Clarissa's Blog

True Americans 

I did an activity today where students broke up into 4 groups: Christians, Muslims, Jews, and the indigenous peoples of the Americas. They created the story of each group based on what we’ve learned in our course Cultures of Spain. 

Then they formed new groups with one Christian, one Jew, one Muslim and one indigenous person. Each had to tell their story in the first person. For instance: “In 711 we crossed the Straits of Gibraltar and arrived at the Iberian Peninsula, etc.”

I wanted to see who would start speaking first in each group, or whose perspective is the privileged one. And what do you think? Every group started with the narrative of the indigenous Americans. 

This is really interesting to me because, to be honest, I would have automatically started with the Christians, even though I am well aware that it makes no sense even from a Euro-centric perspective. 

This was a really cool activity. 

Nation-state Demolition Service

“I’m a Leninist,” Bannon proudly proclaimed.

Shocked, I asked him what he meant.

“Lenin,” he answered, “wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.”

It can’t possibly be any clearer. Bannon’s – and by extension Trump’s – goal is to destroy the nation-state  (because there is no other state form right now) in the service of liquid capital. It slaughters me that people don’t understand this and call them nationalists when they are the exact opposite. 

An Idea

… it was Spicer’s portrayal by a woman that was most problematic in the president’s eyes, according to sources close to him….

Hey, remember the colleague who likes Trump because he’s “strong”? Maybe we need a bunch of very dainty actresses or very gay actors to portray Trump if that’s the kind of thing this type of voter responds to. 

Even a Broken Clock

“Winning’s everything,” he said. “If you don’t win, you can’t make the public policy. I say that because it is hard for people in our party to accept that principle. Sometimes, you’ve just got to win, OK? Our party likes to be right, even if they lose.”

Eew, Rahm Emanuel. But if he was right about something a single time in his life, this is that time. 

Waiting for a Narrative 

If you don’t define your own narrative, others will define it for you, and you’ll probably not like it. Democrats don’t have a coherent narrative on immigration. Obama deported like there was no tomorrow but his party ended up being labeled a party of open borders globalists. 

Voters care about immigration. It’s a fact of objective reality that one might not like but has to accept. One has to come up with a short, clear statement that people will understand. “No ban, no wall, no Trump” is, once again, about what you don’t want. There is zero in it about what one does want instead. And the recent election was already lost on the strategy of “vote against this.” 

Rep

I’m not a citizen but I’ve already won an election in this country. I’m going to be a union rep. That’s the best kind of political engagement I can think of right now.

The Future of Citizenship 

There are two million of Spaniards residing overseas and contributing a large chunk of money needed to keep the country afloat. They are demanding electoral reform to make it easier for them to elect representatives in Spain at all levels. 

Soon we’ll see situations where most of the people who can vote in a country reside outside it and most of those actually living in it not having the right to vote. This will make the transformation of the concept of citizenship inevitable.