It’s quite incredible really, and eminently commendable, that a just-elected mayor, who is barely in office but has already taken a demonstrative stand against slumlords in minority neighborhoods of NYC, took the time to throw himself into the mix against this atrocity.

Where are all the rest of Democrats in Congress and the Senate and throughout the country?

There’s no other way of looking at this: this was as potent of a first day move as one could make to push things clearly in the direction of solidifying socialism.

Above all else people can’t afford rent. And, the fucking glaringly brazen way that landlords are able to get away with utterly leaving apartments in disrepair yet still asking for rent checks is the epitome of capitalist decay. And he’s shining a light on both here.

That Zohran knows he has a mega platform now and chose to go to a black neighborhood in Brooklyn, with tv news cameras following his every move, is a stroke of genius.

I don’t know how all this is going to pan out. There will be and I’m sure now is underway all kinds of hellacious subterfuge and sabotage to sink his agenda.

But if he can win the hearts and minds of working people, who have been fucked over in election after election by the shitty fake democrats that win easily here, and get them to see themselves in solidarity with a socialist movement, we could really be seeing the beginnings of building a serious socialist movement to dislodge the feckless democrats.

It can not be a phot opp. I don’t think it will be.

Cory Doctorow needs a wider audience.

And, at the end of that story was a link to yet another gun massacre.

Waterfront bar in SC. Former Army guy with “mental problems,” probably PTSD.

Greatest Country in the World. With no peace.

Heartened by the immediate pushback to corporate media drivel like this by traditional left and alternative media.

This’ll be an important operation going forward: responding immediately to their pathetic, off key calumny.

Was just having this conversation last night with a friend as we were remarking to each other how mesmerizing dusk is with the summer fireflies.

When he said they didn’t exist out West where he grew up I was surprised.

Thought all along fireflies at dusk was one of the more enchanting parts of summer.

Will come to this everywhere.

Empire falling apart at home.

“ I fear that Allied policy may be no more than to achieve Fascism which will favor us instead of favor Germany.”

• Edward Murrow

“Germany lost the Second World War; fascism won it."

• George Carlin

Enter the singularly great John Brown. Who intuitively knew and dedicated himself to this as the great cause of his life, for which he gave it. Was a great admirer of Tubman naturally.

Brown consistently railed against Northern cowardice and indecisiveness regarding slavery.

On the morning of his execution Captain Brown accurately prophesied, “ I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I now think vainly, flattered myself that without very much bloodshed it might be done.”

Continues along:

“If we become increasingly apathetic in modern times - well, so do fish on river banks, after a little while. Our children often come to resemble apathetic fish - except that fish can’t play guitars. And what do many of our children attempt to do? They attempt to form folk societies, which they call “communes.” They fail. The generation gap is an argument between those who believe folk societies are still possible and those who know they aren’t.

Older persons form clubs and corporations and the like. Those who form them pretend to be interested in this or that narrow aspect of life. Members of the Lions Club pretend to be interested in the cure and prevention of diseases of the eye. They are in fact lonesome Neanderthalers, obeying the First Law of Life, which is this: “Human beings become increasingly contented as they approach the simpleminded, brotherly conditions of a folk society.”

Only possible in a socialist system, in which inter-personal relationships are not commodified as we currently are overwhelmed by today.

Carlin speaks pretty profoundly about this subject too. Will see if I can find some stuff later…

Always think of this passage from Kurt Vonnegut’s “Wampeters, Foma, And Granfalloons”:

“[Dr. Robert Redfield] acknowledged that primitive societies were bewilderingly various. He begged us to admit, though, that all of them had certain characteristics in common. For instance: They were all so small that everybody knew everybody well, and associations lasted for life. The members communicated intimately with one another, and very little with anybody else.

“The members communicated only by word of mouth. There was no access to the experience and thought of the past, except through memory. The old were treasured for their memories. There was little change. What one man knew and believed was the same as what all men knew and believed. There wasn’t much of a division of labor. What one person did was pretty much what another person did. “And so on. Dr. Redfield invited us to call any such society ‘a Folk Society’…. In a folk society, says Dr. Redfield, and I quote him now:

“‘[B]ehavior is personal, not impersonal. A “person” may be defined as that social object which I feel to respond to situations as I do, with all the sentiments and interests which I feel to be my own; a person is myself in another form, his qualities and values are inherent within him, and his significance for me is not merely one of utility. A “thing,” on the other hand, is a social object which has no claim upon my sympathies, which responds to me, as I conceive it, mechanically; its value for me exists in so far as it serves my end. In the folk society, all human beings admitted to the society are treated as persons; one does not deal impersonally (“thing fashion”) with any other participant in the little world of that folk society.

“‘Moreover [Dr. Redfield goes on], in the folk society much besides human beings is treated personally. The pattern of behavior which is first suggested by the inner experience of the individual—his wishes, fears, sensitivities, and interests of all sorts—is projected onto all objects with which he comes in contact. Thus nature, too, is treated personally; the elements, the features of the landscape, the animals, and especially anything in the environment which by its appearance or behavior suggests the attributes of mankind—to all these are attributed qualities of the human person.’

“And I say to you that we are full of chemicals which require us to belong to folk societies, or failing that, to feel lousy all the time. We are chemically engineered to live in folk societies, just as fish are chemically engineered to live in clean water—and there aren’t any folk societies for us anymore.”