richard sherman: thug is now 'the accepted way of calling somebody the n-word'

From the Huffington Post:

Richard Sherman: Thug Is Now 'The Accepted Way Of Calling Somebody The N-Word'

I think Richard Sherman has a point. Thug is increasingly being used to describe black men in a derogatory way, often implying that said individuals are uneducated, violent, and someone to be afraid of. Rarely have I heard that termed used to describe someone who isn't black. Think about it.

To use Sherman's example, white + fighting = that's just hockey; black + smack talking = thug. Hm.

Trayvon Martin was portrayed as just a thug in a hoodie, and his killer was basically acquitted of murder because of it. Hm.

Justin Bieber, on the other hand, who was recently arrested for drunk driving, is just a 'normal kid,' a 'troubled teen,' even when he spits in his neighbor's face and threatens to kill him. Hm. Nope, no black guy thug here.

happy mlk, jr. day

Today celebrates the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., one of American history's most influential figures. (In fact, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is the only federal holiday that honours a private American citizen, and only one of three that honours a specific person.) King is most known for his "I Have A Dream" speech, and for being a prominent civil rights leader, but he was much more than that. He was also a radical activist, pacifist, and revolutionary who became a tireless advocate for the most downtrodden, oppressed, and marginalized among us.

The day he was assassinated, for example, King was in Memphis, Tennessee, supporting a strike of black sanitation workers who were fighting against unequal wages and poor working conditions, as well as for union recognition. King wasn't just a champion for civil rights, he was also a champion for economic justice, freedom, and peace, using his style of nonviolent direct action to fight against racism and the Vietnam War as much as for labour rights and major economic reforms.

For me, King's revolutionary spirit is characterized by these words, which were given in a speech at Riverside Church in New York City on April 4, 1967, exactly one year before his assassination:

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a 'thing-oriented' society to a 'person-oriented' society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

I'd always known that King was a revolutionary figure in American history due to his well-publicized fight for civil rights, but it wasn't until I heard those words for the first time that I finally realized just how revolutionary he truly was, that his dream his "children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character" was intimately tied to his realization that "the problem of racism, the problem of economic exploitation, and the problem of war are all tied together." And it wasn't just in the last few years of his life that he held such radical views as many assume. In a 1952 letter to his soon-to-be wife, Coretta Scott, a young King writes things like:

By the way (to turn to something more intellectual) I have just completed Bellamy's Looking Backward. It was both stimulating and fascinating. There can be no doubt about it. Bellamy had the insight of a social prophet as well as the fact finding mind of the social scientist. I welcomed the book because much of its content is in line with my basic ideas. I imagine you already know that I am much more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic. And yet I am not so opposed to capitalism that I have failed to see its relative merits. It started out with a noble and high motive, viz, to block the trade monopolies of nobles, but like most human systems it [fell] victim to the very thing it was revolting against. So today capitalism has outlived its usefulness. It has brought about a system that takes necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes. So I think Bellamy is right in seeing the gradual decline of capitalism.

Before his untimely death, King was helping to organize the Poor People's Campaign along with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a national campaign designed to address the issues of economic justice and housing for the poor in the US. Months before the march, King told reporters, "I think that the time has come, if we can't get anything done otherwise, to camp right here in Washington just as they did with the Bonus March—just camp here and stay here by the thousands and thousands until the Congress of our nation and the federal government will do something to deal with the problem [of poverty]"—a tactic that was similarly adopted by a budding Occupy movement 43 years later in protest against social and economic inequality following the 2008 global financial crisis.

King was in the middle of crisscrossing the country, trying to mobilize what he called a "multiracial army of the poor" to march on Washington to demand an Economic Bill of Rights, when he took that fateful detour to help support the striking Memphis sanitation workers. In King's absence, the march on Washington was led by Ralph Abernathy, his wife, Coretta Scott King, and Jesse Jackson, and culminated in what became known as Resurrection City, an encampment on the National Mall housing somewhere between 3,000 and 5,000 people.

King was undoubtedly a brave man. He received numerous death threats, but he was willing to put his life on the line for what he believed in, never letting the hatred of others deter him from doing what he thought was just, right, and for the common good—perhaps in part because he knew that his death wouldn't be in vain, that the momentum of change was too great to be stopped by the death of one individual. As King said in a speech he gave the night before he was assassinated:

And then I got to Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers? Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

Like most of the people we tend to commemorate, whether via national holidays or annual acknowledgments, King wasn't perfect. He had his flaws and vices, and he made mistakes just like everyone else. But unlike other giants of history who I personally don't think deserve our admiration and praise (e.g., Christopher Columbus), he does, if only because he did more than most to actively change the world for the better, fighting against ills of society like economic exploitation, inequality, racism, militarism, and nationalism. And in a world where people often assume that violence is the only effective means of change, King showed us by example just how powerful nonviolence can potentially be in combating everything from racial inequality to social injustice in all of its forms.

