Epic Fails and Instant Regrets

I'm having a hard time with focus.  Too much time on the computer, too much time on YouTube, too much time being tempted by the algorithm into watching hours and hours of a category of video called Epic Fails or Instant Regrets -- clip after clip of dinners being ruined, drapes going up in flames, roofs being fallen off of, merchandise sliding off shelves, structures collapsing with the builders still on them.   I find myself hypnotized by what I can't disagree are failures of epic proportions captured on video and assembled (many of them apparently by AI) into socially irredeemable entertainment.  The alternative is torturing myself with videos that bystanders have helplessly taken to document scenes of violent absconding of neighbors, co-workers, strangers by jackbooted masked thugs in out-of-state pickup trucks with makeshift generic insignia on their army/navy surplus in a cosplay of officiality.  The videographers often interject themselves into the video in an attempt to get the thugs to answer to them; failing that to shame them for destroying the fabric of the community, for abandoning their humanity, for emulating Nazis.  I wish these heartfelt interjections were more satisfying to behold.  I find myself wishing for more from the citizens standing in for me and especially from the faceless mooks facelessly destroying peoples lives and homes with an infuriating entitlement.  More shame hitting its mark, more anger making a dent in the armor, more immediate retribution and restoration of justice from the injustice unfolding before our eyes.  More pain returned to the source.

I am aware that it's happening in parts of the heart of the metropolitan area I live in.  I have yet to see evidence of it with my own eyes and I haven't even watched the local news about it, but I have overheard local anchors referring to it (passing through the room with the tv on) and I have of course seen clips of it here and there.  It’s surreal to me at this point.  Just another drip drip drip in the feeling that the world has gone to shit and more reason to worry about how / whether/ if there will ever be recovery from it.

The whole Trump/ Project 2025 agenda seems like something out of the twilight zone.  The chaos of the episode is explained in the reveal that we are no longer on earth but have been somehow transported to a Dumbass Planet where dumb is smart, smart is dumb, bad is good, good is bad, beautiful is ugly, ugly is beautiful, lies are truth and truth is a lie.  People may have voted to give booting immigrants a try not dreaming that that might mean they themselves if they are themselves immigrants.   Or that it could mean that the future of labor in America is the necessary underpaid hard work that has been opened up by the expulsion of the immigrants who have been doing it.  As though people had voted to stop the cannibalizing of immigrants only to find out that they were now on the menu.  Hey! It’s what you voted for!

I want to think of the Trump and the Trumpers and the minions who eagerly serve as Trump's death camp drones as the D Students.  And I realize that some students do poorly in school because we don’t know how to educate them or care to but these are proudly D Students who do poorly because they are spoiled rotten assholes.  Because brains are how you get empathy for other people but these D Students are consumed with feeling only for themselves.  Because of their class or their race or simply their status as white males they’ve never been punished for being poor at thinking.  Au contraire, they are daily rewarded for it because their interactions with the world are a lot like a rock’s with a small precious creature.

I like to think that if I encountered a group of ICE bros tormenting a neighbor I would find the reserves of strength to not let it happen.  It amazes me how civilly these invaders are treated in so many of the snippets of documentation that you come across on the web.  But I am getting the idea that in the moment there is not much one decent person can do in the face of a mob of violent armed authoritarian doofuses.  In the meantime, as I scour the recs put before me by the algorithm, I am holding out hope for some Epic Wins and Instant Gratification.

The Quiet Part

 Truthout tells us what we already knew: Former Top Biden Spox Admits Israel Sabotaged Ceasefire Deals as US Blamed Hamas.  This comes two months after a related non-revelatory revelation from the same "spox"--  Matthew Miller--that "without a doubt" Israel committed war crimes throughout the period that at the State Department podium, Miller repeatedly asserted that it had not.  Lying is part of the job according to Miller: “When you’re at the podium, you’re not expressing your personal opinion. You’re expressing the conclusions of the United States government.”   And yet, as the articles and interviews make clear, the Biden Administration was behind the scenes fully aware of the truth.  So how were these lies the conclusions of the United States government?  The reality is that Matthew Miller, John Kirby, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and other officials and representatives of the government were tasked to lie in keeping with the US's longstanding role as enabler and abettor of Israel's genocide against the Palestinians.  And Miller, Kirby, Blinken et al rose to the task.

From the article:

Miller’s latest statements make it clear that the statements blaming Hamas were a lie. In April of 2024, for instance, Netanyahu announced that Israel would cross Biden’s supposed “red line” and invade Rafah, even as Biden was publicly calling for a ceasefire at the time.

“But in the middle of that proposal being submitted to Hamas, the prime minister publicly said that Israel was going to invade Rafah, whether there was a ceasefire or not,” Miller said. “You can imagine how much harder that made it to get a deal over the line.”

Then, he said that U.S. officials would even try to outmaneuver Israel when announcing Biden’s ceasefire outline in May — only for Netanyahu’s office to “leak” to the press that the plan was not what Israel had agreed to.

