A Quick Google Would Seem To Indicate That Napoleon Also:

This Armistice Day, what better way to repay veterans than to ensure that none of them are ever made again?

Carol Cohn, 1987

Vox

American democracy’s Senate problem, explained

A huge — and growing — source of bias in the political system.

Pretty bold of Vox to advocate for destroying the Senate because they vote the wrong way. As a bonus, the memo they link to doesn't contain a single mention of the House, which (at least attempts) to balance the small-state bias of the Senate with a large-state bias.

‘This Will Be The End Of Late Stage Capitalism,’ Says Increasingly Nervous Communist For Seventh Time This Year

referring to “late” capitalism is a content-free vocal tic that only serves to mark the speaker as a muddled thinker

On Post-Fascism

On the degradation of universal citizenship.

The end of colonial empires in the 1960s and the end of Stalinist (“state socialist,” “state capitalist,” “bureaucratic collectivist”) systems in the 1990s has triggered a process never encountered since the Mongolian invasions in the thirteenth century: a comprehensive and apparently irreversible collapse of established statehood as such. While the bien-pensant Western press daily bemoans perceived threats of dictatorship in far-away places, it usually ignores the reality behind the tough talk of powerless leaders, namely that nobody is prepared to obey them. The old, creaking, and unpopular nation-state—the only institution to date that had been able to grant civil rights, a modicum of social assistance, and some protection from the exactions of privateer gangs and rapacious, irresponsible business elites—ceased to exist or never even emerged in the majority of the poorest areas of the world. In most parts of sub-Saharan Africa and of the former Soviet Union not only the refugees, but the whole population could be considered stateless. The way back, after decades of demented industrialization (see the horrific story of the hydroelectric plants everywhere in the Third World and the former Eastern bloc), to a subsistence economy and “natural” barter exchanges in the midst of environmental devastation, where banditry seems to have become the only efficient method of social organization, leads exactly nowhere. People in Africa and ex-Soviet Eurasia are dying not by a surfeit of the state, but by the absence of it.

Traditionally, liberation struggles of any sort have been directed against entrenched privilege. Equality came at the expense of ruling groups: secularism reduced the power of the Princes of the Church, social legislation dented the profits of the “moneyed interest,” universal franchise abolished the traditional political class of landed aristocracy and the noblesse de robe, the triumph of commercial pop culture smashed the ideological prerogatives of the progressive intelligentsia, horizontal mobility and suburban sprawl ended the rule of party politics on the local level, contraception and consumerist hedonism dissolved patriarchal rule in the family—something lost, something gained. Every step toward greater freedom curtailed somebody’s privileges (quite apart from the pain of change). It was conceivable to imagine the liberation of outlawed and downtrodden lower classes through economic, political, and moral crusades: there was, crudely speaking, somebody to take ill-gotten gains from. And those gains could be redistributed to more meritorious sections of the population, offering in exchange greater social concord, political tranquility, and safety to unpopular, privileged elites, thereby reducing class animosity. But let us not forget though that the social-democratic bargain has been struck as a result of centuries of conflict and painful renunciations by the traditional ruling strata. Such a liberation struggle, violent or peaceful, is not possible for the new wretched of the earth.

Nobody exploits them. There is no extra profit and surplus value to be appropriated. There is no social power to be monopolized. There is no culture to be dominated. The poor people of the new stateless societies—from the “homogeneous” viewpoint—are totally superfluous. They are not exploited, but neglected. There is no overtaxation, since there are no revenues. Privileges cannot be redistributed toward a greater equality since there are no privileges, except the temporary ones to be had, occasionally, at gunpoint.

Famished populations have no way out from their barely human condition but to leave. The so-called center, far from exploiting this periphery of the periphery, is merely trying to keep out the foreign and usually colored destitutes (the phenomenon is euphemistically called “demographic pressure”) and set up awesome barriers at the frontiers of rich countries, while our international financial bureaucracy counsels further deregulation, liberalization, less state and less government to nations that do not have any, and are perishing in consequence. “Humanitarian wars” are fought in order to prevent masses of refugees from flowing in and cluttering up the Western welfare systems that are in decomposition anyway.

Citizenship in a functional nation-state is the one safe meal ticket in the contemporary world. But such citizenship is now a privilege of the very few. The Enlightenment assimilation of citizenship to the necessary and “natural” political condition of all human beings has been reversed. Citizenship was once upon a time a privilege within nations. It is now a privilege to most persons in some nations. Citizenship is today the very exceptional privilege of the inhabitants of flourishing capitalist nation-states, while the majority of the world’s population cannot even begin to aspire to the civic condition, and has also lost the relative security of pre-state (tribe, kinship) protection.

The scission of citizenship and sub-political humanity is now complete, the work of Enlightenment irretrievably lost. Post-fascism does not need to put non-citizens into freight trains to take them into death; instead, it need only prevent the new non-citizens from boarding any trains that might take them into the happy world of overflowing rubbish bins that could feed them. Post-fascist movements everywhere, but especially in Europe, are anti-immigration movements, grounded in the “homogeneous” world-view of productive usefulness. They are not simply protecting racial and class privileges within the nation-state (although they are doing that, too) but protecting universal citizenship within the rich nation-state against the virtual-universal citizenship of all human beings, regardless of geography, language, race, denomination, and habits. The current notion of “human rights” might defend people from the lawlessness of tyrants, but it is no defense against the lawlessness of no rule.

Currently interesting piece written in 2000.

Laws against feeding the homeless remind me of a recent conversation I had about the "Nordic model" of prostitution where Johns/customers are arrested but the prostitutes are left unpenalized: it's breathtakingly hypocritical, and the moral contradictions within bourgeois liberalism are evident. Apparently lawmakers believe that a woman is not oppressed when she is forced by circumstance to sell herself on the street to pay for rent and groceries, but only when the proper individual oppressor (a man) buys her services. (What about woman who hire female prostitutes, or male-on-male sex work?) Similarly, a person is not oppressed by homelesness, exposure to the elements, or the likely accompanying drug addiction, mental illness, and despair, but God forbid we violate any hygiene laws while feeding them!

You know what makes me mad? I used to work at Pizza hut and everyday we would have to throw away perfectly good pizza or potato wedges or garlic bread in the bin because it was the wrong order or the customer had changed their mind. They made us bin the whole thing. We weren’t allowed to put it aside to eat from or take it home (we all earned minimum wage so it’s not like we culd afford pizza that expensive a lot). But what makes me even madder is that they could easily give that to the homeless or poor. Like, if a homeless person came into the store, we could have easily given him one of the 20 or so pizzas that we would be binning every single day anyway. Imagine all the pizza hut stores in the world. Imagine each and every one throwing away on average 20 pizzas a day. Imagine how many people that would feed. Fuck corporations man.

a long, long, time ago

the day

the horny… died.

There's always violence. We could just sieze control of the plants and factories and voluntarily scale back our consumption, production, and pollution over the next decade until CO2 levels stabilized. We don't need to sit here helplessly waiting for the fruits of our own labor to kill us all. Bonus points if we can support people in other countries doing similar things.

it’s crazy that im alive to witness major effects of climate change. like it always seemed super vague and it was always ‘the polar bears won’t have anywhere to live’ but this shit is going to fuck everything up bigtime.

So much awful American car discourse could be avoided if we simply RetVurned to Tradition and built big beautiful trains from sea to shining sea.

one of the things that’s been lost in the recent “let them buy electric” kerfuffle is that there’s a sort of feedback mechanism at work where americans can’t estimate distance correctly and companies see this and are unwilling to put the electric cars that might serve them well on the market. the go-to cheaper electric car on the north american market is the $30k+ nissan leaf. one thing i’ve often found in twitter threads discussing it is americans who say that its 150 mile range simply isn’t big enough for their needs. however, if you’re commuting an hour each way to work, 150 miles is enough to stop in somewhere and pick up groceries. few americans even drive 50 miles a day for work. meanwhile, in europe and china, much cheaper options exist. the dacia spring sells in france for 17,000 euros, or under 20,000 usd, and has a range of 143 miles. the hongguang mini sells in china for the equivalent of 5000 usd and has a range of 100 miles. for many americans, either of these cars could easily replace their current vehicle, especially for those who live in cities, if companies were willing to bring them over. you can see the proof in sales of electric bikes, which now outpace electric cars and have the sort of price and range needed for <10 mile trips (not to mention, some have cargo compartments for grocery rides). however, given the high profit margins on SUVs (as well as america’s addiction to the idea that bigger cars are always safer), it’s unlikely that companies will want to undercut themselves with efficient smaller electric vehicles.