Friday Reads

 In case you missed it, Biden's Philadelphia speech condemning the MAGA cultists and Trump as a threat to democracy:

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I can't even think about fall yet, but the DM has an interactive map where and when one can best see the changing of the leaves.

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Obituary:  Noted author Barbara Ehrenreich, 81, author of Nickel and Dimed, has died.  I think I have read most of her books, which for the most part focused on the economy and society.

Snip:

Then, as she recalled, the conversation drifted.

How could anyone survive on minimum wage? She mused. A tenacious journalist should find out.

Her editor, Lewis Lapham, offered a half smile and a single word reply: “You.”

The result was the book “Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America” (2001), an undercover account of the indignities, miseries and toil of being a low-wage worker in the United States. It became a best seller and a classic in social justice literature.

The Guardian:

The news that Ehrenreich had died on 1 September was released by her son, Ben Ehrenreich, on Friday. He accompanied the announcement with a comment redolent of his mother’s spirit: “She was never much for thoughts and prayers, but you can honor her memory by loving one another, and by fighting like hell.”

Ehrenreich battled over a half a century as a writer committed to resisting injustice and giving a voice to those who were typically unheard.

Her first book, published in 1969, Long March, Short Song, was an account of the student uprising against the Vietnam war.

The article notes Ehrenreich had a doctorate in cell biology but decided to turn to writing and activism instead.

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Pass the popcorn.

How about doing a report of the GI crowd making death threats to women who acknowledge biological reality?

Of course, owner Joshua Moon will prevail like he always does.  Yes, Kiwi Farms is a vile site, but there is that pesky thing called the First Amendment.

Meanwhile, this is likely a more accurate account of the situation.

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Barbara Ehrenreich

gave an interview with Robert McChesney about the pernicious "happy talk" crap of "positive thinking," which is nothing more than Horatio Alger crossed with New Age psychobabble.

The audio interview is here.

I will probably get her book. Being a realist isn't being "negative."

I Totally Agree

that one of the worst ideas ever concocted in the past 100 years is the notion of "positive thinking," which is just a psychobabble version of denial.

"Positive thinking" doesn't achieve anything. People need to be realists, whether it is about their health or personal situation or about the country and world at large.

It's especially vicious when it is corporate America which is promoting this horseshit:

EW: You write a lot about how positive thinking is in all aspects of life. Do you think this is the most insidious about it -- this idea of a disease being your fault?

BE: I look at it with a little bit of sociological detachment. It's a brilliant system of social control. When bad things happen to people you say, "Well, it's really your attitude that has to change."

The second big place where I encountered all this was in the kind of motivational services that are offered to laid-off white-collar workers, where every networking event or seminar you get the same message about how it's really your attitude that is going to determine if you're going to get a job and probably has something to do with why you lost that last one.

You take people who have been really victimized, and I use that word advisedly, with cancer and with lay-offs from unaccountable corporations. And then you tell them, "Well, you just have to change the way you think." And that's very clever.

"Positive thinking" doesn't stop things happening because they are structural in nature.

Barbara Ehrenreich

sounds like somebody who has the luxury of a career to lecture everybody else on what they should do now that they are unemployed.

More than a few of us don't have the luxury of a second income from a spouse as a buffer from the harsh reality of unemployment. And some of us are too goddamned old to even find anything at all but still have to plug away at looking for nonexistent work.

It takes money to go out and bellyache about this rotten economy. The unemployed need jobs, period.

Political Commentary

When it was just the poor who were affected by an economic meltdown, nobody really paid much attention to them because they had no political clout. Now that the middle class and even wealthier people are being thrown into the economic sewer, the poor might actually start exercising more clout after all.

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Why is our dictator worse than Herbert Hoover? It's because he has a personality flaw which made matters worse.

In short, it's his inability to admit he made mistakes, or stubbornness, or rigidity that made him such a piss-poor president:

For whatever reasons--his difficult family history, his problems with addiction, his failed careers before entering politics, his strong religious convictions--Bush has seemed to be comfortable only when he could make quick and firm decisions, however complicated the issue, and then move on. Admitting mistakes or changing course seems almost contrary to his nature. The "unitary executive," which Dick Cheney has so energetically implemented and defended, was the perfect vehicle for Bush's tendency to prefer conviction over practicality. When Congress passed laws that challenged his convictions, the White House changed them through signing statements. When the Supreme Court struck down policies Bush believed in, the White House largely ignored the decisions. When military leaders pointed out the futility of wartime strategies, Bush ignored the generals and waited for Rumsfeld to replace them. When Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, Bush was not only slow to act, but also never took any significant steps to repair the damage that his administration had done to the agency that was supposed to have helped rebuild the city. FEMA today is little better prepared for another Katrina than it was in 2005.

It Wouldn't

be a bad idea if they started outsourcing the CEOs for a fraction of the cost.

Why Is It

employers so value college degrees?