Tag: United States

Notes on the coup

Eighteen Points toward Strength and Solidarity in a Time of Fear and Despair by Mark R. Stoneman

To Stop The Coup, We Must Be Clear About The Truth: Two Plus Two Equals Four by Mike Brock

This isn’t just wrong as a matter of law—it represents an attack on the very concept of law itself. If we accept that the president can unilaterally shut down congressionally established agencies, then congressional power to establish agencies becomes meaningless. If executive authority can override clear statutory mandates, then our entire system of checks and balances collapses.

This is precisely how democratic breakdown occurs—not just through the violation of laws, but through the corruption of the very language and concepts we use to understand law. When we accept arguments that two plus two equals five—that presidents can simply ignore congressional statutes at will—we’re not just making a legal error. We’re participating in the dismantling of constitutional order itself.

Tags authority, fascism, resistance, United States

History Political Commentary Society

American origin stories

“Origin stories tell us who we think a people are–who we think we are, and why. The American origin story is written in Native genocide, transatlantic slavery, and imperial subjugation overseas. That is its originating fact, and so to write the next chapter of that story means contending with this prologue, which most Americans find themselves constitutionally unable and unwilling to do. And so we remain willfully illiterate to ourselves.”

–Elaine Castillo, How to Read Now

Tags America, Christian nationalists, fascism, First Nations, Native American rights, nostalgia, restorative justice, United States

Culture Featured Shopping The Internet

The mindset of more (series introduction)

Post author By Tracy Durnell
Post date December 30, 2024
14 Comments on The mindset of more (series introduction)
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I’ve been playing the game Satisfactory with my sister for about the past year. Neither of us have played games much, and that mostly pre-2000. It’s been slow going as we learn what tools are available to us, how to interact with the world, and what goals we’re meant to pursue. But another thing we’re learning are the world rules.

Chatting with a friend who also plays the game, I mentioned that we were really limited by only having one power plant and coal mine. “By one,” he asked, “do you mean one one?” As he laid out the vast resource extraction the game supported, I realized that I’d been operating under real-world scarcity mindset, assuming that mines would run out, wells would run dry.

That was a few months ago, and I continue to run up against the constraints of mindset that are holding us back in the game. (The latest? Realizing that we could construct workshops everywhere, not run back to the central workshop every time we need to build something.) But what I’ve found interesting is how perceiving that the game world has its own rules makes clearer that I am living in a world with constructed rules too.

“The fact that capitalism has colonized the dreaming life of the population is so taken for granted that it is no longer worthy of comment.”

— Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism

I’m noticing the many ways capitalism’s rules shape the way I act and the things that I want. Underneath all of them is the pernicious quest for more — the idea that more is always better.

This post introduces a series on tackling wants, managing my information diet, and finding enough.

Tags abundance, capitalism, consumerism, discomfort, emotional intelligence, emotions, letting go, mindset, United States, want

Future Building Political Commentary

The election is just the first step for democracy

Post author By Tracy Durnell
Post date November 5, 2024
2 Comments on The election is just the first step for democracy
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Editor’s note: I am going news-free tonight and haven’t looked at any results — pls don’t tell me! I’m not doing the doomer thing (and you shouldn’t either). 🎶 Post soundtrack 🎶

During this election, people have rallied behind the idea of saving democracy — let’s use this collective energy and frustration to push for a real democracy, one in which all Americans have an equal say. We must stop shying away from doing what is right because it is politically challenging. I’m tired of political pragmatism in the face of clear injustice.

Tags America, citizenship, colonialism, democracy, equality, fairness, Guam, immigration, justice, Puerto Rico, representation, United States, voting

Activism Technology

Public comment on proposed vehicle safety rule

Post author By Tracy Durnell
Post date October 27, 2024
No Comments on Public comment on proposed vehicle safety rule
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Replied to Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards: Pedestrian Head Protection (regulations.gov)

NHTSA proposes a new Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) that would ensure passenger vehicles with a gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR) of 4,536 kilograms (kg) (10,000 pounds (lb)) or less are designed to mitigate the risk of serious to fatal injury in child and adult pedestrian crashes. The proposed standard would establish test procedures simulating a head-to-hood impact and performance requirements to minimize the risk of head injury.

