

slooowly stretches across his lap.

          never one for moments apropos to intention, as he comes to expect from these sporadic little nuances of behaviour that eggsy was prone to exhibiting. the journey to palace grounds necessitates a good amount of time from their prior engagements of before and while weariness has settled in a deep weight in his limbs, he doesn’t think to act on abating it. duty and dignity above all else, comfort be damned. sleeping on concrete with only a threadbare excuse of a blanket underneath to keep skin from ground has willed that mantra into etched permanence. his forbearance is commendable, so much so that despite the antics, harry remains planted in his seat on the upholstered bench, lips merely pursing in a thin line to indicate any modicum of response.  

suppose it’s a far reach to think a populist prince would take to the strains of royal duty well, tucked under the rigor of a stiff regalia and obstinate ceremony. lineage or not, youth still thrums wild and unhinged behind this groomed pedigree. fingertips tapping down onto the sheen of a polished mahogany armrest, he demurs. ❝ i take it you’re lethargic, your royal highness sir. ❞

[reportwire]

Arizona GOP Senate Debate Filled With Several Revealing Moments

Arizona GOP Senate Debate Filled With Several Revealing Moments

An energy tycoon, a billionaire-backed populist, Arizona’s attorney general head the list of candidates vying for the Republican nomination in this year’s U.S. Senate race. And if the antics at a GOP debate on Thursday were any indication, they all want to push the seat far to the right. An older — but energized — crowd of more than a thousand packed into the Hyatt Regency in downtown Phoenix to…

[dianamathur-novelist]

European Project, Baltic Dream, Paths Forward Where American Dream Falters

Robert J. Shiller, Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale University, 2013 Nobel Laureate, and kin to four Lithuanian grandparents, addressed attendees at the Baltic Boston Conference on November 24, 2018, commemorating the Baltic centennials.

Professor Shiller spoke about the evolution of “The American Dream,” a notion that was coined and lauded in 1931; and compared it to the European Project and the “Baltic Dream”.

Using search tools Ngram and Proquest, Schiller traced the American Dream origins to the nation’s founding thinkers, including Thomas Paine, who challenged the logic of hereditary advantage in Common Sense (1776); and Ben Franklin, who in 1782 France published the pamphlet, Information for those Who would Remove to America.

“Don’t come to America if you think you will impress people with title and money,” Franklin wrote.  “Come if you can do something. Americans say, ‘God Almighty is a mechanic.’” Franklin claimed the humble husbandman (farmer) would be respected in America.

A sister concept to the American Dream was portrayed by Israel Zangwill in his 1908 play, “The Melting Pot,” wherein a Jewish man marries a Christian woman. President Teddy Roosevelt applauded the play, making assimilation, the coming together of different nationalities and cultures, the preferred face of the nation (rather than, for example, the Jim Crow laws of the day*).

In 1930, “The American Dream” was advertising copy for a box spring mattress. (It cost $13.50).

In 1931, “The American Dream” was coined by historian James Truslow Adams in his book, Epic of America. (So named because Adams’s publisher said a book entitled The American Dream wouldn’t sell.) With that phrase, Adams was defining a hopefulness that he admired in American culture.

"…that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone (emphasis added), with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. … It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman  (ahead of his time, Prof. Shiller points out, Adams specified both genders) shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position."

“Ideas are contagious,” explained Shiller, “like viruses, thoughts change and mutate over time, their popularity goes in and out.” In the depths of the Great Depression, the hopeful idea of the American Dream was born, its roots already established in the nation’s consciousness, and the notion went viral.

Immigrants came to America because of the American Dream, some aspiring to own farms – one version of the Dream. America attracted hardworking people. Every young activist thought of the United States as a bastion of freedom and democracy.

Continuing the etiology, in 1931 and 1961, respectively, playwrights George O’Neill and Edward Albee* used the title with irony, dealing with the disintegration of the American Dream.

The American Dream doesn’t mean today what it meant in 1931.

1950 real estate ads painted the American Dream as home ownership: Man marries and children arrive. Man gives them a place to call their own. The ideal was a suburban home, where couples could entertain using their stylish wedding gifts. The concept had lost its idealistic and intellectual tenor since 1931, even neglecting the original idea of inclusion.

The American Dream further mutated by1980, when homes became thought of as investments. Prof. Shiller pointed to the shift in public attention from land prices to home prices, among other proofs.

Today, suburban home ownership no longer represents the American Dream. Walkable cities offering art, community space, and eateries, make life meaningful to young people.

In 2018, Frank Rich wrote in New York magazine, “That loose civic concept known as the American Dream …  has been shattered. No longer is lip service paid to the credo, however sentimental, that a vast country, for all its racial and sectarian divides, might somewhere in its DNA have a shared core of values that could pull it out of any mess.”

