Number 007: The right side of history, etc.
See u there
Introduction
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"I don't think you get credit for shouting."
Who do you think will end up on the right side of history: those cheering on the concentration of tens of thousands of desperate migrants in camps with communicable diseases and contemptuous neglect, or those shouting loudly that this is terrible? - Chris Hayes, 2019
I have looked and looked and looked and I can no longer find it, but someone I followed at the time (you see, my old Twitter account is suspended so I cannot find my bookmarks) replied to this tweet with the elegant, "I don't think you get credit for shouting."
To act as if you'll end up on the so-called "right side" of history by "shouting" that Trump is evil because of his immigration policies is very revealing of contemporary liberal thought. Though I don't watch sweet Chris's show, I would imagine that he hasn't had breathless coverage of how Biden is evil incarnate for... doing the exact same things - nay, worse - than Trump at the southern border. While I recognize that calling out hypocrisy isn't very interesting, it can be helpful to understand values, especially if the speaker or group in question doesn't frequently make those clear. So what values are implied by this panic? First, you have the ever-formidable "respectability politics," where if Biden isn't as nakedly racist or imperialist in speech then it's much easier to carry on as if things are fine. I don't really care about this. Politics is boring and tedious, so yeah, of course people care more about if you look and sound like a ~President~ than if you're doing things that are clearly intended to kill Brown people; which is, of course, the American president's job, historically. A second value here is that of "bearing witness to suffering" [Brief note here: this is a direct quote from a tweet wherein someone says that Adolph Reed (quoted below) said this. In my research, it doesn't appear that he did, but he said some very similar things in the 2014 Harper's piece, which is cool because the way the tweeter, Luke Savage, put it is actually very salient. I like the filter of someone reading something and tweeting about it years later here, turning it into an even sharper critique].
Lawrence Wright, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, stands in Hebron and watches as soldiers beat his source. In front of him is the Palestinian peace activist Issa Amro, thrown to the ground by Israeli soldiers, who then punch and kick him for having asked to speak to their commanding officer. Wright is there as a reporter, as a witness. He immediately begins filming, and then, right after the beating, tweets out the video, briefly describing what happened, adding only that “I can't stop thinking how dehumanizing the occupation is on the young soldiers charged with enforcing it.”
For liberals, my humanity was a legible reference point. But a world in which the suffering of the people on the other side of the interview window, the wall or the border didn’t happen is so incomprehensible that they have forgotten if they even want it. A world where the US immigration system doesn’t do this to people isn’t really possible. Lawrence Wright, watching, feels bad for the soldiers because, although he doesn't know it, he has already given up on Issa Amro. Burton, 2023
I'm here to tell you that there's no utility in bearing witness to suffering. How many times have you seen someone say "don't look away" after the morning's mass shooting? It's horrifying! It's an inhumane instinct, it reveals a vision of people as tools to an end. In the Trump era, one of the most popular liberal calls to action was about "being informed" (see: "Trump era pushes NYT to new heights"). Apropos of nothing, does the New York Times speak truth to power? Does it reveal the previously invisible?
The next step beyond being informed is frequently unspoken and - honestly - what is it? Voting? Sure, knock yourself out. Believing that being informed, looking at videos of death at the hands of police, tweeting your way through a genocide in Yemen, etc. actually accomplish something is not innocuous, it's indicative of an implied hierarchy. I, the observer, get to consume your suffering because I'm different - I can make a difference. What you might have to die for, I can just vote for. I wash my hands of it afterward, because my work is done. If my guy doesn't win, that's easy: I turn to someone who has been failed by American education, someone who can't signal Intellect by showing me their diploma, and say, "Can you believe these people can vote?"
