happy birthday, howard

Today marks what would have been Howard Zinn's 90th birthday. Zinn, who died on January 27, 2010, was many things in his relatively long life: A WWII veteran, historian, author, playwright, social activist, teacher, the list goes on. I never really knew anything about him until I bought one of his short plays, Marx in Soho, at the local bookstore about four years ago.

I had locked myself out of my apartment, and Annie wasn't going to be home from work for a few more hours, so I went to look around the local bookstore for something to read until she got home. I happened to notice the small, reddish book sitting in the philosophy section—it was short and cheap, so I grabbed it. I spent the rest of my time reading it at a nearby coffee shop.

Not long after that, I rented a documentary about Zinn called Howard Zinn: You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train from the local video store. It was an excellent documentary, and from that moment on, Zinn became one of my heroes. But more importantly, it got me interested in American history, especially the history of the American labour movement. I ended up buying a copy of A People's History of the United States, and that book (true to Will Hunting/Matt Damon's words in Good Will Hunting) knocked me on my ass!

Zinn not only taught me a lot about the American labour movement, but he helped me to find my political bearings as well. At the time I discovered Zinn, I was in the process of figuring out where I stood and how far I wanted to go with my political activism. Zinn inspired me to get politically active for progressive causes at a time when I could easily have been lulled into being just another passive voter. So, in memory of his life, my favourite Howard Zinn quote:

An optimist isn't necessarily a blithe, slightly sappy whistler in the dark of our time. To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places--and there are so many--where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

RIP, comrade.

panhandlers in detroit could face jail time

Ah, yes, liberalism in action. Fining and/or jailing the 'least among us' for begging in certain areas or in certain ways:

Panhandlers in Detroit could face jail time

Like most solutions to pressing social problems, if you don't like something and can't fix it, make a law to regulate it/turn it into a crime and profit from it, right? The saddest part of this is that it'll just make things more difficult for those stuck in the cycle of poverty, allowing police to legally harass them more than already do, and ultimately making panhandlers even more aggressive as they struggle harder to survive. Instead of treating these people as fellow human beings, we, as a society, often treat them as if they're some kind of pests, who, with their poverty and homelessness, are inconveniencing us trying to go about our day-to-day lives, never stopping to think about what it must be like to live a day in theirs.

Maybe instead of fining and jailing homeless people for begging, we could give them a place to stay for starters. There are more than enough vacant homes to house the homeless. Maybe a universal basic income is another possible solution. Or even providing better social programs that help the homeless and poor to find jobs would be infinitely more helpful than punishing them for being homeless or poor (e.g., by providing them with things like internet access, mailing addresses, phone numbers, showers, clean clothes for interviews, etc.).

Unfortunately, we currently seem to be more concerned about giving money to banks to bail them out of their irresponsible behaviour and spending money on invading and occupying foreign nations to provide for any of that. Christian nation my ass.

who's going to be the lesser-evil in 2012?

The more things change, the more they stay the same. This 1967 article might as well be titled, "Who's going to be the lesser-evil in 2012?":

Who's going to be the lesser-evil in 1968?

While reading the paragraph, "So besides Tweedledee-Tweedledums and besides the Lesser Evils who really are different in policy from the Greater Evils, we increasingly are getting this third type of case: the Lesser Evils who, as executors of the system, find themselves acting at every important juncture exactly like the Greater Evils, and sometimes worse. They are the product of the increasing convergence of liberalism and conservatism under conditions of bureaucratic capitalism. There never was an era when the policy of the Lesser Evil made less sense than now," a couple of recent examples immediately came to mind.

The first was President Clinton's signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Financial Modernization Act of 1999, the latter of which repealed sections of Glass-Steagall Act and arguably helped lead to the 2008 financial crisis. The second is President Obama's continuation of Clinton and Bush era policies such as extraordinary rendition and drone strike-assassinations, as well as his administration's crackdown on whistleblowers (e.g., former CIA agent John Kiriakou) and his signing of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012, allowing indefinite detention to be codified into law.

