Ignore all of the people who guided you to this point

I've been reading liberal blogs and articles, and the foolishness from all sides is too much to bear without comment. I'll go over some of the supposed solutions:

1. "Let's get rid of the Electoral College!"

Really -- how? Let's wait until the electoral left is at its lowest point of power, having lost the Presidency, Senate, House, and Supreme Court, and then push through massive changes to the political system. Maybe we could do this if there really was bipartisan agreement. Just writing that sentence makes it clear how ridiculous this is: it's the Grand Compromise all over again. Included in this category are all similar large-scale official structural solutions.

2. "It's time for us all to work together against Trump!"

Really? Why should people on the left want to work with neoliberals who through their actions created the opportunity for Trump to arise? How are we allies?

People are pointing out the horrors of an autocrat with access to mass surveillance, Presidential powers, the politicized security state, official torture, the prison system, the INS, etc. Liberals were fine with all of that as long as Obama was doing it. They have no principled objection and no real interest in removing these state structures: they only want them to be used by their side, and they were demonstrably ineffectual at doing anything about them when they were in power. Well, if liberals want to work together, maybe they can work on the left's projects, but that's difficult because the left really is not vanguardist and has no way of keeping liberals from guiding these projects back into the same tired failure.

3. "Let's do lots of small scale, virtuous things."

No -- this isn't the time to let political action be diverted into the usual personal virtue signaling and meaningless volunteerism for small scale solutions to problems that are large scale. If there was any time to turn back to large-scale politics, it's now. It doesn't really matter which American political party is the one to crack up: moving politics forwards requires that one of them does. The largest danger at the moment is that the Democratic Party gets reconstituted just as it was and then gets the inevitable win that will happen when the GOP flares out. If you're into electoral politics, join the Green Party or make a socialist one. If you're not, join 350.org or the local chapter of BLM or something else. Stop putting your personal energy into organizations that will disempower you and start putting them into ones in which your allies are your actual allies.

4. "Let's double down on scolding people."

If you spent the political season talking about the deplorables or the horrible Bernie Bro left, then you are part of the problem. Please break yourself of this before you go out into the political arena again. Do you need someone's help with something? Then don't start out by saying that they suck. You don't think that you need their help? But really you do, it turns out, if you want to do something like win an election.

I realize that there is tension between these points, of course. Figure out those contradictions for yourself. So many of our political problems are problems of scale and of choosing the right scale for organizations and efforts: what works at one scale will not if you go higher or lower. I'll write about this more later on.

Edited to add: more here.

Glad to be an anarchist today

There's really one main argument for the U.S. Democratic Party: pragmatism. The lesser evil is still evil, but it is supposed to have the counterbalancing advantage that it can win, and therefore displace even worse results. Without victory, it is nothing. No large constituency loves free trade agreements, "humanitarian" wars, mass surveillance and an economy for the elites. People do have critical interests in reproductive rights, anti-racism, and feminism, but those themselves have been demoted to lesser-evil status -- no one was promising a bold new advance in reforming medical care, the prisons, immigration, or the police, but only to hold back the worst.

And now it hasn't won. On the contrary, it has lost so completely as to make it obvious that engagement with it is futile. Sanders tried what people are always (patronizingly) told to do: run within the system, pull the party to the left. He was predictably defeated by a corrupt party apparatus, and I don't see how his run is going to make any lasting difference. The groundwork for this election was laid in every respect by Obama's Presidential failure (ACA's meltdown, no good economic recovery, no pulling the bandaid off the global warming crisis quickly, no prosecutions of bankers or other action against the financial industry) and now the result is here. But of course the problem goes beyond Obama to the Democratic Party's entire political class.

I invite people to reconsider anarchism. Not because there is supposed to be some kind of blueprint for the future waiting in some dusty file somewhere. But because most peoples' thinking is wrong, and they could stand to give up on their current certainties. The left makes many errors, and has had many failures, but one thing that it generally can't do and remain the left is to dismiss large segments of the populace as racists and sexists who have to be suppressed and who have no real grievances. Try relating to people as if you are yourself and they are themselves, rather than identifying yourself with a state or a party, and then think about what this suppression really involves, who you are really trying to convince, and how. How do you get allies? What would one of the Rust Belt voters who Trump won over take from what you're saying?

The need for a left that is against all the hierarchies of unjust power is as great as ever. But the pragmatic solution of going along with the lesser evil is not actually pragmatic. It's time to toss it and go on. Political action is going to be necessary now more than ever, but people can't let that action go within the channels of a system that's failed.

Edited to add some links (not anarchist ones): Glenn Greenwald, Jeffrey St. Clair. Anarchism doesn't really have the temperament or resources for instant pundit reactions, but these will do.

