What to say.

Shit is crazy out there. People wanna go back to burning books, and the dominance of wealth is increasingly too obvious to ignore. It puts me in a mind to consider what, in this context, the proverbial "have a little, want more" might really want more of.

Now, truth be told most people just want to hold on to what they've got. When fear of the foreign devil fails, just threaten someone's livelihood or straight up cast them into penury. Up to a point, this'll keep the proles in line.

But what of the rest? What of all the people who are still making it, but aren't actually members of the power elite. Say, people like me (socioeconomically, anyway), or even people who are more well off, simple (and fucking powerless) millionaires, for instance. What do these people want our of their lives?

I see a lot of decadence. There's a lot of fun shit out there to do and buy and eat and drink, and hell if I'm not a part of that scene from time to time. But ultimately I think there's an end to the gratification you can get from toys.

What I hope is that people start tuning in to the fact that what they want more of is not so much a bigger piece of the pie, but a better meal to begin with. There's a non-trivial connection between inequality and intolerance, between an increasingly brutal and dumb society and the neo-aristocracy that's growing up around us.

What I hope the have-a-little's want more of is civilization. I don't mean that in some refined haughty sense, but in the sense of a productive, vibrant, effective, lively, awesome society, one that produces truly great culture, that can pilot spaceship earth with honor and distinction.

Atrios on Obama's economy captures the essence of what I find so dispiriting:

The point isn't that there was some magic obvious solution, the point is that the problem was bigger than they imagined and, frankly, recovery noises from the administration started to remind me of Bush era noises about how things were always improving in Iraq.

Team Obama appears to have taken all the wrong lessons from team Bush. They pursue the limp magical-thinking type propaganda — "clap louder!" — couched as DC-centric conventional wisdom (which is itself morally and intellectually bankrupt), without apparently even contemplating the virtues of a Cheney-esque will to power.

They also play politics very poorly, much more poorly than the Clintons.

I find myself in odd moments beginning to wish we'd nominated Hillary.

I've been slowly making my way through First as Tragedy, Then as Farce, which I picked up while browsing the Strand back in the spring and then purchased as a supplemental counterweight to the delightfully light/fun Shantaram. Žižek isn't really breezy, but he's certainly brilliant, and more importantly willing to ask pretty hard questions.

The book is part dissection of the contemporary neoliberal status quo ideology, and part argument to revive the idea of (haunting music) Communism. It's already delivered a few gems, such as this explanation of the uselessness of the modern Leftist opposition:

In the good old days of Really Existing Socialism, a joke popular among dissidents was used to illustrate the futility of their protests. In the fifteenth century, when Russia was occupied by Mongols, a peasant and his wife were walking along a dusty country road; a Mongol warrior on a horse stopped at their side and told the peasant he would now proceed to rape his wife; he then added, "But since there's a lot of dust on the ground, you must hold my testicles while I rape your wife, so that they will not get dirty!" Once the Mongol had done the deed and ridden away, the peasant started laughing and jumping with joy. His surprise wife asked, "How can you be jumping with joy when I was just brutally raped in your presence?" The farmer answered: "But I got him! His balls are covered with dust!"

A lot of the rest is somewhat remedial for anyone with a critical eye for the world: how a "kinder" — or more recently "greener" — capitalist status quo has taken hold and is recycling its opposition into its own system, etc. The interesting piece to me is not this critique, but the argumentation to seriously (re)consider the Marxist alternative.

I got handed a voter guide from The League at the 24th and Mission Bart today. Gave me a warm and fuzzy. Love this stuff:

How crazy is San Francisco politics? We're endorsing Gavin Newsom, a guy who blocked us on twitter! We disagree with Gavin a lot. He talks a good game at being progressive, but most of the time he's on the "big money" side of crucial local issues: selling out Bayview/Hunters Point to Lennar, siding with PG&E against public power, etc. His policy of reporting immigrant youth to ICE before they've been convicted of any crimes is horrible. But when you take him out of SF and compare him to the usual hacks who run for office statewide, Gav looks pretty good. He supports reforming Prop 13 and is semi-serious about addressing climate change. His opponent in the primary is Janice Hahn. Her politics seem pretty good, but we don't think she's ready for prime time. She's gotten by on her family name and just doesn't have the experience.

Pssst! Here's a poorly kept secret: the main reason we want Gavin to become Lt. Governor is because if he wins, the Board of Supervisors gets to pick his replacement, and we're hoping that would mean that we'd finally get a Mayor we could be excited about! Some of us are afraid this could backfire on us: Gavin goes on to become Governor or Senator and uses his clout to support candidates and policies that we don't like. Hmm. It's a tough call.

And then there's the comedy. Here's a real ad: