When Not Writing

Much of my time not writing or fishing is spent in the climate activist world. locally I organize with an ecosocialist working group that is part of western Montana DSA. I also work with a group which calls itself System Change Not Climate Change. They have been around since 2014 and maintain a great website which can be found here. This is where some of my non-fiction can be found. Unlike most of the editorial committee members, I am not a scholar but I enjoy the process of research and citing sources to reinforce arguments. I'm learning huge amounts and get a lot of confidence from working with this amazing group. I also meet with an international organization called the Global Ecosocialist Network. Again, these are respected scholars and writers from many parts of the world and they are way out of my league in terms of credentials. But I think it is important, and inspiring, to hear perspectives from other countries. Their website can be found here. Living in a very conservative, rural part of the country, a radical can easily feel isolated and alone. These folks keep me feeling as though I am part of something larger.While I don't buy the notion there is an "arc of hicstory that bends towards justice", by surrounding myself with smart, dedicated people, I can still believe radical change is possible.

Life : Powered

This organization, Life: Powered, and its parent org, the Texas Public Policy Foundation are the kind of fossil fuel shills I write about in my novel, Oblivion's Cross (now available on Amazon) In the book I call it F.R.E.E , the Foundation for Research on Energy and the Economy. The idea is, the industry rounds up a bunch of psuedo- intellectual ghouls willing to whore themselves for a cushy job, which is not hard to do. They write position papers and lobby legislatures and write op eds to support the industry which "supports" them financially. Your basic propaganda machine. Much of the novel is centered around James Beam, a founder of FREE, and big-wig ceo hell-bent on accumulating profit and prestige. As I developed this character I was interested in the degree of cynicism vs authentic belief he wrestled with, that is, what is the true nature and role of ideology. Wish I could get as glowing a review in the NY Times as Vauhini Vara got for her debut novel The Immortal King Rao. Good to see anti-capitalist climate fiction making its way into the mainstream. Kim Stanley Robinson has been leading the charge and his novel Ministry For the Future does a good job of making a political point while keeping the reader ( mostly) engaged. There are some places where it lags.

A Liberal's Idea of "Structural"

Again NY Times. In an opinion piece about homelessness, liberal columnist Farhad Manjoo opines about the "structural causes of homelessness" which he defines as "underdevelopment". This is because he doesn't understand the meaning of structure. Or he does but wants to keep his job and so obfuscates instead. As an intelligent person he of course notices there is plenty of development. It is just obscenely unequal, or what a Marxist would call uneven. Farhood does notice that there are untold numbers of people who are working "full time" ( to be considered worthy, you need to work 40 hours a week!) but are still unhoused. His solution is to give to charities, the classic liberal response, especially around the holidays. In this ideological construct "there will always be poor amongst us", just a sad fact of life, and so the fortunate ones give to the less. And then write virtuously about it. Nothing feels better than giving and that's the whole point ,isn't it? Feeling better? The "structure" is actually the way society organizes production and allocation. It is the property relations developed over centuries. NIMBY vs YIMBY is the result of the structure. Local zoning codes and the so-called "politics" around them are the result of the structure. Don't confuse cause and effect. We all know that Farhad goes to plenty of homes where each family member enjoys five or even ten thousand square feet. Where they each have three or four bathrooms. Homes that you could fit hundreds of tents in. But he never writes about that little issue.

Our Fate is in the Hands of Children

Not in a good way. After viewing the Times' DealBook interview of Sam Bankfraud, and following the links to other Silicon gurus, I'm realizing those Tech commanding heights are controlled by children. That is, Gen X ers who never grew up, because they didn't have to. These are Peter Pans in jeans and t shirts hauling in billions with a B and inventing NEW THINGS. For instance, the old altruism wasn't cool so they invented "effective altruism". It's NEW. So it must be better. Crypto itself is NEW and it was supposed to be revolutionary, because, you know, it's a NEW currency. So it would really undermine capitalist inequality and injustice, by eliminating central banks. The libertarian children thought of this. Leaving it to old normies to fix things like climate change or healthcare or housing, these kids want to solve NEW problems like artificial intelligence. I mentioned the constant grousing the NYTimes and other media does about China's Covid restrictions. How the bad government is interfering with the liberty of The People. Sound eerily familiar? Well now that they are easing up on restrictions the Times is worried about vulnerable old people. About a severe outbreak. The real worry, as always, is the global economy.