“We told the government of Israel only an hour or two before the speech because, frankly, we spent the last few months seeing the government of Israel, at times, try and sabotage an approach to get to a ceasefire, and we were determined not to let that happen here,” he said. “It is consistent with the pattern we saw for many months.”

Later in the program, Miller recalled statements from Netanyahu at a war cabinet meeting toward the beginning of the genocide, saying that he wanted to continue fighting in Gaza for decades.

Blinken told Netanyahu that Israel was “‘making it impossible to realize the dream that the state of Israel has had since its founding. You’re going to be bogged down here fighting this war for years and decades to come,’” Miller recounted. “And the prime minister said, ‘You’re right. We are going to be fighting this war for decades to come. That’s the way it’s been. That’s the way it’s going to be.’”

If it were serious about the ceasefire, the Biden Administration could have exposed Netanyahu's duplicity in order to shine a light on the intransigence of America's partner in the Middle East and shame Israel into doing the right thing.  Instead it chose to signal its commitment to not hindering Israel's goals.  Learning to what extent this is due to ideological commitments to the Zionist project and to what extent due to more venal motivations of the ruling class may perhaps need to wait for a future casual truth bomb that Miller, ex-spox, feels free to drop.

 

Victory At Sea

Because I am really struggling to find anything more to say about the horror show we find ourselves in but am not yet ready to throw in the towel on this blog writing thing, I am presenting yet another rant on the topic of the piss poor electorate that proves yet again that people can not be trusted with democracy.* The below is from yet another correspondence with a leftist who felt it important not to reward Kamala Harris with his vote on election day.  Out of the blue, he shared with me a series of Bluesky skeets on the topic of the deserved unpopularity of Biden's senile Gaza policy, which was fine and truthful.  But the Bluesky poster (skeeter?) who wrote the thread could not resist tacking on the name of Kamala Harris to every other post in a clear attempt to tar her and those still regretting her loss with the same brush.

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In the long series of generally insightful posts by [poster who I will refer to mercifully as "Skeeter" rather than by his Bluesky name] on Biden and Gaza, it’s ruined for me by the very stilted insertion of Kamala Harris in every other post.  This is the kind of thing that drives me crazy.  Take her out of it.  It’s only done to make yourself (Skeeter) feel better about your complicity in Trump’s victory.  Nobody’s fooled.  Nobody fuckin knows what KH would have done as president.  You (Skeeter) are not absolved.  

Casually slipping her in to the conversation really trivializes Biden’s psychopathy in my view.  We all know why you’re doing it.  I don’t forgive you!   (Skeeter)  ^_^  You ruined your excellent points about Biden. C’mon man!

I know it makes you feel better to assert that Kamala would have continued Biden's Gaza policy unabated.  But what’s the point?  She didn’t win.  We lost—meaning we who preferred our chances with Kamala because we were determined to stop Trump.  We lost already.  Everyone else won, including the people who did not want Kamala to win simply because they were for reasons of principle not particularly focused on the difference between Kamala and Trump.  

Kamala did a very bad job with people who have an unsophisticated notion of politics.  That was her bad, that was on her.  She fucked that up irreparably.  It’s the bulk of why she lost.   She did bad with every one else too, but part of a sophisticated understanding of politics is that in an election one of two futures will win.  The choice will be stupid because everybody, even those whose understanding of politics is so sophisticated that they understand both futures are deficient, use one day to administer to their politics and it is the wrong day because it’s already too late to administer to your politics on election day.  "None of the Above" never wins.  Your vote has consequences.  You did not want Kamala Harris to win.  You got your way.  Behold the consequences.  I am unceasingly annoyed by the endless justification for not taking election day seriously, for squandering it on a performance.  

I will stop reflexively complaining about this when people stop trying to rationalize to me why they squandered their opportunity to prevent harm.  I don’t really want to see proof that Kamala promised that if elected she was going to equal Biden in Gaza.  She was told to say that.  She didn’t have to, and that’s on her.  But no one could possibly equal the demented, brain deficient psycho Joe Biden on Gaza.  She lied like a politician and also like a weak vice president (who was reportedly shut out of policy discussions for the entire administration.)  Anyway.  Not to re-litigate but those who did not vote for Kamala should frankly shut up about the election.  It’s unseemly to gloat about a victory—especially when your part in the victory was sweeping the obstacle of yourself out of the way of the guy who won.

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* For the sake of the people, Democracy has to be left to chance.

Taking the Plunge

A political podcast I watch frequently recently had an interview with Osita Nwanevu, author of the forthcoming The Right of the People (subtitle: Democracy and the Case for a New American Founding) his book on electoral reform.  The book will be well-discussed in political circles as it is one of those rare attempts to take seriously the problems we all know exist with our political system-- among them, the exclusive influence of money, polarization, politicians who do not represent the desires of those who elect them-- and do nothing about.  From what I gather the author proposes radical reform of our political as well as our economic system, and the cosmic void knows we are overdue for both.  I am always looking for the next thing to read so I have wish listed the book, but to be honest, I am skeptical that it is going to go far enough toward particularly the political changes that I am convinced are needed in order to shake up our democracy for real.  In particular, I've read the introduction and Nwanevu appears to offhandedly dismiss the classical Athenian system of sortition-- the selection by lot among all eligible citizens of a body of decision makers (a mini-public to use the terminology) for short, non-consecutive terms, much in the way we select juries for criminal cases-- as something that is clearly no longer how we think of democracy. 

