From Blakullafarden to Akbank Bunka

Halsing Suite No. 1 for Guitar: IV. Ganglat "Blakullafarden" A traditional Swedish folk "walking song" from the Hälsingland region arranged for guitar and performed by Jakob Lindberg:

 From the same Suite of Suites of Swedish folk tunes this time from Dalecarlia,  here is Dalecarlian Suite No. 1 for Lute: I. Preludium:

Lindberg's younger brother is Christian Lindberg, a premier trombonist, conductor, and composer of some wildly different music.  Here for instance is Lindberg performing his own Elvis in Memoriam from his Asa Suite with the Australian Chamber Orchestra:

Lastly, here is Turk Jazz, the 3rd movement of Lindberg the Younger's Akbank Bunka suite, performed by Pacho Flores on trumpet with the Arctic Philharmonic based in Tromsø and Bodø, Norway:

Bonus: While we're talking Swedish folktunes, here's one from the region of a quarter of my ancestors, Skåne.  The tune is one of my favorites, Lönsbodapolkan performed by Tvåtakt:

Gimme

Some questions we know the answer to immediately.   Others we have to think about.  There's a class of question that due to the circumstances in which you encounter it demands an instant response but that always gives me pause.  This is a question I encounter more and more at the payment card pad at the retail establishment checkout.  

The first time I remember seeing it was at a PetSmart.   I had swiped my debit card and before I was asked for my PIN I got an unexpected insertion: How much did I want to contribute to homeless pets?  There were an assortment of choices, ranging from nothing to $5, with possibly an option for Other for those finding themselves in a superlatively generous mood.  My reflexive response was "Why does PetSmart want to know?"  It grated at my sense of injustice that some faceless big box store, a black hole of wealth and finance masquerading as a pet shop having opened up my wallet for the purchase of essentials had found some way to coax me to voluntarily open it further ostensibly for the benefit of unseen, merely evoked immiserated animals-- but who knew what actually for?  At best I could imagine PetSmart was shaking me down for their own glory-- cajoling me into funding what some suit fancied to be a PR coup for the company.  At worst, they were performatively seeing how much extra cash they could trick their customer base into coughing up for nothing at the register. I reflexively refused the first several times I encountered the option.

I don't remember when or why I gave in, but I now pretty regularly give the dollar every time.  My working theory is that what happened was COVID-- somehow the knowledge of an increase in homelessness among pets due to the COVID deaths of their owners or other misfortunes related to the upheaval of the disease may have done some work on me and inspired me to use the occasion of the cash register question as an opportunity to satisfy myself that I was in a some small way contributing to the solution of a crisis.  Once I had experienced the ease of giving a buck on top of the hundreds of dollars I was spending each month on my pets, it soon became habit.  Occasionally it occurred to me to question whether my acquiescence to the pleading was serving anybody but the corporation, but it was always after the fact, when I was walking out the door with my purchases and never when I could actually do anything to get to the bottom of the problem.  In fact, it wasn't until just now when I googled "Who benefits from PetSmart's cash register charity?" that I learned that the recipient of PetSmart's customer's spontaneous cash register largesse is "PetSmart Charities LLP."

According to its homepage, 90 cents on every dollar collected at the cash register goes toward the care of homeless pets. But why take PetSmart Charities' word for it?  It takes some digging, but of course there's dirt if you look for it.  Knowing what I now know, I'm sympathetic to my gut resentment at a corporation for expecting me to just hand over money to let them do as they see fit with it with no accountability, no accounting of how it's spent, no input from me in what is done with it.  I don't doubt PetSmart owes a debt to the society we share that lets them grow unfettered-- but I'm uncomfortable with leaving the repayment strictly up to the corporation.  Will it cause me to break the habit of donating?  Probably not.

PetSmart is of course not the only establishment wheedling money out of its customers as long as they have their credit cards engaged.  Drugstores, restaurants and supermarkets among others as I'm sure you're aware also engage in periodic campaigns of fundraising.  My usual supermarket has recently initiated a drive to raise money to combat hunger for vets.  I have seen the prompt the last 2 times I've checked out, and confess that much like my initial response to the homeless pet question at PetSmart, I have found myself reflexively refusing.  

I admit I bristle at the easy sleasy "patriotism" of corporations falling over themselves to lead the mandatory chorus of "Thank you for your service" to soldiers and veterans. What service?  Interfering in democratic elections abroad in order to impose crackdowns on popular socialist movements?  Installing dictators of the corporate class's liking where the US might otherwise have difficulty imposing its hegemony?  Killing innocent foreign citizens with bombs?  Killing American citizens with drones? Thwarting peace, threatening war, crushing autonomy, making the world safe for neoliberalism, finance and corporate exploitation and unsafe for freedom for regular people especially if they're dark skinned and poor?  Shaming Americans into thanking the military for its service is a smokescreen for the owner class's responsibility for how unsafe for true freedom worldwide-- including in America-- the US Military's mission has been in my lifetime.  I can't think of a single military operation that hasn't benefited the haves at the expense of the have nots.  Its ever expanding budget taken largely out of American taxpayer's hides* squeezes out spending that would actually make people's lives easier. Our military is deployed on the wrong side of every conflict and never on my behalf.  And its outsized demands for energy and resources is largely responsible for the planetary climate crisis that is fueling conflicts worldwide.

On the other hand, I realize that the pathways to becoming a soldier or a vet are more complicated than my feelings about the military, and it is an injustice that the country that expects young men and women to volunteer† for the overseas adventures of its small but dominant overclass takes such poor care of those who have served that many of them starve or go homeless.  Take better care of your proxies yourselves, you ungrateful bastards!  