The Big Lie and Ye

Popourri of devolution in our times: Starting with this nifty bit of reporting from the NY Times: "Venezuela was once among the most affluent countries in Latin America, its economy buoyed by oil. But mismanagement and corruption by leaders claiming socialist ideals plunged the economy into disarray, while Mr. Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chávez, gutted its democratic institutions." This did not come from an opinion piece mind you. It is the quintessential piece of ideological propaganda from the "paper of record". Love the bit where Ye and his posse crashed dinner at Mar a Lago. You can't make this stuff up. Kanye asked Trump to be his vice=president. This is the culmination of a process Guy Debord described in 1967 as The Society of the Spectacle. Thesis 111 says it pretty well: The "crumbling of the worldwide alliance founded on beureaucratic mystification". The veil is dropped, the mask removed. Of course Feuerbach saw its outlne much much earlier: But certainly for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, fancy to reality, the appearance to the essence, this change, inasmuch as it does away with illusion, is an absolute annihilation, or at least a reckless profanation; for in these days illusion only is sacred, truth profane. Nay, sacredness is held to be enhanced in proportion as truth decreases and illusion increases, so that the highest degree of illusion comes to be the highest degree of sacredness. I also think it is fascinating that when Louisiana resists Covid restrictions liberals call them reactionary hicks. But when Chinese people resist, they become valiant freedom fighters. And now we have an entire conservative cultural movement based on being asleep. They mock awareness and celebrate obtuseness and indifference. "The worst are filled with passionate intensity" as we slouch toward the outer limits of banality.

Crypto Exchange?

I'm trying to understand this whole FTX meltdown, how it can be that people sunk billions into this thing that did what? They trusted some young guru because why? Crypto exists because it can do what? The NY Times warns that "contagion" can spread through the financial markets. Because some casually frumpy, millenial geek charmed people? This is the essence of our age of anxiety. Not only don't I know what a crypto echange does, I don't know what crypto does. I don't understand how a blockchain works or why anyone would sink their hard earned money into NFTs. I assume the exchange made profit by taking a cut on every transaction but why did people use it as a bank? Did it pay high interest? How did the geek earn multiple billions of dollars? If average people can't understand these huge forces operating in our society, affecting our economy and culture, there is going to be anxiety and it will manifest in different ways. Some of the anxiety will be subconscious, a vague disquiet that dark forces are at work manipulating you in unknowable ways. Which they are. But the real force is operating in plain sight. It's not a "new world order". It's the old world order using new technology. The tech industry is booming one minute and laying people off the next. But what do they do? What do they make? What did all those people do that is now suddenly unneeded? How can these people get so insanely rich so fast? What the fuck is happening? Long, long ago I knew two guys, sons of wealthy people, who gambled on everything. Not just cards and sports, but the most obscure events or arguments, these guys would put money on the outcome. They loved and were addicted to gambling. Maybe that's whats happening.

What Climate?

In all the reporting on election results and the issues that influenced voters I have not seen climate change mentioned even once. Perhaps a Democrat candidate mentioned it in a speech or a Republican used it as an example of "wokeness" but it was not a big factor in deciding races. Most voters had little knowledge of the Inflation Reduction Act or know that COP 27 is taking place at this moment. It would seem that the Supreme Court helped the Democrats prevent a Red wave. Inflation, which you might have thought would drag down Dems, wasn't a thing either. It seems to me there is a kind of exhaustion with all the freaks and clowns, a weariness. It turns out entertainment has its limits. You can only hang out at the circus or amusement park so long, right, and then you want to go home and rest. John Kerry and Biden went to Egypt to sell market solutions to African nations drowning in debt. Turn the investors loose with a profit motive and they will innovate solutions to the crisis. Just ask Bill Gates or Bill McKibben. He was on Ezra Klein's podcast for an hour and never said the word capitalism. For him the bogeyman is fossil fuel corporations who are run by unethical, devious, mean people. Bad eggs are dooming the planet. Not that very many people give a shit.