Today, the labor movement has been largely subdued, and social activists have made their peace with neoliberalism and adjusted their horizons accordingly. Within the women’s movement, goals have shifted from practical objectives such as comparable worth and universal child care in the 1980s to celebrating appointments of individual women to public office and challenging the corporate glass ceiling. Dominant figures in the antiwar movement have long since accepted the framework of American military interventionism. The movement for racial justice has shifted its focus from inequality to “disparity,” while neatly evading any critique of the structures that produce inequality. Reed, 2014
The trick is that very few of us are on "the right side" of history, such as it is. That's okay! We're up against some pretty strong opposition. I'm not deluded about my place in this: I'm an academic, not an activist or an organizer. I probably won't die or go to jail in the fight for liberation. So it goes. These are our choices and we certainly are making them in imperfect circumstances. The thesis of this essay, I suppose, is just that believing that your role involves bearing unnecessary witness to suffering is wrong. You don't have to dehumanize yourself because to be informed is better than to be fulfilled, or happy, or at peace. There are some things that are probably good to be aware of, like, say, terrorism charges being brought against Cop City activists. But you don't need to be acutely aware of every horror in the modern world. That's my view.
To be clear, you (and I) have been failed. As Reed writes, the left-labor movements of the 1960s are essentially dormant (or were, until this summer of labor action, which is cool) and, as Reed doesn't write, this is in no small part due to the covert violence of your own government. The structures that uphold oppression and American imperialism are, despite some recent, hopeful cracks, extremely strong. We're only people.
I'll draw a brief distinction between Chris Hayes' version of "shouting" and productive shouting. One involves his version of journalism, which is grandstanding about how Bad Things Are in a $3,000 suit on primetime television. Another is, perhaps, rallying in front of a government building or, better yet, shutting down a freeway. Good shouting. The key is that you can be doing your best, doing good work, being a good person, and maybe in the grand, cruel scheme of history, you and I maybe won't be on "the right side." Maybe people in the future will be braver than I, willing to actually, literally fight for a better world. That's for them to do.
Other things
"Aragon might well have been describing thrillers of the 1940s and 50s, which were perversely erotic, confined largely to interiors, photographed in a deepfocus style that seemed to reveal the secret life of things, and often derived from the literature of alcohol-a substance especially conducive to desire, enervation, euphoria, confusion, and night...
In many later writings [of Borde and Chaumeton (French writers, who cares)], noir is not simply a descriptive term, but the name for a critical tendency within the popular cinema - an anti-genre that reveals the dark side of savage capitalism. Naremore, 1995
Noir as an anti-genre that shows that darkness of capitalism is a cool idea, but it also was an anti-genre that spoke to how scared people were of mid-century cities. Namely, Los Angeles.
Boston University hired Ibram X. Kendi to lead its new Center for Antiracist Research in 2020, a year marked by a global pandemic and nationwide racial tension.
Three years later, after at least $43 million in grants and gifts and what sources say has been an underwhelming output of research, the Center for Antiracist Research laid off almost all of its staff last week.
Blowing through $43 million in three years at your antiracist research center (also………………………... what is "antiracist research?") is an absolutely staggering achievement. Spending over $14 million a year for a staff of - at most, according to the article - 30 people nets out at almost $500,000 per person, per year. What................. were they doing..............
The Golden State Warriors may be adding new investors — and in the process confirming a staggering franchise valuation.
A group of minority owners are looking to sell their 10% stake in the team at a potential valuation of $7 billion, according to Bloomberg. That would fall in line with Forbes’ most recent NBA valuations — which pegged the Warriors as the most valuable team in the league. Front Office Sports, 2023
Just keeping you updated on this topic :) lotta money :) Also can I just note this fucking line: "That number would make a 10% stake in Golden State worth $700 million — a half-billion dollars more than the $450 million current owners Joe Lacob and Peter Guber paid for the franchise in 2010." Not to be rude but 700m is not half a billion (500m) more than 450m... like why be so imprecise about that? Am I insane?
Well that was the concept. Rudy Giuliani, at the time, said America’s gonna go about their duty, we’re not gonna let this divert us in anyway. We’re America we’re not gonna be scared by this. Everybody should do what they do, and we did. The whole country did. We didn’t just stop. We had jobs to go to, functions to go to.
You find it a little suspicious how the buildings came down right?
Oh yeah. When you hear experts say it was a planned demolition, the way they came down. Thermite and different things that were used, and how fast they cleaned up and got rid of evidence. You gotta admit they did a quick job cleaning up that mess to get things back in order. And Building 7, which was not effected at all. That just came down? That was very suspicious to me.
He contains multitudes.
Assorted treats
