Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All
Saturday, April 30, 2016
MeMeMeMeMe
Friday, April 29, 2016
How Many "Likes" Does It Take To Get To The Cure For All Diseases...? The World May Never Know.
Thursday, April 28, 2016
Are We The Orcsies?
Now goblins are cruel, wicked, and bad-hearted. They make no beautiful things, but they make many clever ones. They can tunnel and mine as well as any but the most skilled dwarves, when they take the trouble, though they are usually untidy and dirty. Hammers,axes, swords, pickaxes, tongs, and also instruments of torture, they make very well, or get others to make to their design, prisoners and slaves that have to work till they die for want of air and light. It is not unlikely that they invented some of the machines that have since troubled the world, especially the ingenious devices for killing large numbers of people at once, for wheels and engines and explosions always delighted them, and also not working withtheir own hands more than they could help; but in those days and those wild parts they had not advanced (as it is called) so far. -- J. R. R. Tolkien, from "Over Hill and Under Hill," The Annotated Hobbit (revised and expanded edition, Douglas A. Anderson), pp. 108-109I've been re-reading Tolkien sporadically in pockets of free time since I got back from the hospital. The reassurance of well-worn paths, I suppose. This passage is of course quintessentially Tolkienian and no surprise philosophically, but I was surprised nonetheless at the bluntness and force of its critique of facile techno-modernism in a story so unambiguously for children.
Wednesday, April 27, 2016
Another Teaching Day
Tuesday, April 26, 2016
Teaching Day
Monday, April 25, 2016
Less Is More?
Unprecedented
And can I just add that nobody with sense would declare Sanders a more forceful or inspirational speaker than President Obama. And it is quite clear that Obama generated incomparably greater enthusiasm and crowds in his election campaigns than Sanders has done. Sanders shows no sign that he can accomplish more than Obama has done (I think his stridency and disdain of many relevant stakeholders to every concrete policy issue means he would accomplish far less) and yet he denigrates Obama as unaccomplished. I find all this both deeply, dangerously erroneous and profoundly, outrageously insulting.
HRC's New General Election Ad
This might sound strange coming from a presidential candidate, but what we really need is more love and kindness.https://t.co/5JT6avz0Cv
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) April 25, 2016
Sunday, April 24, 2016
Techniques of Futurity Against "Future" Technologies
1 Futurists in the 1950s promised automation (technology) would usher in a utopia (politics) of universal prosperity and leisure.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 24, 2016
2 And now, for 25 years futurists have promised AI (technology) will end history (politics) so we will arrive in paradise or apocalypse.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 24, 2016
3 Let's be clear: futurological promises of prosperity via automation mostly failed because of successful right-wing anti-labor politics.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 24, 2016
4 In the absence of organized labor the benefits of automation abetted plutocratic wealth concentration rather than general prosperity.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 24, 2016
5 The 20C futurological failures were not failures of prediction but of a deep misrecognition of political problems for instrumental ones.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 24, 2016
6 Now, let's focus our attention to contemporary politics and futurological discourse. Our 50s automation tech-talkers now blather about AI.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 24, 2016
7 There have never been nor are there now any intelligent artifacts in the world. Yet futurological attributions of such AI utterly abound.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 24, 2016
8 Futurological discourse about threats or promises of artificial intelligence (imagined and present) misrecognizes intelligence.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 24, 2016
9 The substantial content of such false attributions of intelligence to machines that are not intelligent are threefold:
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 24, 2016
10 one -- the displacement of responsibility from owners, designers, users of dangerous artifacts onto the artifacts themselves;
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 24, 2016
11 two -- a false provocation of sympathy for useless, wasteful, dangerous artifacts facilitating fraud, crime & war-crimes; and
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 24, 2016
12 three -- a denigration of actual intelligence in humans and other living persons undermining recognition of their dignity and rights.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 24, 2016
13 Again let's be clear: the substance of rights and of history is political -- and futurology fosters their misrecognition as instrumental.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 24, 2016
14 History is the struggle to solve shared problems; to allocate costs, risks and benefits of change; and testify to hope and suffering.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 24, 2016
15 Recognition of intelligence (its needs and the responsibilities it exacts) is an indispensable point of departure for any free politics.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 24, 2016
16 Futurological instrumentalizations of historical struggle, intelligence/consciousness are indeed profound attacks on free political life.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 24, 2016
17 It is no accident that corporate-military futurisms achieve prevalence as norms and forms of advertising suffuse of public discourse.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 24, 2016
18 Our tech talkers repackage stale crap as novelty, upward failure as innovation, deregulation as disruption, precarity as progress.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 24, 2016
19 This is a *reductio ad absurdum* of marketing deception and hyperbole. But at a deeper level they are dismantling free political life:
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 24, 2016
20 substituting consumption for participation, precarious competitiveness for freedom, status-quo amplification for progress.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 24, 2016
21 Futurology's anti-politics serve reactionary politics. Futurism obliterates open futurity. Every futurism is a retro-futurism.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 24, 2016
22 The refusal of corporate-military futurism requires engagement in the politics it would denigrate, deny, and disavow:
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 24, 2016
23 Intelligence imposes responsibilities. Progress requires collective struggles. Justice isn't shopping. Art isn't an amusement park.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 24, 2016
24 Education, agitation, organization, legislation can still distribute gains from automation and digitization for equity-in-diversity.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 24, 2016
25 Futurity is the openness in the present inhering in the ineradicable diversity of stakeholders sharing, making, contesting the world.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 24, 2016
26 "The Future" is a lie, a projection, a funhouse mirror, a con, an advertising pitch to foreclose threatening/promising open futurity.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 24, 2016
27 Futurological substitutions of futurity for "The Future" are continuous with substitutions of instrumental for political consciousness.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 24, 2016
28 Robots did not deliver us into utopia in the 1950s and AI will not deliver us into either singularity or robocalypse in "The Future."
