39 Matching Annotations
  1. Dec 2023
    1. its design as by its original destination, the car is a luxury good. And luxury, in essence, cannot be democratized: if everyone has access to luxury, no one benefits from it; on the contrary: everyone cheats, frustrates and dispossesses others and is cheated, frustrated and dispossessed by them.
      • for: quote - luxury cannot be democratized, 1% - democracy, elites - democracy, adjacency - luxury - democracy, luxury is not democratic, luxury is inequality, Andre Gorz, Terrestrial website, adjancency - luxury - democracy, quote luxury

      • quote

        • ... By its design as by its original destination, the car is a luxury good. And luxury, in essence, cannot be democratized: if everyone has access to luxury, no one benefits from it; on the contrary: everyone cheats, frustrates and dispossesses others and is cheated, frustrated and dispossessed by them.
      • author: Andre Gorz
      • date: Sept. 25, 2023
      • publication: Terrestrial

      • comment

        • insightful comment reveals an adjacency between luxury and democracy that is obvious in hindsight, but missed seeing in foresight!
      • adjacency between:

        • luxury
        • democracy
      • adjacency statement
        • luxury is, by definition a premium artefact so by definition is beyond the reach of most people. It is therefore un-democratic by design.
    1. the term that I'm knocking around at the moment for you know something which isn't a green New Deal de growth is a 00:32:28 green Democratic Revolution
      • for: definition - green democratic revolution

      • definition: green democratic revolution

        • Schneider proposes this strategy is more pragmatic than either green growth or degrowth. The words are chosen carefully:
          • green - obvious
          • democratic - authentic equal power of the people
          • revolution - because we are at the precipice, a fast evolution, a rEVOLUTION is necessary
        • He finds both of these current approaches problematic:
          • green growth employs the same elite debt-based growth logic that contributed to the fossil growth economy
          • degrowth is a terrible term for climate communications which brings the wrong immediate connotations to the masses so creates unnecessary friction at the outset for any strategy that needs to win over the masses.
      • for: climate crisis - voting for global political green candidates, podcast - Planet Critical, interview - Planet Critical - James Schneider - communications officer - Progressive International, green democratic revolution, climate crisis - elite control off mainstream media

      • podcast: Planet Critical

      • host: Rachel Donald
      • title: Overthrowing the Ruling Class: The Green Democratic Revolution

      • summary

        • This is a very insightful interview with James Schneider, communications officer of Progressive International on the scales of political change required to advert our existential Poly / meta / meaning crisis.
        • James sees 3 levels of crisis
          • ordinary crisis emerging from a broken system
          • larger wicked problems that cannot be solved in isolation
          • the biggest umbrella crisis that covers all others - the last remaining decades of the fossil fuel system,
            • due to peak oil but accelerated by
            • climate crisis
        • There has to be a paradigm shift on governance, as the ruling elites are driving humanity off the cliff edge
        • This is not incremental change but a paradigm shift in governance
        • To do that, we have to adopt an anti-regime perspective, that is not reinforcing the current infective administrative state, otherwise, as COVID taught us, we will end up driving the masses to adopt hard right politicians
        • In order to establish the policies that are aligned to the science, the people and politicians have to be aligned.
        • Voting in candidates who champion policies aligned to science is a leverage point.
        • That can only be done if the citizenry is educated enough to vote for such politicians
        • So there are two parallel tasks to be done:
          • mass education program to educate citizens
          • mass program to encourage candidates aligned to climate science to run for political office
    2. how do we organize a green de Democratic Revolutio
      • for: question - how do we organise a green democratic revolution when power is so entrenched?

      • question

        • how do we organise a green democratic revolution when power is so entrenched?
    3. it is so difficult to get people excited about politics because they've sort of seen through the two- party system now where it's just like the same thing over and 00:38:25 over
      • for: green democratic revolution - critique

      • critique: green democratic revolution

      • paraphrase

        • it is so difficult to get people excited about politics because
        • they've sort of seen through the two- party system now where it's just like the same thing over and over again
        • so you have to offer something new
        • but I think was quite difficult for the left to really bring about a progressive Revolution
        • Iif you take that kind of thinking to its logical conclusion, one essentially ends up just abolishing the whole system and end up at Anarchy
        • meanwhile, the right is doubling down and making itself a firmer force

      • comment

        • in a sense, it feels like a moment when the traditional tension between liberals and conservatives is reaching a peak
        • over force is desperately hanging onto the past whilst smoother is forestry moving in a new direction
    1. https://werd.io/2023/doing-it-all

      Interesting to see what, in generations past, might have been a gendered (female) striving for "having it all" (entailing time with children, family and a career) has crossed over into the masculine space.

