Jeff Sharlet Thread

 

I'm saving this Twitter exchange here because for some reason Threadreader cannot access it, likely because the account is locked. 

Jeff Sharlet is a well-known journalist whom I have followed for years, author of The Family and co-founder of the website Killing the Buddha. 

Sharlet: I confess that I read almost all of the Trump books by access reporters who hold material back. I learn a lot! But it’s not my way, & I can promise you that my new book, The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War, is not based on trading for access to power.

Part of the reason, I should admit, is that I’m terrible at that kind of access journalism. Like, just not good at it. I can’t imagine living my life developing those kinds of sources, even as I’m often grateful to journalists who do.

But access to power just isn’t what I’m interested in, as a writer or as a person concerned by they threat of fascism. My writing life has been organized around the question of what the margins can reveal about the center of things.

I’d be terrible at jockeying for connection with a bunch of type A big-brained, Ivy-educated reporters. I’d lose that contest every time. I’m not dismissing the contest; I read & often value their work. But there is other work to be done, at the margins.

And in more ways than Twitter has counted, access journalism obscures important aspects of reality—not least of which the way power is constructed & experienced far from the bodies in which it’s concentrated.

LC:  I hate myself for watching MH because of her ethics in journalism but she knows a lot and I want to know what she knows. It’s very annoying.

JS:  I don’t hate myself for it. I think people proudly proclaiming they’d never read Haberman are being silly. Obv it’s not my kind of journalism, & it comes at cost; *&* at same time she uncovers *a lot.* I’ve read almost all of em, and Confidence Man is one of the most insightful.

MM: I understand what you mean!  My "way" is to think slowly and deeply about a topic, and wait until some sort of narrative throughline makes itself known to me.  

Writer's Block -- a Thread by Heather Cox Richardson

Writer's Block, a Thread by Heather Cox Richardson

A thread for @alixabeth and others. This is not about writing problems in general: procrastination, frustration, stress eating, pain, and so on. It's for when you cannot remember how to write- like there is a gap in your brain- and the whole world goes gray. 1/

You might well be a prolific writer, but it starts to dry up. It's honestly like you can't remember how to do it. Upset, you tell friends, who joke about it, because OF COURSE you can write. But you can't, and you can't convince anyone you have a big problem. So you wither. /2

The harder you try to meet that deadline, or outline that book, the more elusive it gets. It is like you have lost a piece of yourself, and you are terrified you will never get it back. But no one understands. So you try harder to write, and it gets worse. /3

When this happened to me, I had the extraordinary fortune to see an older colleague, also a writer, who happened upon me at a bad moment and recognized that I was in a bad place, and actually listened. Here was his advice... and it worked. He compared what we do to athletics. /4

As an athlete, you would never train doing the same workout every day. That would injure the muscles you need, while letting the others weaken, and you would be on your way to a catastrophic injury that would knock you out of the game. This is why athletes cross train. /5

He told me I had our version of a repetitive injury, and had been knocked out of the writing game when it had become catastrophic. The harder I tried to get back in, the more I would injure myself. Put away the laptop, he said, just as I would stop running if I had a fracture. /6

Work on healing the injury, first by staying off it, then by cross training. Feed other intellectual muscles. Learn about art, music, gardening, whatever is outside your field. Get outside your intellectual comfort zone: Kpop or film noir or birding. Cook new foods. Exercise. /7

Do not write, and don't let yourself be pressured into it, any more than you would start running on a broken leg. There will come a day when you feel like writing something again, nothing big, maybe a postcard or an overdue recommendation. Even a shopping list. /8

You will be afraid to try because it might bring back all the terror of the early days. So don't. Until you decide you're willing to try. Then limit yourself. Even if it's going well... take it really, really easy. (Injury, remember?) Do the postcard and nothing else. /9

And if you can't do it, put the idea aside and revisit it later. You will want to try it again, and likely soon. Try. Eventually you'll be able to do it. Easily. Rebuild your muscles gradually. They WILL come back when you are ready. /10

And now that I have terrified you... here's the good news. All that intellectual cross training means you will come back much stronger than you were when you had to stop. Your writing- and your intellectual maturity- will be at an entirely different level. /11

It worked for me. Maybe just having permission to stop trying turned the trick; I don't know. But I was writing well again within a year. I remember it as weeks, but it was probably months. And now I'm really careful to cross train. It shows in my work now, I think. /12

So hang in there. You would not be a writer if it weren't baked into you, and it WILL come back. Giving yourself some space and some grace will be the best way to shorten the problem, and in the end, it will help your writing. But it TOTALLY sucks, I know. I hope this helps. /END

Twitter thread recommended by Heather Cox Richardson.

Twitter thread recommended by Heather Cox Richardson.

Yesterday, two things went by on my Twitter feed that raised my eyebrows, because it showed that the Fascist wing of the GOP is not only young and growing, but also saying the quiet part loud to a receptive audience. If they succeed, the US will become a living hell for most. 1/n 

First from Politico, which fails to call fascism what it is. What the authoritarian wing of the GOP calls it is "Common Good" constitutionalism. Essentially, it espouses ditching originalism, and putting in place a court that functions like Iran's. 2/n

Critics Call It Theocratic and Authoritarian. Young Conservatives Call It an Exciting New Legal Theory.

‘Common good constitutionalism’ has emerged as a leading contender to replace originalism as the dominant legal theory on the right.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/12/09/revolutionary-conservative-legal-philosophy-courts-00069201

The court does everything through a lens of "Conservative Christianity is what's best for people and the nation, and freedom is dangerous." It's embraced by a lot of TradCaths and (increasingly) white evangelicals. It stands in opposition to FedSoc Originalism. 3/n 

What's really scary is that it's adherents tend to be much younger. At it's head is Adrian Vermeule, who was one of the main architects of the plan to steal the 2020 election and to end US democracy (and replace it with a theocracy). 4/n

These young Fascists (err.... Republicans) in the legal profession will be hitting the federal bench in the next decade, and perhaps on SCOTUS in 15. Some of them even sooner. But, we can already see it is the future of the GOP legal theory. SCOTUS gave some big hints. 5/n 

During oral arguments in Moore v. Harper, conservative justices were quick to pull a Judas on originalism when they saw an opportunity to usher in permanent GOP rule in any state where the Republicans can gerrymander maps. 6/n 

We will likely see the "Common Good" theory come up when SCOTUS is asked to overturn Lawrence v. Texas, and are told of all the supposed harms that homosexuality causes to individuals in society. We could easily see this case come within the next five years. 7/n 

Which brings me to the second half of "educated Republicans for Fascism": The Claremont Institute. I've written about them and their naked desire to eliminate democracy, install a dictator, and re-shape the country based on their religion 8/n

Sleepwalking Toward a Post Democracy America | Dame Magazine

https://www.damemagazine.com/2021/10/18/sleepwalking-toward-a-post-democracy-america/

Fundamentally, they don't see Americans who aren't conservative Christians as Americans at all. Cue Larry Ellmers, who previously wrote for Claremont that less than half of the US is really American, because they aren't Conservative Christians. 9/n

Again Ellmers is writing for Claremont, and proclaiming that it is time to end democracy and replace it with a conservative Christian theocracy. Because elections don't measure public will and the public is too stupid to know what's good for them. 10/n

The answer, of course, is to overthrow the government (and democracy) to place their leaders in charge. This is a moral necessity, because only conservatives (Christians) can truly discern what's good for society and the nation. 11/n 

The sad part is, this is all happening in the open, and no one is noticing. Far more attention is paid to right wing hacks like Taibbi and Weiss, who are poring over internal documents, misinterpreting them, and threating mundane stuff as giant "Gotchas!". 12/n 

We're treating fundamentally unserious, bad faith actors as the opposite of this as they suck all the oxygen out of the room with their deliberately flawed analysis that "shows" content moderation aimed at preventing stochastic violence is the end of democracy. 13/n 

But at the same time, the thought leaders of the modern GOP, and the lawyer whom they will be putting on the state and federal bench starting in (probably) 2025 are calling for the immediate destruction of democracy and implementation of theocracy... and nothing happens. 14/n 

I have no doubt that DeSantis will happily listen to those calling for the end of democracy to make sure the interests of "real Americans" are the only ones represented. For the greater good of course. I have no doubt he would put these young lawyers on the bench. 15/n 

And increasingly I believe that the media, and American "Centrists" like Sinema would have no idea what was happening, because tools like Musk, Weiss, Greenwald, Taibbi, etc... would continue to churn out propaganda saying the left is the real threat. 16/n 

Most Americans don't pay close enough attention to politics, and would end up like my confused 76 year old Mother, who just doesn't know who to believe. So she keeps pulling the lever for Republicans. 17/n 

However, the goal isn't just to make it irrelevant whom you vote for: it's to keep people from realizing that it doesn't matter. Or to believe that tyranny and oppression of "those people" is good, because they were the ones who were going to take democracy away first. 18/n 

Roubini says another economic crash is inevitable.