Which just goes to show that, "In setups where the choice is between one capitalist politician and another, the defeat comes in accepting the limitation to this choice."

happy birthday, social security

As Social Security turns 77, it faces an uncertain future, with Congress unwilling to raise the income cap (currently set at $110,100) and deficit hawks threatening to dismantle it and donate its remains to Wall Street to gamble with as they see fit. Not much of a birthday present, is it? Which is why I agree with Richard Eskow that the best gift those of us who support this program can give is "the gift of ongoing citizen activism to demand that it be protected from predators who would gut it in the name of Washington dealmaking or tax breaks for the wealthy."

the long road to serfdom

By now, it's become rather cliche to invoke 1984 when talking about the budding US surveillance state; but the glaring similarities between Oceania and the US are simply too obvious to ignore. Many people seem to assume that the US could never get that bad since the book was obviously a critique of socialism and the Soviet Union, so there's no need for us to worry about that ever happening here now that the Soviet Union is no more and capitalism has 'won.' But people tend to forget that Orwell wasn't just critiquing the Soviet Union, he was critiquing aspects of the American and British empires as well. His real target was the growing threat of totalitarianism around the world, not socialism.

The seeds for a subservient totalitarian society aren't necessarily sown overnight, and the slow but steady march of neoliberalism is proving itself just as capable of arriving at oligarchical collectivism as the totalitarian Stalinist bureaucracy that, in the mind of Orwell (who himself was a democratic socialist), betrayed the revolution. As our basic liberties and freedoms are quietly being sacrificed to Moloch by both parties under the guise of security, we're merely taking the long road to serfdom.

romneymachus

With all the hype surrounding the Olympics the past two weeks, a lot seems to have been missed and/or pushed out of public consciousness. One of those things is Mitt Romney's comments at a fundraiser in Israel in which he equated wealthiness with superiority and suggested that Israeli culture is part of what's allowed them to be more economically successful than the Palestinians, just as the US's superior culture is what's allowed us to be more economically successful than Mexico.

Besides illustrating his (and the Republican Party's) belief that wealth is the supreme measure of all things, it completely ignores some inconvenient truths, such as the role Israeli policies have negatively impacted the growth of the Palestinian economy, from its blockade of Gaza (an area smaller than Portland, OR, with twice the population) via its almost complete control over Gaza's borders, airspace, and territorial waters to its occupation of the West Bank, replete with over 500 roadblocks and checkpoints obstructing Palestinian movement.

By implying that wealth in terms of higher GDP per capita is a sign of superior culture, regardless of things like regional hegemony, Romney betrays his belief in Thrasymachian justice, which is nothing but 'the advantage of the stronger' (Republic, 338c).

jim henson's the cube

I have a newfound appreciation for Jim Henson, especially for his experimental filmmaking, after seeing a collection of his experimental shorts, commercials, and TV appearances at the Hollywood Theater. Never realized how much he did before focusing entirely on his puppeteering work. For example, in 1969 Henson produced, directed, and co-wrote an hour-long existential teleplay about a man trapped in a white cubical room called The Cube that aired on NBC.

It's reminiscent of The Prisoner, and deals with a number of similar themes like alienation, identity, insanity, psychological manipulation and torture, and the fine line between illusion and reality, as well as questions about perception and the nature of reality itself that seem to suggest that life is ultimately a paradox and/or shows how someone can get 'trapped' in their own mind.



Definitely a helluva lot better than most of the rubbish they show on NBC these days. I highly recommend checking it out if you haven't already seen it.

psychoanalysing lobo

I find DC's Lobo to be a psychologically interesting character. I see in Lobo aspects of Nietzscheanism-in-the-extreme, which itself is the consequence of being an "indictment of the the Punisher, Wolverine, hero prototype." More specifically, I see Lobo as a type of alien Ubermensch characterized by complete freedom from moral conventions (he does whatever he wills, from the genocide of his own people to killing Santa Claus, possessing the ultimate will-to-power, which I'd argue is inherently sadistic in Nietzsche's philosophy) and the creation of his own personal code of honour (e.g., never violating the letter of an agreement, even though he may willfully violate its spirit).

To me, Lobo exhibits a type of radical individuality that seeks to 'transcend' the world of lesser letzte Mensch in order to lord over it (alive or not). His very being embodies the things Thus Spoke Zarathustra praises and conventional/Christian morality condemns, particularly sex, the 'lust to rule,' and selfishness. His suffering, if indeed he has any, is drowned out by continuously creating and overcoming himself (quite literally, in fact, when he eventually fights his own clone). And his actions ultimately personify the spirit of this passage from The Dawn: "The striving for excellence is the striving to overwhelm one's neighbor, even if only very indirectly or only in one's own feelings or even dreams."

Of course, this may be a crude understanding (even misunderstanding) of Nietzsche's Ubermensch; but I believe that many of his ideas essentially praise and promote aspects of psychopathy when taken to their logical conclusion, and Lobo is the ultimate DC psychopath. And I think it rather intriguing when viewing Lobo from this perspective to also consider his actions from a Freudian perspective, and how his psychopathic behaviour can be seen as representing a megalomaniac attempt to transcend his castration anxiety extraordinaire via rejecting/transcending traditional morality, and effectively 'castrating' society first, through mindless and all-encompassing violence. I think much the same can be said about the Joker's 19th century Russian nihilism, as well.

jumpin' on the ubi bandwagon

Many on both the left and the right in the US have been lamenting the chronically high unemployment rates that have plagued most of the country since the 2008 financial crisis, and both have championed the need for more, better paying jobs as a corrective (mainly disagreeing about which is best way to promote job growth, raising or lowering taxes); but I think the idea of a universal basic income should really be put at the forefront of the conversation, particularly on the part of the left.

Of course, the idea of a guaranteed basic income isn't anything new (e.g., in his 1797 pamphlet, Agrarian Justice, Thomas Paine proposed the idea of a basic income guarantee for all US citizens as compensation for "loss of his or her natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed property"), but it's an idea that seems all but absent from the majority of current discussions about ways to address the economic effects of the latest the crisis, such as chronically high unemployment, the large percentage of underemployed workers having difficulty making ends meet, and record foreclosure rates, as well as things like 30 years of stagnant wages for 90% of US workers, the general increase in work hours of already overworked workers, growing inequality at home and abroad, and a host of other pressing socio-economic issues that concern the working class as a whole.

And while the idea of providing such a guaranteed income in the midst of a global economic downturn might seem counterintuitive, it's not as crazy or as unfeasible as it may initially sound. A lot of people — both past and present, from the left and the right, and for various reasons — have made some fairly persuasive arguments for why we should seriously consider it in some form, and I'm inclined to agree, particularly because of its potential to empower workers, decommodify labour-power by helping free workers from absolute dependence on wage labour for subsistence, and enlarge the nonmarket social economy. Workers would no longer be as pressured to stay at a job they hated, was dangerous, or a toxic environment for fear of not being able to afford food, rent, utilities, etc. as unemployment can be denied to those who quit without a 'sufficient' reason.

The two biggest (and the most legitimate) criticisms of a universal basic income are that it'll have a negative effect on the incentive to work (as if human beings are inherently lazy) and that it'd be impossible to fund. In regard to the first, I agree with Peter Frase that the critics' screams of "but nobody would do any work!" are just plain silly. For instance, he argues in his blog post "Do They Owe Us a Living?" that:

For one thing, at least in the short run, most people would want to make more than the guaranteed minimum, and so would continue to work. For another thing, it's clear that people do various jobs for lots of different reasons that don't have to do with money, and some kinds of work would get more popular if people didn't have to worry about having the money to meet their basic needs. Some jobs really are enjoyable, in other words, and people would do them for free if they could. Other kinds of work give their returns by conferring status–for example, for all but the most famous artists, making art is more about gaining recognition than making money.

One appealing aspect of a basic income is that it would start to sort out the distinctions between the different kinds of labor outlined above. If some jobs start being things people do as hobbies, then great! If some jobs disappear, and we don't miss them, then great! If you have to pay people more to make them take crappy jobs, great! Which isn't to say that basic income is a one-shot magic solution to all the problems of capitalism (although for the argument that it could be, check out a weird and provocative article called "The Capitalist Road to Communism"). Indeed, the best thing about a guaranteed income is that it stands a pretty good chance of provoking major economic disruption and social crisis–that's what makes it a "non-reformist reform."

And if problems do arise, it's not like they're unsolvable. As he continues:

In a world with a guaranteed income, it could very well turn out that there are some things that just aren't getting done. It's not clear that you'd be able to find enough people to clean office bathrooms or work the night shift at 7-11 if they had access to a basic income, no matter what you paid them. Some people invoke the above scenario as an argument against the basic income, but let me emphasize that this is a problem I would love to have. Once it becomes clear what kind of work is both desired and undersupplied, we can have a political struggle about how that work will get done. By offering special rewards (i.e. "material incentives")? By creating some kind of national service requirement in exchange for the basic income (you have to go clean toilets or work the night shift once a month, say)? By finding clever new ways to automate these jobs? Or by deciding we can really do without some things we thought we "needed"? I can’t predict in advance what the solution would be. And I don't have to. That's really the most important point I want to make here. I think the lesson of history is that momentous social change never happens because someone came up with a detailed plan for the future, won people over to it, and then implemented it. The chaos of real people making their own history always overwhelms such neat plans.

Another reason I think this criticism fails is that the job market is already overcrowded, and many people are unemployed or underemployed. So instead of trying to create more jobs simply to stimulate growth, many of which may be are useless or counterproductive, having people able to drop out but still contribute to the economy as consumers (as limited as their spending power may be on such a relatively small sum), would actually help the economy stabilize. Moreover, if a large portion of these people really are lazy, as critics contend, it may actually be better not to have them working, opening these jobs up to more motivated and meticulous individuals.

In regard to the second criticism, that it'd be impossible to fund, I'd argue there are multiple ways to make this possible, especially if the universal basic income itself was large enough to make things like Social Security redundant, thereby replacing them and taking over the funds reserved for these programs. Some additional funding sources include things like capital gains taxes, income taxes on higher earners, inheritance taxes, land and natural resource taxes, luxury taxes, sales taxes, wealth taxes (e.g., property tax), pollution taxes, tariffs, Tobin tax, value added taxes, elimination of certain tax deductions, etc. And as Philippe Van Parijs points out in "A Basic Income for All":

A wide range of existing benefits can be abolished or reduced once a UBI is in place. And for most people of working age, the basic income and the increased taxes (most likely in the form of an abolition of exemptions and of low tax rates for the lowest income brackets) required to pay for it will largely offset each other. In a country such as the United States, which has developed a reasonably effective revenue collection system, what matters is not the gross cost but its distributive impact–which could easily work out the same for a UBI or an NIT.

He notes that estimates of the net budgetary cost of various universal basic income (UBI) and negative income tax (NIT) schemes have been made in both Europe and the US, and as one example, the negative income tax scheme proposed by Block and Manza in the US, which would raise all base incomes to at least 90% of the poverty line, would cost about $60 billion annually (at least in mid-1990s dollars). In comparison, this year's defense budget alone is close to $700 billion, which is more than Britain, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Japan, and Russia combined, accounting for a whopping 40% of total global arms spending. I'm fairly certain the military could spare a measly $60 billion and still remain competitive globally, which would go a long way towards funding. And to all the anti-taxation advocates who feel that taxes are stealing and are vehemently against taxation of any kind, I'd simply offer the words of Benjamin Franklin to Roger Morris for their consideration:

