A wee rant: Why must we have statues of "famous" people? Can't we just have art instead?

Rather than argue about which statues to remove and which to keep, I'd rather have a discussion about why humans deploy statuary as propaganda markers to begin with, a habit that strikes me as similar to dogs marking territory with urine.

Face it, there's a considerable difference between art for the sake of art and statuary for the sake of establishing what is "true." Michelangelo's David is an idealized male form. It celebrates itself. Southern cities dropping statues of Civil War "heroes" during the 1960s? That's so-called art for the sake of societal control.

Why do we do this? The planet is filled with statuary capable of being defined or redefined into repugnance, because after all, doesn't each triumphant victory arch ever erected have the side purpose of provoking the defeated?

Ordinary working men and women have created the planet's wealth -- and the rich folks (generally men) who exploited them get the statues. The same goes for street names; the best are simplest: Main, Market, Oak, Riverside and the like. Naming them for actual people is fraught with peril if objectivity is the aim, because those chosen are flawed by nature.

As I've pointed out many times, a person born in Berlin during World War I, and residing in the same building until his or her death in the mid-1990s, might have enjoyed as many as five different street addresses based on which ideology ruled at the time.

One of these days, our munificent municipal mediocrity will generously allow his fans and campaign donors to erect a statue in his honor.

And I will figure out a way to topple it.

Count me in, emphatically: "Like it or not, a second Age of Revolution is dawning."

I endorse the following remarks.

Covid-19 has changed everything. Now we need a revolution for a born-again world, by Simon Tisdall (The Guardian)

As global demands for justice and equality gather force, only a truly radical agenda can make it happen

... Many countries have seen small-scale Covid-related protests. Yet by and large, insurrection has not gone viral – yet.

That’s despite a consensus among business leaders, scientists and pundits that the world will never be the same again. A watershed has been reached, they say. Mostly older people are suffering now, but millions among the younger generations may have their lives forcibly upended for years to come. Like it or not, a second Age of Revolution is dawning.

So the real question is not whether but what manner of revolution is coming ...

Stuff 'em all: Republicans AND Democrats enabled the PPP chain-feeding bailout debacle.

Spare me.

If you're an indie operator rushing to perform fellatio on Shake Shack -- a $1.6 billion company -- for returning the PPP loan money Republicans AND Democrats bestowed upon it, consider the fine print in the designer chain's mea culpai last week.

Shake Shack was fortunate last Friday to be able to access the additional capital we needed to ensure our long term stability through an equity transaction in the public markets. We’re thankful for that and we’ve decided to immediately return the entire $10 million PPP loan we received last week to the SBA so that those restaurants who need it most can get it now.

Which is precisely what Shake Shack might have done in the first place, seeing that PPP was supposed to be for businesses without financing options like this.

At the end of the week Ruth's Chris Steak House spewed similar bilge during the course of giving back its $20 million. So did an insipid salad chain called Sweetgreen (huh?), Harvard University, and maybe a few others.

The main point: The two-party system is responsible for bailouts that help huge corporate monoliths first, and small indie businesses almost not at all.

And, huge corporate monoliths are greedy bastards that should be eliminated from the face of the earth. Death both to chains and the two-party system.

I hope you enjoyed my TED clenched fist.

White House, GOP face heat after hotel and restaurant chains helped run small business program dry, by Jonathan O'Connell (Washington Post)

With program out of money, backlash prompts executives at Shake Shack to return $10 million loan.

The federal government gave national hotel and restaurant chains millions of dollars in grants before the $349 billion program ran out of money Thursday, leading to a backlash that prompted one company to give the money back and a Republican senator to say that “millions of dollars are being wasted.”

Thousands of traditional small businesses were unable to get funding from the program before it ran dry. As Congress and the White House near a deal to add an additional $310 billion to the program, some are calling for additional oversight and rule changes to prevent bigger chains from accepting any more money.

Ruth’s Chris Steak House, a chain that has 150 locations and is valued at $250 million, reported receiving $20 million in funding from the small business portion of the economic stimulus legislation called the Paycheck Protection Program. The Potbelly chain of sandwich shops, which has more than 400 locations and a value of $89 million, reported receiving $10 million last week.

Shake Shack, a $1.6 billion burger-and-fries chain based in New York City, received $10 million. After complaints from small business advocates when the fund went dry, company founder Danny Meyer and chief executive Randy Garutti announced Sunday evening that they would return the money.

They said they had no idea that the program would run out of money so quickly and that they understood the uproar ...

"'Afterwardness' saturates the present. We didn’t know we were entering a new era until it arrived."

It's not going to be the same. Normality as we know it has been altered, and whatever the exact configuration of the future, it's not going to be the same as it was.

You Can’t Go Home Again, by Alex N. Press (Jacobin)

We didn’t know we were entering a new era until it arrived. We can never go back.