      Sounds like Ben's got some basic priorities set, which is really the only thing necessary. Beyond this, every parent, especially of new babies, in the W.E.I.R.D. culture is tired. By this measurement he's doing it "right". What is missing is an interpersonal culture around him of extended family and immediate community of daily interaction to help normalize his conditions. Missing this he's attempting to replace the lack of experience with this area by reaching out to his online community, which may provide a dramatically different and biased sample.

      Some of the "it takes a village" (to raise a child) still operates on many facets, but dramatically missing is the day-to-day direct care and help that many parents need.

      Our capitalistic culture has again, in this case of parenting in the W.E.I.R.D. world, managed to privatize the profits and socialize the losses. Here the losses in Ben's case are on his physical well-being (tiredness) and his mental state wondering if his case is "normal". A further loss is the erosion of his desire for a family unit and cohesion of community which the system is attempting to sever by playing on his desire to "have it all". Giving in to the pull of work at the expense of family only drives the system closer to collapse.

  2. Oct 2023
    1. Independent family farming used to be much more common [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]. But continued enclosures and increased centralization throughout the food markets have made it more difficult for farmers to survive without growing big. “Get big or get out,” said Earl Butz, Richard Nixon’s Secretary of Agriculture in 1973.
      • for: big ag, smallholding farmers, democratic agriculture, democratizing agriculture, democratizing farming
    1. Potential Biden contenders: - Gavin Newsom, California governor - J. B. Pritzker, Illinois governor - Phil Murphy, New Jersey Governor - Gretchen Whitmer, Michigan Governor

      Currently running on the left: - Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. - Marianne Williamson - Cornel West (Green Party)

    2. The belief that insurgent candidates, and the movements they generate, are never more than dangerous impediments to Democratic electoral prospects is deeply rooted in party orthodoxy, nurtured by the belief that previous outside challengers have sabotaged the party’s chances.

      examples: - Ralph Nader (2000) Green Party - Bernie Sanders (2016) (less evidence of this)

  3. Aug 2023
    1. Meador, Jake. “The Misunderstood Reason Millions of Americans Stopped Going to Church.” The Atlantic, July 29, 2023. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/07/christian-church-communitiy-participation-drop/674843/.

      Meador looks at how churches might offer better community as a balm to W.E.I.R.D. lifeways and toxic capitalism.

      Why must religion be the source for these communal and social supports? Why can't alternate social structures or institutions handle these functions?

      Is this why the religious right is also so heavily opposed to governmental social support programs? Are they replacing some of the needs and communal desires people in need have? Why couldn't increased governmental support programs be broader and more holistic in their leanings to cover not only social supports, but human contact and community building as well.

      Do some of these tensions between a mixed W.E.I.R.D. and non-W.E.I.R.D Americans cause a lot of the split political identities we see in the last few decades? What is the balm for this during the transition?

    2. Contemporary America simply isn’t set up to promote mutuality, care, or common life. Rather, it is designed to maximize individual accomplishment as defined by professional and financial success. Such a system leaves precious little time or energy for forms of community that don’t contribute to one’s own professional life or, as one ages, the professional prospects of one’s children. Workism reigns in America, and because of it, community in America, religious community included, is a math problem that doesn’t add up.

      Extreme focus on financial and professional success has driven people to give less time to communal spaces and experiences including religious life.

      Is this specific to America's brand of toxic capitalism or do other WEIRD economies experience this?

  4. May 2023
    1. An analysis of the modern capitalist state that distinguishes between political society, which dominates directly and coercively, and civil society, where leadership is constituted through consent

      What is the current separation of political and civil society in America in 2023? Do the differences in these two (particularly with respect to Antonio Gramsci's framing) still have distinguishing features?

  5. Jan 2023
  6. www.thepostil.com www.thepostil.com
    1. This site is a cesspool of authoritarian, fascist-apologist, conspiracist mind-mangling content. It's a good place to find out what kinds of bizarre notions people (particularly Catholics of an authoritarian bent) are being fed, and consuming — ridiculous fabrications and warped interpretations of the sort contributing (with giddy joy) to the suffocation of democratic inclinations and institutions.

      The site does have some interesting images. I think this will be an inspiration for some dystopian and horror fiction ideas.

    1. Discourse within the public sphere signals the normative will of the democratic citizenry to the steering institutions of governance. It also articulates and rearticulates (expresses and reshapes) the core of the civic, the vital beating heart of a democracy. This core is a political morality of intentional action motivated by reasoned understanding and moral imagination. In the political morality I see emerging, the separation of the political and the normative is subsiding. Conceptually, power and right are becoming entangled rather than bifurcated. 