Nwanevu quotes Pericles' Funeral Oration from Thucydides as the description of the vaunted strengths of the Athenian system:

Our form of government does not enter into rivalry with the institutions of others. Our government does not copy our neighbors', but is an example to them. It is true that we are called a democracy, for the administration is in the hands of the many and not of the few. But while there exists equal justice to all and alike in their private disputes, the claim of excellence is also recognized; and when a citizen is in any way distinguished, he is preferred to the public service, not as a matter of privilege, but as the reward of merit. Neither is poverty an obstacle, but a man may benefit his country whatever the obscurity of his condition. 

Nwanevu dismisses this as "nonsense" on the basis that of course in actually existing sortition, the pool of citizens was limited to landed males.  Women, slaves, immigrants and eventually even those with less than two Athenian born parents were excluded from the process.  That there could be a fix for these shortcomings is beyond the scope of what Nwanevu appears to have in mind for his book so is never discussed.

To the contrary, I am convinced and reconvinced daily by what our electoral system has wrought that it is sortition with the proper obvious tweaks to the qualification standards to make them as inclusive and representative as scientifically possible*-- even as unfamiliar as the concept has become-- that is the only truly democratic alternative to electoral politics worth replacing our current system with if we're  going to take the trouble of replacing it.  Furthermore I would propose sortition as the most powerful means of setting a chart for the major course correction required if humanity hopes to make amends for the planetary ravages of capitalism and its most nightmarish successors.  The alternative to transitioning quickly to sortition is yielding to the uninformed, brain-dead bad science fiction fantasies of the unself-aware class of billionaires who have insinuated themselves into ownership of our political system and who are  too overconfident in and full of self-regard for their talents at representing the needs of humanity for skepticism about their goals, with the result that in their hands the planet is too choked from the way that they would have with it for the survival of life as we know it.  

In brief, the system I would propose is one developed by Terry Bouricius at Democracy Creative in which the logistics are entrusted to a number of panels each of which is peopled by random selection from a pool of volunteers each of whom would serve non-consecutive terms of varying (albeit short) lengths depending upon the office.  For instance, one panel might determine the methods for random selection and other rules and regulations of the process; another would solicit and compile proposals for legislation; another would solicit expertise and identify and evaluate the best information on the proposed legislation.  For the actual passage of legislation,  "juries" would be selected by lot from among the entire population for mandatory service.  The juries would convene to be informed of the issues to be decided upon and to debate and deliberate on whether more study is needed or to vote on the legislation.   Counterpart systems could be set up for the executive and judicial branches as well replacing and vastly improving the current corroded structure for those institutions as well.

It's a system even the left couldn't fuck up.

Some points I would highlight in making a case for sortition over electoral politics:

Sortition is exclusively about governing the people as we would govern ourselves.  The process is streamlined to 1) Identification of the problems to address;  2) Empowering a randomly selected scientifically representative mini-public of significant size to inform themselves about the same with the same expert information; 3) Informed discussion about the options and goals;   4) devising proposed solutions and taking a vote on their adoption on our behalf (or, if deemed appropriate by the selected body, in a public referendum). 

Electoral politics busies us with a convoluted, purchased process of choosing among self-selected careerists as a way of distracting us from its inability to give us the consent of the governed.  The goal of sortition is governing well; the goal of electoral politics is winning.  Winning is the wrong goal of government.

While it doesn't have to be this way, the way our society is structured now ensures that in every election there will be winners and there will be losers.  The stakes are high and the money spent on the contest is both a result of it and the primary reason that campaign financing perpetually escalates.  Our politics is no longer (if it ever was) concerned with improving outcomes for the electorate but merely with kicking the opposing team's ass.   No less than half the country is thus kept in misery for the duration of the winning teams' term.  This is no way to run a country, but it is an excellent way to run a country into the ground as we see happening around us every day.

Sortition is not about defeating half the country; not about parties or personalities or war chests.  It is strictly about government charting the course we ourselves would chart given our current predicament, the best information about what to do about it and ample opportunity to deliberate and the power to decide our future for ourselves without having decisions imposed upon us.

Understanding the resistance to revolutionary democratic change, I look forward to filling in the blanks in my understanding of what Nwanevu proposes.  May the best re-making win.

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* Randomness guarantees diversity at the top, in sharp contrast to the depressing sameness of our whiny self-selected elite.  No wonder those motherfuckers bitch about diversity.  The actual diversity that would result if our leaders were randomly chosen gives the lie to their artificially uniform, curated monopoly.