 ... I take a break from work to force myself to read an essay I’ve had open on my laptop for a while. In it, the author reflects on his failed efforts to evade commodification as a young writer. He writes: “I realize now that I was trying to undo by writing what could only be undone by action, not alone but with others — and through connections that incantation alone would not conjure.” I’ve been wondering why writing feels so meaningless during this pandemic, even emptier than usual, but it’s because action, right now, is so hard to come by. The emergent wave of walkouts and sickouts by essential workers at Amazon, General Electric, Whole Foods, and more — not to mention the tenant organizing — are the actions needed to force the hands of the rich and powerful, who are busy attending to their own problems. Writing isn’t totally useless, of course; the future is open, now more than ever, even if the forces of left and right that seek to shape it are nowhere close to being on a level playing field. But when the system is so hostile to reform, much less radical change, no amount of correct phrasing or clever proposals can shape history.

At least he's stunningly consistent: "Tom Friedman Has No Idea What He’s Talking About."

I first became aware of Thomas L. Friedman when my pal Barrie and I read From Beirut to Jerusalem (1989), which described Friedman's feelings about Israel in the context of his work as a young reporter in the Middle East during the 1980s.

The book seemed solid to me, particularly the chapter called "Hama Rules," which bluntly detailed the horrifying violence directed against internal dissent by the elder Assad in Syria circa 1982, thus providing a preview of son Bashar's predictable instincts during the country's recent civil war.

However this passage at Wikipedia suggests that I didn't necessarily have a wider frame of reference at the time.

It received the 1989 National Book Award for Nonfiction and also the Cornelius Ryan Award. In a book review for The Village Voice, Edward Said criticized what he saw as a naive, arrogant, and orientalist account of the Israel–Palestine conflict.

There's little sense in belaboring the point, which comes down to this: As my frame of reference widened, Friedman's credibility shrank in proportion. His article last week, as dissected here by Elie Mystal, was like an itemized list of centrist wrong-thinking in response to Trumpism.

I haven't read a column by Friedman for a very long time, and propose to double down on what is proving to be a correct decision on my part.

Tom Friedman Has No Idea What He’s Talking About, by Elie Mystal (The Nation)

Every pundit urging moderation was wrong in 2016, and they’re wrong now.

There is one, and I’ll argue only one, thing that Thomas Friedman gets right in his latest New York Times column “‘Trump’s Going to Get Re-Elected, Isn’t He?’”—and that one thing is the fact that people are asking that question a lot. The fear is palpable. The fear is real that somehow the Democratic Party will fail to the meet the unique danger posed by the incumbent president.

Fear can be a powerful motivator, but fear also causes people to make bad arguments and promote silly things. Thomas Friedman is afraid, and it shows. His prescription for the Democrats to confront the danger of Donald Trump is well-meaning inanity, the kind you find in a squirrel who hears a hawk and runs around in a circle because it can’t remember where the tree is.

The particular hawk that seems to have set Friedman off this time was the first round of Democratic debates. Friedman watched them and did not like what he saw. He was “shocked.” No, really, he used the word “shocked” five times to describe the ideas he heard from Democrats, which is an interesting word choice considering Donald Trump is the president of the United States. Maybe he expected Democrats to offer the same kind of fiscally conservative, socially moderate, wildly unpopular policies that served Jeb! so very well against Trump?

From Friedman:

Dear Democrats: This is not complicated! Just nominate a decent, sane person, one committed to reunifying the country and creating more good jobs, a person who can gain the support of the independents, moderate Republicans and suburban women who abandoned Donald Trump in the midterms and thus swung the House of Representatives to the Democrats and could do the same for the presidency. And that candidate can win!

But please, spare me the revolution! It can wait.

This poor man has it so twisted around that he’s decided it’s the Democrats who are threatening to nominate somebody indecent and insane.

PINTS & UNION PORTFOLIO: Beer diversity is bitter and malty, sweet and sour, big and small, foreign and domestic.

The current draft lineup at Pints&union is a very good representation of what I've been hoping to achieve in a concise, ten-tap setting.

Taken in concert with the bottle and can selection, our beer list might not be the biggest or even the "best," whatever THAT means these days, but there can be no doubt that it is downtown New Albany’s most thoughtful: bitter and malty, sweet and sour, big and small, foreign and domestic.

The "classic" quotient is high and the "trendy" buzz low, and purposefully so, but if all the others are kaleidoscopic hamster wheels, intelligent and stable design becomes the most revolutionary concept of all.

Thank you for your support.

PINTS & UNION PORTFOLIO: If beer choices constantly rotate, then it's revolutionary to rotate them less often -- or not at all.

The Spring 2019 issue (Vol. 63) of Food & Dining Magazine will hit the streets in March. My beer column is returning with a brief overview of Pints&union, emphasizing our revolutionary beer program.

My stand is clear, and the time for a “back to basics” movement is now. I believe there exists a silent majority among American beer drinkers who find the kaleidoscopic tilt-whirl of short attention spans – this frenetic hamster wheel approach to beer appreciation – utterly bewildering.

If you're thinking this isn't revolutionary at all, I beg to differ. The core definition of revolution is "involving or causing a complete or dramatic change." There's an inescapable relativity to this. If beer choices constantly rotate, then it's revolutionary to rotate them less often -- or not at all.

Ah, but BUSINESS -- consumers demand kaleidoscopic hamster wheels, therefore businesses are compelled to provide them or go bust.

Not entirely, and in fact I've never really believed this is true. If I had, would there have been a Rich O's Public House in 1990 offering unknown beers when consumers were demanding a dozen more tasteless frozen light lager "choices"?

Besides, if every bar in town is showing the Stupor Bore, then I want my joint to do something different as a haven for the minority preferring anything but football. Businesses are compelled to find markets, not pander to any particular model.

This is as good a segue as any into a nationwide campaign to restore a dollop or three of equilibrium to the reign of short beer attention spans.

Why #FlagshipFebruary?

What sometimes gets lost amid the constant stream of special releases are the beers that paved the way for today’s remarkable global beer market, or in other words, the flagship beers that got us here.

When the current keg of Monnik Mild George depletes, there'll be two kegs of Anchor Steam to pour in connivance with #FlagshipFebruary, although I can't say exactly when this will begin.

San Francisco’s Anchor Brewing Co. is widely acknowledged to be the first modern-day craft brewery in the United States. It is less appreciated that the company’s flagship beer, Anchor Steam Beer, is the first American craft beer in modern times. Because of its status as the last survivor of the steam beer style, which was once widespread in the American West, the beer appears to be a missing link between historic and craft beers. However, the circumstances of its reinvention in 1971 show it to be something far more important.

Finally, at Good Beer Hunting the forever well-informed and provocative Bryan Roth turns the very notion of "flagship" inside out. It's very interesting reading, which makes me more determined than ever to create, nurture and sustain an alternative beachhead.

We’ve Created a Monster — What Does it Mean to Talk Flagship Fatigue?

... Advocates spent the last 40 years decrying the problems of mass market Lager and clamoring for more options and experiences via “small and independent” craft brewers. They can hardly complain when those wishes come to fruition, and when 85% of 21-and-over Americans live within 10 miles of a brewery. This is the future liberal, promiscuous drinkers want, old-guard flagships be damned.

I've been one of these advocates, who now finds his innate contrarianism to be as infinitely mutable as the beer marketplace itself. I'm proud of what we've accomplished so far, and I will continue to work on improving the beer experience at Pints&union.

Marohn: "Certified planners—along with licensed engineers—present the greatest institutional obstacle to wide-scale adoption of a Strong Towns approach."

A periodic reminder about Strong Towns.

WHO WE ARE.
Strong Towns is an international movement that’s dedicated to making communities across the United States and Canada financially strong and resilient.

THE PROBLEM WE FACE.
For generations, North American communities have been growing—or at least, they've been building. But as we've paved endless roads, raised countless buildings and put more and more infrastructure in the ground, we’ve given almost no thought to whether future generations will be able to afford to maintain the world we'll leave them with—or how many of the things we build are making our communities worse places to live today.

As today's essay by Charles Marohn was introduced in my member e-mail:

About ten years ago, a guy from Minnesota noticed something unusual was going on at work. He was a city planner who was respected by his peers, but the things he was helping communities build were putting them in debt—really deep in debt.

No one seemed to think this was a problem. In fact, most of his colleagues were doing the same thing. But when he did a little basic math, he realized that even in the best case scenario, the towns he worked with would never be able to afford to maintain all the pavement and pipe they'd put in the ground.

That guy, of course, was our founder and president, Chuck Marohn. And he decided to do something about this problem: he started the Strong Towns movement. And all those years, he maintained his planning certification, even though he stopped working professionally as a planner long ago.

These days, though, Chuck is considering letting that professional acronym fall off the end of his signature. And the reason why has some profound implications for the future of the Strong Towns movement.

Give it a read, and let us know: how will you make your town stronger today, no matter what letters are at the end of your name?

Good stuff.

Goodbye AICP? by Charles Marohn (Strong Towns)

Earlier this year, I received a letter from the American Planning Association (APA) informing me that my certification from the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP) was no longer in effect. The reason stated was that I had failed to complete the required ethics credit for my continuing education. There was a reinstatement process outlined in the letter, including an ultimate deadline for meeting this requirement and becoming an AICP certified planner without having to retake the test.

The letter has sat on my desk for months. I came into the office this evening to find the letter so I could reference it, and someone has cleared it off my desk. I’m unable to locate it. My AICP pin that was sent to me years ago is sitting here on the ledge, however, in the box it came in with a dead bug on top of it. Its disposition is revealing.

I’m coming to the realization that I just don’t care about my AICP. I certainly have not lost any sleep over the letter from the APA. For months, I haven’t bothered to take even the most rudimentary action regarding it. This isn’t the kind of behavior one has regarding a certification they value.

Here comes the meat.

It’s no wonder that the AICP has tended to be—in my experience—an echo chamber of public employees (with governments paying their certification) and the planning consultants who want credibility with those governments (so they can enjoy exclusivity in selling their services).

I’m neither, and I’m starting to get the impression that I don’t belong. Or am not really wanted. I spend a fair amount of time with planners—a great number of them are AICP—and I know there is a lot of enthusiasm for Strong Towns within APA’s membership. Even so, certified planners—along with licensed engineers—present the greatest institutional obstacle to wide-scale adoption of a Strong Towns approach.

Throw another log on the fire.

If we’re going to sit around and wait for planners to lead this revolution, we’re going to be disappointed. Some will be there with us, but most are going to be late adopters.

ON THE AVENUES: Fighting the power with ballots, not bullets.

