OK, not news. But I don't mean it just as an insult, or even "stuff I don't like". In 1995 Umberto Eco's essay "Ur-Fascism" (https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/umberto-eco-ur-fascism) laid out 14 points by which future fascists might be known. Trump ticks almost all of them. So in this series of posts I'm going to go through his points and check Trumpism on each one. Note that I say "Trumpism" rather than just Trump, because Trumpism is larger than just the one man.
/1
Newspeak, an impoverished vocabulary and elementary syntax to prevent complex or critical reasoning.
Trump has a habit of making speeches in half sentences. His followers have used the word “woke” extensively, often without being able to define it. All opposing points of view are dismissed as “fake news” and “lies”.
Eco has given a precise description of the anatomy of fascism. By measuring Trumpism against Eco's points I have shown that it meets the criteria laid out, with the exception of "permanent warfare" (point 9).
So saying "Trump is Fascist" is not mere polemic, or a statement of opposition. It is a simple statement of fact.
WRT "permanent warfare", Eco also notes that movements tend to accumulate more fascist aspects over time, so it probably won't be long.
For #Pride Month, I'd like to mention #Babylon5. The show ran from 1993 to 1998, and made a point of not making a point of gay relationships. Susan Ivanova (serving military officer) had a lesbian affair with Talia Winters, and no other character even blinked.
Later on two straight men on a secret mission found themselves using "newlyweds" as a cover story, because two men on their honeymoon would fit right in.
The message was clear: in the future being gay is 100% unremarkable. In the 90s!
Jessie Gender (trans) and Vera Wylde (genderfluid) of Council of Geeks have a free weekly podcast where they break down an episode of Babylon5 each week and offer a bit of an LGBTQ+ perspective where applicable. they're up to season 3 episode 18, but you can go back to episode 1 and start there, or ever further back for a complete breakdown of Farscape
@tokensane great points, and I'd also like to add all of the little queer allegories inherent in B5's depiction of telepaths - a small minority who are born differently than others, typically find out they're different in adolescence, aren't allowed to touch each other, and who need to either register with the government, go to jail, or take Alan Turing-style blockers that slowly kill them.
it's no coincidence that ivanova and talia are both teeps, that mundanes seem to mistrust and avoid them so much, that there's such strong "queer polycule" vibes in Byron's group in S5 (including a pair of women who are shown visibly physically close to one another and described as "closer than sisters"), or that the Shadows, a thinly veiled Nazi allegory, are depicted as previously having tried to commit genocide against teeps (including having wiped them all out from the Narn homeworld).
like, especially for a show run by a cishet guy in the '90s, there's so much nuanced understanding of queer issues and history present there. B5 seriously does a better job at that than most modern TV shows.
@tokensane What does this “directly” you keep using mean? Does a company with a large majority of stock owned by the state count? If not, I think it is very rare that the state would own railway infra and operate trains directly as a government agency. And I see no reason why it would be a good idea. But state-owned I infra is good.
1/11
This is going to be my first long-form post. I don't know if this will go anywhere, but I want to get this off my chest.
The UK has a problem with sewage in its seas and rivers. The Standard Model of this on the Left is that greedy privatised water companies have focused on paying shareholders rather than investing in infrastructure. Hence we are in a literal mess.
This narrative is seriously incomplete, verging on wrong.
10/11
Paradoxically, the current outrage at the government is driven by data that the government itself has now started collecting. If the Environment Agency hadn't started monitoring sewage outflows none of this political fallout would have happened. As they say, no good deed goes unpunished.
11/11
By all means call for action on sewage: God knows its long overdue. But don't fall for the myth that its all due to privatisation, and don't assume that the situation has suddenly gotten a lot worse; as far as we can tell its always been like this.
There is a line of argument I keep seeing which goes like this:
Capitalists are doing this bad thing which is hurting this group of poor people.
