And within the same trend, a fellow I’ve been following on FB has announced today that he has to quit FB because he’s about to lose his job. His employers are getting tired of hearing from endlessly indignant right-fighters who are outraged by his posts. He’s the kind of writer who can’t be easily identified as being on the left or on the right. Meaning, the only kind it makes sense to read. 

Anybody with even a glimmer of originality always ends up broken down and pushed out of blogging or social media. The only alternative is to avoid any subjects that can prove remotely controversial. Or somehow find a way to burrow into the deepest obscurity.

Internet enthusiasts used to warn against the dangers of governmental censorship of the Internet. Now they are all saying that in their wildest nightmares they couldn’t have anticipated how eagerly and happily users would self-censor until turning the Internet into a place to shop, gossip, and stare at cute kitties. 

Very, very sad news about Fredrik deBoer. I have no idea what happened but the linked post sounds very desperate.

I hope Freddie finds help in the place where he’s going. 

The article I liked in the collection is by journalist Paul Mason. He is from a working class family, so he tends to idealize the working classes, especially the way they were in his childhood. But at least, he’s not engaging in a wholesale condemnation of workers as racistsandsexists that is so fashionable right now. 

Mason explains that working classes withdraw their consent for mass migration into the country not because they are innately evil but because they legitimately feel that their working class culture is being eroded into oblivion. Plus, there are great observations on how neoliberalism tries to annihilate “space, community and non-abstract labour.”

Here is a quote I liked from the piece: 

The authoritarian populism that is mobilizing working class voters is, essentially, a demand for deglobalization. It’s reactionary nature lies. . . in its complete ignorance of the complexity of the task.

But, Mason says, those under 35 have so interiorized the lingo of joyful acceptance of globalization that it’s not going to be turned back. Mason is very optimistic about the “young networked internationalists” while I’m not, so he sees a very positive scenario of “saving globalization by ditching neoliberalism.” I don’t always want to be a negative scarecrow, so I’ll just let it stand for the moment. 

The way it works is this. You recruit some excitable young people into neo-Nazi groups. You recruit some more excitable youths into the Antifa. Then you sic them on each other. 

While they whoop each other’s asses, they represent no threat to the neoliberal order. Thus, the young population that could potentially question this order is declawed, defanged, and distracted.

In the meantime, the general public is horrified and will that more easily accept one of the pillars of neoliberalism, which is securitization. 

​“The local Indivisible chapter organized a peace vigil downtown here last Sunday in solidarity with Charlottesville. It was one of many such vigils around the country. Not a Nazi symbol in sight. Yet the local antifa group that attended seemed bent on taking over what was intended to be a peaceful rally. There was a shouting match with police the organizers had requested. Later, the group split off and marched through downtown chanting slogans.” 

Oh, come on, folks, let’s stop being childish already. These facile Antifa fools – not to be confused with the many thousands of anti-Nazi protesters who are wonderful people – are being revved up from the same place that gave us our current president. You know, the one that rhymes with gremlin.

The role of the Antifa (that the excitable little tools play mostly unwittingly) is to discredit the protesters and cast a shadow over the entire progressive movement. They are fulfilling this role extremely well. And the protesters aren’t managing to throw them off until it gets too late. 

I had high hopes for this collection of articles on the current political climate but it proved a disappointment. Most of the articles offer nothing but superficial, trite slogans, the likes of which you can easily find on your Facebook wall in great abundance. Here is a small recap of each author’s ideas:

Arjun Appadurai – Germany is the only truly European country and if only it decides to practice its true Europeanness by disregarding the wishes of the not-really-European everybody else in Europe and brings in more immigrants, soon enough golden age will begin.

Zygmunt Bauman – intolerance is bad, Pope Francis is good, and everybody must become cosmopolitan because it’s the only decent thing to be.

Donatella della Porta – Occupy and Indignados achieved great success. Nobody knows what it consists of but it was still a great success. 

Nancy Fraser – this article also has a ton of empty sloganeering but at least it introduces a very useful concept of progressive neoliberalism. So this piece was not a waste of time. 

 Eva Illouz – this was actually a useful read. Illouz traces the history of Israel’s political divide. I knew very little in the subject and enjoyed the article. The conclusions are dumb (the Mizrahim are just like Trump voters because they don’t live in big cities), but the body of the piece is OK.

Ivan Krastev – you can’t have globalization, democracy and self-determination all at once. Something has to go. And it won’t be globalization, that’s for sure. This is an important point, so I’m glad to have read the piece by Mr Krastev.

Bruno Latour – the reason for Brexit is that the UK wants to restore its 19th century empire (huh?) We are all on the Titanic! Oblivious to the approaching demise! It’s all in the same overwrought vein and utterly useless. 

[To be continued. . .]

My 18-month-old daughter follows me around the house and points out imperfections in my cleaning strategy. 

“Mess! Dirty!” she says whenever she sees something that isn’t up to her high standards. “Ewww! Wash! Wash water!” She keeps repeating it until I do wash the offending bit of floor or furniture with water. 

Yes, I taught her the words, complete with a disgusted facial expression that accompanies “ewww”. It seemed like a fun thing to do at the time. Little did I know she was going to put this fun skill to use so fast. 

Some academics have found a very inventive excuse for not working on their research: Trump! It feels “unfeeling or uncaring”, they say, to do any work while there are all these delicious Trump scandals happening. Caring, good people are all stuck on Twitter and in front of TVs where the really important stuff occurs.

I wish they used all this inventiveness to produce research and not to feel sorry for themselves on social media. But it’s unfeeling or uncaring to deny people a chance to have all this fun. God forbid Trump doesn’t get reelected for a second term. What will they do then? Go back to boring, staid work after luxuriating daily in the sweet feeling that “the sky is falling”? That will be such a huge letdown.

I’m telling you, folks, whenever I read stuff like that, I get very worried about 2020. These people won’t let Trump go. They are too addicted, too far gone.  

This is exactly how I feel about the eclipse. I understand that people are excited, and I’m sincerely happy for them. But I fail to find the event anything but very mildly curious. 

As I said, though, I’m very very happy for those who experience the eclipse as a big deal.