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 24, 2016
29 It is crucial to grasp this isn't a matter of competing Future predictions, but refusing the futurological eclipse of political futurity.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 24, 2016
30 I invest my hopes for progress not in Future Technologies but in techniques of futurity: education, organization, legislation.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 24, 2016
Saturday, April 23, 2016
Transcribe All The Seeecret Eeeevil Thoughts And Then Release The Transcipts!
New York Times Re-Invents Prince As Hacker Disruptor Thought Leader for Venture Capitalism
"Prince was technology" and a "hacker" says NYT. cc @dgolumbia @dalecarrico pic.twitter.com/AWfCFOoMCO
— Yasha Levine (@yashalevine) April 23, 2016
@yashalevine @dgolumbia One last bid to own him. Will fail as the others did.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 23, 2016
1 All culture is prosthetic, all prostheses are culture.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 23, 2016
2 Hence, the *discourse of technology* selectively attributing the technological term to some but not all artifice does more specific work.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 23, 2016
3 Usually we describe only that artifice as "technology" which mobilizes fantasies of agency, promises of omnipotence, threats of impotence.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 23, 2016
4 Or we mobilize "technology" to adjudicate familiar from unfamiliar, or more urgently to naturalize and hence de-politicize the customary.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 23, 2016
5 Our reactionary tech discourse peddles stasis as accelerating change, status quo amplification as disruption, accumulation as innovation.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 23, 2016
6 The NYT bid to re-write Prince's radical creativity via the tired sociopathic lens of tech innovation and disruption is all too familiar.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 23, 2016
7 The last time the industrial eye of power tried that shit he wrote "slave" on his face for the cameras, declared his name unpronouncable.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 23, 2016
8 "Where is my love life? Where can it be? There must be something wrong with the machinery. Until I find the righteous 1 Computer blue."
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 23, 2016
@yashalevine @dgolumbia @dalecarrico we are starting to use the word "hack" the way Smurfs say "smurf"
— Olivier Jutel (@OJutel) April 23, 2016
@OJutel @yashalevine @dgolumbia Especially hacks.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 23, 2016
Friday, April 22, 2016
Time To Hit The Pause Button
Thursday, April 21, 2016
Prince -- The Sacrifice Of Victor
NPG in mass attack, Sonny, please.
(we sacrifice)
Church if u will, please turn 2 the book of Victor (We s, We s)
We like 2 start at the top if u don't mind
(we sacrifice)
(Don't say it, preacher)
I was born on a blood stained table
Cord wrapped around my neck
Epilectic 'til the age of 7
I was sure heaven marked the deck
(we sacrifice)
I know joy lives 'round the corner
{Joy for sale down on the corner} (we sacrifice)
One day I'll visit her I'm gonna
{Out on my block I'm just a loner} (we sacrifice)
When she tell me everything {tell me}
That's when the angels sing {sacrifice}
That's when the victory is sho 'nuff {sho 'nuff down with the sacrifice}
(we sacrifice)
(help me)
(Don't say it, preacher)
Mama held up her baby 4 protection
From a man with a strap in his hand
Ask the Victor 'bout pain and rejection
U think he don't when he do understand
(we sacrifice)
I know joy lives 'round the corner
{Joy for sale down on the corner} (we sacrifice)
One day I'll visit her I'm gonna
{Out on my block I'm just a loner} (we sacrifice)
When she tell me everything {tell me}
That's when the angels sing {sacrifice}
That's when the victory is sho 'nuff {sho 'nuff down with the sacrifice}
(we sacrifice)
(help me)
{S.A.C.R.I.F.I.C.E}
(we-we-we sacrifice)
(Don't say it preacher)
(sac-sacrifice)
(we-we-we sacrifice)
(we-we-we sacrifice)
(sacrifice... if u turn the page)
(Don't say it, preacher)
1967 in a bus marked public schools
Rode me and a group of unsuspecting political tools
Our parents wondered what it was like 2 have another color near
So they put their babies together 2 eliminate the fear
We sacrifice yes we did
Fighting one another, (we sacrifice) (don't say it preacher)
All because of color
The angel of hate - she taught me how 2 kick her
If she called me anything but Victor (u mean like nigger?)
