Month: January 2021

Since last week I have been doing well, overall, continuing my recovery from surgery and concentrating on writing chapter two of Ian Curtis, Joy Division, and Critical Theory.  I didn’t experience any noticeable pain during the first week, I did in the second week but it was much, and by this third week it has largely disappeared; I have not taken any pain reliever, of any kind, in well over three weeks as I have not needed to do so.  I am also fortunate as well, despite the fact that bleeding is commonplace after this surgery for as long as eight weeks out, that I have experienced no bleeding whatsoever. 

In relation to my book, even though January 2021 has proven multiply full, busy, and distracting for me, much more so than was the case for many months preceding, I did write approximately 50 single spaced typed pages, comprising the first half of the aforementioned chapter, from the 4th through the end of last week, the 22nd, and then starting this Monday the 25th I began intensive listening, note-taking, and reflection on the first of five Joy Division songs I am writing about in detail in the second of this chapter–“Disorder.” I have found this challenging work because it is readily possible to approach “Disorder” and each of the other four songs I am subsequently addressing in this same chapter from many viable and compelling directions, while taking into account numerous noteworthy features of the musical sound. 

I need to be selective, ultimately, while exploring a considerable range of takes on my way to discovering what seems like a satisfying discussion.  And even though this process will culminate with an interpretation, it will do so, as is the case with the rest of the writing I have been doing, since last August 1, on two books, by in fact elaborating multiple interpretations.  I am, in addition, deliberately leaving each of these interpretations open-ended, while calling attention to their partiality and limitedness.  I am suggesting moreover that these interpretations are not only products of a specific time and place and of my social background, experience, and positioning as well as my historical and cultural situatedness but also of ongoing dialogues I have engaged in, with this music, and with a history of previous interpretations I have consciously and unconsciously developed of these same songs, over the course of 40 years of listening to them at multiple different times and places as well as in multiple different moments and through multiple different passages in my life-experience.  

***

I have been steadily reading more about critical phenomenology as well as about famous and influential Black Britons.  Andy and I have made our way through the Swedish TV crime drama The Sandham Murders and the French TV crime drama Speakerine; we are also currently following the Norwegian TV crime drama Aber Bergen and just started the Swiss TV crime drama Banking District.  Speakerine is an historical drama, focused on television, government, and multiple contesting social and political forces in France at the time, in 1962; Aber Bergen is a contemporary legal drama; and Banking District is a recent drama concerning the realms of banking and finance, set so far at least in 2012, with ample reference to the impact of the 2007-2008 banking crisis and global recession.  Andy is getting ready for the Spring 2021 semester, as well as continuing to design and print practical objects and devices via his new 3-D printer.  Andy is hopeful he, and I, will be eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine as soon as the beginning of March, which appears to be the current forecast.  We both are doing a regular amount of indoor exercise, and I have been able to slowly resume running after my operation; Andy does far more lifting than I do and he has created an impressive home gym in response to what the pandemic has necessitated.  I am, as always, enjoying exploring musical possibilities for my radio show, Insurgence, for WHYS Community Radio here in Eau Claire, and in preparing to share these; tonight this will include music from For Those I Love, Douglas Dare, Lowertown, Luke Abbott, and Shabaka and the Ancestors.  

***

I definitely found the Green Bay Packers’ loss this past Sunday sad and disappointing.  This team impressed me greatly throughout the season, and I maintained high hopes, but unfortunately just as last year the 49ers appeared to be the Packers’ nemesis this year it appears the Bucs are.  I am hopeful as many members of this same team will return as possible, even though I fear we will experience some heartbreaking departures, and I hope as well we will make another deep run next year, with Aaron Rodgers continuing to lead the way.  I do think, despite some questionable calls during this last game, Matt LaFleur has been a fantastic head coach, and I am confident in him leading the team moving forward.  But I do feel for all the players, coaches, and the rest of the members of the organization as well as for all devoted Packers’ fans, worldwide.  For me, the team’s performances, its achievements, and the manifest joyful camaraderie I noted among the players, and coaches, throughout this past season, felt like a much needed ‘gift’ to me, and to other Packers’ fans, in the ongoing midst of this terrible pandemic. 

***

Although of course people like me, coming from ‘the socialist left’, will continue to push for bolder, more far-reaching, and more fundamentally transformative actions, I am impressed with the Biden administration so far.  They are taking on so much that is urgently necessary and doing it seriously.  Of course so much damage needs to be undone and repaired, but I am impressed the administration is seeking to do far more than that, and is working at it, right away.  I continue to worry, though, that in this nation fascism, and its appeal, remain substantial, and substantially dangerous.  

***

I want to wish all friends beginning a new semester next week all the best with this, and I do sincerely hope that next Fall will be much closer to what we long experienced as ‘normal’.  Even though I have done remarkably well during the course of this pandemic and the forced social distancing, I eagerly look forward to the latter’s end.  I am satisfied with my life, and grateful for the security and stability I enjoy, as well as for being able to focus the critical mass of my time and energy, while working, on two demanding yet fulfilling book projects (they do in fact leave little room left over for much else).  It remains odd though that as Andy mentions ‘my bubble’ is quite small, because these days I only venture from our house once a week for groceries, whenever I have an appointment or need to pick up a prescription medication at Mayo Clinic Health Systems Eau Claire, and when I do my Thursday night radio show at WHYS.  I will be happy when spring arrives, or even later winter, when I will resume long walks outdoors, and with resuming running recently perhaps this will include outdoor runs as well.  

***

As a final comment, I noted to myself, and shared with Andy, earlier this week that the line “Touching from a distance, further all the time” certainly takes on a starkly resonant new meaning as the COVID-19 pandemic persists.  And the same with “I’ve got the spirit, lose the feeling, take the shock away.”  Take care and all my best to everyone reading this and to all close to you. 

Today (20 January 2021) was a good day to have my letter to the editor printed among others in the Eau Claire _Leader-Telegram_, joining fine contributions from people I know including Todd Adams, Sharon Hildebrand, and Carter Smith.  My letter, which I sent in over a week and a half ago now, I wrote in response to reading a letter that claimed the 2020 US Presidential election was rigged by ‘socialists' working with ‘the deep state' and that it was time for ‘true Americans' to become concerned and active in fighting ‘to take our country back'.   Here's my letter (limited to 250 words of course):

No credible evidence support contentions the Presidential election was ‘rigged’. All charges of widespread fraud and corruption have been dismissed, as without merit, often by Republican elected officials and by Republican-appointed judges. Socialists and the ‘deep state’ do not work together; throughout US history socialists have consistently viewed the ‘deep state’ with suspicion while the ‘deep state’ has targeted the socialist left for interference far more than the fascist right. Socialists in the US have nothing to do with the Soviet Union or Communist China. Socialists in the US are democratic socialists, committed to peaceful, non-violent social change. Like socialists in Scandinavia and throughout Western Europe, American democratic socialists equate socialism with economic as well as political justice, democracy, and freedom. American democratic socialists support a vision of society rooted in solidarity, in collective responsibility for each other, where everyone is included and no one left behind. American democratic socialists encourage eligible voters who have not previously voted, or rarely voted, to exercise their right to do so, through entirely legal means. American democratic socialists work toward these ends entirely above board, in no way colluding with the FBI, CIA, or NSA. Joe Biden won, comfortably, both the popular and the electoral vote; this was not rigged. Rigging the vote would not result in Biden falling short of polling expectations, or Democrats losing seats in the House and meeting minimal expectations in the Senate. It’s preposterous to claim otherwise, as it is to claim Donald Trump is leading a secret crusade against a cabal of cannibalistic pedophiles. The attack on the Capitol, incited by President Trump, is about ‘taking America away’–from the Constitution, from democratic legitimacy, from traditional norms of peaceful transfer of power, in the direction of autocracy. That danger the Founding Fathers worried about and strove to prevent.

Bob Nowlan, Eau Claire

***

Today I feel cautiously hopeful we will begin to move past the long nightmare of what the outgoing presidency has inflicted on us for the past four years, and even longer than that considering the seemingly endless lead up to the 2016 election.  It will be welcome to have a President who actually cares more about doing his job than his ego, and whose actions are not motivated first and last by efforts to enhance his personal power, and who is not willing to incite and lead dangerously anti-democratic (yes, fascist) forces to the brink of a successful insurrectionary coup.  I will have disagreements with the Biden administration, undoubtedly, but these will transpire on a terrain where we will be able to recognize, address, and engage a broadly shared sense of common reality.  I feel cautiously hopeful that Biden and his administration will recognize the need ‘to go big' and that we do indeed face urgent crises that require urgent responses and urgent solutions, while I also maintain some cautious hope as well that this administration will support and propose responses and solutions that will prove transformative and lasting, not just palliative and ameliorative.  It will be welcome, most welcome, to live under a ‘normal presidency' once again, where we can all focus on discussing and debating the issues that matter to and affect us, especially those of us in the greatest need or at the greatest disadvantage, rather than having to attend to (or strive desperately to avoid paying attention to) whatever latest of a seemingly incessant daily barrage of outrageous actions, or posts, are issuing from a president who is conducting his presidency as if he were no more and no better than the ultra-sleazy host of an ultra-sleazy reality tv show.  Biden is a man who can and does experience and extend genuine compassion and empathy, and that will be most welcome.  He is someone who recognizes his own strengths and his own limitations, and is ready to seek out and trust credible, reputable, and indeed expert advice.  He is someone who has actually worked in government all his life, and knows how that works, for better and worse.  

I think most of all today of so many students of mine these past four years who have evidenced great, even grave, concern, worry, fear, and anxiety about the future of this nation, and about their own futures, living through the presidency of the past four years, a good number of whom contacted me right after the results of this past 2020 presidential election became clear to let me know they felt like they finally could begin to breathe again.  We all need a successful Biden-Harris presidency.  May it be so.

***

All welcome. All good. All necessary.

President Biden’s 17 Initial Executive Orders and Other Directives in Detail

***

Finally (writing on 21 January 2021), while I am relieved and happy Donald Trump is no longer president, and cautiously hopeful President Biden and his administration will reverse some of the worst damage of the last presidency as well as do some urgently needed good that extends beyond reversing this worst damage, I am skeptical about the preeminent emphasis on unity and healing, however much I do understand and respect from where this is coming and why.  It is crucial that progressives keep mobilized, active, and pushing hard for transformative change.  It is necessary moreover to question on what basis is ‘unity’ proposed and pursued.  And to question as well whether ‘healing’ means forgiving and forgetting what cannot and should not be forgiven or forgotten.  Unity and healing should not proceed without accountability.  Progressives cannot simply ‘unite’ with fascists on the basis of a compromise that grants fascism further legitimacy by accepting fascism is, effectively, ‘half right’.  And progressives cannot accept ‘healing’ that suggests ‘all sides’ are equally responsible for the present ‘need to heal’–that, effectively, it comes down to recognizing ‘there are good people on both sides’.   Unfortunately, the Biden administration confronts multiple enormous challenges, simultaneously, with a razor-thin level of support in Congress.  Biden, Harris, and their administration therefore must make a compelling case for the actions the new administration is and will be proposing, pursuing, and implementing–striving to win people over to recognize how and why all of this is in their interest and to their benefit, including people who do not currently accept Democratic Party policy proposals (let alone policy proposals advocated by those identifying politically further left than Democrats) are in their interest and to their benefit.  The conditions that enabled fascism to occupy the center right in the Republican Party have not changed just because Joe Biden is now president and Kamala Harris is now vice-president and they have not changed just because Biden and Harris are assembling their own team at the top of the executive branch of the federal government.  These conditions remain. None of us who oppose fascism can afford to rest content that this new administration is now in office and trust that they themselves, all by themselves, will transform the basis upon which current sharp and stark divisions manifest themselves.  We certainly can respect the inherent dignity and worth of all people while striving to contribute toward forging means of insuring everyone is included and taken care of, within our communities and our greater society, while simultaneously respecting the value of strong and even fierce political disagreements, but we cannot compromise with those who oppose and work to fundamentally undermine democracy and who likewise work to fundamentally undermine the pursuit and realization of social justice.  We cannot simply ‘unite’ in ‘healing’ with all those who are fine with racism, ethnocentricism, xenophobia, sexism, heterosexism, homophobia, cissexism, transphobia, ableism, ageism, massive socio-economic inequality and disparity and precarity, ecological destruction, militarism, and imperialism–and who in fact are effectively in favor of exacerbating all of these conditions.  No one who identifies with any of these conditions as positive, necessary, inevitable, or even of indifferent unconcern needs maintain those identifications–none of those identifications are unalterable.  We need to show people who do so identify, as best we can, how and why they should, they must, change.  But we also can’t just wait for them to be persuaded of the value of change; we must press forward on behalf of our progressive values, in determined, principled, committed contestation with those maintaining anti-progressive values when, where, and as necessary.  

1.

I have decided to accept an offer I received in October 2020 to provide me another year of 100% externally supported full-year leave, for the 2021-2022 academic year, to continue writing, and work toward completing drafting, Ian Curtis, Joy Division, and Critical Theory and 21^st Century British TV Crime Drama: a Critical Guide.  I will then return to full-time teaching and institutional service with the start of the 2022-2023 academic year.

Even though I tried not to do so, I agonized over this decision.  I miss teaching and working with students, and I miss working directly with colleagues, in English and across campus, as part of an immediate community.  It’s been my life for over 35 years, doing that kind of work, as part of that kind of community, and it’s been a great life.  I’ve immersed myself in that life. 

However, returning at the end of this year of leave to that work, and that life, would have proven the easier, the more comfortable, and the more familiar path.  In committing to work assiduously on these two book projects I have needed to fight against persistent fear that has held me back too long from proceeding too far, while remaining mired in hesitation and doubt: fear I am not smart enough, fear I am not knowledgeable enough, fear I am not talented enough, fear I am not skilled or capable or savvy enough, fear I am not qualified or experienced enough ‘in the right ways’, fear I am not ‘the best possible person’–to write these two books, and do their subject matter the justice they deserve.  But since the end of the Spring 2020 semester, I have confronted these fears and am making progress holding my own with them.  I strive to mobilize these fears by bringing them to bear in what I write and how I write as one of my best strategies for dealing with them–not attempting to get rid of them but rather to turn them to my advantage.  

The writing challenges me to do much I have never tried to do before.  Even as inspired by past teaching the writing I am doing with these two books breaks with and surpasses anything I have ever done in teaching.  It can be draining.  It can be frightening.  But it also is exciting and fulfilling.  And it feels like the most important and necessary work I could possibly be doing at this point in my life.  I am determined to carry it through to the end.  

By the end of this current year of leave if all goes well I will have drafted approximately 40% of the two books; with another year of leave I stand a good chance of drafting 100% or close to it.  That’s hard to pass up.

It will feel strange, at it has this year, not to be teaching and not to be involved in the life immediately surrounding teaching.  This has been and will continue to be a dramatic shift.  I have not done anything like this since I worked on my PhD dissertation.  But it is the right thing to do.   

2

Last Friday 15 January 2021 when the doctor who performed my surgery last Thursday 14 January 2021 morning called me he asked if I could spare the time to talk for awhile.  I replied yes I can.  The doctor told me the tumor he removed was cancerous, low-grade and non-invasive. He expressed confidence he removed all cancer cells presently in my bladder because this was a surface-level tumor.  He indicated he did not need to prescribe chemotherapy or radiation treatment at the present time.  However, he also informed me this type of cancer tends to return, and we needed to schedule a follow-up procedure in three month’s to check on whether that happens.  I appreciated his directness, precision, and clarity.  The way I understand it is I had cancer, it was not all that serious, I don’t have it anymore right now, and although it might return, it might not–it might never return.  I am confident, whatever comes, my care team at Mayo Clinic Health Systems-Eau Claire and I will deal with it. 

I am slightly curious about what might have caused this cancer, but I suspect if I had thought to ask when the doctor and I were talking he probably would have told me what Andy did, that it is difficult to say as many environmental factors can contribute as well as do hereditary ones.  I am always grateful for a life-partner who is a scientist–as well as an engineer; since Andy began working with the 3-D printer I gave him for a Christmas present this past December 25, Andy has designed and printed an impressive collection of practical objects and devices.

I have felt good, overall, since surgery.  No bleeding, and extremely little pain in or from the area where the surgery was performed.  I have felt more tired and weaker than would otherwise be the case, and I have experienced some digestive strain as well as some mild mouth abrasion due to the tube inserted for the general anesthesia.  All in all, though, an excellent result.  

Learning that the tumor the doctor removed last Thursday was cancerous and that it is possible this cancer could return did not effect the decision I shared in the preceding post right before this one.  If anything I felt a slight twinge of concern that it might be preferable for me to work in less isolated circumstances, if the cancer returns and if it becomes anything other than low-grade and non-invasive.  But I am determined to live my life and do what is best for me to do, from where I am at, in present circumstances. 

I do openly share I am a person who experiences worries and fears, as well as anxiety and panic, but I also know I have learned a great many useful ways of dealing with all of this, over the course of my life, steadily increasingly so, and my willingness to be open about all this with anyone and everyone is further indicative of how I can and do deal with worries, fears, anxiety, and panic, when and as these come.  I am not inclined to worry about this extremely mild case of cancer, which I at present no longer have, nor am I inclined to fear its potential return.  I accept this is what it is, and feel calm about it.  

Today in less than an hour, Thursday 14 January 2021, I will be traveling to Mayo Clinic Health Systems Eau Claire–Hospital/Luther campus for surgery, in what may turn out an all-day affair, although it would be nice if it wraps up much sooner. The surgery is to remove a tumor/lesion from my bladder, which may or may not be cancerous. I am and have been feeling anxious about this surgery, with three hours of meetings, tests, and examinations Monday in preparation heightening this feeling, even though I could experience all of that as indicative of how thorough and careful they all want, and will strive, to be. Some of this has to do with reaching a certain age, where health care providers are all the more concerned to make sure they consider any possible way that surgery, and especially anesthesia, could prove harmful. Nonetheless, I don't feel reassured when they feel they need to remind me that people die while under anesthesia, even though my risk of ‘a cardiac incident' is seemingly just about the lowest possible, given all of the tests and evidence they have gathered concerning the state of my heart health. So I am hoping of course for the best and that the after-effects will not prove too painful, let alone debilitating, for too long afterward.

I have a pre-recorded Insurgence show that Andy will enter into the playlist to run on time tomorrow night, featuring music from The Soft Moon, Craven Faults, and Andrew Wasylyk.

Otherwise I am making good progress in work writing chapter two of _Ian Curtis, Joy Division, and Critical Theory_ and in continuing to do some running mixed in with walking and hiking periodically, at least every other day. I don't think I have much else new to report. I do have a great deal of reading, as well as writing, to look forward to ahead, and I am indeed excited and enthused about this. Hopefully the surgery will not set back my exercise and fitness regime too much, while I also will continue to listen to a great deal of music and watch a lot of TV crime dramas, especially of late from Scandinavia and elsewhere in Continental Europe.

I did write an earlier post for this blog yesterday concerning making sense of the larger meaning and significance of the attack on the US Capitol from a week ago. This post addresses, among other things, the inescapable partiality and limitedness of my own and everyone else's interpretations and judgments, especially in the immediate aftermath, as well as the responsibility nonetheless to strive to come up with the best of these possible; the long-term roots of what has happened and promises to continue to happen; how the erstwhile ‘far right' is and has been for awhile now no longer _far_ right along with what are the implications of this; why (democratic) socialists should not back away from identifying themselves as socialist or supporting and advocating for socialism, including why this would be a damaging response to the strength of fascist forces in the US today; why comparisons that equate the violence in the attack on the Capitol with violence surrounding protests against systemic racism and in support of Black Lives Matter throughout this past summer are fallacious; and what ‘antifa' really amounts to and actually does.

***

Surgery, which began extremely early this morning, went well.  A deep, thorough, examination of the entirety of both of my kidneys found no problems, no abnormalities, no impairment of expected and optimal function.  The doctor biopsied the tumor/lesion and several other sections in the bladder which appeared potentially suspicious as well as cauterizing a significant area of the bladder.  I returned home before noon, and felt fine.  Now begins the process of recovery.  I am directed to take it extremely easy for 24 hours, and then avoid all strenuous activity for a week, and expect periodic bleeding that may last up to the total of eight weeks, although likely considerably less.  Other serious post-operative developments are possible, and Andy and I will be monitoring for signs of these, but are also unlikely and I feel optimistic about my chances of avoiding them altogether.  Right now pain is minor, and no visible bleeding has yet occurred.  Since I did not sleep one second last night–I simply couldn't, as my anxiety condition becomes extremely heightened in situations of waiting and anticipation, especially potentially threatening or disturbing (after all, that's why neuroscientists suggests ‘clinical-level anxiety' can be rooted in the amygdala, and represent an evolutionary over-adaptation of the ‘fight, flight, or freeze' response [in my case I will usually prefer to flee or freeze than fight, at least not physically; I tend to be an overtly extremely non-violent person, even when engaged in competitive sports]). And for several days now I've had trouble sleeping much as well, due to the waiting and anticipation.  So I have catching up to do with that, and undoubtedly lingering effects of general anesthesia are still active.  But I am most thankful for my entire ‘health care team' at Mayo Clinic Health Systems-Eau Claire, and all family and friends who have expressed their caring concern and shared hopeful wishes and prayers.  I wish everyone, everywhere, could have full and readily available, including entirely affordable, preferably universally ‘free',  access to at least the same quality  of health care I do.  And I think that remains a preeminent democratic socialist commitment–to help make that happen.  I remember being fired up with enormous passionate enthusiasm and determination the first time I learned, as a young teenager, about organized activist efforts to achieve universal ‘free of charge at the point of entry and access' health care, in this nation, paid by and through the state, as a ‘human right' not a privilege, which people obtain to greater versus lesser degrees depending on their income and wealth, their economic capital.

***

As I have time in days and weeks ahead, I recognize one further major issue I would like to address, and counter, in addition to those I addressed in my blog post of yesterday, and that is commonplace criticism of so-called ‘cancel culture', which is closely akin to commonplace criticism of so-called ‘political correctness' (and even to commonplace criticism of so-called ‘virtue signaling') and marks a not only long ascendant but also increasingly prevalent trope in contemporary American political right discourse, including discourse produced and disseminated by the now emergent contemporary American fascist center right.  Lots to carefully unpick there, so it may take awhile, what with all else I am and will be doing, and with recovery from surgery, but this remains a potential important future focus for a blog post, nonetheless.