* Blog copy for future reference. Go to the link for many further links validating the content.

The Unavoidable Crash

Dec 2, 2022
NOURIEL ROUBINI

After years of ultra-loose fiscal, monetary, and credit policies and the onset of major negative supply shocks, stagflationary pressures are now putting the squeeze on a massive mountain of public- and private-sector debt. The mother of all economic crises looms, and there will be little that policymakers can do about it.

In the private sector, the mountain of debt includes that of households (such as mortgages, credit cards, auto loans, student loans, personal loans), businesses and corporations (bank loans, bond debt, and private debt), and the financial sector (liabilities of bank and nonbank institutions). In the public sector, it includes central, provincial, and local government bonds and other formal liabilities, as well as implicit debts such as unfunded liabilities from pay-as-you-go pension schemes and health-care systems – all of which will continue to grow as societies age.

Just looking at explicit debts, the figures are staggering. Globally, total private- and public-sector debt as a share of GDP rose from 200% in 1999 to 350% in 2021. The ratio is now 420% across advanced economies, and 330% in China. In the United States, it is 420%, which is higher than during the Great Depression and after World War II.

Of course, debt can boost economic activity if borrowers invest in new capital (machinery, homes, public infrastructure) that yields returns higher than the cost of borrowing. But much borrowing goes simply to finance consumption spending above one’s income on a persistent basis – and that is a recipe for bankruptcy. Moreover, investments in “capital” can also be risky, whether the borrower is a household buying a home at an artificially inflated price, a corporation seeking to expand too quickly regardless of returns, or a government that is spending the money on “white elephants” (extravagant but useless infrastructure projects).

Such over-borrowing has been going on for decades, for various reasons. The democratization of finance has allowed income-strapped households to finance consumption with debt. Center-right governments have persistently cut taxes without also cutting spending, while center-left governments have spent generously on social programs that aren’t fully funded with sufficient higher taxes. And tax policies that favor debt over equity, abetted by central banks’ ultra-loose monetary and credit policies, has fueled a spike in borrowing in both the private and public sectors.

Years of quantitative easing (QE) and credit easing kept borrowing costs near zero, and in some cases even negative (as in Europe and Japan until recently). By 2020, negative-yielding dollar-equivalent public debt was $17 trillion, and in some Nordic countries, even mortgages had negative nominal interest rates.

The explosion of unsustainable debt ratios implied that many borrowers – households, corporations, banks, shadow banks, governments, and even entire countries – were insolvent “zombies” that were being propped up by low interest rates (which kept their debt-servicing costs manageable). During both the 2008 global financial crisis and the COVID-19 crisis, many insolvent agents that would have gone bankrupt were rescued by zero- or negative-interest-rate policies, QE, and outright fiscal bailouts.

But now, inflation – fed by the same ultra-loose fiscal, monetary, and credit policies – has ended this financial Dawn of the Dead. With central banks forced to increase interest rates in an effort to restore price stability, zombies are experiencing sharp increases in their debt-servicing costs. For many, this represents a triple whammy, because inflation is also eroding real household income and reducing the value of household assets, such as homes and stocks. The same goes for fragile and over-leveraged corporations, financial institutions, and governments: they face sharply rising borrowing costs, falling incomes and revenues, and declining asset values all at the same time.

Worse, these developments are coinciding with the return of stagflation (high inflation alongside weak growth). The last time advanced economies experienced such conditions was in the 1970s. But at least back then, debt ratios were very low. Today, we are facing the worst aspects of the 1970s (stagflationary shocks) alongside the worst aspects of the global financial crisis. And this time, we cannot simply cut interest rates to stimulate demand.

After all, the global economy is being battered by persistent short- and medium-term negative supply shocks that are reducing growth and increasing prices and production costs. These include the pandemic’s disruptions to the supply of labor and goods; the impact of Russia’s war in Ukraine on commodity prices; China’s increasingly disastrous zero-COVID policy; and a dozen other medium-term shocks – from climate change to geopolitical developments – that will create additional stagflationary pressures.

Unlike in the 2008 financial crisis and the early months of COVID-19, simply bailing out private and public agents with loose macro policies would pour more gasoline on the inflationary fire. That means there will be a hard landing – a deep, protracted recession – on top of a severe financial crisis. As asset bubbles burst, debt-servicing ratios spike, and inflation-adjusted incomes fall across households, corporations, and governments, the economic crisis and the financial crash will feed on each other.

To be sure, advanced economies that borrow in their own currency can use a bout of unexpected inflation to reduce the real value of some nominal long-term fixed-rate debt. With governments unwilling to raise taxes or cut spending to reduce their deficits, central-bank deficit monetization will once again be seen as the path of least resistance. But you cannot fool all of the people all of the time. Once the inflation genie gets out of the bottle – which is what will happen when central banks abandon the fight in the face of the looming economic and financial crash – nominal and real borrowing costs will surge. The mother of all stagflationary debt crises can be postponed, not avoided.

Nouriel Roubini, Professor Emeritus of Economics at New York University’s Stern School of Business, is Chief Economist at Atlas Capital Team, CEO of Roubini Macro Associates, Co-Founder of TheBoomBust.com, and author of MegaThreats: Ten Dangerous Trends That Imperil Our Future, and How to Survive Them (Little, Brown and Company,  2022). He is a former senior economist for international affairs in the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers during the Clinton Administration and has worked for the International Monetary Fund, the US Federal Reserve, and the World Bank. His website is NourielRoubini.com, and he is the host of NourielToday.com.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) The Scheme 19

 

November 30 | Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Courts Subcommittee, delivered the nineteenth in a series of speeches titled “The Scheme,” exposing the machinations by right-wing donor interests to capture the U.S. Supreme Court and achieve through the Court what they cannot through the elected branches of government.  

 

Whitehouse discussed “Operation Higher Court,” a private campaign by right-wing activists to “embolden the justices” to write “unapologetically conservative opinions.”  Whitehouse also called on Congress to pass his Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act, a bill to enact stronger recusal standards, require the Supreme Court to adopt a binding code of conduct, and mandate more robust rules governing judges’ duty to disclose gifts and travel paid for by outside parties.

Jay Rosen wonders: What is Driving Musk at Twitter?

Jay Rosen wonders why Musk appears to be destroying Twitter. This is a snapshot of some of the replies.

Here are a few responses to his Tweet...