      !- quotable : growing impact of democratic citizenry affect the steering institutions of governance

  7. Sep 2022
    1. McConnell said it’s up to the Republican candidates in various Senate battleground races to explain how they view the hot-button issue.   (function () { try { var event = new CustomEvent( "nsDfpSlotRendered", { detail: { id: 'acm-ad-tag-mr2_ab-mr2_ab' } } ); window.dispatchEvent(event); } catch (err) {} })(); “I think every Republican senator running this year in these contested races has an answer as to how they feel about the issue and it may be different in different states. So I leave it up to our candidates who are quite capable of handling this issue to determine for them what their response is,” he said.

      Context: Lindsey Graham had just proposed a bill for a nationwide abortion ban after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

      McConnell's position seems to be one that choice about abolition is an option, but one which is reserved for white men of power over others. This is painful because that choice is being left to people without any of the information and nuance about specific circumstances versus the pregnant women themselves potentially in consultation with their doctors who have broad specific training and experience in the topics and issues at hand. Why are these leaders attempting to make decisions based on possibilities rather than realities, particularly when they've not properly studied or are generally aware of any of the realities?

      If this is McConnell's true position, then why not punt the decision and choices down to the people directly impacted? And isn't this a long running tenet of the Republican Party to allow greater individual freedoms? Isn't their broad philosophy: individual > state government > national government? (At least with respect to internal, domestic matters; in international matters the opposite relationships seem to dominate.)

      tl;dr:<br /> Mitch McConnell believes in choice, just not in your choice.

      Here's the actual audio from a similar NPR story:<br /> https://ondemand.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/me/2022/09/20220914_me_gop_sen_lindsey_graham_introduces_15-week_abortion_ban_in_the_senate.mp3#t=206


      McConnell is also practicing the Republican party game of "do as I say and not as I do" on Graham directly. He's practicing this sort of hypocrisy because as leadership, he's desperately worried that this move will decimate the Republican Party in the midterm elections.

      There's also another reading of McConnell's statement. Viewed as a statement from leadership, there's a form of omerta or silent threat being communicated here to the general Republican Party membership: you better fall in line on the party line here because otherwise we run the risk of losing power. He's saying he's leaving it up to them individually, but in reality, as the owner of the purse strings, he's not.


      Thesis:<br /> The broadest distinction between American political parties right now seems to be that the Republican Party wants to practice fascistic forms of "power over" while the Democratic Party wants to practice more democratic forms of "power with".

  8. Aug 2022
  9. Dec 2021
    1. Mumford (1964) - Authoritarian and Democratic Technics

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  10. Oct 2021
    1. Coronavirus Pandemic Data Explorer. (n.d.). Our World in Data. Retrieved March 3, 2021, from https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer

      is:webpage lang:en COVID-19 graph case death Germany Sweden UK Afghanistan Africa Albania Algeria Andorra Angola Anguilla Antigua Barbuda Argentina Armenia Asia Australia Austria Azerbaijan Bahamas Bahrain Bangladesh Barbados Belarus Belgium Belize Benin Bermuda Bhutan Bolivia Bosnia Herzegovina Botswana Brazil Bulgaria Burkina Faso Burundi Cambodia Cameroon Canada Cape Verde Cayman Islands Central African Republic Chad Chile China Colombia Comoros Congo Costa Rica Cote d'ivoire Croatia Cuba Cyprus Czechia Democratic Republic of Congo Denmark Djobouti Dominica Dominician Republic Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Equatorial Guinea Eritrea Estonia Eswatini Ethiopia Europe Europian Union Faeroe Islands Falkland Islands Fiji Finland France Gabon Gambia Georgia Ghana Gibraltar Greece Greenland Grenada Guatemala Guernsey Guinea Guinea-Bissau Guyana Haiti Honduras Hong Kong Hungary Iceland India Indonesia Iran Iraq Ireland Isle of Man Israel Italy Jamaica Japan Jersey Jordan Kazakhstan Kenya Kosovo Kuwait Kyrgyzstan Laos Latvia Lebanon Lesotho Liberia Libya Liechtenstein Lithuania Luxembourg Macao Madagascar Malawi Malaysia Maldives Mali Malta Mashall Islands Mauritania Mauritius Mexico Micronesia Moldova Monaco Mongolia Montenegro Morocco Mozambique Myanmar Namibia Nepal Netherlands New Zealand Nicaragua Niger Nigeria North America North Macedonia Northern Cyprus Norway Oceania Oman Pakistan Palestine Panama Papua New Guinea Paraguay Peru Philipines Poland Portugal Qatar Romania Russia Rwanda Saint Helena Saint Kitts and Nevis Saint Lucia Saint Vincent Grenadines Samoa San Marino Sao Tome and Principe Saudi Arabia Senegal Serbia Seychelles Sierra Leone Singapore Slovakia Slovenia Solomon Islands Somalia South Africa South America South Korea South Sudan Spain Sri Lanka Sudan Suriname Switzerland Syria Taiwan Tajikistan Tanzania Thailand Timor Togo Trinidad Tobago Tunisia Turkey Turks and Caicos Islands Uganda Ukraine United Arab Emirates USA Uruguay Uzbekistan Vanuatu Vatican Venezuela Vietnam World Yemen Zambia Zimbabwe test vaccine chart map table data case fatality rate mortality

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  11. Jul 2021
    1. The narrative of Free America shaped the parameters of acceptable thinking for Smart America. Free trade, deregulation, economic concentration, and balanced budgets became the policy of the Democratic Party.