***

As an addendum to this post I've thought a little further about matters of anxiety, and my life-experiences with anxiety, that I will try to address here.  When I experience anxiety, as I have written elsewhere, I experience this as overwhelming dread that can all too easily and all too quickly evolve into panic.  That can, in turn, yes, result in panic attacks.  And these manifest themselves in a host of physical sensations (rapid breathing, heart racing, sweating profusely, pacing back and forth, otherwise restlessly moving about, awkward shifts in gesture or posture, feeling the need to retreat and crumble into a tight little ball, crying, collapsing and passing out, and yet much more besides).  Specific fears and worries can enhance the prospect that an upsurge of anxiety will occur, but once anxiety takes hold it becomes unmoored from specific fears or worries.  And, yes, it makes sense that this experience of anxiety reflects an evolutionary over-adaptation of the ‘fight, flight, or freeze' response, in confronting or anticipating confronting imminent danger, while, yes also, in my case, I am much less likely to  ‘flee' or ‘freeze' than ‘fight'.  But I also respond in yet another way, and that is by burying the anxiety beneath a facade of outward seeming calm, control, self-possession, and focused concentration.  This is not so much conscious and deliberate as rather habitual and a learned behavior, a necessary way of being able to cope.  In other words, when feeling most anxious, I often craft an appearance to cover this tightly over so I outwardly seem almost as if the opposite is the case (and I am not always aware I am doing this when and as I am doing it).  Now this is not always close to perfect, and can't last all that long, but it happens.  If anxiety is connected to fear, and worry, in my case it is ultimately connected to the biggest possible fears and worries, which I do, periodically, need to confront directly–and those tend to amount, in sum, to fear and worry that nothing about whom I am, have been, and will be, and nothing I am doing, have done, or will do, will be valuable, to anyone, anywhere, at all, or at least not for all that long.  It is connected to fears and worries that I am simply incapable of doing anything all that well or being at all significant, let alone at all useful.  I am not really all that ambitious, so what I am writing about here is fear and worry about not being modestly successful in doing something of meaning, value, and use for even a small number of people.  As strange as it may seem, I do contend with this fear and worry in terms of whether I am smart, skilled, experienced, capable, talented, qualified, and deserving enough to do what I've spent much of my life concentrating on doing–teaching and otherwise working as a university faculty member.  Yes, definitely, I recurrently struggle with ‘the imposter syndrome' and I am sure I always will.  And, yes, also, in writing I often do fear or worry I simply am not capable of writing anything worth anyone else ever reading.  Of course, that is not the whole story, or I wouldn't be writing this here and now and I would not have done much of anything else I have done.  But, yes, what do I fear and worry about, most of all, that is connected in any way to anxiety I experience, periodically, that greatly exceeds and surpasses fear and worry is the following: I fear and worry that I am worthless and useless, always have been, and always will be.  I think that is a fundamental kind of fear and worry, one that transcends much more specific, contingent fears and worries that develop over the course of everyday life, or even are specific to particular kinds of activities, projects, tasks, relations, circumstances, etc.  The answer often to this fundamental fear and worry is just to persist, nonetheless, and keep hoping that this fear and worry is wrong, or that I will eventually be able to prove it wrong.  But it also helps to take this fear and worry on, confront it, and bring it to bear, in whatever I am seeking to do, that I hope will matter, to me and to some others, because in doing so I am, paradoxically enough, more likely to come up with something worthwhile.  In other words, I invite and encourage this fundamental fear and worry to ride along with me as I proceed while I strive as I can to make this fraught companion a surprisingly enabling ally.  Yes, this in part helps in avoiding becoming too comfortable or complacent, and yes this in part helps in experiencing compassion and empathy, but even more than that it means imagining if the fundamental fear and worry might be true, and inquiring into why would this matter, why would I so much not want this to be the case and not be willing to accept it–i.e., to inquire what is at stake in continuing to resist and fight against it, at all.  And, usually, the answer is it's because it is not ‘me' that matters at all.  Rather, it's what I am a (very small) part of that matters, and it matters as such a (very small) part what I am thereby called upon to (try to) be and do, to experience and contribute, to be responsible to and for, and to attempt to share, offer, give, and receive.

In the internet age, and, more precisely than that, in the age of social media, many of us experience a strong temptation, if not even a strong compulsion, to react immediately to every major political event, especially those widely recognized as historically significant, with a rapid effort to interpret the meaning and evaluate the significance of the event. This can be problematic, as often we do in fact need much more time for careful, thorough investigation, reflection, examination, assessment, and consideration of which precise array of frames of intelligibility, including which precise theories and modes of critique, will prove most apt in making sense of and responding to this event, especially concerning the event's long-term implications. Nevertheless, we often simply cannot wait, and to do so would be irresponsible, including ethically, so we must do the best we can with what we can come up with quickly. I suggest, however, we always strive to recognize, and acknowledge, openly, our inescapable partiality and limitedness, in advancing whatever interpretations and judgments we do, especially when we need to do so rapidly. All of us are partial and limited, in numerous ways, and it is vital to keep that in mind.

In relation to the ‘insurrectionary attack’ on the US Capitol last Wednesday, I myself have been particularly keenly concerned to connect this event with a long pre-history, and with a prospective long post-history, representative of the same broad constellation of forces. I do, as a result of considerable study, over a long period of time, consider it accurate, and necessary, to identify these forces as ‘fascist’. I do also believe as well, as a result of considerable political experience and engagement, that these forces, what they represent, and what they are capable of doing have long been underestimated, not taken all that seriously as anything more than a ‘lunatic fringe element’ that is entirely ‘exceptional’ to what happens throughout ‘normal’ American politics and culture. What I think is different now, versus the not too distant past, is the once ‘far right’ is no longer _far_ right, as positions and practices, as well as commitments and convictions, once perceived as too ‘radically extreme’ to be tolerated within ‘the mainstream American political right’ are no longer so. This fascist, or at least proto-fascist or incipiently fascist, current of ‘right-wing politics’ has made considerable headway in recent times, but has long been much closer to the brink of so doing than many would credit. It is important, as well, I believe, to recognize that fascism is not only a populist but also a popular form of politics–that is indeed its aim, and its trajectory, once its gains momentum, and once critical problems and indeed crises in pre-existing social, economic, political, and cultural normativities become substantial enough for fascism to emerge into the mainstream and then rapidly gain steadily wider and deeper support; if this opportunity presents itself, fascism will do so.

With the erstwhile ‘far right’ now the ‘center right’, the center of gravity in political discussion is shifting, has shifted, and is under considerable pressure to continue further to shift. That’s why it is absurd for democratic socialists to respond by redefining themselves, their vision, and their politics according to some ‘more appealing’ pseudonym. On the one hand, this will not prevent critics on the right from continuing to label everything we do, everything we propose, everything we support, and everything we work to advance and enact as ‘socialist’. On the other hand, it will lead in the direction of eschewing, bracketing, and distancing erstwhile democratic socialist politics from transformative goals and even from far-reaching and substantial reforms, in attempts to compromise with, and seek common ground with, the emergent fascist center-right. Democratic socialism maintains a lengthy history, encompasses an elaborate array of precise values and commitments, and involves a vision of the need to create a fundamentally different, and greatly improved kind of society, ultimately one that, yes, does replace capitalism with socialism. To back away from identification with that history and tradition, that array of values and commitments, and that vision, out of fear, is a betrayal of principle and a surrender of ground to those forces democratic socialists identify as the ones striving the most aggressively as well as most desperately in support of reaction, and, especially reaction against what we, within academia, tend to identify as matters of equity, diversity, and inclusivity (especially, in other words, reaction versus foregrounding and prioritizing equity, diversity, and inclusivity). The current fascist center right in the US aspires to ‘return’ to, to ‘recapture’, and to ‘restore’ an imagined past state of affairs in which America was supposedly ‘great' in ways it no longer is, with that change supposedly the result of the influence and impact of a host of forces, interests, and social groups that have, by and large, in fact been supportive of and identified with foregrounding and prioritizing matters of equity, diversity, and inclusivity, in particular along lines of race and ethnicity, and gender and sexuality, but also along lines of religion and spirituality, disability, and ‘culture’ broadly conceived. A ‘culture’, after all, refers to a particular socially shared way of life, whether corresponding to a particular group of people, a place, or a period, with particular emphasis on the means and media through which people derive, ascribe, express, and communicate meanings. And the current American fascist center-right most definitely objects to, opposes, and seeks to undo the acceptance of a ‘pluralistic’ ‘multiculturalism’–i.e.,the viability of multiple cultures thriving simultaneously at the same time and place, as well as the viability of these cultures overlapping, intersecting, and continually reshaping each other. The current American fascist center-right likewise most definitely objects to, opposes, and seeks to undo the acceptance of a broad array of even gently to mildly ‘liberalizing’ trends and tendencies. What actually enables the American fascist center-right to become as strong as it has is the persistent lack of a substantial socialist–democratic socialist–left in this nation, a movement that presses for far more substantially transformative changes in addition to pluralistic multiculturalism and liberalization, changes that decisively impact who owns and controls the means, processes, and ends of the production, accumulation, circulation, investment, and distribution of social wealth, produced via social labor, and a movement that forthrightly addresses inequities along lines of class, including in their precise intersectional relations with race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexuality, disability, age, and mental and physical health status as part of what Patricia Hill Collins theorizes as a ‘matrix of domination’. American democratic socialists support a vision of society reestablished on the basis of substantive, expansive, and inclusive economic as well as political democracy, justice, and freedom. American democratic socialists support a vision of society in which we maintain a laser focus on continually striving to attend to the needs of those who remain marginalized, excluded, suffering, and struggling, so no one is left behind and everyone enjoys the opportunity not only to survive but also to thrive, a society indeed organized according to the principle ‘from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs’ and where ‘the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all’. This is a society, and an attendant dominant culture, in which substantive solidarity becomes a foundational organizing principle, a society in which it becomes a manifest shared social responsibility for us each to look after and take care of each other, and where our social institutions in fact actually do represent the concretization of this fundamental commitment.

