Friday Links: How Much Income Until I Count As A Person Edition
"The Fascist racketeers were no fools. They understood the psychology of their starving victims. Their appeal to them was irresistible." - Angelo Herndon
Nazis unwelcome: here’s my post about moving this blog off of Substack soon. I might put this stinger on every post until then to try to irritate Nazi Sympathizer Hamish McKenzie. I might forget/get bored and stop. Not today though!
Most people, on some bone-deep level, want the juice without the squeeze. The biggest appeal of a cruise or an all-inclusive vacation is the brief illusion that money doesn’t exist and your desires are accommodated by magic. There’s always a breakfast buffet with an omelette station to erase the hangover from the endless drinks, there are fresh and saltwater options for swimming. Unfortunately, life necessitates work—if you’re not doing it, someone else is. The grocery shelves must stay stocked, the infrastructure maintained, the sick cared for.
Part One | Part Two | Part Three
What I’ve Been Reading This Week:
A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn: “Robber Barons and Rebels,” “The Empire and the People,” and “The Socialist Challenge”
Four Hundred Souls edited by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain: Part Eight (1899-1904)
An Indigenous People’s History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz: “Six: The Last of the Mohicans and Andrew Jackson’s White Republic” and “Seven: Sea to Shining Sea”
In the years between the Civil War and Reconstruction—maybe the evilest, most racist period in U.S. history—no one wanted to work. Sorry, no one rich wanted to work. The people who were working? Well, they weren’t people, you see.
Did you know about Angelo Herndon, the Black antifascist communist in 1930s Atlanta, from whom the epigraph is taken? Let’s quote Robin D.G. Kelley a minute: “During the summer of 1930, about 150 Atlanta business leaders, American Legionnaires, and key figures in law enforcement founded the American Fascisti Association and Order of Black Shirts. Their goals were to ‘foster the princeiples of white supremacy’…” Jump back a few decades. Did you know police tore up train tickets to try to prevent Black people from leaving during the Great Migration? I assume you know about the Great Migration, it certainly wasn’t taught in my high school history classes. Black people wanted 1) to live and 2) jobs with dignity and paycheck. White people everywhere were pretty opposed to the former and also obsessed with the latter. Meanwhile, all those “we’ll never move west of the Mississippi, Indigenous people, don’t worry” promises from the colonizers were proving to exactly as trustworthy as those “we’ll never move west of the Appalachian mountains” promises.
The second the U.S. government even thought about acquiring California, it was looking towards Pacific and Asian markets. Markets, specifically. These people—and they are still with us today—are only satisfied when they are rich, when every natural resource (including human capital) is being “put to use.” Nothing can simply be, things must be used. In the immortal words of Frenchie from The Departed, “this is America, if you don’t make money, you’re a fuckin douchebag.” Don’t even get me started on President McKinley, up all night fully anxietizing because he doesn’t “know what to do with the Philippines” now that the US has “acquired” it from Spain. Don’t let them be. No, the way only way William “why wasn’t I one of the ones who was assassinated before I could do anything” McKinley could sleep that night was by deciding “we” needed to “uplift and Christianize” a people who hadn’t been bothering anyone.
Consent is manufactured by newspapers today, well, so it was back then. The uniting cry of anyone who wasn’t already a millionaire was for life and dignity, but if you’re only using newspapers as a primary source, you’d think a whole nation both 1) knew where Cuba/the Philippines were and 2) were absolutely frothy-mouthed over the potentialities of their lumber markets. Every opinion columnist some combination of Thomas Friedman and Ross Douthat.
Dunbar-Ortiz points out that the US colonization of California began from the Pacific Coast—thumbs-on-the-scales war games for manifest destiny, sea to shining sea cheat codes. It’s difficult, I think, for USians to picture the United States as anything other than this shape, Mexico as anything other than that shape. Possible that I’m just stupid—I distinctly remember being in high school, hearing “manifest destiny,” and thinking, “well sure, we’re…[traces country].” The profit motive, of course, was there. Yet Indigenous people—the greatest keepers of the land the planet has ever seen—had to be taught profit motive, had to be taught the “value” of incurring debt, so how manifest is capitalism?
We’re in a new Gilded Age now, and both scientific racism and hyper-racism are BACK, baby. Similarly, a new labor movement is ascendant. Let’s not leave POC out of the labor revolution this time, huh? Unless 2020 was a total mirage and people have already forgotten Trayvon Martin or Breonna Taylor (seems like a lot of people have, let’s not), we’re in the midst of a new Civil Rights movement. We’re certainly in the midst of a major Black intellectual movement. Do we get to decide if the future is a place of equity, dignity, and caring for each other? Or do the Elon Musks and Chris Rufos and Hamish McKenzies get to decide our future?
LINKS!
Something to listen to? Look, I’m not gonna lie. I read seven chapters of Howard Zinn this week. Those are long chapters! And that’s not even the only book I’m reading! So it’s all YouTube clips this week. First up, I can’t stop watching the Anderson .Paak TinyDesk. Stay til the end to learn how classy of a joint NPR is.
At an undetermined date in the recent past, I turned 36. My Rasheed Wallace year! Here’s Sheed talking about how “Taco” Joe Kleine—so nicknamed because he would frequently play garbage time minutes and do things like “make two free throws so the Bulls could score 100 points and the fans get free tacos” and not much else—was “strong as a lumberjack or something” and gave Sheed a welcome to the NBA moment.
Being 36, and also being an avid reader of Golden Age Cracked and contributor to I guess Silver Age Cracked, I am now watching everyone on the internet discover things I already learned 10-15 years ago. So while I already knew that The Dude post-dates that check for cream in the opening scene, maybe you didn’t.
DeMar DeRozan dunks? DeMar DeRozan dunks.
Get some Skateline in your life, come on.
What’re you still doing here? It’s cold outside! Build a fire or something. Or go read Vine, if you haven’t. It’s real good, we even made an audiobook.
If you work in the service industry, may you clean up in tips this weekend. If, like, one of your tables complains their food is taking too long, like “where’s my well-done sirloin, you lazy & entitled service worker,” like that? Tell them that after the 1919 riots in Chicago, where white people invaded Black neighborhoods and beat, burned, and broke people and things, there was a study done. Sociologist Charles S. Johnson had 50+ recommendations on how to address systemic racism in Chicago. We have yet to implement most of them. But if you’d like, rude restaurant patron, we can refill your diet coke.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris