Aiming For The Impossible

I'm not sure why anyone would seriously mourn the death of Ted Kazcynski, when both a) his basic critique of technology is stupidly, fundamentally flawed to anyone who thinks about it for five minutes and b) plenty of morally palatable and effective enviormentalist protestors exist. But nobody's making any "Jessica Reznicek did nothing wrong" memes.

While the ML's/3rd worldists are correct that the US enjoys imperial privileges, there's so much that the US could do to improve the quality of life for its citizens that would be entirely domestic in nature, or even beneficial to foreign workers. For example, taxing the domestic wealthy to fund a higher minimum wage and safer workplaces would be a massive benefit to both American and Mexican workers. Not everything is zero-sum, and I think that a lot of ML's claim otherwise as a way of rationalizing the lack of leftist policy achievements in the US; like the only reason that California can't have zoning reform is because it's somehow mutually exclusive with stationing carriers in Okinawa and thus The Powers That Be would never allow it, rather than it being a difficult and politically unpopular fight that no one really wants to wage.

It's so funny to see a lot of western leftists who are so disgusted by the idea of marxism-leninism that all they can conceive of is like... so long as we can have a high minimum wage here and free healthcare and affordable housing everything will be fine, as if that is all that matters because these people don't actually care about the global south and the fact that those benefits are imperial in nature lol

The humanities are too important to be left to the humanities majors.

without humanities you will fall for the first lie somebody tells you that punches in the gut because you never learned how those gut-punches work

"people who didn't go to university are easily fooled morons. I am not classist."

“We train our young men to drop fire on people, but our commanders won’t allow them to write ‘fuck’ on their airplanes because it’s obscene.”

The above thread is a typical, and entertaining, mockery of crude and reactionary youth (presumed entirely male but who knows) getting shut down by calm and minimalist mods running X-box live.

But reading through it, it’s easy to forget: these are social rules for games where you run around in grimdark settings finding other players and shooting them with realistic guns until they are a bloody mess on the floor. And then you do it again ten seconds later.

I’m not criticizing that as an illegitimate form of enjoyment, but it does seem that such an atmosphere goes pretty well in hand with crude and violent jokes, particularly usernames. This one guy calls himself ObamaDeathPanel, a morbid joke about what the true all time killer is (perhaps I should claim the usertag Capitalism.) And while that might be tasteless - that seems exactly the sort of joking nom de guerre a barbarian in that situation might take. Many of the other handles and bios don’t seem that much farther off from what an adrenaline addled machine gunner would say either.

The whole thing highlights the hypocrisy and disavowal of this corporation. We want to take the money of teenage boys who love shooting their problems into oblivion, but for mods’ sakes don’t talk like someone who does that.

They fallback on the excuse “well the Live service is E because people from other games use it”, but then that begs, why are you trying to make a social experience that is inclusive of both Call of Duty and Spyro?

This seems like one of those trends that will come to define politics a few years on down the line. Racial tension is nothing new in the US, but this kind of gender clash has no historical precedent, at least to my knowledge. Someone on reddit once joked that the future of politics was the (implied nonstraight, nonwhite, liberal/leftist, feminist, etc) Tumblr party losing national elections to the (implied straight, white, rightist, anti-liberal and anti-feminist) 4chan party, and they're probably right. This is what happens when we focus on gender instead of class.

Most Popular Posts of 2018, and what that says about 2019

These are my most popular original posts of last year. You may notice a theme:

Why men bottle up their feelings - “Men need to get in touch with their feelings,” they say, right up until they do.

On the play “Straight White Men” - Or how being the ally you’re told to be makes you disliked by the people you’re supposed to be supporting.

Dirty Sock Sexuality - When the sexuality of young males is portrayed as gross, everybody suffers.

We Built an Incel Factory - A model of dirty sock sexuality appears in the wild. 

What if Sex Ed helped boys get laid? - A solution to dirty sock sexuality.

Pick your man myth, pick your misery - When fear and myth drives a woman from one set of abusers to another. 

The dumbest thing I’ve ever done - In which I am the dirty sock and waste hours upon hours of a therapist’s time. 

Cunnilingus class is cancelled until further notice - Nobody wants to learn from someone who actively loathes them, and sex-positive feminists will never change male behavior without recognizing that.

“Entitled” isn’t a catch-all for men who do bad things - Incels aren’t entitled, they hate themselves. 

Special mention: The help-to-prison pipeline - A trans man discovers that the women tasked with helping vulnerable men fear and blame them, with predictable results.  

The pattern here is that all of my top posts are about vulnerable men and boys. Specifically, how they are given from people who see them mostly as threats to be mitigated, not individuals who want growth, love, and success just like anyone else. Models for men fall into the bitter MRA whine, the anachronistic trad, or the pop-feminist “good man” schtick that sees men’s behavior only through the lens of what it accomplishes for women. There must be a way forward that allows for self-advocacy and self-worth but still respects others and I don’t think any of these models get it right. These posts poked around the edges, seeking to define the contours of the problem. In 2019, I hope to explore these themes more.

Thank you to my readers for your support in 2018!

Communism is when you do a lot of unpaid overtime and are expected to be grateful for the privilege, apparently.

There were many incredibly hardworking peasants and workers in the USSR who achieved astonishing things in service of the revolution, but the fact that they had to make such extraordinary sacrifices is itself a tragedy, and should not be celebrated.

The individual referred to in OP's post was actually named Nikolai Ostrovsky (Pavel Korchagin was the main character of his fictionalized autobiography). He lived a short life full of hardship and sacrifice and died at 32. I think the best way to honor his memory would be to create a world in which such sacrifices are no longer necessary.

wait till i tell "i don't dream of labor" crowd about pavel korchagin who became soviet national role model for basically working himself to multiple disabilities to save town from freezing in the winter during russian civil class war. he wrote autobiographical novel while already blind for which he became famous. and in it there was a scene where anyone who refused to work in those terrible conditions were asked to give up their communist card. because you can't claim to call yourself a communist without being ready to put in as much work as you can. and that wasn't just him ussr was able to withstand these critical first years thanks to selfless underpayed work put by it's people towards rebuilding country's wealth. getting rid of feodal lords and capitalists was enough motivation imagine that! the fact so many people who call themselves communists on here seem to be proud of flaunting their individualism and complete lack of proletarian morals is an insult to all revolutionary workers of the past. go call yourselves libertarians or something.