we need a hero

To be honest, I'm completely disheartened by everything that's going on right now, from the lack of justice for the deaths of black people by the police across the country to the lack of political leadership on the part of Democrats against Trump and the dangerous threat he and what he represents poses to this country, and especially to women, BIPOC, immigrants, and the LGBTQ community.

After Trump suggested getting rid of ballots and having to wait and see what happens, refusing to commit to a peaceful transition if he loses the November election, people are worried about what may happen. Nobody seems to have a plan if Trump decided to stay in power by whatever means necessary. Democrats, who are trying to also prevent another Trump-appointed Supreme Court nomination, aren't even willing to use a government shutdown as a tool, having approved a temporary budget until December. Meanwhile, people are in the streets protesting police brutality and the growing rise of a new breed of fascism in the US. But the right has their hero in Trump, as imperfect as he may be. He's a focal point for their right-wing nationalism and has captured the populist fires burning in the hearts of many working people in America disillusioned by the status quo. And the opposition, well, they seem like they're a deer caught in headlights, better at wringing their hands at the violation of norms and chastising leftists for their direct actions than mounting any actual resistance.

There doesn't seem to be an opposition leader or hero to match Trump, who, as crazy as he is, has mastered the art of having every insane thing he does and says broadcast on every media outlet. I think Democrats made a huge mistake when they picked Biden to be their electoral champion. They did so in large part because didn't want to rock the boat too much and scare away conservative Dems and the mythical moderate Republicans they think they can win over in big enough margins since they've inexplicably decided to battle leftists and progressives with all their might, except it turns out the fucking boat has been hijacked by fascist pirates and what we really need is someone willing to lead the charge to retake the boat and give everyone healthcare. Someone like Bernie would have been a much better option. Not only are his progressive ideas like Medicare for All favoured by a majority of voters, which would help him cross party lines and feed some of that populist hunger, but he was much more focused on organizing and movement building than simply winning the election, something we desperately need at this moment.

Let's face it, Biden excites no one, and he's a piss poor leader in my opinion. Working people are trying to carry on the fight against police brutality and fascism in the streets, but the police and Democratic leaders are making it difficult. Also, labour and spiritual leaders aren't helping organize and lead as much they did in past social justice and civil rights movements. To sustain the kind of mass resistance needed to do what they did in, say, the '60s requires solid organization, people able to inspire and keep morale up when things are their darkest and most violent, and the ability to help support people logistically and legally when they inevitably get arrested (e.g., the NLG). In a lot of areas, it seems they're lacking many of those things. People are out on the streets, yes, but often don't have any real plan or objective besides standing their ground against police for as long as they can. And I think this movement could really use leaders to help focus these protests, organize actions, and get more people to join them for extended periods of time. I definitely think we need more union support out there (also strike actions), more preachers in the vein of MLK and Malcolm X, more political leaders in the streets, and more groups organizing and supporting these protests.

We have BLM and people who are committed anti-fascists, and they're doing amazing work right now, but they're not to the level of SCLC yet in terms of what they did organizationally. Being at these protests, it feels like it's a little too much a leaderless movement at times, often being very chaotic and mainly involving police encounters and not much else (although the collection and distribution of food and supplies for those in need has been one great thing). I think that kind of confrontation is important, especially with the police increasingly suppressing protest movements, but I don't think it's sustainable. We need help and guidance and inspiration as well as our fierce independence and anger. I think that's one reason Occupy fizzled out after the police smashed camps. People didn't know what to do next, and the momentum just wasn't there to regroup or try something different. Most people simply went home. And I fear that may happen here too, unless the police just keep killing black people and getting off, because that's the main fuel for this movement at the moment. But if that calms down, then I think these protests will shrink and fade until the next spark.

There's nothing wrong with having leaderless movements, of course. And Eugene Debs had a good point when he said, "Too long have the workers of the world waited for some Moses to lead them out of bondage. I would not lead you out if I could; for if you could be led out, you could be led back again. I would have you make up your minds there is nothing that you cannot do for yourselves." And often times, when the leaders are killed, movements can lose their hope and direction and die with them. But sometimes being leaderless can lead groups to be disorganized, so their actions aren't directed and the momentum is difficult to maintain because so many of those involved aren't on the same page. What good leaders can sometimes help to do is focus and organize movements. That doesn't mean they have to direct everything like a shepherd to sheep, but they can help to keep things going in a certain direction and towards a certain goal. If the people involved agree to an idea or tactic, they can help guide the movement to stay on course when they start to get too off track. I'm not saying every moment or movement needs designated leaders, and I think that many things should be decided by those involved democratically or through consensus. But I do think leaders have their place, whether they're political, spiritual, or involved in labour.

Eugene Debs didn't want to be a Moses, but he was certainly a political and labour leader who inspired and organized hundreds of thousands of people to fight for labour rights and socialism. He was a hero for so many in his own time and beyond. In that sense, it's not so much about hierarchy and authority, but more about helping steer the boat. If the movement isn't already characterized by strong organization, sense of purpose, and direction, such as a bunch of disparate people gathering in the streets every night over a common cause or adversary, then it runs the risk of having too many leaders, with everyone wanting to go in their own direction and trying to lead everyone else along with them, pulling things apart. I saw it with Occupy, at least, and worry the same fate will befall this configuration of mass civil unrest/disobedience.