ON THE AVENUES: Fighting the power with ballots, not bullets.

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

Next summer will be the 30th anniversary of my month’s stay in the German Democratic Republic, or as we still refer to the fading image in our cracked rear view mirrors, East Germany.

In 1989 I had the opportunity to spend more than three months in East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary and the USSR. This period remains a defining experience in my life, something that continues to intrigue and haunt me all these years later.

Regular readers of the NA Confidential blog know this, seeing as I’ve told the story so many times before. In 1989, I was still traveling in Europe when suddenly the Berlin Wall came down. No one expected it, least of all the Ost Berliners who lined up at checkpoints on the fateful evening of November 9 with little more in mind than seeing what life was like on the other side.

Earlier the same day, border guards would have opened fire on them for trying to cross.

For them, for me, for virtually all of us, the Cold War’s spheres of influence seemed eternal at the time. We had no idea drastic change was just around the corner. There were minor fissures, hairline cracks and other warning signs, but no indication they wouldn’t be resolved within the overall context of the postwar victors’ division of power.

Here, there and everywhere, politics ultimately is about power -- who has it, who doesn’t, who is in, who is out -- and who ultimately decides. In East Germany, the Communist regime addressed the people like this: If you’re not with us, you’re against us.

However, it was different in Hungary, no less a Communist state than the GDR, and to be sure, capable of undemocratic threats and repression when necessary. Hungarian leader Janos Kadar artfully borrowed money from the capitalist countries in order to make consumer goods more readily available, thus altering the political power equation: If you’re not against us, you’re for us.

These days it is assumed that political power is about money and vice versa, but in fact it isn’t always about money, even for Mitch McConnell, and as numerous small-time, tinhorn dictators have proven. Not all those Communist-era kingpins were in it for the money, although the closer you got to the Balkans, the more likely there’d be noticeable self-enrichment. Like Kadar, some of them were personally austere.

I’ve always cited Romania’s Nicolae Ceausescu as the worst composite of all worlds. He was a true doctrinal believer in Marxism-Leninism who didn’t at all practice what he preached, amassing personal wealth amid widespread societal misery, and also imbued with an evangelistic mission to inflict his inner aesthetic (read: atrocities) on a captive population.

It was power, all right, and the oppressive ability to puff his own ego by commanding uniformity in thought and design from people who didn’t possess the means to resist -- or so Ceausescu thought, until he learned the hard way.

You’ll recall the year 1989 concluding with Ceausescu in the company of his widely detested wife Elena, the two of them captured by revolutionaries, given only a cursory trial and then shot on the spot in the courtyard of a school.

It is reputed that those soldiers chosen to carry out the verdict refused the option of a conscience-salving random blank round, and were so eager they actually started shooting before the video was ready to record the executions.

Frustrated small-timers like Ceausescu who possess grand, unfulfilled ambitions invariably become the worst leaders of all, and to repeat, it isn’t always about the money. Rather, their purported political stewardship becomes a process for assuaging the pain of being picked last for kickball in elementary school.

They begin by seeking vengeance against their perceived betters, but like any addiction, soon too much evening-up isn’t enough, and it doesn’t take long before these big fish in small ponds are mashing members of their own peer group underfoot.

Granted, some of them die with their boots off, in bed. Sick and old, Kadar began seeing the ghosts of the people he’d ordered killed on his way to the top. All the goulash communism in Budapest couldn’t help him by then, and Shakespeare would have had a field day with Kadar’s dementia-laden inner terror.

In 1989, the DDR’s Erich Honecker already was suffering from cancer, perhaps the outcome of his nation’s institutionalized environmental catastrophe. Honecker fled the collapsing police state of his own creation and washed up in Chile, where the terminal disease killed him with the same remorseless efficiency as policeman manning his wall’s many towers targeted potential escapees.

And so I say death to chains … and to tyrants, every last one of them.

---

Maybe I’m digressing, maybe not, so let me try to arrive at a point. While a particular monopoly on political power may seem to be permanent and irreversible, history is filled with evidence to the contrary, and in 1989, as explained here, I witnessed it myself.

The Berlin Wall would stand forever, right up to the point when emboldened ordinary people began chipping at the asbestos-laced monstrosity with screwdrivers, shovels, tire irons and their bare hands. In less than a year, Germany was reunified. The East Bloc disappeared almost overnight, and a few years later, so did the USSR.

The elites, juntas and cliques may seem to have all the power, all the money, all the propaganda, and all the guns – metaphorical or otherwise.

But they never, ever have a monopoly on truth, honesty or simple human decency.

Paranoia’s a big destroyer. So is hubris. Even worse is the reality once addressed by John Lennon: “One thing you can’t hide, is when you’re crippled inside.”

It can be hidden for a while, though not forever. Back in 2008, there was a huge red maple on the west side of our house. It seemed healthy enough, then one night we heard a crash. A branch had fallen, barely missing our car parked in the driveway. Shining a flashlight up the trunk, we could see the tree was hollow and termite infested.

There was little choice except to have the red maple taken down, which was done just a few days before the damaging straight-line winds from the hurricane occurring to the southwest, in the Gulf of Mexico, which probably would have knocked the hollow tree on our house.