If the only thing that tells me is father time
Then sacrifice is the mutha sublime - we love it
Listen mutha - we sacrifice
(don't... don't... don't say it preacher)
(we sacrifice)
(Well, well, well, well)
(What is sacrifice?)
Hold yo' text, deacon
Never understood my old friends laughing
They got high when everything else got wrong (pass the booze up here)
Dr. King was killed and the streets
They started burnin'
When the smoke was cleared, their high was gone
Education got important, so important 2 Victor
A little more important than ripple and weed
Bernadette's a lady, and she told me (what she say?)
"Whatever u do son, a little discipline is what u need,
Is what u need, u need to sacrifice"
(we sacrifice)
I know joy lives 'round the corner
{Joy for sale down on the corner} (we sacrifice)
One day I'll visit her I'm gonna
{Out on my block I'm just a loner} (we sacrifice)
When she tell me everything {tell me}
That's when the angels sing {sacrifice}
That's when the victory is sho 'nuff {sho 'nuff down with the sacrifice}
(we sacrifice)
(what is sacrifice?)
(we sacrifice)
{S.A.C.R.I.F.I.C.E}
(we sacrifice) (joy around the corner)
Hey Wendy, how come we... (we sacrifice)
'scuse me y'all (we sacrifice)
We don't don't mean 2 take up yo time (joy around the corner)
But we got something
Heavy on our minds (we sacrifice)
Yes, we do (we sacrifice)
Sometimes, u gotta leave the one u love
Somebody, anybody, everybody wave your hand
Around the corner, there's another sacrifice (joy around the corner)
But u got 2 do the best u can y'all (we sacrifice)
Say u got 2 go through it (go through it)
U got 2 go through it all (go through it all)
High glory, yeah
Sell it, don't tell it, don't tell me (joy around the corner)
...nice at my feet
Lord I might get tired,
But I, I've got 2 keep on (we sacrifice)
Walkin' down this road, (we sacrifice)
Keep on walkin' down this road (joy around the corner)
When I reach my destination (we sacrifice)
My name will be Victor
Amen
Prince -- Still Would Stand All Time
This love that I've been waiting for a love solid as rock
A love that reaffirms that we are not alone
A love so bright inside you, it glows
And all things would be fine
Still would stand all hate around us
Still would stand all time, still would stand all time
When men will fight injustice instead of one another
It's not that far if we all say yes and only try
Then Heaven on Earth we will find
Therefore love must rule us all
Dishonesty, anger, fear, jealousy and greed will fall
Love can save us all
You just please give us a sign
(Still would stand all time)
Heaven, oh, we all want to find
(Heaven on Earth we all want to find)
Still would stand all time
(We're not alone)
Tell me can you see the light
(Can you see the light)
If you just open your eyes
(Still would stand all time)
So much you will know
So much you will show
(It's not that far away if we all say yes and give it a try)
Gotta give it a try, yes
(Still would stand all time)
I say still
So may times
(Still would stand all time)
Life was closing in I just knew
I just knew I couldn't take it
That's when Love opened it's arms
Still would stand all time
(Still would stand all time)
(Run to the light)
Leave your past behind
(All things will be fine)
Still would stand all time
Wednesday, April 20, 2016
Another Teaching Day
Tuesday, April 19, 2016
Teaching Day
Tinyhouse, Majorlouse
Monday, April 18, 2016
Ten Theses On Taxes And Democracy
OneHostility to taxes is commonplace among anarchists, as well as for right-wing "conservatives" whose advocacy of "smaller" or "more limited" government amounts to anarchism -- since advocacy of ever smaller, ever more limited government without indicating what good government actually is and alone can accomplish is substantially equivalent to anti-governmentality. Exploitation of discontent over taxes is also commonplace among neoliberal/neoconservative right-wing politicians and thinkers who want to ensure taxes subsidize primarily the fortunes of incumbent elites through extractive-industrial-financial corporate-militarism backed by complacent consumerism and organized violence. I for one do not want to smash states, but to democratize them. And an understanding and championing of taxes should be no less indispensable to the work of democratization as its obfuscation and demonization is indispensable to the work of anti-democratization.
TwoTaxes are not really the price we pay for a civilized society -- in Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.'s, influential phrase -- for civilization is priceless. This is just to say that commonwealth is not a private commodity but a public good. Taxes are not, for example, fees for discrete services that might be provided otherwise, nor are taxes a price for which there might be discount alternatives. Perhaps the true spirit of Holmes' phrase is captured best in a negative formulation: anti-tax zealots would appear to believe that civilization is the only free lunch.