• Push Twitter into bankruptcy so the debt can be restructured to his (Musk's) benefit.
• That's what "wreak havoc, buy the debt" means.
• Ah, thanks, my slow brain didn't connect! 🙄
• He's lost $500 billion in Tesla stock decline - Tesla stock value was based on Musk's business genius reputation.  Nothing that happens at Twitter can conceivably make up for that.
• When the Bean Counters (old school term) took over the publishing/online content house where I worked, all they did was lay people off. First an entire division, then several big sweeps.
• We, the Walking Dead, kept waiting for the new vision. It never came. Biz was sold in pieces.
• What works on Tesla suppliers doesn’t work on advertisers
• The politics of sh*tposting worked for Trump, so why not him and why not in business? (of course, the politics of sh*tposting worked for Trump until it didn't)
• I don’t know but I have thought about it quite a bit since he took control. It doesn’t appear as planned as his fans claim. The tell is how much staff was cut, claiming some weren’t supposed to be fired, trying to bring others back. He’s impulsive & reactionary, not thought out.
• It’s likely a combination of several of those plus a couple we can’t see.
• I’m going with all of the above.

Aphorisms Galore!

This is a huge collection of aphorisms.

I meditated 15 hours a day for 6 months straight with one of the toughest Buddhist monks on the planet.
Here's what I learned:

This is Sayadaw U Pandita. He was notorious for his unwavering belief that enlightenment is possible in this life & his ruthless expectation that his students get there. We slept 2-5 hours/night. No reading, writing or speaking.
Lots of pain.
Lots of insight.
Let's get into it...

1. Finding your true self is an act of love. Expressing it is an act of rebellion.

2. A sign of growth is having more tolerance for discomfort. But it’s also having less tolerance for bullshit.

3. Who you are is not your fault, but it is your responsibility. 

4. Procrastination is the refusal or inability to be with difficult emotions.

5. Desires that arise in agitation are more aligned with your ego. Desires that arise in stillness are more aligned with your soul.

6. The moment before letting go is often when we grip the hardest. 

7. You don’t find your ground by looking for stability. You find your ground by relaxing into instability.

8. What you hate most in others is usually what you hate most in yourself.

9. The biggest life hack is to become your own best friend. Everything is easier when you do. 

10. The more comfortable you become in your own skin, the less you need to manufacture the world around you for comfort.

11. An interesting thing happens when you start to like yourself. You no longer need all the things you thought you needed to be happy. 

12. If you don’t train your mind to appreciate what is good, you’ll continue to look for something better in the future, even when things are great.

13. The belief that there is some future moment more worth our presence than the one we’re in right now is why we miss our lives. 

14. There is no set of conditions that leads to lasting happiness. Lasting happiness doesn’t come from conditions; it comes from learning to flow with conditions.

15. Spend more time cultivating a mind that is not attached to material things than time spent accumulating them. 

16. Sometimes we need to get out of alignment with the rest of the world to get back into alignment with ourselves.

17. Real confidence looks like humility. You no longer need to advertise your value because it comes from a place that does not require the validation of others. 

18. High pain tolerance is a double-edged sword. It’s key for self-control, but can cause us to override the pain of being out of alignment.

19. Negative thoughts will not manifest a negative life. But unconscious negative thoughts will.

20. To feel more joy, open to your pain. 

21. Bullying yourself into enlightenment does not work. Befriending yourself is how you transcend yourself.

22. Peak experiences are fun, but you always have to come back. Learning to appreciate ordinary moments is the key to a fulfilling life. 

23. Meditation is not about feeling good. It’s about feeling what you’re feeling with good awareness. Plot twist: Eventually that makes you feel good.

24. If you are able to watch your mind think, it means who you are is bigger than your thoughts. 

25. Practicing stillness is not about privileging stillness over movement. It’s about the CAPACITY to be still amidst your impulses. It’s about choice.

26. The issue is not that we get distracted. It's that we're so distracted by distractions we don't even know we're distracted. 

27. There are 3 layers to a moment: Your experience, your awareness of the experience, and your story about the experience. Be mindful of the story.

28. Life is always happening in just one moment. That's all you're responsible for. 

29. Your mind doesn’t wander. It moves toward what it finds most interesting. If you want to focus better, become more curious about what's in front of you.

30. Life continues whether you’re paying attention to it or not. I think that is why the passage of time is scary. 

31. You cannot practice non-attachment. You can only show your mind the suffering that attachment creates. When it sees this clearly, it will let go.

32. Meditation can quickly become spiritualized suppression. Be careful not to use concentration to avoid what is uncomfortable. 

33. One of the deepest forms of peace we can experience is living in integrity. You can lie to other people about who you are, but you can’t lie to your heart.

34. Be careful not to let the noise of your mind overpower the whispers of your heart. 

35. Monks love to fart while they meditate. The wisdom of letting go expresses itself in many forms.

36. You can't life-hack wisdom. Do the work. 

Sayadaw U Pandita passed away in 2016. While I often resisted his style of teaching, I had the deepest respect for him. Through his teachings, my life changed in ways I can't describe; a sentiment echoed by thousands of others. I am forever grateful.

Twitter Thread from Cory Muscara

NY Times Notes to "Understand SCOTUS New Term"

This is my file copy for future reference. It's not possible to check every url in a casual reading online. These notes are being linked from an insert at a much larger article, also linked below...

Understand the Supreme Court’s New Term

A race to the right. After a series of judicial bombshells in June that included eliminating the right to abortion, a Supreme Court dominated by conservatives returns to the bench — and there are few signs that the court’s rightward shift is slowing. Here’s a closer look at the new term:

Legitimacy concerns swirl. The court’s aggressive approach has led its approval ratings to plummet. In a recent Gallup poll, 58 percent of Americans said they disapproved of the job the Supreme Court was doing. Such findings seem to have prompted several justices to discuss whether the court’s legitimacy was in peril in recent public appearances.

Affirmative action. The marquee cases of the new term are challenges to the race-conscious admissions programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina. While the court has repeatedly upheld affirmative-action programs, a six-justice conservative supermajority may put more than 40 years of precedents at risk.

Voting rights. The role race may play in government decision-making also figures in a case that is a challenge under the Voting Rights Act to an Alabama electoral map that a lower court had said diluted the power of Black voters. The case is a major new test of the Voting Rights Act in a court that has gradually limited the law’s reach in other contexts.

Election laws. The court will hear arguments in a case that could radically reshape how federal elections are conducted by giving state legislatures independent power, not subject to review by state courts, to set election rules in conflict with state constitutions. In a rare plea, state chief justices urged the court to reject that approach.

Discrimination against gay couples. The justices will hear an appeal from a web designer who objects to providing services for same-sex marriages in a case that pits claims of religious freedom against laws banning discrimination based on sexual orientation. The court last considered the issue in 2018 in a similar dispute, but failed to yield a definitive ruling.

Caroline Orr Bueno -- Thread on Twitter

This incomplete post is the best I can do this morning as I catch the rapidly-unfolding events at Twitter.

One thing that keeps me up at night right now is the possibility that Twitter’s potential death spiral will coincide with a major regional/national/global crisis. For better or worse, Twitter is a crucial disaster comms tool, and we don’t have a replacement for it. 

Twitter has been a vital source of information, networking, guidance, real-time updates, community mutual aid, & more during hurricanes, wildfires, wars, outbreaks, terrorist attacks, mass shootings...etc. It's not something that can be replaced by any existing platforms.  

If Twitter suddenly stops working or if huge swaths of the population can't access it during a crisis, the result will almost certainly be preventable suffering & death. Elon Musk needs to stop treating this like a playground, and start protecting it as vital infrastructure.

This isn't just my opinion. There is an entire line of research exploring the use of Twitter for crisis- and disaster communication. For example, here's a great study about the significance of Twitter as a communications tool during Hurricane Harvey. 

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405844020316479

As this study notes, Twitter has been identified by some researchers as the "most useful social media tool" for communicating during disasters. Other platforms play a role, but Twitter is the central hub for journalists, govt, citizens, witnesses/survivors, & first responders. 

One of the reasons Twitter is such an important comms tool during disasters is that the nature of crises often makes it hard for traditional media to reach the public and the disaster scene. Twitter is often the first and only source of info about unfolding crises. 

