Posted by Alexander Jerri
The Cult That Wouldn't Die... Of Salmonella
Welcome to the Moment of Truth: the thirst that is the drink.
Good morning, fellow-travelers. Hillary Clinton wrote another book, this one rehashing her losing battle to become the first female President of the United States, blaming everyone but herself, which is what politicians are supposed to do. I don't fault her for this. Unlike some of you, I don't think she is a special war criminal. She is certainly no more a war criminal than Condoleezza Rice or Madeline Albright, and all three of them stand like wispy seedlings beside the mighty sequoia of US war criminals, Henry Kissinger. Have they named a sequoia after Kissinger? It's long overdue.
But neither is she such a shining light of uncompromising progressive leadership that preferring an ancient left-leaning Jew indicates a psychosexually genocidal motive.
There were certainly some Bernie supporters whom it was reasonable to suspect of hating Hillary out of misogynist resentment. Likewise, though the majority of Hillary supporters are not unself-aware auto-inductees into a reactionary, self-pitying cult of personality, some are, too many, it's embarrassing, it's grotesque, and it's disappointing to see Hillary in her new book feeding them back the very lines of thought their psychoses generated. But, again, she is a politician, and it is fair play.
Did Bernie's primary candidacy hurt Hillary? Of course. An election is a contest. A popularity contest. If the person opposing you in a popularity contest gets popular, that is by definition an injury to you. Furthermore, Bernie remained popular, but, let's be fair: trying to be popular is part of his job.
To those with an actual leftist critique of capitalism, Bernie's campaign highlighted Hillary's shortcomings in that regard. It is good that we are now, thanks to Bernie, suspicious of progressives who are unwilling to speak forcefully against the miscreants milking our communities of resources. It's unfortunate that Hillary lagged behind the rest of us in understanding that kissing corporate ass could be considered a drawback to a large portion of the liberal coalition. Now that we all understand it, though, maybe next time we can field a really good candidate who is prepared not only to go at least partway to the mat for people of color, women, and the gender non-binary, but one who also doesn't suck corporate ass like it's a cream-filled doughnut.
Yes, Obama got... read more
Posted by Alexander Jerri
Listen live from 10AM - 12PM Central on Lumpen Radio 105.5FM Chicago / stream at www.thisishell.com / subscribe to the podcast
10:15 - Historian Kim Phillips-Fein traces today's austerity politics to New York's 1970s fiscal crisis.
Kim is author of Fear City: New York's Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics from Picador.
11:00 - Sociologist Christian Parenti watches capitalism's climate-driven crisis wash away our cities.
Christian wrote the article If We Fail for Jacobin.
11:45 - In a Moment of Truth, Jeff Dorchen says 'It's not global warming, it's Hillary.'
They just blame her for everything, these guys.
Posted by Alexander Jerri
The Drowned World
Welcome to the Moment of Truth: the thirst that is the drink. Are you ready to live under the sea or die trying?
Did you see any of those pictures of the Interstate 10 Ocean in Texas? Pardon me, the sea. Did you see the sea? There didn't used to be a sea there. I drove that highway all the way from Baton Rouge through Houston and Austin, back in aught 1, arrived in Los Angeles the night before 9-11, and didn't see a single fish. Not even a grouper. I saw a plane fly into a building, through a nightmarishly clear sky, the next morning on TV. But no grouper.
So now the ocean's here. I think it's here to stay. I think the whole southern USA is going back underwater, like nature intended, before the Freeze Miser locked up all the water at the poles. Days were wetter then.
We can do this, America. We can get used to anything. You'll get used to the water. It's cold when you first get in, but then you get used to it. We got used to distrusting the Spectacle, after Nixon had to resign when it came out that he'd ordered Halderman and Erlichman to hypnotize Oswald to kill JFK. We got used to having a regulatory system run by the industries they're supposed to regulate. We got used to not having enough money for food, shelter, medical care, and education. We got used to the owners of massive, mind-blowing, stratospheric wealth telling us there just wasn't enough to pay us a decent wage or support the common weal. We got used to cops gunning down black people or murdering them in jail for any reason or no reason.