The Remissness of our People in Paying Taxes is highly blameable; the Unwillingness to pay them is still more so. I see, in some Resolutions of Town Meetings, a Remonstrance against giving Congress a Power to take, as they call it, the People's Money out of their Pockets, tho' only to pay the Interest and Principal of Debts duly contracted. They seem to mistake the Point. Money, justly due from the People, is their Creditors' Money, and no longer the Money of the People, who, if they withold it, should be compell'd to pay by some Law.

All Property, indeed, except the Savage's temporary Cabin, his Bow, his Matchcoat, and other little Acquisitions, absolutely necessary for his Subsistence, seems to me to be the Creature of public Convention. Hence the Public has the Right of Regulating Descents, and all other Conveyances of Property, and even of limiting the Quantity and the Uses of it. All the Property that is necessary to a Man, for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right, which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other Laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition. He that does not like civil Society on these Terms, let him retire and live among Savages. He can have no right to the benefits of Society, who will not pay his Club towards the Support of it.

chick-fil-a, revisited

From discussions I've seen lately, it seems like the uproar over Chick-fil-A is still upsetting people who don't get what it's all about, and/or think that boycotting a single company over where it happens to donate to is pointless. But what people annoyed by this don't seem to realize is that it's not really about Chick-fil-A at all; it's about equality. Chick-fil-A is simply a rallying point for people who support equal rights and treatment for the LGBTQ community to make a public show of solidarity, which COO Dan Cathy himself instigated by announcing his views regarding gay marriage and Chick-fil-A's financial support via its charitable arm to 'pro-family' groups that not only help lobby for laws and amendments that discriminate against the LGBTQ community, but much, much worse.

I don't think boycotts are a particularly effective or practical strategy, mind you; and there are arguably more pressing concerns at the moment than the spending habits of Chick-fil-A. But at the same time, I don't think it should necessarily be discouraged, either. For one, it can at least help to shine a light onto the issue of equal rights, giving it more media attention than it might otherwise receive, and expanding public awareness in the process. And in this case, considering the wide-reaching implications of this kind of monetary support, which can ultimately take concrete form in the shape of laws and amendments targeting and negatively impacting members of the LGBTQ community (not to mention reinforcing negative stereotypes that make their lives living hells), I think it's entirely appropriate for individuals who are against this kind of discrimination to boycott organizations that actively promote and support it and be vocal about it. Who knows, it may just help motivate people to take a wider look at what else they might be unknowingly supporting, turning uneducated consumers into more educated, socially-active citizens.

But it's not about refusing to do business with every company that gives money to something you don't like (which is most likely impossible for most of us to do); it's about public awareness and solidarity. Again, Chick-fil-A is simply a rallying point for equal rights, and I don't see why that's so hard for people to understand. During the civil rights movement, for example, the Montgomery Bus Boycott was a rallying point against segregation and racial discrimination, not an end in itself (i.e., people didn't want to ruin buses, as they depended on them; they simply were protesting racial segregation on the public transit systems and in general). And the same is true here, except the Chick-fil-A boycott is a rallying point against the denial of equal rights and discrimination based upon sexual orientation. It may not have as much of an impact, of course, but the same principle is at work. It's just one of many tactics, not an end in itself.

Last but not least, I think it should be pointed out that most of the groups being given money by Chick-fil-A aren't 'charities,' as some people mistakenly believe. The Family Research Council, for example, isn't a charity; it's a lobbying group that advocates against LGBT rights, abortion, divorce, embryonic stem-cell research, the theory that global warming is the result of human activity, and pornography. Moreover, many of the ideas expressed by the FRC and/or its top representatives are extremely anti-gay and even outright false (e.g., see their entry in the Southern Poverty Law Center's "18 Anti-Gay Groups and Their Propaganda"). They're not just about supporting 'traditional marriage'; they're about attacking the LGBTQ community simply for being who they are.