ThreeCertainly taxes are not theft, as anarchists of the right and the left are so pleased to declare, since taxation is a precondition for the constitution and ongoing intelligibility of the claim to ownership on which notions of theft depend in the first place.
FourNeither should taxes be mischaracterized as forced contributions to what might instead be charitable causes, since the basic rights secured through taxation cannot be regarded as matters of charity else they are not truly rights but mere favors bestowed by privileged elites.
FiveTaxes are not, however annoying they may seem, burdens on our freedom so much as essential enablers of freedom. Taxes, government bonds, and public fees support the public investments maintaining the legal, infrastructural, and administrative material conditions alone within which political freedom can abide.
SixTaxes ameliorate undemocratic concentrations of wealth and authority to secure sufficient equity among citizens of diverse fortune. The equity valued by democracy ensures that the diversity also valued by democracy does not disable the demanding and costly democratic processes facilitating collective responsibility, expression, criticism, problem-solving and the interminable reconciliation of the aspirations of all the people with whom we share and contest the present world.
SevenTaxes pay for the maintenance of institutions providing nonviolent alternatives for the adjudication of disputes. Taxes pay to secure basic needs to ensure that the scene of consent to everyday association is reliably informed and is non-duressed by the threat of deprivation, inequity, or insecurity. And taxes pay for the accountable administration of commons and public goods without which they are inevitably violated and exploited for short-term profit-taking by minorities to the cost and risk of majorities. Far from representing quintessential state violence, taxes are the enabling condition of a democratic state facilitating nonviolence.
EightTaxes coupled to representation itself ("No Taxation Without Representation") tie the maintenance of government as such -- an organization invested with legitimate recourse to force with all the clear dangers inhering in that state of affairs -- inextricably to public accountability and democratic legitimacy.
NineTaxing more those who profit more by their personal recourse to the shared inheritance of human knowledge and culture, to the shared substance of precarious environmental resources on which we all depend for our survival and flourishing, and to the ongoing benefits of collaboratively maintained infrastructure, institutions, norms, trust, legitimacy, and security is not unfair in the least. Progressive taxation follows quite simply from a recognition of the indisputable fact of our radical inter-dependence as both productive and vulnerable beings in the world. This same recognition, of course, is also the foundation for fairness.
TenWhenever a right wing politician declares all government wasteful, criminal, or corrupt you should pay close attention, because he is revealing his intentions. Wherever government is meant to be of by and for the people, to be anti-government always means to be against the great majority of the people.
I have posted earlier versions of this piece in the past on tax day. Some of the aphorisms anthologized in Dispatches from Libertopia were culled from those earlier pieces. The larger vision of the politics of democratic equity-in-diversity implied in these propositions is elaborated in longer pieces to be found in Against Anarchy and in Arendtian Exercises and scattered in other places.
Sunday, April 17, 2016
Another Cordial Exchange (Truly) With A Sanders Supporter Still Reading My Blog
You know, Dale, I still think you're fantastic and all, but I'm sorry to say that I'm kind of embarrassed by the fashion of your defense of Hillary. As you said, no problem in preferring her over him, but you've been sounding like you think the average Bernie supporter equals to the loudmouth technolunatics we use to stand against (which is clearly not the case). Same with the insinuations that Bernie is misleading the public opinion, when he is being crystal clear about his need for mass engagement if he is elected. (Also, that whole "I'm an atheist who was moved by Hillary's discussion... of the role of spiritual counseling to balance ego and service and practice gratitude" thing was quite a cheap shot IMO.) Worst case scenario, Bernie will deliver at least what Hillary would deliver (if we don't overestimate her ability to ~soften Republicans' hearts~). And he will strengthen grassroot movements (he is already doing it). And he will certainly preserve Obama's achievements (anyways, Obama 2.0 is not exactly what USA are seeking for in this moment according to the polls, right?). All that said, I agree with you, Hillary is not the enemy. Conservatives are. And she's flirting with them quite often (either for the sake of political pragmatism or for profit). That's why she's splitting the Left. Still, regardless of who will be the candidate, I'm hopeful that Left will win this battle and we will have a superior and more mature Democratic Party for the next years, partly thanks to these primaries. Always nice to read your blog! o/To which I reply (endlessly, as usual):
Most of the Bernie supporters I interact with online and who make the most noise are indeed loudmouths with little sense and often less decency. I am now regularly charged -- either outright or by smug insinuation -- with ignorance or hypocrisy by my usual allies on the left for supporting Clinton and I have witnessed no end of sexist, racist, bullying awfulness from Bernie supporters more generally. If I focus on these it is because they shape my experience of the Sanders campaign. If you say both sides do it, there will be some truth to that but my experience -- which certainly need not be yours -- is that there is a difference in the level of bullying in these campaigns at all levels. I do know, however, that many Democrats (leaving to the side BernieOrBust redditor and Naderite types) like both candidates and will gladly support either against the GOP in the general whatever their present preference and their behavior usually reflects this. I do appreciate this position and try to promote it when I can.