The design of Twitter is also uniquely conducive for use during crises. Hashtags, for example, become crucial navigational tools to find relevant, up-to-date information and advisories in one central place without having to lose valuable time searching multiple websites. 

Effective use of Twitter by government agencies can also engender trust in those agencies during crises, which is critical when you need people to follow evacuation orders or other safety protocols. It helps keep people informed, engaged, and alive. 

Twitter can also play a crucial role in the healing process after crises. It gives people a space to build community resilience, which also helps us better prepare for future disasters. These are, quite literally, life-saving implications. 

My colleagues and I recently wrote/presented a paper on this very topic (I will share it when it's published), and one of our findings was that Twitter actually shapes the course and outcome of crises. It can literally mean the difference between life and death. 

I truly hope Elon Musk will see that he holds people's lives in his hands, and will start acting accordingly — because if he continues playing around with Twitter like a new toy, he *will* be responsible for deaths at some point. 

In the meantime, I hope you'll use this opportunity to plan ahead. Make an emergency communication plan for your family, your workplace, your neighbors, etc. Don't wait until it's too late.

Here's how to get started on that:

ready.gov/plan-form

ready.gov/sites/default/…

https://www.ready.gov/plan-form

Here’s more reading on the use of Twitter for disaster communication if you’re interested:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4494697/

Thomas Zimmer thread about Twitter

I'm keeping this insightful thread for future reference.

Thomas Zimmer is a historian and DAAD Visiting Professor at Georgetown University where he focuses on the history of democracy and its discontents in the United StatesThoughts on Twitter, Musk, and the destruction of the virtual public square. He also contributes to The Guardian.

The end may be near. No amount of snark or schadenfreude will change the fact that this situation is a disaster. Twitter has always been a mess – but also a crucial instrument to democratize America. 

There are two distinct, but intertwined issues here: There is the fact that a tech oligarchy, animated by an inherently anti-democratic worldview, holds so much power; and there is, more specifically, the threat to the world’s most important political communications platform. 

In general, from a democratic perspective, it’s highly problematic that these tech oligarchs are amassing so much power and influence. They are not democratically controlled in any way, there are no checks and balances, they are not guided by any concern for the public good. 

What is happening here is not politically neutral. Musk has been on a rightward trajectory for quite some time, he shares all the reactionary moral panic concerns over “wokeism” and “Cancel Culture” – a big reason why he wanted to control Twitter in the first place. 

It is not a coincidence that the Right – the Trumpist Right, specifically – is cheering Musk on. If someone has the enthusiastic support of those who want to undermine and abolish democracy, it is probably fair to assume that there is cause for concern. 

Musk is yet another example of the libertarian-to-far-right-pipeline. Peter Thiel is probably the most striking example of this – a stark reminder that these types of libertarians have always been driven by a desire for freedom from regulation of any kind to do as they please. Thiel and Musk believe that the world works best if people like them are in charge, get to do whatever they want to do, unhampered by regulations or demands for equality – because they are convinced that their personal interest is identical with the interest of humanity itself. 

It’s an inherently anti-democratic worldview that tracks very well with the reactionary political project of maintaining traditional hierarchies. This is what is pulling these people to the Right, why they eventually gravitate towards autocratic regimes at home and abroad. And now that inherently anti-democratic, anti-egalitarian worldview is animating the man in charge of the world’s most important political communications platform, a virtual public square functioning as an essential part of democratic culture. 

Twitter could have been, should have been, so much better. But casually dismissing the platform as “not real life” has always been silly – its enormous influence on the broader public, media, and political discourses is undeniable. 

As @RVAwonk points out, Twitter has functioned as an indispensable communication tool in disaster and emergency situations - on a global scale. The potential loss of that alone is highly problematic. And that’s before we take into account the platform’s democratizing effects.

Unroll available on Thread Reader  

https://twitter.com/RVAwonk/status/1592347386684506113

Twitter established a conversation between people in powerful positions to shape the political and public imaginary – because they are journalists, or politicians, or public figures – and people who would otherwise never have access to those levels of influence. 

For instance, Twitter allowed people from the academic world to share with a broader audience what they think and observe - and thereby inject their analysis and commentary into the public debate to an entirely unprecedented degree. Most importantly, Twitter has been instrumental in amplifying the voices, demands, and the critique of traditionally marginalized groups. That’s where it really demonstrated its democratizing potential. 

Much of the moral panic over “cancel culture” is a reaction to precisely this: Traditionally marginalized groups have gained enough influence and, crucially, have acquired the technological means to affect the political debate. 

• Twitter has been crucial in this uphill struggle of traditionally marginalized groups to finally make their demands heard, be able to extract a political cost for certain discriminatory speech and behavior: a tool for organizing, a platform, a global amplifier. 

• Twitter has enabled people with absolutely no traditional access to power to speak to powerful elites directly, criticize them in the public square. How valuable this has been is evidenced by the fact that many of those elites are so consistently bemoaning “persecution.” 

• To the extent that traditional societal elites - and elite white men, in particular - face a little more scrutiny today than in the past, that they have been deprived of their supposed “right” to unquestioned deference and affirmation, Twitter has helped democratize public life. 

Losing this will hurt – hurt the attempts to finally make America live up to the promise of egalitarian multiracial pluralism, to become the democracy it never has been yet. That those elected to safeguard democracy have seemingly cared little about this is a massive failure. 

Finally, there is this: White male hero worship of the worst kind. The message here seems to be that we’ll just have to live with the damage these tech oligarchs cause – and be grateful for all the wonders with which they are supposedly blessing the world. No, no, no.

This type of sacrifice at the altar of the white male genius is so toxic. Artists, entrepreneurs, inventors – let us no longer suspend the rules for them, enable them, make vulnerable people pay the price for their awfulness. This needs to stop. We need to hold them accountable. 

For those who are concerned about the seemingly impending destruction of the virtual public square, let me add: We just discussed Musk, Twitter’s importance, and the libertarian-to-far-right tech oligarchy’s anti-democratic project in the new episode of @USDemocracyPod:

Unroll available on Thread Reader

https://twitter.com/tzimmer.../status/1593608308065243137

Addendum: I’m getting a lot of “Musk and Thiel are just greedy narcissists” responses. Sure. But there is also a clear political valence to what they do. They are part of an anti-democratic political project. De-contextualizing and de-politicizing that underestimates the threat.

What's Eating Elon Musk?

At this writing Elon Musk has been the new owner of Twitter for about a week and the air is thick with speculations about what the heck he is doing. At first glance he seems to be destroying the place, perhaps as some crazy expression of egocentricity. This Twitter thread poses a rational explanation I'm keeping for future reference. 

Andrew Gawthorpe is a lecturer in history and international studies at Leiden University in the Netherlands. His thread. 🧵

The more Musk's actions don't make sense from a commercial point of view, the more I become convinced that this is about politics for him, specifically ingratiating himself with the American right and with Beijing. A brief thread with the evidence.

Musk seems to be on a mission to damage Twitter. He’s alienating both the most unique part of its userbase – the journalists and others who make it the global public square – and the advertisers who are Twitter’s actual customers but who can’t stomach his erratic behavior. 

Why would he do this? It makes sense if you want to court a few specific groups: the American right, Beijing, and potentially other American adversaries.

To understand the domestic politics angle, you have to understand how the right has become fixated in recent years on the tech industry and the (supposed) liberals who run it.

Prominent right-wing figures now even talk of a kind of digital totalitarianism in which cultural norms are dictated by the (supposed) ability of tech companies to police online discourse. They badly wanted to see these companies displaced or forced to cater to the right.

Which is exactly what Musk is offering through 

(a) his pledge to change how Twitter moderates discourse, to allow more RW extremism 

(b) his culture war against blue checks, who in the minds of the right are the key figures in Twitter’s cabal of liberal thought police.