As we honour his legacy today, it's my hope that his example will inspire us to not be afraid to make a difference, to courageously dive in and get our hands dirty working alongside our brothers and sisters all over the world in trying to shape a better future. King saw with profound depth the mutually-dependent relationships that underlie this fragile thing we call life, and encouraged us to see them as well—a realization he believed necessary for peace on Earth:

It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. We are made to live together because of the interrelated structure of reality. Did you ever stop to think that you can't leave for your job in the morning without being dependent on most of the world? You get up in the morning and go to the bathroom and reach over for the sponge, and that's handed to you by a Pacific islander. You reach for a bar of soap, and that's given to you at the hands of a Frenchman. And then you go into the kitchen to drink your coffee for the morning, and that's poured into your cup by a South American. And maybe you want tea: that's poured into your cup by a Chinese. Or maybe you're desirous of having cocoa for breakfast, and that's poured into your cup by a West African. And then you reach over for your toast, and that's given to you at the hands of an English-speaking farmer, not to mention the baker. And before you finish eating breakfast in the morning, you’ve depended on more than half of the world. This is the way our universe is structured, this is its interrelated quality. We aren't going to have peace on earth until we recognize this basic fact of the interrelated structure of all reality.

Although the Establishment often tries to adopt and sanitize popular radical figures and the things they stood for, people like MLK Jr., Nelson Mandela, etc. should be remembered for being the radical revolutionaries they were. They challenged the status quo. They challenged their governments and social institutions that support things like racism and economic injustice. They challenged the ideas and prejudices of their generation and those before them. And through their struggles, and the struggles of countless others fighting for the same things, they've helped to change the world.

duck dynasty

Since it's all everyone seems to be talking about, my thoughts on the Duck Dynasty thing:

1. The First Amendment protects you from the government, not from the social consequences of what you say. From a purely legal standpoint, if you do something that can potentially hurt your employer financially, they generally have the right to suspend or fire you (especially if it's in your contract), and other people have the right to think you're a shithead. The Duckdude hasn't been arrested for it (like Eugene Debs was for speaking out against war during WWI), so his First Amendment rights haven't been violated.

I don't personally think people should be fired simply because they hold certain beliefs, even if they're stupid ones; but if a paid employee publicly says something that may damage their employer's brand or those of their sponsors, said employer has legal grounds for discipline or dismissal (my company has a similar policy as much as I disagree with it), and the public has a right to think you're a shithead. Neither is a violation of the First Amendment.

2. I think things like bigotry, racism, sexism, etc. should be confronted wherever they're found. For one, these ideas and attitudes have very real consequences for a lot of people who happen to be gay, female, transgendered, non-white, etc., and who often have to face harassment, discrimination, and worse simply because of who they are. People shouldn't get a pass for being bigoted, racist, sexist, etc. simply because of their age, where they grew up, or anything else for that matter. (Don't get upset, he's old/Baptist/southern/whatever after all. Hatin' on queers is just their thing.)

That said, I think these kinds of situations require more than just indignation and outrage; they require us to confront these realities and have a discussion about them in order to help shine a light onto their continued existence and help motivate us to actively challenge them wherever we find them hiding, especially within ourselves. We're all conditioned on some level by our surrounding and upbringing. We all have prejudices of some sort. The Duckdude shouldn't be persecuted for what he said, but used as another catalyst for further challenging and changing negative societal attitudes towards the LGBT community.

What is progress, really, if not our ability to transcend our conditionings and prejudices?

in defense of 'entitlements'

I think this article makes a good point re: the left embracing the term 'entitlement' in the sense that, "The discourse of entitlement is a discourse of rights, of human agents claiming what’s theirs instead of asking permission from the powerful":

In Defense of ‘Entitlements’

Certainly, from a socialist perspective, entitlement programs shouldn't be some sort of end goal, but like labour laws, rent control, single-payer healthcare, UBIs, etc., they're a useful tool in helping support the working class in the here and now (under the current mode of production) while at the same time chipping away at the idea that only people doing x for y amount of time and/or for z amount of money are worthy of eating, having shelter, having access to healthcare, enjoying free time, etc. Our society is indeed a twisted one if we truly hold that only those rare few with sufficient material means thereby earn access to "the rudiments of life" (i.e., food, healthcare, shelter, etc.) while the rest of humanity is SOL.

The neoliberal narrative is that you should distrust poor people, but we should not only question that narrative, we should question the very basis for it.

pythagoreanism 2.0?

An intriguing article about an intriguing discovery:

Scientists Discover a Jewel at the Heart of Quantum Physics

The description of the newly discovered geometric object, the amplituhedron, its ability to simplify complex mathematical formulas, and its existence's suggestive consequences re: a possible new geometric approach to both particle interactions and the structure and evolution of the universe itself brings to mind some old Pythagorean ideas about math, nature, and harmony.