I really hated losing that tree. But we needed to be rid of it before further damage occurred. Trees are to be loved, but has anyone of sound mind ever fretted over losing a despot?

This guy got it right.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

This passage wasn’t written by Vaclav Havel, Lech Walesa or even the fellow clad in denim carving away at the Berlin Wall with his souvenir Bulgarian pen knife.

Rather, it was Thomas Jefferson.

---

Recent columns:

September 11: ON THE AVENUES: After 49 years, two more reasons to be an Oakland A's fan.

September 9: ON THE AVENUES: May, Kennedy, wigs and prayers, but where's the delightful infidel gardening column?

August 30: ON THE AVENUES: From Baltic to Mediterranean, the diary of an unrepentant New Albanian Europhile.

August 23: ON THE AVENUES: The "downfall" occurs when we all fall down.

August 20: Non-learning curve: This ON THE AVENUES column repeat reveals that since 2011, we've been discussing the safety hazards on Spring Street between 10th and 9th. Too bad City Hall is deaf.

Here and there, "dislodging those corporate Democrats ... is a critical front in the effort to actually make America great again."

Writing at The Nation, John Nichols, finds reasons to celebrate New York's 2018 state primary results.

Big Wins by Down-Ballot Progressives Are Going to Transform New York Politics

... The change in Albany will be dramatic as a new generation of insurgents and reformers arrives. (Governor Andrew) Cuomo is likely to return with a more progressive bent—having been pushed left by the (Cynthia) Nixon challenge. The Democratic nominee for attorney general, Tish James, has served for many years in New York City posts as a labor-aligned progressive. And the legislature will be populated by a state senators like Alessandra Biaggi, who claimed her victory as a signal that New Yorkers would no longer “tolerate Democrats who would be empowering Republicans.”

If the local Democratic Party is to be purged in like fashion, candidates who aren't afraid to describe unclothed passers-by need to step forward and take "down-ballot" into places like the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th council districts.

First, the bigger picture.

Yes, let's wipe out Trump. But take neoliberal Democrats with him, too, by David Sirota (The Guardian)

After a scorching summer of discontent, Donald Trump’s endless tweets and scandals have given Democrats their best chance to retake Congress since George W Bush’s second term. And yet, insurgent progressives are not limiting themselves to dethroning Republicans: they are taking aim at corporate-friendly Democrats within their own party, too.

Amid an upsurge of populist energy that has alarmed the Democratic establishment, a new wave of left-leaning insurgents have been using Democratic primaries to wage a fierce war on the party’s corporate wing. And, as in past presidential primary battles, many Democratic consultants, politicians and pundits have insisted that the party must prioritize unity and resist grassroots pressure to support a more forceful progressive agenda.

Not surprisingly, much of that analysis comes from those with career stakes in the status quo. Their crude attempts to stamp out any dissent or intraparty discord negates a stark truth: liberal America’s pattern of electing corporate Democrats – rather than progressives – has been a big part of the problem that led to Trump and that continues to make America’s economic and political system a neo-feudal dystopia.

Dislodging those corporate Democrats, then, is not some counterproductive distraction – it is a critical front in the effort to actually make America great again.

Sirota surveys a long train of abuses and usurpations.

Recounting this sordid record is not to dispute Democrats’ occasional successes. Some blue locales continue to periodically pass progressive initiatives, most recently on climate change, net neutrality and minimum wages. These are undoubtedly important, but they have for the most part been incremental at a time when the economic and ecological crises we face demand far more radical action.

The current iteration of the Democratic party has proven time and again that it is not merely uninterested in that kind of radicalism, but actively opposed to it. Party powerbrokers and multimillion-dollar MSNBC pundits would prefer an election focused exclusively on the palace dramas surrounding Trump’s boorish outbursts and outrageous personal behavior. They don’t want an election focused on the bipartisan neoliberalism that has wrought the desperation and mayhem unfolding outside the palace walls.

Out here, though, economic reality has proven the scripted red-versus-blue theater to be a bread-and-circuses distraction from the fact that both parties are culpable for this moment of crisis. America is now in backlash mode, producing candidates in Democratic states who are boldly challenging the party’s decrepit establishment.

After briefly reviewing a list of these candidates, Sirota brings it home.

These progressive challengers and others like them have each run unique campaigns, but all have embodied the core belief that anti-Trump rhetoric alone is not an adequate response to the emergencies at hand. Democrats’ record in liberal states and liberal cities over the last decade makes a strong case that they are correct – and so now the revolution is on.

That may bewilder the Democrats’ permanent political class that has gotten used to steamrolling the public, losing elections and still remaining in charge of the party – but, really, the only confusing thing about this uprising is that it took this long to finally ignite.

As noted previously, local prospects for Democratic Party reform are slim, although much will depend on the next 52 days.

Analysis: Election results this November will offer clues as to the progress (or regress) of the 2019 municipal election cycle in New Albany.

If the "blue wave" doesn't materialize in Floyd County, it's likely the party's current municipal power brokers will go to any length to remain ensconced. They're entrenched and waiting better times outside the city limits, but still capable of wetting beaks in the city.

Do we even have enough progressive voters to support candidates who might seek office? I'll leave that one for another time, along with a analysis of local issues which define "progressive."