The only real criticism of the whole thing I've found compelling so far is from Slate's J. Bryan Lowder, who recently wrote in regard to the shallowness of consumer activism itself: "As the culture wars heat up in the months preceding the Presidential election and various gay marriage ballot referenda, our assumptions about how we can effect change demand interrogation. Do we, to borrow a phrase from Chasin, really want our citizenship to be located squarely in the marketplace? Is affirming the moral and political influence of corporations really the precedent we want to set? Instead of—or at least in addition to—boycotting and kissing at Chick-fil-A, wouldn't our energies be better spent working to dismantle the corrupt system that allows businesses to mess about in politics in the first place?" I don't know about anyone else, but I can definitely say amen to that.

where's the ltv?

A friend of mine posted this article on Facebook today, and I think the author presents some interesting, if rather stridently presented, points.

For one, modern, predominately academic critics of capitalism do seem to find themselves between a rock and hard place when it comes to confronting capitalism without at the same time supporting neoliberal policies aimed at reducing the state that ultimately target and negatively impact the working class via their reduction and/or elimination of state welfare and safety programs. As a result, they find themselves in the uncomfortable (and unenviable) position of "siding with the nation state against the historical process bound up with capitalism," and in the process, supporting state welfare and safety programs and its management of social capital along with the state itself, which ultimately represents the interests of the capitalist class and not that of labour. (I know it's something I have a difficult time reconciling in my own politics.)

Another salient point is the relative absence of Marx's labour theory of value in most of the analyses and critiques of the current crisis, and I agree that one of the things that should be at the forefront of any socialist response to the current crisis, and capitalism in general, is a demand for the reduction of labour hours.

I think the author makes similar albeit less stringently stated points in their series of articles titled "The Black Hole: Marxism, the State and the Social Revolution": "The Black Hole: Marxism, the State and the Social Revolution," "The Black Hole: Marxism, the State and the Social Revolution (2)," and "The Black Hole: Marxism, the State and the Social Revolution (3)."

human values > $

As I was watching a recently posted video on David Harvey's website today, I was struck by how much it seemed to resonate with an article I happened to read earlier in the day from the March, 2011 issue of the Smithsonian titled "What the Luddites Really Fought Against." Both the article and the video, The End of Stupidity in the Face of Capitalism, share a somewhat similar message, which, as it's expressed in the article, is that "it's possible to live well with technology—but only if we continually question the ways it shapes our lives." But more importantly, that to truly live well, we must stand up "against technologies [and one could easily add economic systems] that put money or convenience above other human values." And in doing so, "it may help, every now and then, to ask which of our modern machines [and production systems] General and Eliza Ludd [and critics of capitalism like Marx] would choose to break. And which they would use to break them."

guilt by association: mmcarthyism 2.0?

The potential ramifications of what this article is implying are chilling to anyone familiar with the history of McCarthyism. This article is implying, and not subtly might I add, that the Feds were unable to take action and prevent this racist asshole from shooting a bunch of people in a Sikh temple, despite being 'looked at' multiple times over the past decade, because they're "prohibited under federal law from collecting information on U.S. citizens not suspected of committing a crime" (as if they don't already do that anyway). Cue arguments against Sen. Merkley's Protect America's Privacy Act and for more intrusive government powers to spy on American citizens suspected of, well, pretty much anything.