Comment left at regulations.gov:

Yes, please consider pedestrian safety in vehicle safety standards. Cars keep getting taller, heavier, and more dangerous for people outside the vehicle. Without regulation, I fear the trend will only continue. Our safety is important too.

Granting ourselves grace

Liked K.B. Spangler (@kbspangler.com) (Bluesky Social)

Wondered why I’m spending so much time in the garden lately, then remembered we’re about a month away from learning if a declining elderly man with multiple criminal convictions and a massive history of sexual assault will be able to implement his 920-page strategy for standardized dehumanization.

I’ve also been spending a lot of time gardening and nesting. I’ve noticed myself having trouble focusing on longform reading and doing things that involve making decisions…

I forget sometimes how much stress and anxiety become embodied. There are real reasons I can’t concentrate, and it’s a good time to be gentle with myself. Now is not the moment to push, but to listen to my body. I can offer myself understanding and kindness instead of judgment.

Tags anxiety, elections, fascism, politics, stress, United States

Environment Society

Managing climate disasters

Post author By Tracy Durnell
Post date September 30, 2024
3 Comments on Managing climate disasters
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Bad Climate Socialism by Hamilton Nolan

[T]here is a difference between socializing the costs of things we need more of, and socializing the costs of things we need less of. Universal public health care would be good. Universal public insurance for people to continue to build more beachfront homes that scientists tell us will be at ever-increasing risk of destruction from climate change—allowing us to delay our ultimate reckoning with the need to phase out fossil fuels? Not good. Socialism is a tool. It demands at least a minimal level of judgment. If you socialize the costs of a bad thing you make that bad thing cheaper and ensure that you will get more of it.

Tags climate change, community, disaster, emergency, individualism, insurance, preparedness, socialism, United States

Travel

The Great American Road Trip

Post author By Tracy Durnell
Post date September 27, 2024
6 Comments on The Great American Road Trip
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woman holding ice cream and standing underneath a t-rex sculpture — Classic Americana

A mention of electrifying “the great American road trip” threw me for a mental loop: does road tripping happen significantly more in America than other countries? 🤔 I could potentially see that being so, given our lack of long distance public transit, large geographic size spanning vast wild spaces, pretty extensive system of national parks, reasonably acceptable infrastructure through otherwise remote areas, and our love affair with driving. I know there are a lot of tourists who come to the US and do a road trip here; is that merely by necessity, or are they road tripping at home too?

Tags personal, road trip, The West, United States

Political Commentary

Recognizing fascism

Replied to Ur-Fascism by

Umberto Eco (nybooks.com)

I think it is possible to outline a list of features that are typical of what I would like to call Ur-Fascism, or Eternal Fascism. These features cannot be organized into a system; many of them contradict each other, and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism. But it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it.

(Archive link.)

“Nevertheless, historical priority does not seem to me a sufficient reason to explain why the word fascism became a synecdoche, that is, a word that could be used for different totalitarian movements. This is not because fascism contained in itself, so to speak in their quintessential state, all the elements of any later form of totalitarianism. On the contrary, fascism had no quintessence. Fascism was a fuzzy totalitarianism, a collage of different philosophical and political ideas, a beehive of contradictions.”

Tags authoritarianism, fascism, language, names, Umberto Eco, United States

Environment Political Commentary

The Dysfunctional State

Replied to Supreme Court overturns 1984 Chevron precedent, curbing power of federal government by John Fritze (CNN)

The Supreme Court significantly weakened the power of federal agencies to approve regulations in a major decision Friday that could have sweeping implications for the environment, public health and the workplace.

The 6-3 ruling, overturning a precedent from 1984, will shift the balance of power between the executive and judicial branches and hands an important victory to conservatives who have sought for years to rein in the regulatory authority of the “administrative state.”

Step one: stuff the judiciary.

Step two: stuff the Supreme Court.

Step three: run all existing and future Federal policy through the backlogged, unqualified judiciary to grind governance to a halt.

Step four: profit!

Under a conservative Court, there is no such thing as precedent. They are shameless in their corruption, gleeful in their theft of the public good, righteous in their trampling of the rights of Americans. Hopefully our Democratic lawmakers will realize someday soon that nothing is protected if it’s not enumerated in excruciating detail in the law itself, the existence of laws doesn’t mean they’ll be enforced or enforceable under this standard, and old laws will be resurrected to impose a far-right vision upon us.