The plan to charge for blue checks makes no sense otherwise. It will destroy the perceived value of the blue check and earn piddling revenue, which is primarily an ad business. Its only purpose is to win plaudits from the right by showing he shares their enemies.

Musk must calculate that however many online liberals he annoys, the left will never fully turn against him. He’s the guy that made electric cars a real thing! He thinks he can use that space to court the right. 

Why? I don’t know. But I’m convinced that’s what he’s doing.

Next up: China. Here’s a screengrab from today’s WSJ. At a time of great tension between Beijing and American companies operating in China, Tesla stays in their good books through actions like this. Twitter can help with that.

It’s no secret that China often pressures Western companies to take particular stances on Taiwan or other issues by threatening to cut off market access. They want to control Western discourse through sheer market power. 

As the owner of Twitter, Musk must know that some of that pressure will come his way. It even gives him a great opportunity to ingratiate himself to Beijing by influencing how China, Taiwan, the Uyghurs, etc., are discussed on the platform.

No coincidence, then, that while the deal for Twitter was closing, Musk suggested Taiwan give up its independence and become a “special administrative zone” of the PRC, drawing praise from Beijing. 

Elon Musk's unsolicited idea for Taiwan welcomed by Beijing,

Hong Kong CNN Business  As tensions between China and Taiwan simmer at their highest point in decades, officials in both places have clashed in recent days over an unsolicited idea from billionaire Elon Musk.

The world’s richest man suggested in an interview that hostilities between the two could be resolved if Taipei handed some control of the democratically governed island to Beijing, prompting praise from China and predictable outrage in Taiwan.

“My recommendation … would be to figure out a special administrative zone for Taiwan that is reasonably palatable, probably won’t make everyone happy,” Musk told the Financial Times in an interview published on Friday. “And it’s possible, and I think probably, in fact, that they could have an arrangement that’s more lenient than Hong Kong.”

China’s ambassador to the United States, Qin Gang, thanked Musk for his suggestion in a tweet Saturday, calling for “peaceful unification and one country, two systems.”

But Taiwan’s representative to the US, Bi-khim Hsiao, wrote: “Taiwan sells many products, but our freedom and democracy are not for sale.”

China’s ruling Chinese Communist Party views Taiwan as part of its territory, despite having never governed it, and has long vowed to “reunify” the island with the Chinese mainland, by force if necessary. Taiwan, a democracy of 23 million people, strongly objects to Beijing’s claims to the island.

Beijing has offered Taiwan a “one country, two systems” system of governance, similar to Hong Kong, but that has been rejected by all of the island’s mainstream political parties and the proposal has received very little public support.

In a briefing on October 7, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said the “Taiwan question is China’s internal affair.”

“China’s position on resolving the Taiwan question is consistent and clear. We remain committed to the basic principle of peaceful reunification and ‘one country, two systems,’” she said. “At the same time, we will resolutely defeat attempts to pursue the ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist agenda, push back interference by external forces, and safeguard our sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen speaks at a ceremony to mark the island's National Day in front of the Presidential Office in Taipei on October 10, 2022. 

Wang Ting-yu, a senior lawmaker for Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, slammed Musk in a Facebook post on Saturday. “Musk’s solution is all about victim concessions,” he said.

Musk’s comments about Taiwan come days after he angered Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for tweeting a “peace” plan between Russia and Ukraine, proposing that Kyiv permanently cede Crimea to Moscow and hold new referendums in regions annexed by Russia – this time under the supervision of the United Nations.

“Which Elon Musk do you like more?” Zelensky asked his Twitter followers, using the social media platform’s poll function.

“One who supports Ukraine,” or “One who supports Russia.” 

Looking at these and other comments – e.g. about Russia/Ukraine – many have asked “can he really be that stupid?” Maybe, but the alternative is worse: it’s an attempt at active courtship of the world’s worst dictatorships, exactly as he takes over the West’s public square.

What is he going to do with this control? Twitter won’t make Musk richer – if anything, it will consume his money. But it is a tool which can be used to ingratiate him and his other businesses with the American right, Beijing, and other dictatorships. This is the real story.

So while you consider how Musk’s moves look to be completely contrary to the long-term health of Twitter either financially or as a genuinely useful and productive forum, keep your eye on this picture instead. Twitter is now a tool of his ambitions, whatever they may be. /end

Twitter Exchange About Chinese Characters

Enshrined here is part of a two-year-old link which reappeared in my Facebook timeline this morning. 

JB - Knowing nothing about these glyphs I can discern that the images in the picture are something like cursive versions of the printed ones. When I was learning to write the Korean phonetic characters someone teaching me the proper way go draw them explained there was a distinction between print and cursive writing. Printing takes more time so someone in a hurry is apt to lapse into cursive.

LM -  John At the top of my page I put an album of the calligraphy from The Huntington and you can see the explanations for each picture and how it relates to printing or cursive. Chinese has so many script types probably more than a dozen because the characters reach back at least 3000 years.Hangul is the newest alphabet. And it’s very phonetic and logical. I’m sure they have beautiful calligraphy as well but I think that the Chinese script the characters in themselves so wonderfully to calligraphy! But I guess so does Arabic. 

JB - The Chinese characters are bewildering there are so many. I think about four thousand were commonly used in much of Korean printed material, but daily newspapers and other more ordinary material used the phonetic alphabet.
High school students used little hand-made cards about the size of postage stamps, threaded on a string by the hundreds, as aids for memorizing.

LM - John I don’t think they use quite that many nowadays.

JB - Leanne Martin They may not have had that many then. Possibly what we now call "misinformation."
I was curious once about how a Chinese dictionary was organized. If I recall correctly it is in order of the number of strokes needed to make a character.
A single stroke can have a variety of meanings depending on how it's made, angle, end-hooks, etc. Two strokes can be combined to make even more variants -- each with different meanings, etc...
Characters at the end of the dictionary require many strokes, often combining two or more other characters to make a pictograph. Amazing and endlessly complicated.

LM - John yes they’re divided by the radicals. And if you think about it it’s mine boggling but it’s even really hard to use a dictionary! There’s also a great book about the history of the Chinese typewriter. But yes, like you I’ve always thought the dictionaries are incredibly interesting like you said. Basically divided by radical and stroke order. 

JB - One of the most unforgettable books I ever read was "Moment in Peking" by Lin Yutang, whom I had never heard of before I idly picked up an old book in a used book store.
I later discovered he was quite a scholar, widely known for his version of a Chinese-English dictionary and a spate of other work.
Maybe after my tour of duty in Korea I was attracted to anything of Asian origin so I really related to the details of the story-line.

LM - John How wonderful! I really loved his book the importance of living. He’s a very quirky thinker. But at one time I was a big fan of that book and I’m realizing that I should buy a copy for my new home since all my books were left behind in Japan. I’ll look into his work on the dictionary. It’s really a name I had almost forgotten. I’m so glad you reminded me! Are you watching any of the Korean dramas that Brooks loves so much? Like Mr. sunshine. Or My Mister? She’s written some interesting posts on the TV shows on the blog!

JB - Leanne Martin I would like to do that but I watch very little on TV other than keeping up with the news. My wife does the chick-flicks on TV and my online life is full with my two social media accounts.
I'm aware of the Korean dramas and other entertainment but haven't been drawn to them. I lately watched a bit of BTS when I learned that boy-band was so important to the Korean GDP as Samsung.

LM - John LOL!

Justice Sotomayor's Remarks about Justice Thomas

This tweet is receiving a number of interesting replies.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor did a talk in Chicago tonight hosted by Roosevelt University.
She was asked how she maintains relationships with judges she disagrees with — Clarence Thomas, in particular.
[Image above is] what she said...

Here are some of the endless replies...

• Thomas taught a course at my law school, and he was unfailingly kind to everyone. He invited a classmate of mine who was a huge Nebraska fan to watch a Nebraska game with him from the VIP box. I find his personal kindness so incongruous with his decisions and his politics.