Hint: the street grid is a perfectly applicable social justice issue. 

Russell Brand's podcast Under the Skin with guest Yanis Varoufakis: "How To Construct A Global Revolution."

I highly recommend taking 80 minutes out of your day and listening to this podcast.

Russell Brand is intelligent, entertaining and a solid interviewer.

Yanis Varoufakis makes as much sense as anyone currently commenting on the world situation.

To repeat: Highly recommended.

Under the Skin with Russell Brand

My new podcast 'Under The Skin' asks: what's beneath the surface - of people we admire, of the ideas that define our time, of the history we are told. Speaking with guests from the world of academia, popular culture and the arts, they'll help us to see the ulterior truth behind our constructed reality. And have a laugh.

You can also listen to it here:

#015 Yanis Varoufakis - How To Construct A Global Revolution

In a fascinating interview I discuss with Yanis what happens when you take on the political, financial and media elite, and how radical reform can occur. Through accounts of his confrontations with the IMF, European institutions and the German government we examine where true power lies and how it is wielded.

I resemble this remark: "Idlers of the world unite."

It's the perfect read while on holiday.

Idlers of the world unite: Why the work ethic needs to be resisted, by Joe Humphreys (The Irish Times)

Unthinkable: The problems of modern labour call for a ‘collective and structural solution’, says David Frayne

The myth of the modern workplace is that new technology and an increasingly educated workforce is redefining labour for the better. Monotonous, manual work can be done by machines, freeing humans up to do creative, value-added, entrepreneurial activities. So we’re told.

The truth is there has been an explosion in what anthropologist David Graeber calls “bullshit jobs”. The knowledge economy compels us to communicate more – even when we want to switch off. And, as individuals come under pressure to stand out from the crowd, there emerges what sociologist David Frayne calls a “culture of gratitude” where labour is given without charge in return for “profile” or imagined networking benefits.

“In this hyper-competitive context,” he writes, “it has almost become a matter of bad taste to fuss about issues like contracts, payment, and working conditions. You should just be grateful to have an opportunity in the first place.”

Frayne has mapped these modern changes to the labour market in his book The Refusal of Work, which his part sociological study and part polemic. Valiantly, he takes up where the likes of Robert Louis Stevenson and Bertrand Russell left off in offering a defence for the dosser.

How paint has become a weapon in Macedonia's "Colorful Revolution."

Bear with me. This story is deeper than it seems at first.

How Paint Became a Weapon in Macedonia's 'Colorful Revolution', by Feargus O'Sullivan (City Lab)

Paint-balling your way to fair elections.

Look at the aftermath of recent protests in the Macedonian capital Skopje, and you might assume a festival had just left town. Archways appear splattered with polka dot blotches of color, statues drip pink and blue streaks, and fountain water runs scarlet. This colorful makeover isn’t the result of some Balkan version of Holi, however. It’s the product of a protest movement whose dazzling tactics—dubbed Sharena Revolutsiya or “the colorful revolution” despite its overwhelmingly peaceful nature—has meant covering city walls and monuments in splashes of brightly colored paint ...

 ... Macedonia’s Colorful Revolution actually kicked off last winter following shocking revelations over the scope of alleged state surveillance in the country.

Macedonia became an independent country following the breakup of Yugoslavia. Since time immemorial, the geographical vicinity of present-day Macedonia (not to mention the Macedonians themselves, many of  whom live in Bulgaria and Greece) has been a regional bone of contention. Now, Macedonia finds itself astride a major refugee route, with geopolitical ramifications.

With the E.U. relying on Macedonia to stem the flow of refugees trying to cross the country from Greece, European governments have largely taken a softly-softly approach, concerning themselves more with brokering stability than pushing for regime change. All that has forced local protesters to get creative. Instead of throwing bricks or Molotov cocktails, they’ve been firing paint balls, scattering Macedonia’s parliament and public buildings with glaring color.

Here's the kicker. Macedonia's political crisis derives in part from ongoing efforts to plasticize and Disney-fy the capital city, Skopje.

That demonstrators are especially concerned with altering the capital’s appearance is not insignificant. In many countries this might come across as a wanton, self-defeating attack on public property that has served many governments, not just the current one. In Macedonia’s capital, however, those very buildings are often new, and represent the forces in the country that protesters loathe.

Skopje has in recent years been undergoing a massive reconstruction project to make it look grander and more imposing (and in Europe, it’s not alone in doing so). The ruling VMRO-DPMNE party has splurged on giving the city a neoclassical makeover that has smothered the city with Brobdingnagian monuments to Alexander the Great, bridges bristling with bronze reliefs, and endless hollow colonnades. At a mushrooming cost of €633 million ($722 million)—meaning that the country is paying out €10,400 ($11,860) every hour—the results are dramatic, oppressive, and hideous. It’s no wonder that these new monuments have been taken as symbols of the government’s grandiose delusions and petty oppression, stone and masonry canvasses on which people are now writing their frustration in day-glo paint. This isn’t just a case of protesters writing their anger on walls. In Skopje, the walls themselves are part of the problem.

Sound familiar?

"For millions of Americans, the dysfunction of our political system may be frightening, but it’s creating a unique reform moment."