To your point about my more usual anti-futurological critique I must say that Bernie's "Revolution" reminds one of nothing so much as the vapid marketing fandoms peddled as "revolution" in the tech press and even soft-drink commercials. While it is true that Bernie's go-to soundbite when confronted with demands for some path that gets us from where we are to the outcomes he promises is that millions and millions of people are going to need to rise up to make it happen, I get e-mails from his campaign all the time telling me that voting for him or contributing a few bucks to his campaign is "Joining the Revolution." Nobody who actually takes revolutionary politics seriously would (or at any rate should) ever mistake for revolution supporting one candidate over another in a party primary election.
Before you take too much heart in such slogans, conjuring up visions of millions of "revolutionaries," you should ask yourself why a candidate inspiring far fewer citizens than Obama did in his 2008 primary bid (this is a checkably factual observation, not loose-talking hyperbole) and this time in an election with little prospect of the Congressional majorities Obama briefly collaborated with, is somehow going to accomplish more than the brilliant, dedicated, inspiring, luminously clear, strategically masterful, unfailingly graceful, scandal-free Obama has managed to do -- and the results of which Sanders and so many Sanders supporters feel so very eager to denigrate.
When Sanders glibly speaks of the millions who will rise up to hold politicians accountable for failing to enact his ideal policy outcomes he ignores facts such as that an overwhelming majority of millions and millions strongly wanted common sense gun safety regulation after Sandy Hook but that GOP obstruction was nonetheless able to keep anything from happening and then suffered absolutely no adverse consequences for this. He seems to ignore the lessons of recent history such as that the Affordable Care Act was shepherded through Democratic majorities in the face of GOP obstructionism and at the cost of those majorities in the aftermath due to GOP deceptions, and that there weren't the votes for a public option let alone single payer, and that many of the uninsured today are imperiled by GOP politicians refusing the Medicaid expansion available to their suffering precarious citizens.
Steeply progressive taxation to invest in public health, education, welfare, public financed elections, sustainable infrastructure and commons are all outcomes the aspiration toward which have been commonplaces across the Democratic left my whole life long, however often and however stridently Bernie likes to congratulate himself in repeating them that he hopes we are all "ready for a radical idea!" or that he is about to "do something unique in politics -- tell a truth!" as if he is the only one who wants these outcomes or dares to dream them.
The pretense that impurity or corporatist sell outs in the Democratic Party are the reason we lack universal healthcare or free education or expanded social security or stimulative public investment in renewable energy and transportation and urban infrastructure or countless other progressive outcomes is either a flabbergastingly stupid misdiagnosis of the problem at hand or a cynical deception to attract support from ignoramuses and narcissists more excited to preen in public about their perfectionism than to actually struggle in the slow, heartbreaking, compromised manner available in reformable but diverse stakeholder societies.
Far from your own worst-case assumption that Sanders would simply deliver what Clinton could, I would offer up instead a more plausible and terrifying worst-case (assuming the WORST worst does not occur, assuming he does at least win the general election at all against even a near-fascist GOP candidate once their avalanche of negative advertising is finally unleashed upon the scarcely vetted grumpy disheveled avowed socialist Sanders who has promised on video to raise middle-class taxes among many other things that have sunk many an election campaign hitherto) of a Sanders White House reduced to hectoring recalcitrant but actually-existing powerful stakeholders about ideal outcomes while his $27-dollar donation and rock-concert rally supporters retreat back into some new comparably non-demanding consumer enthusiasm while the inadequate but real gains of the Obama administration are squandered, progressive ideas discredited in an ineffectual presidency, and generational demoralization steals any hope I personally have of seeing sustained progress in my lifetime toward the goals to which I have devoted my life, most of which have been reduced to vapid Bernie Sanders bumper stickers.
Now, I've been an atheist for thirty years but I know plenty of people of faith who are decent and intelligent -- I don't hold with the celebrity-era fandom nonsense of claiming to know what is in a candidate's heart or voting for the candidate you want to have a beer or a dream date with or whatever -- but I did indeed think Hillary's discussion of her faith and the call to service it entails for her was thoughtful and intelligent and moving in its way. I don't understand how her statement or my reaction to it was some kind of "cheap shot." What exactly is cheap about it and who is getting shot?