Right now, Trump is steering the boat towards a rocky reef, threatening to dash it to pieces rather than relinquish control. And the ones in the greatest position to stop him and wrestle away the wheel, the so-called resistance, are hemming and hawing and fighting those on their side who are the most committed to action. And at times like these, I wish we had a hero of our own.

thoughts on a social dilemma

I watched A Social Dilemma on Netflix last night, and it made me want to write a long post on the connections between the negative side effects and manipulation of social media and capitalism, since the drive to monetize people's attention and changes in their behaviours is the primary reason these products are the way they are and do what they do. But I really think Justin Rosenstein, near the end of the film at about the 1:24:50 mark, delivers about the best take on this connection without specifically referencing capitalism itself. I think the whole thing is worth watching and listening to and, but here's my transcription of what he says:

"We live in a world in which a tree is worth more, financially, dead than alive, in a world in which a whale is worth more dead than alive. For so long as our economy works in that way and corporations go unregulated, they're going to continue to destroy trees, to kill whales, to mine the earth and, and continue to pull oil out of the ground, even though we know that it is destroying the planet and we know that it's going to leave a worse world for future generations. This is short-term thinking based on this religion of profit at all costs, as if somehow, magically, each corporation acting in its selfish interest is going to produce the best results. This has been affecting the environment for a long time. What's frightening, and what hopefully is the last straw that will make us wake up as a civilization to how flawed this theory has been in the first place, is to see that now we're the tree, we're the whale. Our attention can be mined. We are more profitable to a corporation if we're spending time staring at a screen, staring at an ad, than if we're spending that time living our life in a rich way."

And I 100% agree, and would go even further to say that the same has always been true under capitalism, except instead of just doing that in terms of exploiting our labour-power during the work day, they're now able to do it almost every waking hour of the day. And it's going to be incredibly hard, if not impossible, to change this under the logic of capitalism. That's why I'm so critical of it. It compels the maximization of profit over everything. It compels the accumulation of capital, and with it, social power, into fewer and fewer hands. It turns everything into a commodity to be exploited and mined for profit. And to change that logic, we have to change the system and the social relations of production that currently exist.

A huge issue that relates to this is the contradictions inherent to private property rights and how it's never really the community or aggregate of users or workers, with a few exceptions such as strong unions, who have a say in the shape and operation of any platform, service, forum, workplace, etc. It's a huge area of tension. Owners have full control; others struggle to have their voices heard in a meaningful way. Which is why I think whatever we create to challenge and replace these platforms, and capitalist social relations in general, must allow for some community/worker control and engagement. And in the case of something as massive as FB or Twitter, possibly a form of nationalization as unpopular as that might be. If you live in a system with logic that drives most owners towards profit and monetization, you get what we have now. And it seems so bad because of the speed in which it's gone bad.

In the past, the speed of serious issues of capital consolidation and widespread negative effects were often slower in accumulation as they spread and became more commonplace. But the exponential rate of processing power, among other things, has made these problems arise faster and spread faster than most people's understanding or our electoral system can keep up with, especially since that system was purposefully made to be slow to change to begin with. In addition, any changes that are made to these platforms and within corporations in general are at the whims of owners, and most are geared towards what makes these things addictive and manipulative and so profitable in the first place. And even the very existence of these platforms, services, forums, etc. are at their whims. In the blink of an eye, they could simply shut them down and kill/displace communities, lay off workers, etc. And whatever arises in their place will be subjected to the same logic and financial incentives to grow, increase use, increase the manipulation of users, increase profits, etc.

I think the main question is, what alternatives to community ownership and control are there? If you're going to regulate these things, we still have to contend with the fact that these companies help write the legislation and/or lobby for loopholes and other means of defanging them. Even in highly regulated areas, such as media companies by the FCC and agencies of that nature, there's a massive amount of consolidation and essentially monopolization. Most local stations are now owned by these media giants (e.g., Sinclair Broadcasting Group), affecting everything including the kind of news that people see on a local level as well as national. That doesn't necessarily mean that every user should have a say in something like code writing, for example, just as you wouldn't let just anybody walk into a hospital to be a nurse. But I certainly think we need to move in the direction of more socialization.

So, for instance, workers at places like Google should all have some amount of ownership and control over their labour and the products of it (since that labour and those products have serious, real world effects), having some leverage and decision-making abilities besides having the choice of doing their jobs or leaving. (Much of the criticism of these platforms comes from within, but those who offer it are often powerless to do anything without the approval of the CEO, board, stockholders, etc., who have no financial incentives to change them in ways that are more healthy and ethical.) Another level would be mandating or at least normalizing some levels of community/user ownership or decision-making and finding ways to prevent or discourage the distorted views individuals get through algorithm-oriented content orders designed for maximum time usage, ad revenue, etc. I think some of that could be implemented through legislation, but I definitely think that workers and users themselves need to be empowered as well.

Coincidentally, a friend of mine just wrote two blog posts about something similar, albeit from a different POV inspired by a section of Nadia Eghbal's Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software, that of the difference between a platform and a community. It's worth reading if you have the time: part 1, "platform syndicate" and part 2, "black box." I'm glad there are at least people in tech like him thinking about and trying to work on these problems, because I very much doubt the radical changes I suggest will happen. So it'll be up to people like him to try and stave off the worst possible scenario.