(1 of 4)

Basketball-laden holiday weekends are death for readership, but I'd rather think about public participation, ranked-choice voting, Constitutional reform and other structural reforms.

This Is What Political Revolution Really Looks Like, by Wendy R. Weiser, Rob Richie and Sanford Levinson (The Nation)

Without these structural reforms to American democracy, even a progressive presidency couldn’t accomplish much.

The rise of Bernie Sanders, whatever the fate of his campaign, has likely altered the trajectory of progressive politics in the United States for decades to come. He has not only rallied millions of supporters to stand with him, in the words of Michael Harrington, on “the left wing of the possible,” he has significantly expanded the realm of the possible itself. Yet for many on the left even Sanders’s fiery denunciations of a rigged political and economic system fail to account for how profoundly that is the case and how challenging it will be to un-rig it. In this installment of “That’s Debatable,” our continuing series of forums, Wendy Weiser, Rob Richie, and Sanford Levinson argue that deeper structural reforms would be necessary for a “political revolution” to make our federal government more responsive to the people in whose name it governs and whose interests it is supposed to serve.

On Bernie Sanders, the fall of the wall, and Russian words not used here.

Rewinding to November, 1989, we see Bernie Sanders between gigs -- loser of a congressional election, and no longer mayor of Burlington. Sanders sought brief refuge at Harvard, teaching briefly while "plotting his next move."

When the Berlin Wall Fell, Bernie Sanders Didn’t Respond Like Other Politicians, by Richard Kreitner (The Nation)

Instead of heralding “the end of history,” Sanders called on Americans to take the revolutions of 1989 as a model.

... In an op-ed he wrote for The Harvard Crimson that month, Sanders wrote that watching the dramatic events unfolding abroad—“glasnost; perestroika; free speech; open parliamentary debate televised before millions of viewers; the beginning of organized political opposition to the Communist Party; mass strikes and demonstrations by workers and ethnic minorities; serious publications dealing honestly with the nation’s sordid history which had been covered up for decades by officials lies”—prompted him to consider the need for something similar to happen at home.

A quarter-century later, I still use these Russian words quite often. I may actually have campaigned for office on their basis, although few people seem to remember what they mean.

... Without glasnost, (Mikhail) Gorbachev believed, there could be no perestroika; without a popular outpouring of anger and dissent, the powerful and the privileged, those who profited from the status quo, would continue to block the thoroughgoing systemic reforms he had proposed.

Similarly, Sanders acknowledges that the sweeping political changes necessary for making the United States a more just and equal nation are impossible—he is, indeed, that much-abused word, “unelectable”—without a groundswell of support among the marginalized and the disillusioned.

Soul searching as impetus for structural reform? It makes sense to me, although you simply cannot TIF it and declare victory. At this precise moment, I'm not optimistic. Then again, relative sobriety has been known to induce horrifying realities.

Perhaps tomorrow will be different.

Your Saturday Radical 2: Chris Hedges, Karl Marx and why everything is not beautiful.

For a broader overview, the interview format here:

“We are in a revolutionary moment”: Chris Hedges explains why an uprising is coming — and soon, by Elias Isquith (Salon)

In recent years, there’s been a small genre of left-of-center journalism that, following President Obama’s lead, endeavors to prove that things on Planet Earth are not just going well, but have, in fact, never been better. This is an inherently subjective claim, of course; it requires that one buy into the idea of human progress, for one thing. But no matter how it was framed, there’s at least one celebrated leftist activist, author and journalist who’d disagree: Chris Hedges.

In fact, in his latest book, “Wages of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of Revolt,” Hedges argues that the world is currently at a crisis point the likes of which we’ve never really seen. There are similarities between our time and the era of the 1848 revolutions throughout Europe — or the French Revolutionary era that preceded them — he says. But in many ways, climate change least among them, the stakes this time are much higher. According to Hedges, a revolution is coming; we just don’t yet know when, where, how — or on whose behalf.

Recently, Salon spoke over the phone with Hedges to discuss his book, why he thinks our world is in for some massive disruptions, and why we need revolutionaries now more than ever.

A bit more deeply here:

Karl Marx Was Right, by Chris Hedges (Truth Dig)

... Karl Marx exposed the peculiar dynamics of capitalism, or what he called “the bourgeois mode of production.” He foresaw that capitalism had built within it the seeds of its own destruction. He knew that reigning ideologies—think neoliberalism—were created to serve the interests of the elites and in particular the economic elites, since “the class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production” and “the ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships … the relationships which make one class the ruling one.” He saw that there would come a day when capitalism would exhaust its potential and collapse. He did not know when that day would come. Marx, as Meghnad Desai wrote, was “an astronomer of history, not an astrologer.” Marx was keenly aware of capitalism’s ability to innovate and adapt. But he also knew that capitalist expansion was not eternally sustainable. And as we witness the denouement of capitalism and the disintegration of globalism, Karl Marx is vindicated as capitalism’s most prescient and important critic.

Actually, MOST movies are "too dumb to criticize." Time for some book-readin'.

It's a preachin' kind of Sunday.