The American Dream is history*.

Across the Atlantic, the counterpart to the American Dream is often referred to as the European Project. In contrasting the two mindsets, Jeremy Rifkin explains:

For Americans, freedom is associated with autonomy, which requires amassing wealth. One is free by becoming self-reliant, an island unto oneself — and with exclusivity comes security.

For Europeans, freedom is not found in autonomy, but in access to a myriad of interdependent relationships with others. The more communities one has access to, the more options and choices one has for living a full and meaningful life. With relationships comes inclusivity, and with inclusivity comes security.

The American Dream puts an emphasis on economic growth, personal wealth and independence. The new European Dream focuses more on sustainable development, quality of life and interdependence.

The American Dream pays homage to the work ethic. The European Dream is more attuned to leisure and deep play.

The American Dream is wedded to love of country and patriotism. The European Dream is more cosmopolitan, less territorial, … and secular to the core.

Neither Americans nor Europeans have lived up to their respective dreams, but Europe has articulated a vision for the future that focuses on quality of life, sustainability, peace and harmony.

(Rifkin, 2004.) (Check out the highlights of a collective vision based on personal transformation rather than individual material accumulation here:

Professor Shiller shared brief references to national Canadian, Chinese, and French Dreams, elaborating on views of the Russian Dream obtained through a primary source. “They don’t talk a whole lot about it, but …we too have a national dream. Not for happiness. We dream about what the majority of Americans already have, a cottage (single family home).”

A common aspect of the American and Russian Dreams: We want to live well, and not be limited by a society that prevents us from doing what we could do.

That this is the sincere desire of a typical Russian is evidenced by the popularity of recent presidential candidate Alexei Navalny, who said, “The idea we are destined to always live in poverty is deeply engrained in people’s minds. The goal of my campaign is to conquer it.” Navalny’s run against Putin was halted by conviction of a tax irregularity.

What is the Baltic Dream? Professor Shiller picked the brains of his Yale Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian students to elucidate its themes. Recurrent were feelings of loyalty, and of love for country and culture – though not in a nationalistic way – and of wanting to go back. It’s a dream of integration into exciting things wordwide; of being part of the family of European countries, small by might, yet world citizens, technological leaders and entrepreneurs in the vein of Finland’s Nokia and Estonia’s Skype. “The Baltic Dream is to be free, independent democracies; to own our land, and speak our language.” Power in song and dance is part of the genetic code, still as relevant and victorious as the Singing Revolution.

What comes next in the evolution of national dreams?

A desperate political atmosphere has come in after the demise of the American Dream. It’s every man for himself. There is loss of commitment to policies that redistribute to the poor, and loss of entrepreneurial optimism. Political attitudes are hostile. Troubled polarization and the rise of nationalist politics beset the quest for our identity and hope for the future.

Last year 69 million people were displaced by war and discord, and are pushing at borders.

Fear of immigrants, fear of automation stealing jobs, fear of home price inflation, especially for people who haven’t yet bought homes, is rampant.

Professor Shiller’s tone was tactful in answering questions from the Baltic Boston audience, which comprised both Trump supporters and critics. He deftly replied that discussing America First as a national sentiment and public policy requires a psychologist as much as an economist.

What obligation do Baltic countries have to help Muslim refugees? Muslim refugees don’t have that much interest in going somewhere where you have to learn an exotic language. And the national identities of small countries may be threatened by the influx of different perspectives. But certainly the Baltics should take some Muslim refugees, and be nice to them.

Shiller’s documentation of the rise and fall of the American Dream ended on a note of reasonable hope when he compared President Trump to the historical figures of William Jennings Bryan, a populist of the 1890s; Father Coughlin, a fascist radio priest of the Great Depression; and Senator Joe McCarthy, Red-scare smear tactician of 1950.

“These men all were very popular at one point in time,” Shiller pointed out. “Then they went too far and that did it. McCarthy eventually became ridiculous, even accusing communists of mind control.” The citizenry eventually withdrew support for these figures. “Trump’s antics may be pushing his luck. Calling a woman ‘horse-face’ doesn’t have to do with politics. You don’t call people that, even an opponent.”

“I just hope he does the right thing in the remaining two years,” Shiller concluded.

by Diana Mathur

* the author’s observation

[babajuma1]

Sonko has 'relocated' his populist antics to Mombasa and locals are falling for them. Dead bodies of Luhyas, Luos and Kambas detained in hospitals are being cleared and transported upcountry😀😀 https://www.instagram.com/p/CdIfOEjoHfz/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=