      The deregulation part has hurt us immensely. Cross reference this with the thesis found in American Amnesia by Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson.

      Which parts of the Democratic party went along with this? Evidence? More of the deregulation parts seemed to be identified with the Republican party.

  12. May 2021
  13. Mar 2021
    1. Even liberal media fed up with Biden administration over lack of access to border crisis

      ugh Fox you terrible pieces of shit. the only conservative media concerns there have ever been is that we aren't sufficiently horrible to people at the border. Liberals, unlike Conservatives, are happy to do own-side criticism. We want good. We want progress. We want to be decent to our fellow humans, who we recognize as worthy & good. Of course we're distressed at this bad situation. We don't shield our leaders from criticism, we expect active Democratic engagement.

      You could not better show yourselves for who you are with this headline, you useless evil villians.

  14. Feb 2021
    1. This task force could also meet regularly with tech platforms, and push for structural changes that could help those companies tackle their own extremism and misinformation problems

      there's a solid enough conceptual idea here, that society ought be able to voice some sense, direct & govern the platforms forward & along & upwards. there is something lacking, certainly, in that the companies have nothing to listen to, are so alone. (oh yes there are voices but it's a chaos of voices, there's no scheme for guiding oneself through, so the entity must keep picking for itself what to do.)

      still though,

      It sounds a little dystopian, I’ll grant.

      no. it sounds a lot dystopian. very very dystopian.

      society could use means to weave together coherence, to establish a democratic growth, proclaim the unity it does have. celebrates, accepts & socializes core things to itself.

  15. Oct 2020
    1. A lot of Democrats believe in what is called Enlightenment reasoning, and that if you just tell people the facts, they’ll reach the right conclusion. That just isn’t true.
  16. Aug 2020
  17. Jul 2020
    1. Labaree argues that American education has had three goals that have shifted in importance over time: democratic equality, social efficiency, and social mobility. Democratic equality supports the idea that education is a public good, necessary for creating informed citizens.

      Raising informed citizens as a goal of education

  18. Jun 2020
  19. Sep 2019
  20. Nov 2017
    1. Wm Jones

      Personally, I did not believe the Democratic Writing Project to be helpful or well designed. It is a good idea but it would have been more beneficial if this conversation took place out loud among a class, rather than online. I will never read any annotations outside of my own and the four that I will comment on, and that is upsetting. This is nothing more than a way to force everyone to participate and have something tangible to grade, and the students are not retaining the value of analyzing this document. I think this would have been better if we all read it at home and we compared physical annotations in class.

  21. Jun 2016
    1. Title: House Democrats Stage a Sit-in on the House Floor on Gun Control - The Atlantic

      Keywords: john lewis, democratic majority, wednesday afternoon

      Summary: He tweeted during the sit-in Wednesday afternoon that GOP leaders should put his proposal to prohibit suspected terrorists from buying guns on the floor.<br>Politico reports that Speaker Ryan’s office does not seem amenable to Democrats’ move.<br>This is reminiscent of when Republicans staged a protest against the Democratic majority during the summer recess in 2008, speaking in a darkened chamber to demand action on energy legislation.<br>Can we see?<br>CSPAN is still not broadcasting a live feed of the chambers, but the network is replaying members’ speeches online.<br>John Lewis has championed nonviolent protest his entire career.<br>House Democrats, led by civil-rights pioneer and Georgia Representative John Lewis, are staging a sit-in on the House floor to protest what they see as congressional inaction on gun control.<br>“We have to occupy the floor of the House until there is action,” Connecticut Democrat John Larson said, as his fellow members began to sit down late Wednesday morning.<br>Members have instead taken to Twitter to spread awareness of their action, tweeting statements and pictures from the floor.<br>#NoBillNoBreak #DisarmHate pic.twitter.com/C7BZpzNvxL<br>The 15-hour Senate filibuster led to votes Monday on four gun-control-related measures, but all failed.<br>Connecticut Democratic Senator Chris Murphy is reportedly headed to the House floor to join his House counterparts.<br>Mr. Speaker, not one thing.”<br>She said a minority of pro-gun voices “are forcing a false choice between constitutional rights and safe streets.”<br>—Nora Kelly<br>

  22. Oct 2015