Mid-terms is like walking into the wrong bar

...or any bar in Manhattan. Who are these people? Where did they come from? Where did they get their ideas? Vague discomfort and fascination mix and fight each other until one token too-expensive beer is consumed and out the door I go...

Notes:

1. Imagine, difficult I know, some cracker declaiming Obama as a Socialist. What doesn't bug me (not really): that some cracker is not a socialist, that some cracker can't define socialism, that some cracker calling Obama a socialist is an insult to socialism, that some cracker is wrong, that some cracker will never be corrected, that some cracker can vote, that some cracker can organize, that some cracker can exist. What bugs me is that I don't know any crackers. I only know crackers declaim Obama's "socialism" because the media thinks it is worth reporting on. Liberal bias? Conservative bias? My record collection for a value judgement or at least some basic editing from the dull, earnest, pretty people on TV! In other news, the earth is apparently flat and since everyone drinks water and everyone dies, water is bad for you.

2. The media needs the two party system more than the politicians do. Enough parties would actually allow for the results of elections to broadcast the will of those who voted in them.

If only Brooks and Shields had Jamaican accents. Then their baseless speculations and pontifications and pronouncements, their hamhanded picking through tea leaves in the dark, would attain the excellence of late-night infomercials.

Sad News

RIP John Olsson (via here)

This store was so intertwined with the first 25 years of my life (as customer and employee) that it is really hard to imagine that it doesn't exist. John provided something valuable that nobody provides anymore: a truly generalist independent store that, through the diversity of its offerings, was able to ensure each and every person who walked in, regardless of their education and experience, their next favorite book or record.

Thanks, John.

Midterm midterms

The McCain/Feingold bill was one of the few bright spots of the time I spent thinking and acting within the confines of the American political system and it is really sad to see Senator Feingold ousted.

Dedicated to those Ds who remain:

Slowly Devolving

Into strident, self-righteous bullshit I know, but today I sure ain't the only one.

This is a bad

Not voting today.

It does feel weird.

The idea that it is the mature thing to do still affects my feelings even if I don't agree.

Adulthood is compromise, isn't it?

But

Part of the whole "just vote" thing seems to be that wanting war to end or nationalized health care or whatever is just unreasonable and that there is no reason to let the boat crash because you don't like who is steering. And I, being a bland, boring, nice guy who distrusts all his own anger and his desire for revenge and who still dumbly believes that reason could actually still work, even if he knows that the people who fuck things up are usually quite aware of what they are up to, don't want the crash. I don't call people "sheeple" and have no illusions about the chances that a slightly overweight, chain-smoking record collector could survive collapse.

But I still don't understand the mentality that seems to assume the inevitability of the present. That wakes up everyday in this world of cars and cell phones and buildings and language and says ok this is how it always was. Of course it wasn't.

War happens kiddo. It always has. But maybe it always has because last time someone said. War happens kiddo. It always has. And the last time someone said. War happens kiddo. It always has. Life is life because we define it as such.

Naive, I know, but I still think that the number of people who want to bad, who wake up with the words "fuck you" darting from their eyes, is actually pretty low. It's those of us who wake up weary, distracted, selfish or selfless, who groan "fuck it" while falling from our beds only to catch ourselves at the last minute, if only to ensure the toilet is reached before urination, who are busy, who have kids to pay and rent to feed, who let those people have their way.

I keep thinking of babies and bathwater. And this is about right. Babies shit and scream and vomit and cry and want and want and want and are only happy when you give. Exhausted, at best, you get the promise of nostalgia in return. Politicians too. But politicians never seem to turn 18. They keep playing war, cops and robbers, house, whatever, in the front yard and expect to be fed when they ask. Only their games are for real. And so we shouldn't assent. We shouldn't let their charm and promises and possibilities distract us, and we should't thank goodness that they are doing the playing for us so that we can, after long hours at work, fall onto the couch like a Muslim kissing the ground at Mecca.

They do what they want and when they break the neighbors window they cower behind us when those neighbors come over to call. Then they sneak out at night while we are asleep and run back to that neighbors house to cover it with toilet paper, all because the neighbor dared to complain about that window.

They change their thoughts, their beliefs, their principles, daily, hourly, whenever depending on whoever is around. The word compromise assumes fixity non-existent.

Why am I the kid for not indulging them?

I agree with Kohlberg. I am trying my best to be a number six. I don't want people to be blown up for no reason. Nobody I vote for will make this happen. So I will let all of those little ones and twos and threes and fours have their little party today. But I won't feed them.

At least some old bartender friends of mine made some money

DC rally writing and links below.

1

2

I wasn't there. I watched some online. Everything I wanted to say has been said better.

Having been a quiet Leftist for most of my life and an East Coast resident all of my life, I can't help but wonder why there is such a bad vision of the Left out there. Does Cold War rhetoric account for all of it? Or a complete misunderstanding of intentions? A lack of education? I guess it should be obvious. But this is one of those things I only know but don't understand, you know?

Something I forget sometimes and maybe we forget sometimes and it certainly becomes a very buried assumption when we are all together talking and especially when we are angry, which seems to be most of the time, but, for all the scope of Leftist discourse, from the little arguments about the ramifications of some footnote of some impenetrable tract to the vast, bloodlusty denunciations, aren't we in this this because we love people and want to improve the conditions under which they live, or better yet, assist in removing the impediments that prevent them from doing it themselves?

I hesitate to use the language of the enemy but maybe it's time to rebrand? Marxists: we aren't happy that your Mom has cancer because we don't want a new yacht! Marxists: we hate ATM fees too! Marxists: you'll be surprised at how much better hamburgers will taste!

At the very least, I hope that, before I die, even if we have accomplished nothing, can we just make it so that apologists for empire don't get to call us the killers?

Every Solution a Problem

My parents were urban planners, and I had a pretty strong interest in urban history and planning issues for most of the first two decades of my life. I don't think about it much anymore I guess because it seems that most of what gets built has to conform to what people with money think should be built. And, at the very least, nowadays, people with money mostly seem to be wrong. Anyways.

The main things that the typical liberal planner would have complained about for the majority of the 20th century are been 1) the anti-social nastiness of most Modern architecture, and b) suburbanization. While, even during the current recession, trees continue to be cut down to build ever more ludicrous strip malls, even while old malls languish because it seems to be cheaper to build new than to renovate, the other trend of the last decade has been, of course, the re-urbanization of cities.

I am sure that I wasn't the first person to note all of the problems inherent in New Urbanism, and I did, many years ago (basically, it's cool that beautiful old buildings get renovated but it sucks because mostly wealthy people and corporations benefit. Also, culture is only approved of in the new city as a consumer pastime, not a protest). But I am not aware if anyone has discussed the ramifications for political organization. At least on the East Coast, no matter how bad suburbanization gets, there are still cities that act as the center around which the morass is "organized". Between the move of numerous mostly white and mostly rich people back into these centers and the housing crisis that seems to exist mostly outside of them, poor people are being banished physically to the margins. The obvious consequence of this has been the closing down of public space, both to protest, and even to certain types of people, but what warrants further discussion is the difficulty of organizing those that are now being moved outside of the denser areas, away from the best transportation, and out of the spotlight (even if that spotlight was only shined by the local media as a consequence of their work to make suburbanites feel justified in their exile). How will we reach these people? How will they reach each other?