The Russians Are Coming

"the companies think it's time we all sit down, have a serious get-together- And start another war” * When I went walking, the world to see, five people came to talk with me. The first was a boy who was missing a nose. He said that the good that we do only grows. The next was a man without any hands "Hell, Afghanistan's no fun So whadya say? We don't even have to win this war.” * "We had Libya all ready to go and Colonel Khadafy's hit squad didn't even show up. I tell ya That man is unreliable.“ * "He died knowing that even his soul was not safe from the hell-blade borne by the wolf-faced albino.” * "But none of that helps now that the UK army can barely deploy a brigade of infantry, or field a working aircraft carrier, or prevent Russian war planes buzzing Dorset.” * Who said that simple joys make no demands. The third was Even though a loop can go on endlessly, and you can see another column right there, you'll never get there. Not in 30 years. Or maybe it's a Mobius strip and you'll get there no matter what "Doing homework?” "No, writing a poem”

growing up you think of your mental background as songs but write enough and there comes a time when your mental soundtrack is primarily things you've written and read "Are you believing the morning papers? War is coming back in style There's generals here, advisors there And Russians nibbling everywhere” * "In the name of world peace In the name of world profits America pumps up our secret police America wants fuel To get it, it needs puppets So what's ten million dead? If it's keeping out the Russians” * "On its cover, repeatedly displayed on the TV screens of TVO’s viewers, is the Symbol of Chaos —Dugin’s no less malevolent version of the swastika.” * "You want me to explain to you how Europe’s Gaslighting Abusive Boyfriend is a threat to the country I happen to live in?” * When people dream beauty, and decide to write, they write trees in glory, trees in the day. But I find my dreaming slipping away to trees in the fog and mysterious night I lie to her too. I tell her that everything is basically going OK // postmodernism can be a jumble of quotes from low culture sources and some self reference My friends laughed when I listened to the Dead Kennedys in 1985 it was supposed to be my youth not 2015

Dakota Access Pipeline protests

Police actions against people protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline are heating up. Pepper spray and attack dogs were used against protestors on September 3, police issued arrest warrants for reporter Amy Goodman and Presidential candidate Jill Stein, and on October 27 the National Guard was called out to clear the protest camps, using LRAD devices, tear gas, pepper spray, armored tanks, and bean bag rounds. I recommend this piece, which reminds people that this is a continuation of centuries-long violence against native people.

Many calls have been made for Obama to intervene, or for Hillary Clinton to make a statement about this other than her bland noncommittal one. I joined in these pro forma calls, but I predict that Obama will do nothing, and so will HRC when she wins. Obama did nothing as the Occupy movement had its camps destroyed by police. His last 100 days will be no different from the rest of his 8 year term. As for HRC, she will be busy wasting her first 100 days on whatever minimalist agenda she thinks she can pass.

More simply, this is how the American state handles protest -- then and now. From charges under the 1917 Espionage Act that destroyed the IWW and that are being used against Snowden, to the long history of military troops used against native people throughout the history of the U.S. and up to today.

#KidsGetOffMyLawn

I just started using Twitter, and now I'm going to write the same complaints that everyone probably writes about Twitter.

1. Pictures

What does everyone know about Twitter? The 140 character limit. But of course no one can write anything worthwhile in 140 characters. So, since Twitter allows you to attach a picture as well, that is what everyone does. Not only does every nonprofit group using Twitter have to come up with a picture or cartoon or at least a graphic to put under whatever they're talking about, but other people have resorted to *taking a picture of their extra text" and putting that up.

Let's say that you want to quote something from one of these extra-text blocks. What do you do, trim the picture to make a little irregularly sized area around the words you want? Someone has typed something in and their writing was in Unicode or ASCII, which you can copy and paste as writing, and now it's in a bunch of pixels which you can't. It's the same thing that happened with old-style PDF files, and it's a Lovecraftian information-destroying horror.

2. Retweets

OK, how much effort would it take Twitter to not show you retweets of a tweet that you've already seen? It can't be much programming effort, since every tweet has to have a unique ID floating around somewhere. But they haven't wanted to do this -- who knows why -- and as a result, when you're interested in something, you're going to see every major occurrence connected with it complete with its picture a whole lot of times. Why?

3. Ads

Since 2010 Twitter has been not-making-a-profit on its "sponsored tweets" which it jams right into your timeline whether you like it or not. Hulu now lets you pay to not see ads, which of course people do, and Web sites in general either do the obnoxious ad popup thing in which case you never go back or sullenly let you use an adblocker. There are Twitter clients with adblockers as well, but they have certain problems which make them less tenable. Twitter itself will let you opt out of ad personalization, which only means that you'll still get the same number of ads, they just will pretend that they aren't tracking you. Twitter has the same advantage as any other social media company that entrenches itself in its space, but this has to be a vulnerability.