What supporters of this might not realize (or do and actually support) is that this will make it even easier for state and local agencies to spy on and harass anyone who doesn't fit the mold of the perfect Americans citizen, including Muslims, anarchists, etc. The NYPD has already taken upon itself the task of spying on Muslims in New Jersey, saying that it's a necessary safeguard against future terrorism (as if all Muslims are terrorists); and the FBI seems perfectly able and willing to raid houses in search of anarchist literature because a few people wearing black broke some windows and slashed some tires. But what if the government could legally collect and store data about citizens, like what books they purchase from Amazon or what kind of deli they get their meat from? It would make their jobs that much easier, because they wouldn't even have to make the pretenses of investigating legitimate threats to public safety; they could just point to these items and activities as probable cause in and of themselves. And if that doesn't worry you, just imagine the extent of the witch-hunts during the 1950s if McCarthy and Hoover had the kind of surveillance capabilities we have now. Anyone thinking of buying Debt: The First 5,000 Years or halal meat better watch out.

the revolt of angels

Just discovered this literary gem from China Miéville's list of 50 fantasy and science fiction works that socialists should read. I'm surprised I haven't read it already considering its main themes, which include anti-authoritarianism, Gnosticism, Satan as a free-thinking, humanitarian revolutionary, and an ending evoking the likes of Leo Tolstoy (esp. his letter, "To the Working People") and the Buddha (e.g., SN 3.15 and SN 3.23), who both advised against neglecting the evil lurking in our hearts and minds in the pursuit of challenging evil in the world since, in their view, external manifestations of evil can never truly be conquered if we don't also seek to eradicate the seeds of evil present within ourselves. A bit dated, but still a humorous and witty piece of satire.

To some extent, I think one can even compare the spirit of Ialdabaoth (characterized by jealous, violent, quarrelsome, and greedy tendencies) in The Revolt of Angels, along with Tolstoy's "causes of the wretchedness of [the working people's] position" and the Buddha's three qualities of the world that "arise for harm, stress, and discomfort," to the deeply ingrained psychological roots underlying the Marxian concept of false consciousness (i.e., the "ideology dominating the consciousness of exploited groups and classes which at the same time justifies and perpetuates their exploitation") in the form of fetishized greed (rational self-interest) and competition that also serve to help support the cycle of reactionary violence of people against revolutionary activity and thought, even if the ideas of France, Tolstoy, and the Buddha are ultimately more conservative and idealistic than revolutionary from a historical materialist perspective.

sunday afternoon

"Sunday Afternoon"

On an unexpected adventure,
I look around at the cast of characters that surround me:
friends, acquaintances, college students, artists,
mothers, fathers, children,
a guy who looks like a sailor, and not in a good way...
I wonder about their lives,
about the choices they've made and whether they're happy with who they are;
where they are;
and who they happen to be there with.

A coffee in my hand,
comforting me and shaking me out of my waking slumber.
Tony's niece doesn't remember meeting me.
I contemplate how many times that's happened,
how many people have failed to recognize me,
even though I always seem to remember them.
Am I really that forgettable?
Perhaps.
But restlessness leads us on to another adventure,
and a walk along a river of memories.

The city is full of contradictions.
A new path along the river paralleled by abandoned factories;
emergency phones meters apart,
while the rest of the city has long forsaken 911,
because they know from experience that no one ever comes.
One coney island we suspect is run by racists,
the other has a dungeon for a bathroom,
yet all three of us find the latter infinitely more inviting.
Miley Cyrus stares down at me from the wall,
most likely judging me as I inhale my ketchup-covered coneys.

Yes, I put ketchup on my coney dogs.
And so does Tony,
both of us growing up in the heart of downtown.
I guess it's a thing,
not putting ketchup on coney dogs.
I'm sure all the trendy hipsters would disapprove.
And I chuckle inwardly at the ridiculousness of it all.
Did Miley Cyrus really eat here?

The taste of onions accompanies thoughts about friendship,
about what that word really means.
Who are these people I'm with?
Why did I pick them over what I was originally planning on doing?
I conclude it means the people I consider my family,
the people who I trust and would sacrifice anything for,
even my time,
which has become very precious to me as of late.
It explains why I consider so few people my friends:
I've only got so much to give.

