Politics

Can’t resist touching the third rail: it’s time to talk about Graham Platner! Platner discourse will get another injection of life this fall if Collins wins (odds are good, alas), when everyone spends months arguing that Platner would have won or that Janet Mills would have won if we hadn’t wasted months and millions on Platner or that a better candidate would have won the primary if Schumer and the DNC hadn’t tried to clear the way for Mills. It’s gonna be the best kind of bitter political discourse, because there are at least three sides to the argument and the stakes are so high. If I sound frivolous, it’s only because I’m depressed, and I’m writing this to get some of that depression down on paper. ...

In my inevitable quest to learn more about the history of our new home in the Twin Cities, I recently read Teamster Rebellion by Farrell Dobbs as a primary source on the Minneapolis general strike of 1934. That strike was a significant moment in US labor history, beginning a shift towards industrial unionism – the idea that all workers in a given industry should be part of the same union, rather than organizing unions by trade. It also, not coincidentally, triggered real growth for the Teamsters and was one of the turning points leading American Trotskyists to split from the Stalinist Communist Party USA. ...

I recently watched Gus Van Sant’s Elephant, and respected it very much. Inevitably, I wound up comparing it to the other auteur school shooting movie based on an actual shooting, Denis Villeneuve’s Polytechnique, which in my eyes is the best thing Villeneuve has ever done. The two movies are on par in terms of craft; my gut reaction is that Polytechnique is a wiser movie. So I wanted to think about why I reacted that way. ...

The news broke today that the performative anti-gay, anti-abortion activists Mayday USA are suing Seattle for imaginary free speech violations. Well that’s fun. I’m not about to waste the research effort I did just because the Seattle Times had to close their comment section, so here we go! One paragraph summary: they’re a bunch of New Apostolic Reformation assholes who came to Seattle this summer to fire up controversy and got what they wanted – counter-protesters, arrests, and a lot of free publicity. So it goes. Now they’re suing because the publicity is fading and the grift is based on constant weeping and wailing.

Mmm, a whole month’s worth. Look! Finally an article about “the average rural voter” that doesn’t turn out to be about a local Republican activist! I need to remember to check out this online course about modern Ukrainian history from Yale. The trap everyone falls into with technical debt is basically the result of the fact that human instincts are terrible at risk analysis. “It’s been OK so far!” And then your entire airline stops being able to fly. ...

I read Lawfare because it represents a place where fairly traditional liberal approaches to national security are meeting (occasionally) more progressive and practical understandings of the challenges before us. Accordingly I read their piece on composite violent extremism with great interest. I Don’t Speak German and others in the anti-fascist researcher sphere have been talking about this for ages, of course. I think it’s a reasonably good piece. There’s one huge gap, however. The authors define “individuals who draw on a variety of disparate prejudices and grievances but do not adhere to a discernible ideological framework” as “ambiguous” and sort of throw up their hands; this is a failure, because in many cases the underlying similarity is accelerationism. In some cases – Christchurch, for example – accelerationism is an expression of a clear ideology. Often that’s white supremacy, but not always. ...

John Sandford has always been both an author I enjoy and one who fascinates me from the political perspective. His writing is aware of politics, and often revolves around politics, but few of his protagonists have any interest in discussing their political views beyond the immediate. Perhaps this reflects the author. Who knows? Lucas Davenport shoots and kills people, a lot. He’s a cop. There’s also a strong thread of police corruption in those books. Nobody is a hero just because they wear a badge. ...

It is not very useful to argue this shit on Twitter but that’s what blogs are for, right? Anyone who says that Clinton lost because of Russia is wrong. Anyone who says that Clinton lost because she ran a bad campaign is wrong. Anyone who says that Clinton lost because of Bernie is wrong. You’re all wrong. A lot of things happened and I don’t think any of them shift the tide on their own. Here’s stuff that happened in no particular order of importance!

As I have linked before, albeit more sporadically as time goes on: thank you. Ars Technica seems to have lost the photos, but the Internet Archive has them still. Once upon a time, this post was a symbol of the good will we squandered. These days I think the damage Bush did during the War on Terror is nothing compared to what Trump did. So it goes. I think the 20th anniversary is, therefore, a good time to make this the last repost.

The Seattle Police Department has a detailed timeline of events in Seattle on 6/1/2020, the day the SPD decided to barricade a street and prevent protestors from reaching the East Precinct. I’m also drawing on Heidi Groover’s tweets from that day (original). NPR has a detailed timeline of the Capitol coup attempt; Aaron Rupar’s tweets (original) were also very useful for timing of the rally. Seattle 5:40 PM: Crowd [at Westlake Park] now approximately 7000, crowd talking about marching to East Precinct 6:02 PM (original): Crowd starts moving 7:11 PM: march stopped at police line, 11th and Pine [roughly a 25 minute walk from Westlake Park] ...