When I come across people today suggesting socialists should abandon the use of the word ‘socialism’ in identifying what they stand for, because of Republicans attacking socialists and socialism in their campaigns for office, I think about what ‘socialists’ and what ‘socialist ideas’ are these Republicans currently actually objecting to. These seem to be, as associated with socialists like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, ‘medicare for all’ and a ‘green new deal’–as well as ‘defunding the police’. In relation to the first two, if this is socialism, then this is actually quite modest, but nonetheless in both cases, urgently needed, and no ‘socialist’ should feel like they have to apologetically back away from support of either. In relation to the last, many are troubled, and would prefer ‘reforming the police’, but advocates of ‘defunding’ are and long have been targeting systemically racist dimensions of police and policing in this nation, as well racist dimensions of choices and decisions concerning what scarce social resources and for what range of purposes are directed toward police and policing (versus all other avenues for potential investment). From my vantage point, ‘defunding the police’ is too limited, and too focused on the negative; a better phrase, I suggest, would be ‘transforming the police and policing’–or, even better put, ‘transforming public safety and protection’. A key goal of this transformation should be to end racism in the police and in policing–and in fact to go yet one step further by defining racism as not only a public health crisis but also a crisis in public safety and protection. In other words, we need institutions that will respond to racism as a crisis in public safety and protection, one of the gravest such crises existing at present and long persisting throughout our nation’s history, and if this means transforming present police outfits to proceed on this basis, so be it, while if it means devising and implementing entirely novel kinds of organizations to do so, that do not at all resemble traditional police forces, then so be that. Where funds go, and where they do not go, represents only a sliver of a much greater issue.

False comparisons also abound. The protests this summer across the country, sparked by the police killing of George Floyd, and of many other Black and Brown people in this country, as well as in response to the highly uneven as well as highly destructive mistreatment of Black and Brown versus White people all too often, in all too many ways, permeating policing, law enforcement, and criminal justice systems, throughout the history of this nation, represent the progressive rising of historically and continually oppressed people, and allies, against long-standing systemic injustice, whereas the insurrectionary attack on the US capitol represents the reactionary rising of people who aim to return to, reinstate, and revalidate even much larger and deeper forms of systemic disparity, disproportion, injustice, and inequality than at present exist and persist, along lines of race and yet much more besides, while extending all of this far beyond policing, law enforcement, and criminal justice alone. The vast majority of this summer’s ‘Black Lives Matter' protests were peacefully non-violent, and where violent destruction took place this often developed for a variety of reasons and from a variety of sources, including but far from exclusive to a manifestation of the rage of the for too long too far oppressed, who experienced no other obviously apparent or available means by which they conceived they could possibly be seen and heard. But the idea that ‘radical Marxists’ were behind this violence makes no sense, if one knows just about anything about Marxism. Marxism conceives of socialism as a movement of self-emancipation on the part of the vast majority, ultimately globally, and does not authorize or valorize anarchic acts of rebellion and destruction as particularly useful or viable means of working toward systemic transformation. Marxism does not authorize or valorize insurrections, or coups, or putsches, or any of that kind. Likewise, democratic socialists, across the board, Marxist and non-Marxist, advocate the necessity of protest, of mobilization, of activism, of pressuring those in positions of power, especially at the heights of power, including through civil disobedience and direct action, but not by means of wanton acts of destruction, especially not of enterprises and institutions that are of critical value and importance to communities that are already experiencing considerable precariousness. It’s a fundamental logical fallacy to suggest that one situation in which violence erupts is the same as all situations in which violence erupts, because, supposedly, according to this fallacious line of reasoning, violence is always inherently essentially exactly the same, everywhere.

One further comment. Among the emergent fascist center-right, ‘antifa’ represents a preeminent bogey figure–as well as a convenient excuse and scapegoat. But, in practice, ‘antifa’ is extremely decentralized, diffuse, and small in active numbers, while its overall focus is largely always defensive, including a willingness to use violence to defend communities targeted for violent attack by fascist forces. Yet, the in fact most prominent, influential, and effective ‘antifa’ practices at present in this country involve researchers who work to expose fascists, by sharing their positions and actions, with a wider public, and causing these fascists public embarrassment and loss of social status. ‘Doxing’ in other words. This kind of ‘antifa work’ also involves publicly exposing corporations, politicians, and other individuals and institutions who invest in and support or are otherwise complicit with active fascists. So, in sum, antifa activists are in fact primarily investigative journalists and whistleblowers, who treat covert supporters of fascism the same way those practicing ‘outing’ have historically targeted closeted lgbt people in positions of power who conceal their lgbt identities while publicly opposed to and working against equal rights for lgbt people.

Below I link a thoughtful comment from the now long-time president of Wesleyan University, where I received a great education and even a more fantastic and transformative overall life-experience as an undergraduate university student from 1979 to 1983. Michael Roth is roughly my age, although I don’t recall knowing him while we were both Wesleyan students, if we did overlap. A highlight of working for the past 36 years as a university level professor, adjunct professor, and graduate student instructor has been persistently every class every semester every week addressing serious, sensitive, highly controversial, and yet also urgently important issues in careful, thoughtful, mutually respectful, and both passionate and compassionate ways. Many, many years ago now a student in a first year writing class asked why are we learning to argue in these ways, the ways I was teaching, when people in power outside of these kinds of academic spaces seem rarely if ever to do the same. I asked him in turn if he thought what we were doing and how was better. He replied ‘of course’. I then indicated we are pursuing a mode of practice that we can all strive to bring to bear outside of and beyond the classroom and that we might indeed assume as our moral responsibility to do so. Yes call out people forcefully for their positions and practices, and for their damaging and insidious implications and consequences when and where that is the case; hold people, especially in power, to account and critically question authority; and make directly and immediately clear when, where, how, why, and to whom these, the issues we are addressing, are matters of urgency, even grave urgency. But make a reputable and compelling case, don’t demonize your opponents as worthless and without any shred of intrinsic worth or dignity, even when that is extremely hard to do, or as totally and forever beyond any kind of salvation or redemption, even when that last seems impossible, and concentrate always on critique of positions and practices, and of implications and consequences of positions and practices, not attacking of persons. Some positions, and even more some practices, and especially some actions and behaviors, are and should be, most certainly, entirely unforgivable, but it is those positions, practices, actions, and behaviors, and their implications and consequences, that must always be the ultimate focus.

The still current president has failed, miserably, including his most fanatical supporters, because of the positions, practices, actions, and behaviors in which he has engaged, which he has inspired, and which he has instigated. And the same is true of fellow members of his party who have by and large cynically opportunistically supported and fomented dangerous lies _they know are lies_. Lying to the American people, to whom you have been elected to _humbly_ serve, and doing so over and over again, repeatedly, at steadily more exaggeratedly extreme levels and degrees, regardless of the damaging consequences you know will follow, solely to advance and protect your own narrow personal interests, are immoral and unethical practices and behaviors. That’s why I agree this president should step down, should resign, and so should, among others, Wisconsin US Senator Johnson. I have written the latter to urge him to do so as a matter of moral responsibility. This has nothing to do with ‘hating’ these people as persons nor any desire to force them to personally suffer. We can and should urge people to recognize and accept responsibility for the consequences of their actions and to do the right thing, even compelling them to do so when they won’t do so themselves. Lies like these, to the American people, from those at the heights of power, should make us all keenly concerned to investigate, expose, and call to account potentially numerous other terribly consequential lies these people have proclaimed, many of which some of us know about and have been tracking while still others remain yet to be revealed.

From Wesleyan President Michael Roth, _Inside Higher Education_

One further comment from me on this matter, and then I need to move on:  when you lose, and it is clear you have lost, it is a matter of good sportsmanship, to admit it, to gracefully accept it, to congratulate the winner, to move on and prepare to compete and contend again, in the future.  I found it disturbing from my earliest youth when occasionally some kids literally decided ‘to take their ball and go home' when they did not win, or were not winning, or were not being made the center and praised continually by everyone around, while participating in what was ostensibly a team sports effort.  Over the course of one's life, most people lose many times, and have teams, and campaigns, and issues, and initiatives, and candidacies, and enterprises they support lose as well, many times, but it is wrong to respond, when you clearly have lost, by incessantly proclaiming long thereafter that you have really won and your opponents cheated, when they did not.  This is a lesson young people should learn, and be taught, and continue to follow, from early on in life.  It is alarming when many people, and especially those at the heights of power or able to use violent means to fight for reactionary ends, are enabled by their failure to learn this vital moral lesson.

***

As an addendum to this message I will just add since Michael Roth was Wesleyan class of 1978 it is in fact most unlikely we crossed paths while I was a student at Wesleyan, although not entirely unlikely since Wesleyan was a popular place for which alumni to return, including other than during homecoming or class reunions.

I became quite sick Wednesday 30 December, and this continued to worsen 31 December and 1 January, meaning these holidays proved much less celebratory and fun for me than they otherwise would have turned out, even under pandemic conditions.  I met with an urgent care physician's assistant Saturday who did a thorough examination of me, ran three tests, and prescribed me two medications.  I am doing significantly better.

Unfortunately, in eight days I next need to spend the full day undergoing surgery to remove a tumor/lesion from my bladder, and half the day next Monday in pre-surgery meetings and in doing pre-surgery tests.  I am not happy about any of this impending, nor about the risks of complications nor about the after-effects than can include pain and bleeding for up to four weeks, even if all goes well.

I read four crime novels during the break between 24 December and 1 January, one by Ian Rankin, one by Val McDermid, and two by Deborah Crombie.  I enjoyed them all.  The Rankin and McDermid novels were these authors' latest published books, and the Crombie books are part of a long-running series involving police detectives Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James.

I have begun writing Chapter Two of Ian Curtis, Joy Division, and Critical Theory.  I am doing well in this work so far, even though beginning to write this chapter has felt daunting because it demands of me some of the most difficult work I will need to do in the course of my work on both of the two books I continue currently to write.

I also extensively rethought the subsequent chapters of Ian Curtis, Joy Division, and Critical Theory.  I have reduced these from six to four which means the book will now extend to a total of six as opposed to eight chapters.  I have thought carefully about matters of audience and purpose as well as context and genre, and indeed contingency, exigency, and kairos, in making this change; my rhetoric colleagues will be proud of me.

Chapter Three will stage an encounter and dialogue between Ian Curtis and Joy Division, on the one hand, and the following three books on the other hand: Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844; Durkheim, Suicide: a Study in Sociology; and Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents.  Chapter Four will stage an encounter and dialogue between Ian Curtis and Joy Division, on the one hand, and the following three books on the other hand: Weber, Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism; Althusser, On the Reproduction of Capitalism: Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses; and Foucault, Discipline and Punish.  Chapter Five will stage an encounter and dialogue between Ian Curtis and Joy Division, on the one hand, and the following three books on the other hand: Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism; Said, Representations of the Intellectual; and Minh-ha, Woman, Native, Other: Writing, Postcoloniality, and Feminism.  Chapter Six will stage an encounter and dialogue between Ian Curtis and Joy Division, on the one hand, and the following three books on the other hand: McRuer, Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability; Cvetkovich, Depression: A Public Feeling; and Gordon, Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination.

I am also greatly enjoying reading:

I have managed to do some more running, long walking, and long hiking despite my recent illness, and that has made me happy.  More and further to come, especially post-surgery.

Tonight on Insurgence I will play music from I Like Trains, Coricky, Rich Aucoin, and Michael Kiwanuka.  I look forward to it.

Andy and I have recently completed a number of TV crime dramas.  We are currently watching a Finnish TV Crime drama, All The Sins, and a Danish historical workplace drama, The New Nurses.

I am enormously grateful to share in the enthusiasm for and excitement concerning how the Green Bay Packers have done this year.  I always watch all Packers' games, all the way through, year in and year out, other than when absolutely impossible, and will go to considerable lengths to be able to do so if I am not at home or can't be at home.  This has been a great, fun year to be a Packers' fan.  And I will add I myself never doubted Aaron Rodgers, who remains my all-time favorite individual Packers' player, and who also remains the only individual Packers' player whose jersey I own (striking indeed for a devoted and passionate Packers' fan for so many decades now).

Andy has been creating many interesting and useful devices using his new 3-D printing machine (one of my Christmas presents for him).

Star, Jet, and Casey continue to enjoy spending time with us.  Casey is getting older and periodically needs to be carried up stairs, while also tending to bark too often, for too many reasons, but he still loves to play and cuddle, frequently, every day.

I have been listening forward for music to play on multiple Insurgence shows yet to come and appreciating doing that as well.

I have been following, of course, the transfer of presidential power, and fraught events surrounding this, including all the desperate and despicable acts of the despot who will soon be leaving along with the similar acts of those supporting him, including cynically opportunistically.  I wrote a long letter over the weekend to Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson effectively suggesting he should resign as he has shown a pronounced deficiency of moral character and has engaged in demagoguery worthy of Joe McCarthy.  But I am happy about the elections to the US Senate, representing Georgia, of Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff.

I soon will be making and notifying relevant people of a major decision concerning my work ahead.  I will share details here as well when I do so.

I have been planning a great deal more reading ahead while acquiring the sources of this reading in preparation.

I am deeply concerned about the continuing ravages of COVID-19 and the economic impact, and harm, it has encompassed and which continues to worsen as well, including as much in the UK as in the US.

Here I will also note well that in previously addressing COVID-19 and the year 2020, in an earlier blog post, I failed to mention the harm that this pandemic, and forced physical isolating and distancing, has exerted upon people suffering or subject to abuse, within their ‘home'.  The extent of this abuse, and the toll it takes, is already all too terrible and it is terrifying that COVID-19 has rendered this kind of situation all the more widespread and all the more deeply harmful.  I have been tremendously fortunate to share this time with a wonderful loving, patient, caring, kind, and generous human being–my husband Andy Swanson.