2 They are doing this in order to hurt the poor people because doing so maintains the capitalist power structure.
The jump from 1 to 2 bothers me. AFAICT (1) is happening because the individual capitalists are making a profit out of it, and the wider socio-legal system is letting them get away with it. (2) implies that these capitalists /1
/4 If you follow environmental news you see plenty of big companies drilling for oil, ignoring global warming. But if they were capable of joining together in mutual self interest, they would see that not drilling more oil would be in their mutual interest and so agree not to do it (capitalists need a livable planet as much as anyone).
/5 In Umberto Eco's essay on Ur-fascism he writes that fascists see their enemies as simultaneously too strong and too weak. Socialists seem to see their enemies as simultaneously too clever and too stupid. Clever enough to form complex conspiracies in pursuit of long-term goals, but at the same time too stupid to avoid sleepwalking into a disaster.
I'm migrating away from a copper landline to VoIP. When I looked for an adapter I found lots of these boxes on Amazon, under a variety of brand names inc Tonysa and Dpofirs. They are obviously all the same product, and mostly sold for £20-30.
@tokensane The genuine ones were Sipura and then rebranded to Cisco. They're a bugger to program (lots of settings and ideally you need a list of config parameters for your region), but once you've done it, they're rock solid bits of kit. We have some that have been at customers for 15+ years.
So, should the University Superannuation Scheme (pension fund for UK academics) pump even more of its members money into #thameswater to stop it collapsing? Or should it write off its investment and let the Govt pick up the pieces? @ChrisMayLA6
BBC News: Big Thames Water investor backs turnaround plans
Ha ha @tokensane you must have read my mind.... since I discovered USS is a major shareholder (and of course is currently paying my #pension) I have been wondering exactly the same thing - should they cut their (propspectve) losses or be a more active shareholder while also answering the call for capital.... and the reason I haven't posted on it is I just cannot come up with a good answer.... I can argue both ways but cannot convince myself of either 🤔
@ChrisMayLA6 I have to confess to a bit of mischievousness in making that post, but I was also genuinely interested in your opinion. I too can't see the right answer, and I don't envy the trustees their decision. Does it make a difference when it's a pension fund that is getting the profits instead of some billionaire?
Lets create a #climate meme-storm. Show people what #climatechange really means. Make it personal; it happens to people like us. You must protect your kids from it.
See following posts for more examples.
Create your own. Post to other #socialmedia. Keep pushing it.
Avoid licensed images, including stuff from news sites. They always use AP, Getty etc who have slick #copyright takedown ops.
Wikimedia and US Gov are good sources of free-to-use images. Check the details.
Captions: put a gut-punch at the top, and a call to action at the bottom. Keep it simple and emotive. If facts and logic were enough, we wouldn't have a problem.
I used #inkscape to add the captions, but there are lots of alternative meme-generator apps and web sites.
"kids" has no apostrophe in these because I wanted to leave it ambiguous whether it was singular or plural.
Souls are indivisible, and only death separates soul from body, right?
So if an #embryo acquires a #soul at the instant of conception, what about identical twins, formed when an embryo splits in two? Do they share a soul, or is one of them a soulless monster? OTOH, what about chimeras, formed when two embryos fuse, so that the resulting baby is a patchwork of cells from both? Two souls in one individual? Or what happens to the other soul?
I've tried to draw a chart showing how this happens. Start with one, and all the others follow and reinforce each other. I've highlighted #FrustratedMiddleClass just because its the commonest starting point.
Of course all these arrows can also work backwards. E.g. "Syncretistic Tradition" supports "Selective Populism". But that also means that a Selective Populism is going to cause a Tradition to accrete around it.
My personal approach is just use a word processor in outline mode. Then fill in the details.
Or if my ideas aren't that well-formed, I just start writing down everything I know and then try to shuffle stuff into some kind of order. The mere act of writing it down forces me to organise my thoughts and identifies weak points in my thinking.
TL;DR: use a word processor. Write first, organise second.