We did these things, we made these changes within our very selves, because it was our patriotic duty. We may not have a communal sense of distributing resources, but we do have a collective love of our country. And I don't think learning to breathe underwater is too much for America's Jesus to ask of us. On Venus, they're so patriotic they breathe ammonia, and on Mars they breathe almost nothing at all. We're lucky to be getting oxygen. Is it really too much trouble to extract dissolved oxygen from seawater? Come on, grow some gills, binch. If a goddam fish can do it, so can you.
We've gone soft, having all this readily available oxygen floating in the air, a veritable luxury dessert cart of oxygen, wheeled right to our table. We've become like delicate woodland sprites, prancing and sparkling and tinkling about the forest floor, sipping nectar from daffodils. We've become lazy lotus-eaters,... read more
Posted by Alexander Jerri
Listen live from 11AM - 12PM Central on Lumpen Radio 105.5FM Chicago / stream at www.thisishell.com / subscribe to the podcast
11:10 - Writer Natasha Lennard promises confrontation, not a platform, for White supremacy.
Natasha wrote the In These Times piece Don't Give Fascism an Inch and Not Rights but Justice: It’s Time to Make Nazis Afraid Again for The Nation.
11:50 - In a Moment of Truth, Jeff Dorchen guides us to our underwater destiny.
Does this mean Jeffy finally read Kobo Abe's Inter Ice Age 4 since I been bugging him about reading it? Oh sorry, spoilers BTW.
Posted by Alexander Jerri
I Didn't Ask To Be Born Famous
Welcome to the Moment of Truth: the thirst, which is also the drink.
Royalty is a hereditary disease. It's the only hereditary disease you can catch through marriage. Well, there's also nobility. You can even buy your way into that disease. But there's nobility and there's nobility. There's the social status of "noble" and there's the virtue. What kind of self-important asshole designated his social class "nobility?" It's pathetic. Arrogating to oneself the label "noble" is the status equivalent of a child's toy advertised as "fun" or the package of a junk food item announcing it's "delicious." You can be certain such a toy is no fun, and the snack is yet another knot of flash-fried Styrofoam coated in salty orange dust chemically designed to mimic flavor.
And yet even supposed intellectuals are willingly knighted and consider it an honor. In Thailand you have to respect the king or they'll put you in prison. But what's everyone else's excuse? The Queen of England is just a glorified chimp we've gussied up in sparkles and given castles and horses.
Oh, speaking of royalty, it's the twentieth anniversary of the death of Princess Diana in a car accident in Paris. Very sad. She was reasonable to deal with, from most accounts, and very generous with her time. She even had a streak of the do-gooder in her. Princess Diana, or as she was called, ironically it turned out, Princess Di, died a very popular person.
To commemorate the anniversary of her death, the BBC revisited the event with her bereaved sons, Princes William and Phillip. I can't remember which is which so I'll just refer to them collectively as Princess Wallop. Why? Because it's easier to say than "Princes Willop."
Princess Wallop, it turns out, was upset by his mother's death. So like us, the royals, aren't they? Emotions and everything. He blamed the paparazzi. Many blamed them.
Even the normally cool-headed George Clooney blamed them. But the paparazzi were only doing their job. "Oh, but maybe Princess soon to Di didn't want her picture taken that day. Why couldn't they just leave her alone?"
Neither Clooney nor Wallop wanted to consider that the paparazzi didn't create the situation by which they could exchange pictures of celebrities for money. They had rent to pay, they didn't have a castle or two to fall back on.
Wallop wasn't in a forgiving mood, though, at the time. He blamed being royal, and all the... read more
Posted by Alexander Jerri
Listen live from 11AM - 12PM Central on Lumpen Radio 105.5FM / stream at www.thisishell.com / subscribe to the podcast
11:10 - Current Affairs editor Nathan J. Robinson examines the strategic implications of non-nonviolent protest.
Nathan wrote the articles We'll Beat the Fascists with Ideas, Not Fists for In These Times and Thinking Strategically About Free Speech and Violence for Current Affairs.
11:50 - In a Moment of Truth, Jeff Dorchen witnesses the crash that killed Princess Di - in his mind!
Jeff is capable of recalling things from his past, that's his secret to doing things like this.