In the meantime, now that I've talked it out, I've decided: I will do what I can to help out fellow exploitees of the system at the cash register.  Fuck it!  Solidarity!

~~~~~

* And less and less out of the overstuffed pockets of the tax shirking owner class whose sloppiness and greed and hostility to the rest of the world cause the emergencies that members of the military are then tasked to risk life and limb and mental health to deal with.

† It was considered a victory when the draft ended in the fallout from the American public's disenchantment with Vietnam.  But truthfully, in a more democratic society (one much more democratic that the US), military service that serves the people should be a duty that is shouldered by all citizens.  Perhaps if everybody had an equal chance to be selected for military service, a more democratic congress would be more selective about the engagements that call for military deployment.

The door is open

My brother thirteen is ready for a General Strike.  Laid off from work in the days of COVID, he has lately been participating in more than his share of the many marches and demonstrations that have sprung up in response to the plethora of outrages coming out of the Trump II White House.  Marches have their place- but there is something to be said for the General Strike as an effective weapon against the authoritarianism that is threatening to turn Americans into complicit abettors in TwentyFirst Century Fascism.  

My brother thirteen is all about the General Strike.  He was ready May 1.  In principle I support the idea-- I find the daydream of a work stoppage across the land a tantalizing fantasy, but the May 1 movement my brother informed me about remained a daydream when the day rolled by,  I told thirteen I would gladly  participate in any organized General Strike as long as it wasn't just a Bluesky thing.  It needs to be The Big One-- a voluntary mass stoppage of work and of commerce participated in so broadly that it causes the severe pain in those it is designed to communicate to.  It needs to be a threat that normies take seriously.  I will commit to it the day I overhear my work colleagues discussing it. There is talk of General Strikes if you look for it-- but you have to want to find it.  But until it is a phrase buzzing from late night talk show hosts' lips, and tossed about in the banter that precedes workaday meetings, I don't think I'll be joining.

Taylor Lorenz recently made a video about the "Someone Needs to Do It" Meme.  I can wholeheartedly relate to the sentiment.  A General Strike would be better because it's something we could all pull the trigger on. How satisfying would that be?  But while we wait for a movement to congeal around an act that demonstrates the power and the seriousness of the anti-fascist masses, I concur with Taylor Lorenz that hoping for the vicarious thrill of some anonymous working class hero's taking of matters into his or her own hands is not an unpleasant way to pass the time.  It's just too passive a pastime, and history suggests there are ways for the non-violent among us to spring into action.

I think of G.A. Cohen's parable of the self-imprisoned man from Karl Marx's Theory of History:

A man is in a windowless room whose door he mistakenly thinks is locked. Unlike a man in a locked room, he can leave it. Yet since he does not know he can, he is not likely to try the door. One reason why people sometimes do not exercise their power is their lack of awareness that they have it.

Now is the time for us to collectively walk through that door.  Whenever we agree is Now. 

Not to put too fine a point

Toward the end of a long piece for Spectre Magazine in which socialist writer DK Renton carefully builds a history-based counter-argument to the notion that Trump's second administration is exhibiting signs of fascism, he writes:

Trump isn’t a fascist yet, his party isn’t in its core politics, his voters are largely the Republicans of 2012 and 2008, rather than an army committed to certain outcomes in advance. But the distance between him and fascism has narrowed to such a fine point that it would take very little to cross it. 

As some boob on the internet with no reputation to protect, I have the luxury of not concerning myself with strict formalities.  From my perspective Donald Trump is eagerly embracing the forbidden mantels of fascism and authoritarianism that I'm surprised as someone closer to his age than I'd like to admit (he could be my oldest brother's oldest brother) he did not internalize an antipathy to in the wake of Hitler's defeat in World War II.  Then again, what I am witnessing seems to me to be the apotheosis of the easy sociopathy exhibited so freely by members of his class in the 1960's of my youth. 

I try to get inside his head to understand, but there's no room in there.  The space is completely occupied with "Me".  But in their unfettered lack of self-awareness, he and his loutish accomplices remind me very much of a cross between  a certain type of suburban New Jersey blue blood in whose homes my father, a self-employed poorly compensated floor scraper would often ply his trade and the more successful than he nouveau riche contractors he would frequently work with.  Somehow I experienced both, and though my father never talked about it, my invisibility when he would bring me and my twin brother thirteen, preschoolers, along on rare jobs, felt like a blindness on the part of the blue blooded dames who would casually toss about racism and contempt for the poor, careless of my father's feelings and without filter as though my brother and I in our food-stained little outgrown hand-me-down shirts and shorts with our impressionable little brains weren't there.  The loud and crass contractors who simply ignored us took for granted that my father would have no objection to their racist complaining and liberal sprinkling of the n-word in casual conversation on the job when thanks to their discrimination no black people were anywhere around.  In church we learned and sang that Jesus loved the little children of all colors, but he was exceptional.  Most adults it seemed, especially the comfortable ones -- maybe because change was so much in the air in those days -- were preoccupied with their hatred and satisfied with white society's stinginess toward those who were fighting for fairness with their slice of the pie.  Rich people assume the non-rich hate them because they envy them.  In my case, the hatred comes from my formative experience of them.  Among the worst, most contemptible people I've ever met, and I'm convinced Donald Trump and his posse are the same.  These are the tax shirkers and wealth hoarders and planet rapers who complain about the entitlement of the poor. And Trump and his team are emboldened to be doing something about it.

In their recent article on the subject of End Times Fascism in the Guardian, Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor make a distinction between the fascism of 100 years ago, focussed as it was on creating an earthly utopia from the ashes of the world it sought to destroy, and today's kind of illiberal go for broke state sponsored capitalism, utterly and intentionally conscious of the ravages it is wreaking on what's left of the planet it's been destroying with an escape plan reserved strictly for the traitorous oligarchs who are carrying it out.  A small but powerful group using the fragments of state power dutifully servile to it in the person of amoral autocrats such as Trump, Israel's Netanyahu, Hungary's Orbán, India's Modi, etc., in order to shut every one else out.  It's the culmination of a project described in recent works like Richard Seymour's Disaster Nationalism, Douglas Rushkoff's Survival of the Richest and Yanis Varoufakis' Techno-Feudalism.

There are definitions and lists of characteristics of fascism, but I am finding Google's AI list among the most succinct and useful:

Extreme Nationalism: Fascism emphasizes the nation's importance and often includes a strong sense of national pride and a belief in the superiority of the nation. 

Militarism: Fascist regimes often prioritize military strength and glorify war, viewing it as a way to achieve national greatness. 

Cult of Personality: Fascist leaders are often portrayed as charismatic and infallible figures, and their followers are encouraged to worship them. 

Suppression of Dissent:  Dissent and opposition are harshly suppressed, often through violence and intimidation. 

Social Hierarchy: Fascism often features a belief in a natural social hierarchy, with some groups seen as superior to others. 

Control of the Economy: Fascist regimes often exert significant control over the economy, sometimes through state ownership or regulation. 

Racism and Xenophobia:  Many fascist movements have embraced racism and xenophobia, targeting minority groups and promoting national purity. 

Use of Propaganda:  Fascist regimes often use propaganda to manipulate public opinion and create a sense of national unity. 

Rejection of Democracy:  Fascism is typically opposed to democracy and free elections, viewing them as weak and ineffective. 

 The rest I feel emboldened to say is quibbling.