I tend to avoid American mainstream movies, as they tend to be depressingly stupid. Two hours expended to glare in pained annoyance, while books await reading, strikes me as a poor bargain even when drunk.

Lately I've been avoiding social media expressions of polarized dumbassery, whether emanating from knee-jerking parties to the right or left. It is increasingly evident that social media was developed to be abused by the 99%, go the glee of the 1%, as the ones who should be marching together to take back what is theirs instead attack each other.

It's called divide and conquer, folks, and you buy into it every single day. Rather than emulating 19th-century peasants prostrate on their knees, praying to the Tsar (or the Koch Brothers, or "fill in the blank: with the name of any multinational corporation) for some measure of hope, perhaps we might commence a shift aimed at taking some of it back.

Without knowing or caring why the sniper was sent to Iraq in the first place -- why soldiers are sent anywhere throughout history -- it's all diversion and fluff. Metaphorically, we cannot all work "for" ourselves, but we needn't work for the Man, either. Ideas and words matter, and it's never too late to invest in the time required to grasp their meaning.

Sermon concluded.

'American Sniper' Is Almost Too Dumb to Criticize, by Matt Taibbi (Rolling Stone)

Almost.

 ... Filmmakers like Eastwood, who could have cleared things up, only muddy the waters more. Sometimes there's no such thing as "just a human story." Sometimes a story is meaningless or worse without real context, and this is one of them.

Personal change, political change, and why the orangutan sleeps tonight.

When you've been in the principled position of political opposition for 35 years, having realized long ago that the problem isn't so much Republican or Democrat, but America's non-thinking, two-party dysfunction itself, then election results so disappointing to others are like water off a duck's back.

Floyd County hands its Democrats a purely epic, top-to-bottom beat down.

Here's an essay from a few years back. I like it because of this impeccable conclusion:

We can follow the example of those who remembered that the role of an activist is not to navigate systems of oppressive power with as much integrity as possible, but rather to confront and take down those systems.

Exactly.

Forget Shorter Showers; Why personal change does not equal political change, by Derrick Jensen (Orion)

WOULD ANY SANE PERSON think dumpster diving would have stopped Hitler, or that composting would have ended slavery or brought about the eight-hour workday, or that chopping wood and carrying water would have gotten people out of Tsarist prisons, or that dancing naked around a fire would have helped put in place the Voting Rights Act of 1957 or the Civil Rights Act of 1964? Then why now, with all the world at stake, do so many people retreat into these entirely personal “solutions”?

Part of the problem is that we’ve been victims of a campaign of systematic misdirection. Consumer culture and the capitalist mindset have taught us to substitute acts of personal consumption (or enlightenment) for organized political resistance.

But first, a CeeSaw digression: "The Fascist Automobile vs. Bicycle Rebellion."

Councilman Bob "CeeSaw" Caesar has uttered so much white-bread blather over the years that it would require a full-time archivist to annotate the quotes, which we'd then be throwing into the fireplace, anyway, better to save on a long winter's heating bills.

One time just after we first clashed over the one-way street grid, and in CeeSaw's best 1960s-era verbiage, borrowed from a time when he undoubtedly occupied the city's defense ramparts all alone, besuited, starched and buttoned-down, heroically facing the long-haired hippie freaks advancing like drugs-and-free-sex zombies toward his well-ordered foyer, Caesar referred to me as anti-establishment. Or maybe it was counter-cultural, or both.

His scorn was as palpable as my pride.

The point, however, is that my flaming radicalism of the sort that sends cautious jewelry buyers scurrying is as quaint and peaceful as Bob Caesar's "but really, I'm still a Democrat" innate Romneyism when compared elsewhere.

Like here.

The Fascist Automobile vs. Bicycle Rebellion (Rebel Metropolis)

 ... Instead of leveling the playing field by democratizing our common street space the way bikes do, automobiles prompt us to often engage in sociopathic behavior that’s hostile, selfish, dangerous, and downright fascist.

Walking makes them uncomfortable, too.

I've been on a walking jag the past year. Using your feet perhaps is the ultimate simplification. Yes, bicycling remains important to me, and I expect to enjoy more saddle time this year.

Ross is onto something here, and I like the 'tude.

The truth about bike lanes, by Theodore Ross

We cyclists seek a revolution in our thoroughfares

... Bike lanes, and the self-satisfied travelers thereon — need I point out that I have cycled to work over the Brooklyn Bridge for going on 10 years? — constitute a direct spatial challenge to the automobile. They confiscate valuable property from the car and redistribute it, in nigh-socialist fashion, for use by another mode of transport. Not much of it, in truth, but enough to spite those stuck in traffic. To be sure, the freeway will remain king of the road, and the fundamental symbol of America’s profligate personal independence, for the foreseeable future. The bike is nothing more than an irritant, a jab, a ploy to undermine the automobile’s authority by indicating the ways in which it falls short of absolute necessity. In so doing, however, a conversation might arise about how best to order our urban spaces, about population density and its discontents, air quality and poor health, and what impact dependence on private instead of public transport has on poverty and inequality. The bicycle proffers no remedies in this regard. But perhaps, through its annoyances, it can divert attention in a useful direction.

Previously: ON THE AVENUES REWOUND: Courtesy bicycle to the Hotel Silly (2010).