• it's probably a shield for him. by being kind he can prove to himself that the duty to help others should be left to the individual rather than the state. it probably absolves him of any potential guilt he might feel bfrom his decades long agenda to destroy the social safety net

• The thing people miss about Thomas is that he was on track to become a Catholic priest. The racism he encountered in the Seminary and after MLK's assassination changed his trajectory. What Sotomayor says tracks. The folk at the court are his parish. The rest of us don't matter.

•  But what kills me is...it seems like for most people, encountering that racism at seminary would turn them in the OPPOSITE direction as that in which Thomas went. Right? Like, he hated the racism so much he decided to...become one with/a tool for the white supremacists party?!

• I’ve heard similar personal accounts about Clarence Thomas. I appreciate Justice Sotomayor’s  grace and can learn from it. In real life, I’m often met with people who I like personally and would never align with politically. I believe we are all struggling with this. 
Clarification: I disagree, wholeheartedly, with Justice Thomas and seriously doubt his integrity on the bench in light of his wife’s involvement with upcoming cases.

• She's wrong. This kind of indulgence is fine for neighborhood relations, but not for positions of power. Knowing he's a person and has genuinely good intentions has not changed the outcome one jot.

• She wasn't saying anyone has to do this with anyone else. She's saying she prefers a cordial relationship with her coworkers and sees the good in the people they are outside of their jobs so she may continue working alongside them. I don't think she's asking anyone to like them.

• Clarence Thomas pretends to be interested in the people he comes in contact with as a defense mechanism! It helps to camouflage public persona! But he doesn’t care about the millions of people he will never come into contact with!

• Be curious what his honest opinion of her is? She has the respectfulness and understanding we value in a Supreme Court Justice. Thomas may know “names” and “situations”, but it’s a far cry from what is required to be a good and fair Justice. He has proven he’s not in her class.

• I, frankly, don't care that he knows everybody in his building. He's quite content to take away the rights of at least half of them. His wife tried to overthrow a duly elected govt! No way he wasn't aware of this! But, yeah, tell me to like him for knowing people's names!

• I think he knew Anita Hill’s name too.

• Not everyone can reach their bootstraps but there are many options to help people besides the government - family, friends, charities, etc. - I imagine Clarence thinks those options are preferable and should therefore be nurtured and enhanced.

• And what the hell is the point of Government if not to help it’s people. Why exactly have I been paying taxes to the Government since my first job at 15 if I cannot turn to that same Government if I fall on hard times and need assistance to get back on my feet?

• Justice Clarence Thomas wants everyone to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Justice Sotomayor recognizes that not everyone can reach their bootstraps. I recognize that not everyone has boots.

This links a C-SPAN clip from the event
which I created but have not figured out
how to download to this blog.
It is about six minutes long. 

Recent Disturbing Links

Here are several links which puzzle together which form another repeat of history. 
I'm too tired and discouraged to put together another blog post but the reader is invited to invest an hour or so checking them out. 

•  Is That a Tape Recorder in Your Pocket, or Are You Just Unhappy to See Me?

•  Adrian Schoolcraft - From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

•  Ever wonder how white supremacists stopped Black voting during Reconstruction? In this century, thanks to Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s “election security force,” it’s on video:

•  Florida Department of Law Enforcement

•  FDLE was Live via Facebook

Inflation Tweet

This twitter thread from Nicole Thomas-Kennedy (NTK) is receiving many replies underscoring her message.

-20 years ago, working as a server, I lived in a corner 1 bdrm apt downtown with amazing water views for $700/month. 

-A similar apt now $3,600/month, more than 5x as much. 

-As a lawyer at age 47 I am unable to afford living in the apartment I did at age 27 while waiting tables

There are other differences of course. 

I know how a small family (& we couldn't fit in a one bedroom anyway.) 

I mostly practice public interest law which is not the best paying. 

I also have six figures in student loans, but back then I had no debt at all.

Despite these differences, I still make significantly more money now than I did back then, but because of the astronomical cost of housing I  have a very similar standard of living.

I would also add medical and childcare along with housing into running in place mix. After those three things I am mostly back to where I started in 2002. 

And I almost forgot student loan payments are set to start up again. Good thing I went to school.

Also also - my partner is a therapist. It's not like I am carrying these financial burdens (or the student loan debt) alone. I cannot imagine what it's like for single parents. I really and truly do not get how they are doing it.

The most remarkably sad thing about the comments is how it’s the same or similar pretty much everywhere in North America- from Nova Scotia to Tampa, Seattle to San Diego. 

Ppl need to stop saying “move” -there’s barely anywhere to move to.

Replies include these...

• Long story short. If your family didn’t own a home before 2008 there is a very slim chance that you will ever own a home. The only way to get a home now is to be given one by your family. And people say this generation doesn’t want to work. Work for what? 
• I literally bought a home at 23 in 2018. The secret is not having student loan debt. I went to trade school and paid it off in a year.
• The real secret is being in buffalo. Houses are cheaper in areas people don’t typically want to live. We can say this is actually a solution and have the population disperse more, but it’s hard for people to move and it’s an advantage to people that already live in these areas.
• 20 years ago, I rented a carriage house for 350 a month. I paid for it with a bartender position while in school. I saw a similar place for rent the other day for 3200 a month. I have a PhD ans couldn't afford that now. It's out of control
• What strikes me about that story is that an ordinary person in 2022 can't afford to live where a horse lived and a carriage was parked 100 years ago!
• (Before anyone pounces: I know it can be economically justified, I just find it an interesting observation)
• I was forced to sell my house at the end of GW's recession, 2008, got laid off, couldn't find work, let alone a FT job. Took 4 yrs to find a PT job that paid only $11 an hr. I did side freelance writing jobs, but minimal money. I can't afford today, to buy the house I once owned.
• My dad is 73, bought his first home when he was 20 for 10k, he still lives there and it’s now worth over $650k I know it’s 50 years but still it’s right next to a bloody busy train line lol
• 20 years ago I bought my first house. A 1/2 duplex, with 3 bedrooms, a small yard. It was "below my means" but costly. Now that same house cost 6x as much. If I started now I could not afford that house. If I started now I could afford a crummy 1 bedroom apartment. Same job.
• My apartment complex had an almost 60% increase this year alone, rents went from $1200 to $1900 for 600 sq feet 30 minutes outside of Tampa in Odessa. In 2019, this area was renting for $1060 max per month.
• My kid got a promotion to middle management, making over twice what she was hourly. And she's living with us because a 1 bedroom apartment in a shit part of town is over $1700.
• The kicker: she makes more than what the two of us combined made as teachers before we retired.
• My friend won the lottery in the early 2000's. He sold his house and moved to a beautiful house in France. A few years later he attempted to move back. He had been priced out of the market. HE HAD WON THE LOTTERY and still was priced out.

Nicole Thomas-Kennedy ran for election for Seattle City Attorney in Washington. She lost in the general election on November 2, 2021. Her professional experience includes working as a managing attorney at NTK Law LLC. She earned a degree from the University of Washington in 2012 and a J.D. from Seattle University in 2016. Thomas-Kennedy has been affiliated with the National Lawyers Guild.  LINK

Notes on Kidnap and Ransom Insurance

This dramatic account of the kidnapped crew of an oil tanker reminded me of kidnap and ransom insurance, one of the expenses of doing business in a global economy. 

The sailor and the pirate king

Indian sailor Sudeep Choudhary was kidnapped at gunpoint by Nigerian pirates. He and his crew were taken to a swampy jungle prison in the Niger Delta where human skeletons hung in the trees. The hostages pinned their hopes on shaky ransom negotiations and the desperate efforts of their families back home. Sudeep tells Outlook's Kevin Ponniah his harrowing story and how his freedom was secured.