And as quickly and unexpectedly as it began,
I find myself being rushed back home,
and to my evening shift at the cafe,
empty and waiting for the motely assortment of poets and musicians to arrive.
A new adventure,
and something else to take my mind off the melancholy this city provokes,
as I watch it struggle to rise from the ashes,
like some gritty, urban phoenix.

occupy buddhism: or why the dalai lama is a marxist

An interesting article exploring the rather unlikely partnership of Buddhism and Marxism, and the need for Buddhism to consciously "enter the movement of the real and be engaged with the struggle to end suffering, and man's inhumanity to man" instead of continuing its transformation into "a fetish that ultimately enables the status quo to maintain its continuing control, dominance, and expansion":

Occupy Buddhism: Or Why the Dalai Lama is a Marxist

Smithers asks, "Does [Buddhism] have the legs of an emancipatory religion, a religion of liberation with the power to transform societies and cultures?" and seems to answer in the affirmative. And from my own experience, I'm inclined to agree. Buddhism definitely has that potential.

Before I became interested in Buddhism, for example, I didn't really have any political-economic views to speak of. In fact, I was more or less completely uninterested in politics whatsoever. After years of studying and practicing Buddhism, however, I began to take more of an active interest in the world. This was partially due to cultivating compassion and being more sensitive the suffering of others, as well as Buddhism's encouragement to analyze our actions and their effects in the world in an effort to make ourselves and the world a better place. And in this aspect, I've found the seemingly unrelated aims of Buddhism and Marxism to be quite complementary.

To me, the main difference between the approaches of Buddhism and Marxism is one of focus; whereas the Buddha's focus was primarily on how to liberate the individual from their mental suffering by mastering the process of 'I-making and my-making' involved with our conception of self, Marx's focus, the bodhisattva that he was, was primarily on how to liberate society from its suffering and alienation by changing the material conditions that support it.

But the article isn't about turning Buddhism into some kind of revolutionary political philosophy; it's about applying the ideals of Buddhism in all that we do, which for me (and others like the Dalai Lama) includes trying to help society overcome and advance beyond what Thorstein Veblen called 'the predatory phase' of human development. So for me, instead of canceling the full impact of reality and making me "indulgent, pleasure-seeking, distancing, and largely apathetic to worldwide suffering and misery," Buddhism has done the exact opposite, leading me to become more disciplined, involved, open, socially engaged, and sensitive to worldwide suffering and misery.

oakland, the last refuge of radical america

Just finished reading what amounts to Jonathan Mahler's reactionary critique of Occupy Oakland and radicalism (i.e., socio-political movements aimed at fundamentally changing the structure of society through revolutionary means) in general.

The first paragraph immediately sets the tone and assures the reader: this article isn't going to be kind towards Occupy Oakland. And Mahler doesn't disappoint, seemingly doing his best throughout the article to point out the socio-economic conditions that motivated much of the Occupy Oakland movement only insofar as it serves to help blame the 'radical' residents of Oakland for the existence of poverty, high crime rates, and a dysfunctional government, and then to repeatedly smear and condemn them for getting involved with a movement openly angry at the systematic inequalities of capitalism and willing to confront the system head on—painting them all as little more than a bunch of stoned, violently radical nihilists comparable to 'the Menace' of the Hell's Angels, as Hunter S. Thompson famously called them in the opening line of his first book, as if there's little difference between the two groups.

Moreover, Mahler's piece as a whole seems to assume the superiority of neoliberalism to any of the potential alternatives — all but praising its assured victory over the challenges of 'radical America' and the 'extreme' politics of activists like Boots Riley (despite neoliberalism's obvious failings), calling the attempts of those who dare to dream otherwise "an extreme exercise in the denial of the reality that is at their door" — and implying that any serious challenge to neoliberalism is doomed to failure, ending with "the Menace's last stand."

However, I think Mahler's unrelentingly hostile portrayal of Occupy Oakland and repeated comparisons to the Hell's Angels echoes the Lynch Report, which Thompson felt vastly exaggerated the menace of the Hell's Angels and misrepresented their lifestyle.