Posted by Alexander Jerri
Welcome to the Moment of Truth: the thirst that is the drink.
The Tragedies teach us that people have flaws, and those flaws cause suffering. The Comedies teach us that people have flaws, and those flaws cause mirth. Didactic theater teaches us that slightly flawed people are impressed into tragic interaction with others by systems that exploit their flaws, systems in which even the beasts at the top of the food chain are trapped, unable to resist their basest desires and fears, causing them to rationalize their own cruel behavior. And depending on how the story is told, it can be either tragic or comic, or both in varying degrees.
Some folks have flaws that cause them to amass or retain wealth. Some have flaws that cause them to alienate friends. Some have flaws that cause them to sacrifice their own needs in deference to others'. Some have flaws that cause them to descend into misery. Some have flaws that cause them to descend into penury.
Nietzsche called those with flaws that got them into positions of control over resources at the expense of others, "the strong." Everyone under their control he called "the weak." He called the rhetorical idea that such control was immoral, "slave morality," a trick the weak played to gain leverage over the strong. Pretty clever of the weak, he allowed.
Nietzsche was brilliant and funny and tragic, but his opinions about strength and weakness miss the point of economy. An economy seeks to provide for needs and to channel abilities. That's what it's always been, I argue, in my new essay. This one. I'm defining economy as an emergent behavior of a social group, not as some top-down design. The chief of a tribe didn't design their economy. Kings didn't design their economies. Prefects and mayors don't design their economies. They do all use their positions in the social hierarchy to influence the rules of the economy in their favor. The communist governments of Russia and China attempted in the most obnoxious way to force top-down design, which led to deprivation, cruelty, and crime.
To this day, economies are deformed by the coercing, twisting, bending, torqueing tendencies of elites to try to enrich themselves, and, under capitalism, those elites are not solely governmental. Not by a long shot, chump. Private corporations and financial organizations are able to deform the goals of the economy just as easily if not more so, sometimes using government and sometimes ignoring... read more
Posted by Alexander Jerri
Listen live from 9AM - 1:00PM Central on WNUR 89.3FM / stream at www.thisishell.com / subscribe to the podcast
9:15 - Writer Andrea Flynn explores the persistence of racialized barriers to economic equality.
Andrea is author of the book The Hidden Rules of Race: Barriers to an Inclusive Economy from Cambridge University Press.
10:05 - Journalist Silvio Carrillo reports on new evidence around the assassination of Berta Cáceres.
Silvio is Berta's nephew, and the director of bertacaceres.org.
10:35 - Journalist Jennifer C. Berkshire explains how Democrats bought into school privatization.
Jennifer wrote the Baffler article How Education Reform Ate the Democratic Party.
11:05 - Journalist Suzy Hansen examines America's era of decline, from outside its borders.
Suzy is author of Notes on a Foreign Country: An American Abroad in a Post-American World from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
12:05 - Gaye Theresa Johnson and Alex Lubin explore the possibilities of Black radical thought.
Gaye and Alex edited and contributed to the essay collection Futures of Black Radicalism from Verso.
Posted by Alexander Jerri
Listen live from 9AM - 10:15AM Central on WNUR 89.3FM / stream at www.thisishell.com / subscribe to the podcast
9:15 - Yanis Varoufakis explains how the Western establishment's crushing of the Greek debt rebellion led to a rise of the far right.
Yanis is author of Adults in the Room: My Battle with the European and American Deep Establishment from MacMillan.
9:50 - Live fom São Paulo, Brian Mier does something The New York Times won't - talk to the Brazilian left.
Brian recently wrote the article The State of the Brazilian Left: Analysis from an American in Brazil for the Council on Hemispheric Affairs.
Posted by Alexander Jerri
Welcome to the Moment of Truth: the thirst that is the drink.
I thought of a funny character name: Dag Nabakov. It's a cross between the old coot's interjection "dag nabbit," Swedish diplomat Dag Hammarskjöld, and the author of Lolita and Pale Fire, Vlad Nabakov. Or NaBAKov, as people I disagree with about pronunciations mispronounce it. Dag Nabakov is an old southern novelist who moved to Russia and wrote about an old foreigner who falls in love with an underage Russian because she represents everything he idealizes about the brutish freedom of his adopted country. When Shelly Winters kills herself, he plays a hilarious cat-and-mouse game with Peter Sellers until he's finally brought to tears or justice or something. And the Swedish part of the author is, he loves lingonberries, and dies in a plane crash.
A friend of mine was talking about Donald Dump's recent reaction to the recent incident of terrorist automobile violence in New York. My friend's an adoptive New Yorker, and he said, and I paraphrase freely, "New York doesn't need his anti-immigrant BS. He's always on about immigrants, hating on immigrants, but this is New York, which is immigrant central. It's a city of immigrants, like no other city. I'd just like to see some New Yorkers, grieving about this incident, but then Dump spouting his anti-immigrant BS, and these New Yorkers just beating the crap out of him. That's not how you sympathize with New Yorkers about something like this. It's not an invasion of aliens. It's them. It's one of them like that Las Vegas shooter was one of the white people. New Yorkers know what their city means, and it doesn't mean xenophobic racist real estate pricks who don't pay their contractors."
It got me thinking about how people become racist. They say no one's born racist. Then they did an experiment with rats that showed rats were racist, so now they're not so sure. People might be born racist. Mammals have cultures, though, even rats. Maybe there's some learned racism among rats. And human culture is ridiculously overwhelming, and many of its effects are creepy and insidious.
I knew a white guy who worked in the projects in a social-worker-ish capacity, and he was beaten up quite severely by some black teens, and it seemed after that he decided, "What am I not being racist for? What's the point?" And he became a big ol' macho racist.
How he came by his feelings made sense to me,... read more
Posted by Alexander Jerri
Listen live from 9AM - 1:40PM Central on WNUR 89.3FM / stream at www.thisishell.com / subscribe to the podcast
9:15 - Writer Cindy Milstein finds rebellion and solidarity in the face of death.
Cindy is the editor of Rebellious Mourning: The Collective Work of Grief from AK Press.
10:00 - Philosopher Kate Manne examines the brutal logic of misogyny.
Kate is author of Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny from Oxford University Press.
11:05 - Activist Carl Anthony charts a new path towards environmental and racial justice.
Carl is author of The Earth, the City, and the Hidden Narrative of Race from New Village Press.
12:00 - Journalist Lucas Koerner explains why Chavismo won, again, in Venezuela's elections.
Lucas wrote the piece Why Chavismo Won for Venezuelanalysis.
12:35 - Jacobin's Alyssa Battistoni looks at climate change's impact on working class movements.
Alyssa wrote the article Living, Not Just Surviving for Jacobin.
1:00 - Journalist Greg Palast remembers high school shop class with Vegas shooter Steven Paddock.
Greg wrote the piece I went to school with the Vegas shooter at his website.
1:25 - In a Moment of Truth, Jeff Dorchen regards the violent Other.
Jeffy's always othering that guy.
Posted by Alexander Jerri
Listen live from 9AM - 1:40PM Central on WNUR 89.3FM / stream at www.thisishell.com / subscribe to the podcast
9:15 - Writer George Monbiot explores the possible new worlds to emerge from the wreckage of this one.
George is author of Out of the Wreckage: A New Politics for an Age of Crisis from Verso.
10:00 - Kali Akuno and Ajamu Nangwaya discuss building alternative economic and social models at Cooperation Jackson.
Kali and Ajamu are edited and contributed to to the new collection Jackson Rising: The Struggle for Economic Democracy and Self-Determination in Jackson, Mississippi from Daraja Press.
11:05 - Sociologist Alex Vitale looks to the end of policing, and the start of democratic solutions to social problems.
Alex is author of The End of Policing from Verso.
12:00 - Journalist Martha Pskowski reports on bureaucratic disasters before and after Mexico City's earthquake.
Martha wrote the Guardian article 6,000 complaints ... then the quake: the scandal behind Mexico City's 225 dead.
12:35 - The Oakland Institute's Anuradha Mittal documents the struggle for land and livelihood in occupied Palestine.
The Oakland Institute released a series of nine reports on everyday life for Palestinians, titled Palestine: For Land and Life.
1:05 - Our Man in San Juan, Dave Buchen checks in from tomorrow's dystopia, today - post-Irma Puerto Rico.
Dave is in town to work on Theatre Oobleck's Apocalypse Cabaret: A Benefit for Puerto Rican Artists in November.
1:25 - In a Moment of Truth, Jeff Dorchen's appearance discrimination gets ugly.
Not a good look for Jeffy.
