The worst thing about being middle-aged is a depleted, impoverished emotional range.

The best thing about being middle-aged is a depleted, impoverished emotional range.

Everybody is very surprised that my husband and I don’t text each other continuously throughout the day. Unless we are coordinating a furniture delivery or a kid pickup, we don’t text each other at all, to be honest.

I’m passionately in love with the man but I need some space, too. Being constantly in touch feels very suffocating. I’m not saying that people who do it are in any way wrong. I’m sure it’s super cute when they do it. I’m just saying that even the thought of getting several text messages a day from him makes me feel choked.

We also don’t read each other’s social media. What would we talk about if we did? I bring all of my best material here and have very little else to contribute to a conversation.

This is a brilliant insight. I’m putting it here because I want to keep thinking about this.

It’s also a great illustration of how to let go of outdated arguments and leave the quagmire of circular thinking. Everybody – including me – has been repeating how the word fascism is being misused by the left to brand all opposition as pure evil. We say it and say it and say it. “They are the real fascists!” OK, so what? We’ve said it, and it’s true, but now what? And then one random online person finally says, “OK, but what is it they call fascism? What do all these things have in common and where do they stand in relation to the neoliberal mentality?” And we have finally moved towards a fresh insight.

Here is why moving towards nationalized healthcare AT THIS POINT is a gigantic mistake:

This is not about COVID. Forget about COVID for the moment. Every illness, especially the ones that are expensive to treat, can be traced back to some wrong choice you or your parents or your great-grandparents made some time in the past. It’s very easy to deny care to anybody if virtue, as defined by government authorities, is the price of admission.

We are now in the grip of neoliberal mentality. Things that worked a decade ago are now irrelevant. Everything has changed. The state used to make sure there were enough healthy workers for the capital to use. Providing healthcare made sense, so it was provided. Now the state makes sure there are not too many superfluous humans that hinder the free flow of capital. Providing healthcare no longer makes sense. Keeping people healthy no longer makes sense.

You can dismiss this Lehmann woman as a dumb hysteric, and she is. But that doesn’t matter. Her “structure of feeling” is neoliberal. What she says speaks to many people because theirs is, too. This is the continuation of “defund the police.” The state no longer keeps us healthy, educated, and safe because capital doesn’t need that many of us anymore. And many of us are cheering it on because we have either absorbed this mentality or are incapable of noticing that things are changing. We keep groping this elephant from different sides and trying to figure out what we are touching using an entirely outdated conceptual framework.