In particular, the description of a "'master amplituhedron' with an infinite number of facets" whose volume theoretically "represents the total amplitude of all physical processes" and its relationship to 'lower-dimensional amplituhedra' that "live on the faces of this master structure" and which "correspond to interactions between finite numbers of particles" is reminiscent of Pythagorean ideas re: the 'infinite' (apeiron) and its relationship to the 'limited' (peiron).

The former suggests that the laws of the universe are the way that they are because of the way the master geometry of the universe is shaped, while the latter suggests a harmonic and mathematical order to the way the limited takes shape or unfolds from the unlimited, emphasizing the role of numbers in understanding the universe, which in my opinion makes quantum physics sound almost like a type of neo-Pythagoreanism.

All they need to do at this point is to incorporate vegetarianism and a theory of rebirth into the mix and we'll have Pythagoreanism 2.0.

zarathustra, the unintentional capitalist

While Nietzsche's distaste for capitalism is relatively well-known, it struck me how easily the chapter "War and Warriors" in Thus Spake Zarathustra, which is essentially about the way once should approach the predominately internal process of struggle and self-overcoming needed in the quest to becoming a Superman (and possibly a stab at German militarism just for good measure), can be interpreted as expounding and extolling the underlying philosophy of the rational, self-interested capitalist (especially if one replaces the terms 'man' with 'labourer' and 'Superman' with 'capitalist'). To me, the imagery shouts 'competition!', 'accumulation for accumulation's sake!', and 'don't bemoan the success of fellow capitalists more profitable than you, their class interests are still your class interests!' as much as it does 'struggle for knowledge!', 'overcome yourself for overcoming's sake!', and 'be proud of your enemy and their success because their success is also yours!' I don't know. I'm sure that wasn't his intention, but that's my perception of it, at any rate.

revolutionary paramnesia

I was watching a video called "Myths of the Founding Fathers" the other day and it struck me as kind of ironic how many people, whether liberal, conservative, or otherwise, scoff at the mention of Marx or socialism while at the same time having nothing but praise and reverence for the Founding Fathers and the American Revolution. Don't they realize that the Founding Fathers are themselves guilty of that dreaded Marxist 'e' word, expropriation?

For example, in chapter 32 of Capital, Marx, writing about the historical tendency of capitalist accumulation, describes the logic process whereby the "the expropriators are expropriated" due to the "monopoly of capital" becoming a "fetter upon the mode of production" and leading to a point where the "centralization of the means of production and socialization of labour" becomes incompatible with their capitalist integument, sounding "the knell of capitalist private property." At the very mention of the expropriators being expropriated, however, such people tend to vociferously object and sing the praises of our fair republic, invoking the sanctity of private property rights and condemning expropriation as theft.

But if you think about it, the Founding Fathers and their selective respect for property rights did just that—they expropriated the private property of Britain despite the enormous amount of capital put into establishing, supporting, and managing colonial settlements by Britain and companies like the London and Bristol Company, Hudson's Bay Company, etc. The only real difference between the two is that the American Revolution was a relatively conservative, bourgeois revolution of wealthy, ruling-class elites that itself feared a revolution of the propertyless, labouring class, whereas what Marx was talking about is a revolution of labour over capital.

While many colonists remained loyal to Britain or else remained neutral during the conflict, it can't be denied that a large portion also supported declaring independence from Britain because they felt they had more interests in common with the American revolutionaries and the Enlightenment ideals that fueled, or at the very least justified, their fight for independence. "Sure, your property interests are our interests, plus we love liberty and hate taxation without representation too!" But this isn't all that surprising considering that the ruling class, owning to their control over the means of material and mental production, utilize these in such a way as to promote their own ideas and interests, or as Marx puts it in The German Ideology, "the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force."

So our country was founded up various forms of expropriation, from the expropriation of Native American land to that of the private property of Britain. And in the process, we merely exchanged one capitalist ruling class for another. One could argue, then, that the revolution itself is in a sense incomplete, which reminds me of an interesting article I read a while back connecting the political emancipation realized via the American Revolution, and the 'neo-Roman' republicanism associated with the Enlightenment ideals of the Founding Fathers underlying it, to the logically consistent extension of those emancipatory ideals and actions into the economic sphere, suggesting that true independence won't be won until we're liberated from the structural and personal forms of dependence that characterize wage-labour under capitalism.

At the very least, I think this look at how segments of the American working class extended these emancipatory ideals and actions into the economic sphere offers present-day socialists, etc. in the US an interesting rhetorical basis from which to argue that both the philosophical and political foundation of US republicanism, championed by conservatives and liberals, are actually more potentially revolutionary than they're willing to admit, limiting the concept of freedom to one small area of civil society. That "To demand that 'there is to be a people in industry, as in government' [is] simply to argue that the cooperative commonwealth [is] nothing more than the culmination and completion of the American Revolution's republican aspirations."

In other words, the revolution isn't won yet!