If you forgive me, a cheap shot looks more to me like your own declaration that Clinton is flirting with reactionaries for money and splitting the left. So far Clinton remains enormously popular among Democrats, she has won more states and more delegates and millions more votes than Sanders has all the while being outspent by him nearly two-to-one in many states (New York included). Hillary Clinton is the most famous woman on earth and has already been in the White House -- in what world would this not elevate her to a realm of rich players and institutions and payments. It is perfectly legitimate to critique plutocratic perqs and corruption -- not to mention militarism and US exceptionalism -- since I do so myself you can hardly think I would think otherwise -- but to invest these critiques in the person of Hillary Clinton in particular or pretend support of Sanders constitutes in itself the quintessence of such critiques or some circumvention of their issues is so wrongheaded I don't even know how to respond to it apart from an expression of exasperation tinged with real despair. I do not know that you engage in such facile discursive maneuvers -- or whether your complaints about the Hillary monster come from such a place -- but if you do not you will have certainly noticed that these moves are commonplace and are no doubt as offended by them as I am, preferring your own much more substantial reasons to support Sanders over decades-old Republican anti-Hillary talking point and Naderite party false-equivalency theses.
In the spirit of your corresponding observation: Bernie Sanders is not the enemy any more than Hillary Clinton is. Sanders is a contrarian career politician, a Senatorial back-bencher in a secure seat from a tiny, white, more than usually liberal, homogeneous New England state. He's seventy something and probably having the time of his life after many years' of public service. It's hard to begrudge him all that, and for most of his career I've mostly liked and admired him. Both are flawed politicians; neither is a Saint nor a Monster -- though they both seek a Presidency that has something truly monstrous about it, and there is something worrying about anybody narcissistic enough even to want that position.
Be that as it may, progress requires education, agitation, organization on the part of movements that crystallize in partisan reform legislation. The Presidency is an indispensable, also inadequate, position within the practical and institutional terrain on which change is made and sustained. The Sanders campaign seems to me be mis-educating millions about the complexity of progressive issues and their stakes and the ease of their attainment to those who believe in his vision with their whole hearts, all the while denigrating organization/s as the "Establishment" and seeming sometimes to disdain the process of legislative compromise altogether. All this I find hard to forgive. The bullying and bigotry of too many of his supporters I find even harder to forgive, and I am ambivalent about the role of his campaign in enabling this sort of thing given his eschewal of the twice winning, daily growing, REAL real America represented by the Obama coalition for appeals to working-class and liberal gentrifying whites and, as a matter of course if not intention, white resentments and privileges.
I really do strongly prefer Hillary Clinton to Bernie Sanders as the probably sociopathic candidate to my right I'll be protesting for the next eight years. I do so like it or not NOT from ignorance but from knowledge, I do so like it or not NOT from hypocrisy but with conviction, I do so like it or not NOT as a sell-out but as a democratic eco-socialist feminist queer who foregrounds white supremacy in my understanding of injustice and violence in the American case. I am sorry should you find this advocacy a continued source of embarrassment, but I do thank you for your kind words of support and truly for the engagement of your thoughtful and engaged comment. Best to you.
Pop Up Dystopia
Saturday, April 16, 2016
Still More Iconic Bernie Endorsements!
Bernie Is Quite The Uniter
Friday, April 15, 2016
Playing Dominoes With the World's Greatest Historical Monster
The Democratic Debate
Thursday, April 14, 2016
Is New York the Moment We Finally #FeelTheTurn ?
Ms. Clinton may be the most uniquely qualified person to run for the presidency in a generation. Her work as secretary of state gave her firsthand experience understanding complex foreign policy issues and dealing with allies and adversaries. Her service as New York’s junior senator demonstrated that she understood how to leverage federal agencies, pierce the byzantine budget process and find support from Republicans to secure essential funds for New York after 9-11. And her perspective gained as first lady—to say nothing of the bruising battle to reform health care—was invaluable. It is difficult to think of another candidate with such varied and valuable experience.Progress in the context of partisan governance, especially to the extent that it can be shepherded from the White House, requires wide-ranging experience, a firm but engaged temperament, a facility with frustrating processes, coalitions with diverse stakeholder constituencies and organizations. It certainly involves more than just strident repetition of ideal end-goals almost everybody on the left already agrees on but only some seem willing to work on. Of course, there is a range of education, agitation, organization available to radical movement struggles that push partisan governance to greater exertions and transform the conceptual terrain of the possible and the important on which partisan governance, problem-solving and reform plays out.
But supporting a preferred candidate in a partisan primary election is not a revolutionary act. A job interview for the Constitutionally defined position of the Presidency isn't a street fair or a drum circle (both of which I agree can be fun in their place), or a teach-in about ideal policy outcomes in socialist utopias (which many of my lectures to my students turn out to be) or a celebrity fandom exercise (which is a form of consumer-capitalist acquiescence I happily leave to you kids). To pretend that partisan primary politics is radical -- let alone revolutionary! -- politics is to render partisan politics ineffectual and radical politics vacuous. As someone who knows both partisan and radical politics are indispensable to progress but neither alone are adequate to make and sustain such progress I truly abhor the lazy, insulated, wooly-headed debasement and derangement of each by too many supporters of the Sanders campaign.