4. Timelines

OK, let's say that you turn off the wonderful algorithmic timeline and get something that bears some relationship to Newtonian time. Then, unless I'm missing something, Twitter is apparently unable to remember where you were on your timeline if you last looked at it on some other machine. Maybe non-Euclidian timelines have to be turned off on each machine? Who programs things this way anymore?

New data blog

I've started a new blog -- creatively named Rich Puchalsky's Data Blog -- for people who want to read about environmental and financial data issues without having to read through poetry, SF criticism, non-data politics etc.

Happiness and Success! A short three act play

Every now and then I write a satirical short three act play in Crooked Timber comments. It normally takes 15 minutes to write them, so I don't save them, but this one, I think, catches the mood of the current U.S. election better than any other 15 minute piece I could write. It was originally here.

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People should be warned that the levels of meaning and allusion in this play are exceptionally subtle and nuanced: I’m not sure that anyone will understand it immediately. But keep studying it and various symbol-systems may cohere.

Also: trigger warning for eyeball eating and other violence.

Happiness and Success!
A short three act play

Act I
(A WOMAN and A MAN are sitting at a picnic table).

A WOMEN: “I hate this election season. It’s so bitter this year. It’s like our whole civilization is under threat!” [She stabs a fork down into the tray in front of her, pulls out a human eyeball, and eats it.]

A MAN: “Yes, this election isn’t like any other one I’ve heard of. I’m really worried.”

A WOMAN: “I do my best to make things better… I even eat free range eyeballs. “

A MAN: “Free range *people*, honey. It’s not really correct to objectify parts of people that way.”

A WOMAN: “Oh, yes, of course. That’s what that horrible SECOND CANDIDATE does! I can’t believe that for a moment I sounded like SECOND CANDIDATE!” [She eats another eyeball.]

A MAN: “FIRST CANDIDATE will win, if only those young people vote. I don’t know what their problem is, complaining that we ate their eyes and everything.”

A WOMAN: “And they’re so nasty. They even insulted Gloria Steinem!”

Act II
(A circle of GUARDS in standing in the middle of a crowd: each GUARD is holding a leveled automatic weapon. Throughout the scene the GUARDS keep up a low, menacing chant of “KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL!” A small group of NIHILISTS stands nearby holding various protest signs.)

A MAN: “He’s running away! KILL!” (A GUARD shoots a running man in the back.)

A WOMAN: “I want to feel safe! KILL!” (Another GUARD shoots three people in the crowd.)

ANOTHER MAN: “Our society is racist! We won’t protect people from dictators.”

ANOTHER WOMAN: “Eh, join in.”

ANOTHER MAN: “All right, I want to fully participate in our society! KILL! KILL!” (GUARDS mow down five more people).

ANOTHER WOMAN: “Law and order! KILL!”

ANOTHER MAN: “Responsibility 2 Protect! KILL!”

A NIHILIST (holding a placard which reads “Maybe we should kill fewer people”): “Um–“

GUARD: “Get back to the free speech zone, sir! Otherwise I will have to KILL!”

A NIHILIST: “Sorry! Going back now!”

ANOTHER MAN: “Racist!”

Act III
(the public square. There are happy people, balloons, etc.)

A MAN: “The votes are almost in. I think it’s going to go for FIRST CANDIDATE!”

A WOMAN: “I’m so happy! I love democracy!”

A MAN: “She’s going to win … I’m filled with hope!”

A WOMAN: “By working together we can all figure out how to succeed at whatever we want to do! I’m so happy and full of joy!”

A DIFFERENT MAN: “The votes are in! FIRST CANDIDATE wins!”

The CROWD cheers. FIRST CANDIDATE smilingly takes a machine gun from one of the guards and mows down ten people.

SECOND CANDIDATE: “Eh, she’s still a loser. I would have killed twenty people, because I’m a winner!”

THE CROWD boos SECOND CANDIDATE.

YET ANOTHER WOMAN: “I’m so proud that she’s shown our daughters that anything is possible. Now my little girl will know that she can grow up to kill lots of people just like any man!”

The crowd starts to sing. Even A NIHILIST is pulled in.

“We’re happy and we’re right”
“And oh so polite”
“We know we can succeed”
“And darkness recede”
“Because the killing future is so bright!”

(People are swirling around, laughing, munching on eyeballs, firing weapons into the crowd.)

“Now with this great leap”
“We’ve beaten that creep”
“The election is over”
“And we’re in clover”
“And now it’s time to sleep”