BBC World Service aired a story this morning previously aired a couple of years ago. As I listetned to the audio, which is about half an hour, I recalled what I learned about K&R insurance in 2009. Kidnap and Ransom insurance is one of the costs of doing business in a global economy. I noted a few details at my old blog in 2009. 

Kidnap and Ransom Insurance

It doesn't take much imagination to see that kidnap and ransom insurance feeds a flourishing worldwide enterprise in criminal activity. It's the insurance equivalent of derivatives in the securities trading market. There's no stated law against it, so it must be okay. I know that fire insurance does not pay if arson can be proved. That makes sense. Otherwise, we would all burn down investment property and collect for the damages. What a deal!

But in the case of kidnapping and ransom, there is no such exclusion. In fact, the insurance is created precisely to pay off when (and only when) a criminal activity is proved. And all that indemnity and reimbursement language is all it takes to make the package legal.

Waffle House Encomium

This epic tribute to Waffle House appeared in my Twitter timeline.

Since apparently people have decided to slag on Waffle House today, allow me to say a few words, as a transplant to the South, about this institution.

Waffle House goes harder than 99% of us will ever go in our lives. 

Their food is greasy spoon diner food. The waffles honestly do nothing for me. But long ago, my father said to me “There is this place called Waffle House, and they make these hashbrowns, and you get them all the way, and they are amazing. Also, I had to up my acid reflux meds.” 

I made a mental note of this, and then, some time later, found myself moving to North Carolina, and lo! There was a Waffle House.

I slid into the booth, settled on the creaking leatherette seats, and ordered hashbrowns all the way, as my father has told me. 

Was it haute cuisine? No.

Was it good? I’m not sure.

Was is strangely, deliciously compelling? Yes.

Did I eat them all? Yes.

Have I gone back hundreds of times? Also yes. 

Later, I would learn of the legendary Waffle House Index. When all else fails, when disaster is upon you, when the Angel has broken the seal and read from the scroll and fire and blood rains from heaven and the great Beasts sing before the throne Waffle House is open. 

Waffle House is staffed, inevitably, by a gray-haired white lady who calls everyone “hon” and offers you refills on your coffee and by a black man working the grill who gives the impression that if Elvis, Jesus, and DB Cooper walked in, arm in arm, he would not so much as blink. 

(Possibly there are other configurations, but I have not witnessed them. But there are many Waffle Houses, and I am but one woman.) 

Hyperbole aside, in the event of disaster and apocalypse, as mentioned above, Waffle House literally had “jump teams” that are scrambled because they know that
A) local employees can’t necessarily work and
B) people in disaster zones will need hot food. 

They bring in teams that do include restaurant workers, but they also bring in people who can fix gas pipes, contractors who can clear debris, drivers who can bring in food trucks, etc, because Waffle House Goes Hard. 

Undoubtedly they do make money as the only place that’s open, but you note that Denny’s and Cracker Barrel isn’t rushing to follow in their footsteps. What they do is pretty damn impressive. Rumor is that their emergency procedure book even includes nuclear fallout. 

If you have ever been stuck in the dark, in the cold, without hot food, and then found an open Waffle House, you know what it meant to you. 

I am not one to praise a corporation. Capitalism is not my jam. You all probably know that by now (unless you wandered in from a retweet, in which case, hi!) But for all their flaws, Waffle House offered health insurance to hourly employees back when that was laughable. 

They also give PTO to hourly employees, which is still nearly unheard of, and they only promote managers internally, which is still pretty darn unusual.

But for the rest of us, they are the hot meal in the end times. 

I would not be surprised if their disaster prep included the Rapture. (“Jump teams of non-evangelical employees are assembled in the event…”) 

In conclusion: Do not mock the Waffle House. Total strangers will take up arms in defense of those hashbrowns and tell you the story of how, when the world was literally on fire outside the windows, a gray-haired woman poured them coffee and called them “hon.” 

That is all.

Josh Landis interview summarizing Syria's current status

Josh Landis linked this interview summarizing the current state of affairs in Syria. The host's audio is poor but Landis comes across well as he summarizes the current state of affairs in Syria. I have followed Landis for years, having discovered him when I first began blogging. 

Abdalla Najjar, AKA JJ, is a Libyan young man who is interested in having conversations with people from all walks of life. It doesn't matter whether we agree or disagree; what matters is learning at least one lesson from one another. If you are here for quality content and interested in learning a lesson or two from a myriad of individuals, then you are in the right place. The JJ podcast will open your eyes to different ideas!

In this episode, I talk to professor Joshua Landis, a scholar of middle east politics and an expert in Syria. He has quite the long history with the region, and lived there for many years. He has provided his analyses for a number of reputable news channels networks, such as the BBC and Al Jazeera to name a few, and writes extensively on Syria.

Where is the Russian Resistance?

Sam Greene is professor in Russian politics and Director of the Russia Institute at King’s College London. Prior to moving to London in 2012 to join King’s, he lived and worked in Moscow for 13 years, most recently as director of the Centre for the Study of New Media & Society at the New Economic School, and as deputy director of the Carnegie Moscow Center. He holds a PhD in political sociology from the London School of Economics & Political Science.

When Putin announced the mobilization of 300k reservists — and maybe 1.2 mln — many began asking how long it would take for Russians to rise up in resistance. What Twitter and the commentariat want to know now is why that resistance hasn't come.

A very, very long 🧵.

For the full text -- plus links, minus cacophony -- see TL;DRussia (and subscribe for free!)

tldrussia.substack.com/p/why-arent-ru…

Why aren't Russians protesting (more)?

It's time to challenge some myths about Russian politics

https://tldrussia.substack.com/p/why-arent-russians-protesting-more

Russians, of course, are protesting. The pictures are there for all to see, as are the arrests (2,398 and counting at the time I wrote this). But the point is nonetheless taken: we are not seeing anything approaching a mass mobilization against Putin’s mass mobilization.

For many commentators, it was damning enough that Russians in their hundreds of thousands did not come out to oppose the war in February and March — evidence, it seemed, that the majority of Russians did in fact support Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

The fact that more people are not coming out even in defense of Russians’ own lives would thus seem proof positive that the bulk of the population backs the Kremlin and its bloodshed.

In making this argument, it has become popular to compare the small scale of the protests in Moscow, St. Petersburg and dozens of other cities to the much larger protests that brought down regimes in Kyiv in 2004-5 and 2014, and nearly brought down a regime in Minsk in 2020.

This, certainly, is true: when tens of thousands and even a hundred thousand opposition protesters took the streets in Moscow, I could only call the gatherings “large” if we added “by Russian standards”, casting a wary eye to my Ukrainian friends, smirking in the corner. 

One common objection to these comparisons is that Ukrainians and even Belarusians didn’t face the level of repression that Russians do — and have, for years now.

There is, of course, some truth to this. Ukraine at the time of the Euromaidan had some 172,000 police officers, or about 390 per 100,000 population; Belarus at the time of the 2020 uprising had about 46,000 police, or some 490 per 100,000.

Russia has approximately 1,000,000 police officers, or 695 per 100,000 population — and that’s not including the Rosgvardia riot police, the prison service, and the border guards, and various other security services. 

That, though, is not a satisfactory explanation. Regardless of the size of the police, Ukrainian and Belarusian protesters faced real violence, and still they mobilized. Look at Iran right now, or at Egypt in 2011, where repression was brutal and yet the streets kept coming.

(In fact, the streets in some cases kept coming because of the violence, but that’s another story.) In other words, we still need an explanation for why Ukrainians and Belarusians and others can mobilize in the face of violence, and Russians, seemingly, cannot.

Repression, of course, need not be violent to be effective. For all of the faults of the Kuchma and Yanukovych governments, they never exercised the degree of control over politics, media and civil society that Putin built since his very first days as president. 

Living in an a tightly controlled environment makes organization and coordination harder, and the Kremlin has spent decades disrupting the kind of horizontal institution-building that can give people reliable networks of trust and solidarity before the first shots are fired. 