I strive nonetheless, despite it all, when at its worst, and especially inspired by the writing and reading I am doing, by the music I am listening to and sharing, and by the love of my husband and the loving support as well of our pets, to approach the future with cautious hope and with persistent determination.

***

Tonight on Insurgence #808, #26 of year #16, music from I Like Trains, Coricky, Rich Aucoin, and Michael Kiwanuka.  Thursdays 10 pm to midnight US Central Time, 96.3 FM Eau Claire and streaming, via the web, at: www.whysradio.org

https://iliketrains.bandcamp.com/album/kompromat

https://www.punknews.org/review/17223/coriky-coriky

https://www.thechronicleherald.ca/lifestyles/regional-lifestyles/cross-country-bicycle-trek-inspires-aucoins-state-of-the-union-album-united-states-495840/

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/nov/01/michael-kiwanuka-kiwanuka-review-one-of-the-greatest-albums-of-the-decade

January 7, 2021

1.

I Like Trains–“PRISM”

I Like Trains–“The Truth”

I Like Trains–“Dig In”

2.

Coricky–“Clean Kill”

Coricky–“Hard to Explain”

Coricky–“Say Yes”

Coricky–“Have a Cup of Tea”

Coricky–“Too Many Husbands”

Coricky–“Bqm”

Coricky–“Last Thing”

Coricky–“Jack Says”

Coricky–“Shedileebop”

Coricky–“Inauguration Day”

Coricky–“Woulda Coulda”

3.

Rich Aucoin–“Kayfabe”

Rich Aucoin–“How It Breaks”

Rich Aucoin–“Red Rocks”

Rich Aucoin–“Walls”

Rich Aucoin–“Reset”

Rich Aucoin–“This is It”

Rich Aucoin–“Civil”

Rich Aucoin–“Trip”

Rich Aucoin–“Blue Highways”

Rich Aucoin–“Dopamine”

Rich Aucoin–“Eulogy of Regret”

Rich Aucoin–“American Dream”

4.

Michael Kiwanuka–“Another Human Being”

Michael Kiwanuka–“You Ain’t the Problem”

Michael Kiwanuka–“Hero”

Michael Kiwanuka–“Final Days”

Michael Kiwanuka–“I’ve Been Dazed”

David Bowie–“Young Americans”

***

Andy and I finished season one of this Finnish TV crime drama earlier tonight.  I found myself more wrenchingly affected by the climactic and final scenes than I had anticipated, undoubtedly because of complicated although convoluted resonances with my own life-experience at a far from surface level.  At least this reaction further supports the value of interpreting these kinds of TV shows in socially symbolic terms as I am doing in the book I am writing.  But I think it also reminds me I have suffered painfully ‘from being different' and even as self-aware as I consciously aim to be I do not always attend to that impact as much as I need.  But then again undoubtedly that is true of a great many.  We are not always positioned to be able to do so.  Perhaps this response to the movement toward conclusion of season one of _All the Sins_ reflects what I am conjuring in writing about Ian Curtis, Joy Division, critical theory, and me, at present, and perhaps this reflects a mediated response to the events at the Capitol in DC yesterday and all that led up to those, for at least the past five years, as well as stress related to a recent unexpected illness, peaking on the 30th through the 2nd and an upcoming all-day to be spent involved with surgery next Friday as well as half the day this coming Monday to be involved with ‘pre-surgery'.  I think I will make a concentrated effort ‘to take care' and I recommend everyone else out there to be sure to at least try to do so when you need it.

The Euro TV Place: All the Sins: Intriguing Finnish Mystery Series Set to Premiere in the US

Like many Americans I found myself sad, angry, and frightened yesterday.  But what made me most sad, angry, and frightened was not the sheer fact of a group of protestors pressing past Capitol Police to riot in the Capitol Building, and temporarily stopping  Congress meeting and doing its work, while intimidating, harassing, and physically as well as verbally violently attacking many others, notably journalists doing their jobs and others doing necessary jobs in the Capitol region that required they be present even in the exceedingly fraught situation, on these protestors' way to the Capitol from the White House where their leader had stirred them up yet further and directed them to go wild and cause disruption.  All of that was disturbing yes.  But what made me most sad, angry, and frightened is that this mob and their actions demonstrate how powerfully entrenched fascist forces have become in the United States today and how much influence these forces exercise at the heights of government and state power.  I have spent well over 40 years deeply concerned about the ever-growing threat of an incipient fascist far right, ready and able to resort to destructive violence, in this nation, and about its accelerating growth and ever-growing appeal for more than a decade, with the candidacy and then presidency of Donald Trump giving this burgeoning movement an enormous boost in its influence and impact.  Too often too many have proclaimed fascism can never and will never happen here, and too often too many have underestimated how far fascism has been happening and is happening.  Too often too many have imagined that Trump is merely a comic act, or a fake reality TV show, that need not be taken seriously, and that can be dismissed or ignored as merely an example of bad taste, of vulgarity, of bombast, and of harmless buffoonery.  Too often too many have imagined that Trumpism is an isolated instance, an aberration, an epiphenomenon that seemingly emerged out of nowhere and that will soon end and quickly disappear, even all by itself alone, from sheer exhaustion as a result of its own futile incompetence.