I will not predict that Clinton will put the Democratic nomination in the bag in New York this Tuesday. In most ways that matter she already managed this feat March 15 but far from ending the contest that date marked its intensification, and an increase in its wastefulness, misrepresentations, divisiveness. I would like the focus of the campaign to shift to Democratic party unification, down-ticket organization for a potential wave election, and full-on resistance to the death-dealing madness of the Republican Party from the authoritarian top of the ticket down to the bigots wrestling for control of local school boards. The Observer's endorsement ends in a New York state of mind that gives me a measure of hope that this may be the moment we #FeelTheTurn:
Hillary Clinton understands “the system”—our political brinksmanship—and how to work within it to disrupt it. Bernie Sanders, whose ideas are occasionally noble, chooses to believe it can be kicked over like a sand castle. We like to believe she learned some of her pragmatism (some call it “cynicism”) as a New York politician and from the history of our politics. Play the long game, work the system, be an operator, not a hand-wringer. Dewitt Clinton, Al Smith, Robert Wagner, Shirley Chisholm, Bella Abzug and even Daniel Patrick Moynihan would all approve. We believe that Ms. Clinton appreciates and will be able to revive that spirit...
Wednesday, April 13, 2016
Forward He Cried From the Rear
Teaching Day
Tuesday, April 12, 2016
Monday, April 11, 2016
Periodic reminder:
Crawling On Water With the Democratic Party
Progress requires lifelong education, agitation, organization struggle crystallized in Democratic-driven partisan reform legislation. 1
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 11, 2016
If your focus is partisan politics, the enemy is obviously GOP obstruction, lies, and fear-mongering not insufficient purity by Democrats. 2
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 11, 2016
If your focus is radical movement politics to press/ransform partisan politics, the enemies are ignorance, inertia, and disorganization. 3
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 11, 2016
Both radical movement politics and partisan politics are necessary for change -- neither is enough to sustain progress. 4
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 11, 2016
It really shouldn't be THAT hard to support the best compromised/compromising candidates and also be devoted to radical struggles. 5
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 11, 2016
To displace election politics onto a symbolic field disavowing pragmatism & then pretend this IS a form of radical politics is the worst. 6
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 11, 2016
That some Bernie supporters indulging in this farce would decry my politics as reactionary would be disgusting if it weren't so hilarious. 7
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 11, 2016
Making progress via partisan compromise and reform is like crawling on water: Wearying but miraculous enough to quit pining for messiahs. 8
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 11, 2016
Hillary Hate Is Ultimately Irrelevant to 2016 Presidential Election Politics
Demonizers of Hillary Clinton consistently refuse to credit polls (and now millions more votes) showing HRC is liked & supported by Dems. 1
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 11, 2016
Her negs among GOP Base voters and Independents who are actually loyal to GOP are in any case ungettable in the present polarized terrain. 2
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 11, 2016
Tho the loudest of Bernie's supporters online howl otherwise polls suggest Dems like both candidates but HRC voters are a bit more loyal. 3
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 11, 2016
I assume many of the louder BernieOrBusters are really libertopian-leaners and Green-leaners with little partisan dedication or relevance. 4
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 11, 2016
The Obama coalition is the REAL Real America -- it has won twice and grows by the day: Hillary's appeal is there & I agree it should be. 5
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 11, 2016
I expect Bernie will endorse Clinton soon enough and that most of his supporters will vote for her or at any rate against the GOP. 6
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 11, 2016
The GOP can't beat the Obama coalition. And the unreachably libertopian and Hillary-hating left are finally marginal to partisan politics. 7
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 11, 2016
As someone far to HRC's left tho I strongly support her I know of course there is indispensable work to do outside of partisan politics. 8
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 11, 2016
I think people should be able to walk and chew gum at the same time: grasp HRC is worth voting for but also more than voting is necessary. 9
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 11, 2016
But in the heat of silly season it appears that's a lot to ask. Fair enough. Here's to unity in Nov & organizing in the streets always. 10
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 11, 2016
Sunday, April 10, 2016
Saturday, April 09, 2016
If Sanders Keeps Winning Like He Did In Wisconsin and Wyoming...
Sanders is losing, Sanders will lose, Sanders deserves to lose. If you want to see why I think so, scroll down and read as many months of me saying just that as you like.