Add to that the distances involved in a place like Russia, and the propensity of the state both to interdict physical travel and to surveil electronic communication, and mobilizing at anything other than the local level becomes very difficult indeed. 

And yet even that isn’t a satisfactory answer. Lukashenka has done at least as much to undermine civil society as Putin. Look at Iran again, where the geographical and infrastructural challenges can also be formidable. Yes, this makes mobilization harder, but not impossible.

.@oonuch draws attention to the importance of what she calls “cross-cleavage coalitions” — protest groups that span the divides that pertain to common politics, such as class, geography, ethnicity, religion, and so on.

Ukraine and Belarus had them, she points out, Russia does not. And that gets us some distance to an explanation, but not all of the way there.

Most importantly, it leaves open the question of why Russia doesn’t have a cross-cleavage coalition for political change, or even for just stopping the military draft. 

If we look at the pictures from the protests and from the borders where men of all stripes are fleeing the country, it’s abundantly clear that anti-draft sentiment (if not anti-war sentiment) does in fact stretch across most of the salient dividing lines in Russian politics.

And yet we are not — or not yet, at least — seeing a viable protest coalition.

Some commentators will be tempted — indeed, many commentators are tempted — to answer that question with generalizations about Russians and Russian politics, most of which come down to fatalistic explanations for what is generally understood to be Russian passivity. 

Russians are argued to be passive because they are culturally adapted to authoritarianism, because they have low levels of trust, because they are cognitively unaware of their own potential political agency.

The problem with these arguments is that Russians aren't passive.

I have spent the past 20 years studying the ways in which Russian citizens resist the state, rand the reality is plain: Russians can resist the state, they not infrequently do resist the state, and when they do, the state usually backs down.

Russian citizens have spent most of the past 30 years (or more) growing increasingly distant from their state — though it might be more accurate to say that their state has been growing more and more distant from them.

The end of the USSR and the reforms of the 1990s brought about the wholesale withdrawal of the Russian state from the lives of its citizens, ranging from the removal of ideological restrictions, to the dismantling of a cradle-to-grave welfare state.

What remained of the state became heavily predatory, using its position and remaining regulatory powers to extract money and leverage from the citizenry and the economy.

Russian citizens have responded to this, broadly speaking, in two ways. One was to develop an increasing understanding of power as something local, not in the geographical sense, but in the social one.

muse.jhu.edu/article/725993…

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/725993/summary

The real power to create beneficial outcomes for an individual’s prosperity and security is understood not to rest in the distant and abstract institutions of the state or the practices of formal politics, but in resources much closer to hand.

In relationships with people you can reach out and touch, in a deep knowledge of how things work within the context of your life, and in the coping mechanisms that allow you, as an individual, to succeed.

The second response has been what I call aggressive immobility — the firm and purposeful defense of all of that individualized, localized power, and the coping mechanisms through which that power flows.

In an article in Post-Soviet Affairs, I showed the myriad ways in which Russians have time and again stymied the power of the state, forcing it to reverse course on education reform, housing reform, and regional policy.

tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.108…

Running to stand still: aggressive immobility and the limits of power in Russia

The common conception of Russian politics as an elite game of rent-seeking and autocratic management masks a great deal of ‘mundane’ policymaking, and few areas of social and economic activity have...

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1060586X.2018.1500095

Had I written that article two years later, I could have included the remarkable (if tragic) resistance that Russians put up to the state’s attempts at Covid-19 restrictions, which entirely upended the government’s pandemic response.

Russian citizens, then, are not generally passive in the face of threats to their livelihoods, their security, their personal freedom or even their general quality of life.

And they are particularly likely to mobilize against any encroachment on the coping mechanisms that allow them to create at least a modicum of prosperity and security for themselves and their families in the confines of a predatory and fundamentally unpredictable state.

And while aggressive immobility often gives rise to individual resistance, it does frequently turn into collective action.

Despite what the commentariat might believe, the difference between a cause that provokes individual resistance and one that provokes collective resistance is not the moral significance of the regime’s infraction, but the way in which that infraction is structured.

As I showed in my first book, we can expect a collective response when the state’s intervention is concerted and coherent — if it affects people as a group, in more or less the same way and at more or less the same time.

sup.org/books/title/?i…

Moscow in Movement: Power and Opposition in Putin's Russia | Samuel A. Greene

Moscow in Movement is the first exhaustive study of social movements, protest, and the state-society relationship in Vladimir Putin's Russia. Beginning in 2005 and running through the summer of 2013, …

https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=24089

This is, of course, a matter of perception: an attack on a single individual can be perceived as an attack on a group and provoke a response, while a policy aimed at a group may be enforced haphazardly enough that people see it as an individual problem, not a group one.

See the powerful response to the arrest of Ivan Golunov, and the lack of any organized response to the repressive 'Foreign Agents' law. Nonetheless, the general principle stands.

Because resistance is not a one-off affair — I like to see it as a kind of dance, in which the state makes the first move, society responds, and so on — successful mobilization also requires a coherent response from the state to the challenge thrown up by citizens. 

If the state responds by repressing resisters as a group, those resisters will coalesce, generating solidarity and strengthening their sense of common cause

If, by contrast, the state’s response is incoherent, allowing some people to get what they want while others are repressed, people are more likely to seek individualized solutions to the problem. 

So, how does Putin’s “partial mobilization” stack up against these thresholds? Very clearly, the military call-up is a transgression against many Russians’ sense of security and wellbeing. 

Every single person who has left the country or headed for the border is performing an act of individual resistance. So is anyone who is trying to get a medical, educational or professional exemption. 

It is early days, but the level of individual resistance is reminiscent of the fight Russians put up against Covid-19 restrictions and may, in and of itself, be enough to sabotage Putin’s draft.

We are also seeing the beginnings of collective resistance, most clearly in protests around the country — but also in organized efforts to help people avoid the draft and, if need be, to get out of the country.

On a national level, informal coalitions of civil society groups, media outlets and individual activists have banded together to provide guidance and material support. 

Similar things appear to be happening on a local level, in towns and villages, universities, enterprises and professional communities. 

This collective response is happening because the draft is concerted and coherent: as a policy, it is clearly targeted at a large group of people, rather than at individuals as individuals, and it affects them in the same way and at the same time.

Whether that collective response turns into a powerful protest movement depends on what the state does next.

If people — individually or in small groups — are allowed to carve out exceptions for themselves, the powerful incentive will be for people to stick to their “localized” power, and to defend themselves as individuals.

If, however, the state decides that it cannot allow such exceptions (and especially if the draft balloons to 1.2 million), it will demonstrate the limits of “localized” power, and the result will almost certainly be nationwide protest and a direct challenge to the regime.

The evidence at the moment is mixed. Russia appears to be conducting this “partial mobilization” the way it conducts most things: poorly.

Absent a strong, efficient bureaucracy, mid- and low-level officials are left to their own devices to deliver what they believe the Kremlin wants. The result has been a predictable mix of over-reach and pull-backs. 

Officials in places from the North Caucasus to Siberia have opted to over-fill the plan by drafting anyone and everyone, while others — from Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov to Yakutia Governor Aisen Nikolaev — have set themselves up as defenders of their local populations.

Twitter and Telegram abound with stories of high-profile public figures freeing their friends and relatives from the clutches of the military. 

I’m not one for political fortune-telling — uprisings and revolutions are even more unpredictable than wars — but the future is nonetheless subject to patterns of cause and effect. Uprisings happen because regimes provoke them.

If the Kremlin orders the military to tighten things up, the impact of the draft on Russian citizens will become more concerted and coherent, increasing the breadth of resistance.

If the Kremlin gives the order to the coercive apparatus to enforce the draft, patterns of collective response will harden, and that resistance will deepen.

The regime has opened the dance, society has responded. What happens next depends on Putin.

/END