Wanderthread Redux (Part 1)

Wanderfound · December 10, 2019, 12:23am

Wanderfound · December 10, 2019, 12:57am

Wanderfound · December 10, 2019, 11:17pm

Wanderfound · December 11, 2019, 7:05am

Wanderfound · December 11, 2019, 9:03am

Wanderfound · December 11, 2019, 12:52pm

Wanderfound · December 11, 2019, 10:36pm

Wanderfound · December 11, 2019, 10:38pm

https://jacobinmag.com/2018/12/liberalism-theory-practice-obama-trudeau

But while it would be nice to attribute everything about my politics to pure moral sentiment, it would be a lie. Because the less noble truth, if I’m honest with myself and the reader, is that something else has played a formative role in animating my politics and anchoring me on the Left: namely, a searing dislike for liberalism as the hegemonic outlook in our culture and a deep, abiding disdain towards the political class that so self-righteously upholds it.

Maybe I was predisposed to democratic socialism; I always considered myself to be “on the Left,” even as a teenager. In any case, it’s become clear in retrospect that watching the liberal class respond to events over the past decade has been a powerful stimulus in my politicization.

Which is to say, I didn’t acquire radical politics simply through reading Marx in college (though it certainly aided the process). Nor did I become irredeemably frustrated with liberalism merely by absorbing some abstract argument about its flaws. I didn’t have a Road to Damascus revelation while thumbing through some volume by Chomsky or David Harvey. And while I would certainly count them as formative to my political evolution, it wasn’t the likes of Ralph Miliband and Tony Benn — let alone Bernie Sanders or Jeremy Corbyn — who ultimately imbued me with a burning hatred for anything and everything that calls itself “moderate” or “centrist.”

No, that instinct owes much more to watching Barack Obama summon forth a tidal wave of popular goodwill, then proceed to invite the same old cadre of apparatchiks and financiers back into the White House to carry on business as usual despite the most punishing economic crisis since the Great Depression; to seeing the “war on terror” become a permanent fixture of the global landscape long after its original architects had been booted from the halls of power, courtesy of supposedly enlightened humanitarians; to witnessing a potentially monumental hunger for change be sacrificed on the altar of managerialism and technocratic respectability. It comes from watching a smiling Nick Clegg stand next to David Cameron in the Rose Garden at Number 10 Downing Street before rubber-stamping a series of lacerating cuts to Britain’s welfare state and betraying a generation of students in the process; to seeing the dexterity by which Canada’s liberals gesture to the left then govern from the right; and from seeing the radical demands of global anti-austerity movements endlessly whittled down and regurgitated as neoliberal slam poetry to be recited at Davos by the hip young innovators du jour.

These triangulations, and many others like them, helped me realize that the malaise was the product of a congenital trait rather than a temporary blip. The problem, in other words, wasn’t that contemporary liberalism was failing to live up to its ideals, but that it was living up to them all too well.

Wanderfound · December 11, 2019, 11:02pm

Wanderfound · December 11, 2019, 11:04pm

Wanderfound · December 11, 2019, 11:55pm

Wanderfound · December 12, 2019, 1:37am

Wanderfound · December 12, 2019, 1:40am

twitter.com

Naomi Wu 机械妖姬 (RealSexyCyborg)

Ohh, are we playing lets freak out the non-technical normies? You can read the RFID tag in passport cards and many other forms of ID at 50+ meters. This means in principle you can make nationality specific car bombs that will only go off when certain countries are present- or not twitter.com/deathdragon007…

Luke Moravec @deathdragon007

an explosive charge as small as a hand grenade, attached to a small remote controlled drone, could easily cause enough damage to a grounded aircraft to keep it on the ground for for extensive repairs. As an added bonus such a drone would be capable of sneaking up on an airbase https://t.co/DMVYHPXZOp

1:31 AM - 12 Dec 2019 47 1

Wanderfound · December 12, 2019, 1:47am

Wanderfound · December 12, 2019, 7:46am

jerwin · December 12, 2019, 10:06am

Nightmare scenario: his pay, and hence his ability to pay off the payday loan is tied to the future performance of his students.

Wanderfound · December 12, 2019, 8:27pm

Wanderfound · December 12, 2019, 8:50pm

Wanderfound · December 12, 2019, 8:55pm

twitter.com

Corey Pein 😃🤑😐😩💀 (coreypein)

This is a pattern. The administration floats a big scary trial balloon, then announces a slightly milder policy, which prompts centrists to carry the fascist line that left critics are hysterical. Some months later, the worst version of the policy is adopted anyway. twitter.com/mehdirhasan/st…

Mehdi Hasan @mehdirhasan

To be clear, it does seem the initial NYT report may have fanned an ‘unnecessary freakout’ about how US Jews would be defined. But we should still be freaking out about this Exec Order’s chilling effect on free speech and especially pro-Palestinian and BDS activism on campus. https://t.co/OR5huQEJ7M

8:29 PM - 11 Dec 2019 2K 830

Boiling the frog.

Wanderfound · December 12, 2019, 9:05pm