Thursday, April 07, 2016
Shattering the Ass Ceiling
Advice for Folks of the Left Getting Disgusted by the Democratic Primary Campaign or Demoralized by Partisan Democratic Politics
1 I have some recommendations for people of the left becoming disgusted and demoralized by the Democratic primary campaign:
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 7, 2016
2 When partisan legislation and reform ameliorates a problem, increases fairness, saves lives don't dismiss it, let yourself celebrate it.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 7, 2016
3 When partisan legislation and reform inevitably falls short of our hopes work hard and long in a campaign to accomplish a radical outcome.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 7, 2016
4 Choosing a lesser evil different enough to make a real difference for people is a vehicle for progress, so have the courage to choose it.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 7, 2016
5 If you are disgusted or demoralized by this sort of thing, you are probably wasting a lot of energy that could be doing good instead.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 7, 2016
6 Elections are job interviews for real jobs not celebrity fandoms, partisan politics is about compromised problem-solving not "Revolution."
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 7, 2016
7 Remember that partisan reform politics and radical movement politics are both indispensable but also inadequate alone to sustain progress.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 7, 2016
8 Partisan politics must be pushed from the left, what is possible and important in legislation is shaped by struggles on the ground…
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 7, 2016
9 ...but it's in the compromised problem solving space of reform legislation most radical effort and imagination crystallizes into progress.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 7, 2016
10 Remember that no one knows enough about all that is happening and can happen in the world ever to be fully justified in despair.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 7, 2016
11 Remember that demoralization feeds acquiescence to the status quo or wastes energies in disorganized protest better marshaled for change.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 7, 2016
12 There is more than enough work to do. You can find meaning in heartbreaking, compromised, organized efforts to make and sustain progress.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 7, 2016
Wednesday, April 06, 2016
Which Sanders Supporting Idiots Are Your Favorite Sanders Supporting Idiots?
Sanders/Sanders, Neither/Nor
1 From the standpoint of partisan politics, Sanders seems unprepared, temperamentally unsuited, and flatly disinterested in compromise.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 6, 2016
2 From the standpoint of radical (er, "Revolutionary") politics Sanders offers up vulgar critique and vapid proposals without organization.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 6, 2016
3 The Sanders campaign seems to me a complete folly, and it is hard to take seriously those who take it seriously as EITHER real OR protest.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 6, 2016
Another Teaching Day
Tuesday, April 05, 2016
So Much Straightforward Sanders Silliness
Millions and millions supported gun safety regulation after Newtown, majorities even of gun owners -- GOP ignores majorities ALL THE TIME. 1
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 5, 2016
Sanders' declaration that the force of numbers will accomplish what Obama has not is at best delusional at worst insulting the President. 2
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 5, 2016
I don't know which would be worse: Sanders really holding such a facile view of change or Sanders deploying it cynically to fleece rubes. 3
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 5, 2016
I set aside the paradox that the Sanders "Revolution" involves far fewer voters than Clinton now or Obama before both of whom he disdains. 4
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 5, 2016
Teaching Day
Monday, April 04, 2016
Nietzsche has a warning for the BS Brigade:
Burn And Then Turn
Sunday, April 03, 2016
#FeelTheSpurn
Saturday, April 02, 2016
Today's Shorter Bernie Smear Debunker
Pretty sure Sanders wins the twitter primary.
Looking Forward
Friday, April 01, 2016
Why I Hate BOW TO THE MATH Primary Arguments
What Is the Stimulation for the Simulation Hypothesis?
How to tell if you're in a simulation run by unethical AIs from the far future
— Ken MacLeod (@amendlocke) April 1, 2016
Oh wait, you can't
@amendlocke This also means there is no earthly reason to entertain the premise that we are, and few actionable consequences either way.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 1, 2016
Sanders and the Art of the Smear
Sanders supporters smear those who engage with the full diversity of actually existing stakeholders to our shared problems. 1
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 1, 2016
They seem to prefer indulging in purity cabaret, making spectacles of their disdain & disengagement even as it assures practical failures. 2
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 1, 2016
Quite apart from the foolishness of this attitude, it commits Sanders supporters to deceptive fraudulent rhetoric unworthy of his values. 3
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 1, 2016
Any effort to address the concerns of opponents or find areas of agreement or possible compromise are occasions for guilt by association. 4
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 1, 2016
If Sanders supporters have **explicit** accusations to make about HRC's address of powerful stakeholders or her "suspicious" supporters... 5
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 1, 2016
...then they should come out with it, they should make their accusations and provide their evidence and let the voters decide. 6
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 1, 2016
The endless insinuations of hidden monstrousness, smears by association, and conspiracies are deeply dishonest and damaging, but worse... 7
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 1, 2016
...they are yet another way the vapid radicalism of Sanders' campaigning denigrates practical realities of partisan politics and reform. 8
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 1, 2016
None of this is to deny the obvious and ugly ubiquity of corruption and plutocracy. But BOTH campaigns share that premise and address it. 9
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 1, 2016
Sanders has nothing without the pretense he alone recognizes or resists corruption, a pretense he peddles by distraction and insinuation. 10
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 1, 2016