Tuesday, February 18, 2020

Things Can Get Better

"Dystopias Now" by Kim Stanley Robinson | Commune
It’s crucial to keep imagining that things could get better, and furthermore to imagine how they might get better. Here no doubt one has to avoid Berlant’s “cruel optimism,” which is perhaps thinking and saying that things will get better without doing the work of imagining how. In avoiding that, it may be best to recall the Romain Rolland quote so often attributed to Gramsci, “pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.” Or maybe we should just give up entirely on optimism or pessimism—we have to do this work no matter how we feel about it. So by force of will or the sheer default of emergency we make ourselves have utopian thoughts and ideas. This is the necessary next step following the dystopian moment, without which dystopia is stuck at a level of political quietism that can make it just another tool of control and of things-as-they-are. The situation is bad, yes, okay, enough of that; we know that already. Dystopia has done its job, it’s old news now, perhaps it’s self-indulgence to stay stuck in that place any more. Next thought: utopia. Realistic or not, and perhaps especially if not.
I'll be surprised if I haven't linked this previously, but hearing Hilary and Matt discuss it today in their preface to taking up Aurora brought it back to mind.

Ideological State Apparatuses

One way of understanding how the groundwork for the current Republican party and Administration was laid: Faith, Family and America's Future

Tuesday, February 4, 2020

Burn the Democratic Party to the Ground FCOL

Look, by the standards we employ for the rest of the world, the 2020 Iowa caucus should have triggered a CIA-backed coup.

Or, *dramatic chipmunk* is that what we are witnessing?

I kid. But, c'mon.

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