No.  Trumpism emerges from a long history of White supremacy, of America First xenophobia, and of imperialist adventurism and interventionism including led by American  military and intelligence forces interfering in and undermining other sovereign nations (throughout much of Central and South America, in the Middle East, in Southeast Asia, in East Central Africa, in Oceania–think of notorious US interventions in the Philippines, in Cuba, in Vietnam, in Hawaii, in Nicaragua, in Chile, in Panama, in Puerto Rico, in Honduras, in Guatemala, in El Salvador, in the Dominican Republic, in Mexico, in Russia, in Iran, in Iraq, in Cambodia, in Angola, in Somalia, in Haiti, in Sudan, in Afghanistan, in Syria . . .).   Trumpism emerges from the continuing impact of slavery, genocide, Jim Crow, mass incarceration of Black people in ‘the New Jim Crow' under the cover of the so-called ‘War on Drugs', militarization of the US-Mexico Border and border zones extending far into the US, trampling of civil liberties and human rights whenever expediently seemingly necessary in the interest of ‘national security' and in ostensibly concentrating on fighting one or another demonized mythic threat–such as communists beholden to the Soviet Union supposedly overtaking and overrunning the federal government and many other major social institutions.  Trumpism emerges from a lengthy history of divide and conquer of the working class and the poor, and from the shifting of blame for precariousness and precarity onto those groups of ‘others' already all too often even living, indeed long living, in far more precarious situations and at far greater risk of precarity.  Trumpism emerges from grotesque levels of socio-economic inequality, deprivation, and desperation in what is too often complaisantly claimed, by political leaders of both major political parties seeking cheap popularity, to be ‘the richest country on Earth'.  Trumpism emerges from misogyny and patriarchy, from heterosexism and homophobia, from cissexism and transphobia, from toxic masculinity and from tacit acceptance and active complicity with bullying, harassment, and abuse of all perceived and treated to be relatively weaker, more vulnerable, and different from the traditionally predominant norm/from what has traditionally predominantly been identified as fitting the limited confines–and constraints–of ‘the normal'.  Trumpism emerges from dismissal, scorn, and abuse of the mentally and physically disabled, of the chronically ill, of the old, of the young, of those pursuing lives and lifestyles as well as ascribing to religious or spiritual faiths–or to no religious or spiritual faiths–other than a repressively narrowly singular conception of ultra-punitive and ultra-exclusive Christianity.  Trumpism emerges from acceptance and even triumphal celebration in running roughshod over the natural environment, and from treating virtually all other living species as not only inferior and far less important than humans but as ripe for and deserving of exploitation, devastation, and prospective elimination, as an inexhaustible resource for human hyperconsumption.  Trumpism emerges from glorification of physical and psychological violence, from a cultivation of and a wallowing in perpetual grievance and entitlement even in the midst of considerable privilege and advantage, and in indifferent dismissal of the reality of massive interdependence.  Trumpism emerges from an ease at ‘othering' people all around you who you can and do mark out all too easily as ‘enemies' who are far less deserving–even to live at all–than you.  Trumpism emerges from a complacency about and callous indifference to human suffering, and to the suffering of the larger natural world, and from a lack of any sense of active, substantive, lived responsibility to other people and to the greater society and the larger world.  Trumpism emerges from valorizing and trumpeting rugged individualism, or in practice pseudo-rugged pseudo-individualism, over collectivity, over the social welfare and social well-being of all.  Trumpism emerges from a commercial consumerist culture of material acquisition and accumulation and of the commoditization and reification of social relations.  Trumpism emerges from a culture of isolation and loneliness, of atomization and fragmentation, of conventional contentment at not knowing or caring, at all, about your neighbors and about their well-being.  Trumpism emerges from the society of the spectacle and the slow decline and near death of independent investigative socially and politically responsible journalism that is not caught up in celebrity gossip and promotion, in treating politics as nothing more than a game and a sport.   Trumpism emerges from entirely uncritically accepting the private ownership and control of the means, processes, and ends of human social labor, and of the social wealth this social labor produces, as well as of the exploitation and alienation intrinsic to this capitalist system.  Trumpism emerges from denigrating serious and sustained intellectual labor, intellectual inquiry and creativity, intellectual orientation and concentration, well-supported and well-enabled and highly valued public schools and education, across the full spectrum of the liberal arts, humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences.   Trumpism emerges from disparaging, mocking, marginalizing, and trivializing the work, in particular, of the arts, as well as the humanities, and severely limiting opportunities to devote life's primary focus, one's effective life's vocation, to work in these directions.  Trumpism emerges from spending billions upon billions on elections and for election campaigns to run virtually endlessly, with elected political officials needing to spend enormous time, energy, and effort concentrating on raising money rather than serving the public good–and covering these campaigns as if they are all about personality, all about surface appearance and performance, all about image and myth and triviality over issues of real substance and deep concern.  Trumpism emerges from neglecting adequate attention to insuring the health, physical and mental, of all the people of this country, and of neglecting adequate effort toward robustly proactively preventing the worst ravages of not only terrible pandemics like COVID-19 but also of unaffordable and inaccessible health care for all too many in the face of a vast host of diverse possible health conditions.  Trumpism emerges from a situation where, once more, in the supposed ‘richest' country in the world, the vast majority are at real risk of destitution in the face of experiencing just one serious calamity because we do not live in a society that has in fact embraced _socialism_, i.e., social and economic justice; collective responsibility for the well-being, for the advancement, for the flourishing, of each and all, and, through doing so for each and all, for the collective whole.  Trumpism emerges from the only way in which the United States is and long has been genuinely ‘exceptional'–and far from ‘exceptionally _great_': it is the one advanced capitalist nation in the world in which no substantial mass movement, or major achievement, in the direction of genuine social democracy, let alone democratic socialism, has ever taken hold, and ever secured a lasting mass following while exercising an enduring mass impact.  Trumpism emerges from a country in a deep state of anomie–of normlessness–where what ostensibly binds us as Americans all together has become paper-thin, and where established norms, and institutions, including those accompanying the peaceful transfer of power, as well as peaceful voting in elections, and peaceful resolutions of disputes involved in each no longer hold sway, for all too many, and where outrageously absurd yet simultaneously viciously hate-directing and hate-manifesting conspiracy theories have taken their place.

Freedom.  Democracy.  Justice.  Equality.  Peace.  These are not inherent qualities, characteristics, or features of any nation's ‘national character', or of of the systems, structures, institutions, processes, and practices that normally–or normatively–function in any nation.  And certainly not in the United States of America.  These are achievements, not ascriptions.  They are always fragile and precarious and partial and limited achievements.  Those who believe these are worthwhile goals must be eternally vigilant and relentlessly persistent in continuing to press to realize these ends, and their realization will all too readily dissipate, and even collapse, if not continually pushed and advanced all the further, toward a never-ending and never-obtainable horizon of completion, of totality, of perfection,  from which however inevitably we will always fall some distance short we must proceed to work toward, constantly, nonetheless.

As we move on from the events of yesterday let us not focus solely on making it more difficult for people to engage in peaceful, non-violent, and absolutely necessary collective protest, pressuring and calling into account those in positions at the heights of economic and cultural as well as political power, and let us continue to recognize and respect the value and at times sheer necessity of civil disobedience and direct action, with those engaging in such practices ready to accept the legal consequences for so doing.  Let us not focus on a policing, militarizing, or security and intelligence forces kind and direction of response.  Let us focus instead on confronting the roots of fascism, which is always a real and present danger in any capitalist society, and is especially likely to surge in support, appeal, impact, and power in times of significant and multifold crisis, like we face in the US today.

***

As an addendum I want to add here, as more details of what happened have become clear since the time I wrote the preceding, which was almost immediately upon the news breaking of what was transpiring, I am pained at the loss of life at the Capitol, notably now two members of the Capitol Police, as well as the rampant destruction the insurrectionists perpetrated. The Capitol does belong to all of the American people, it is the central location representative of the nation as a political union, and for all of the imperfections, inequities, and injustices that have riven the constitutional representative democracy of this nation since its beginning, it is also representative of the continuous striving of a great many groups of people to render this polity more just, equitable, inclusive, representative, and genuinely democratic. It is representative of a history, including of many terrible flaws and failings, that belongs to all of us and needs to be preserved and protected, and most of all so we can continually learn from it–and always aim, and strive, to do better. I am deeply pained as well at the terrifying impact the insurrectionary attack exerted upon many people working at the Capitol in less prominent positions than representative or senator, although I feel for the latter as well, especially people of color and members of other historically oppressed and marginalized social groups, who were confronted with symbols of racist hatred, slavery, and genocide at the heart of the nation's polity, with those who claimed they were acting as revolutionaries use of these symbols, along with so much else that they had shared quite openly long before 6 January 2021, making abundantly clear precisely what kind of attempted ‘revolution' and in whose interests, as well as against whose interests, this attempt at an insurrectionary coup in fact was. Those who participated in this action support a vision of what this nation should be that identifies large pluralities, even clear majorities, of the population of the United States as demonized ‘enemies' who they clearly aim to deny and exclude from participation and contribution to US politics and society, and in fact even further than that to punish and destroy, beginning with disenfranchisement (which is exactly what those protesting the results of the 2020 US Presidential election support–disenfranchising all voters who voted other than they did and who they perceive and treat as essentially ‘unlike' them and ‘underserving' of what they claim to exclusively deserve, themselves). That certainly includes people like me, on multiple counts.

I also want to add I remain gravely concerned about the potential for yet further acts of violence, and terror, directed against the legitimately elected government of the United States, and also at potentially any and all who do not actively identify with and actively support these bizarrely twisted and hate-filled forms of fascist politics.

The world in which we all live today already experiences far too much death and destruction, far too widely and too commonly, far too often violent and tragic, far too often in the form of killing, injuring, and otherwise seriously harming, including by way of indifference and neglect, including from states and state agents, but also from non-state actors and interests. I sincerely believe we should all be committing ourselves to doing all we can to help contribute to steadily reducing and overcoming this state of affairs, as we work, together, for a genuinely peaceful world and for a world in which ‘the free condition of each is the condition for the free development of all', a world where we are all persistently laser-focused on those groups of people who are yet still and long have not been fully, fairly and justly included, recognized, and accepted as fundamentally equally worthwhile and deserving.