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2:00PM Water Cooler Labor Day 2020

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By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

Happy Labor Day, and I hope you’re enjoying a long weekend.

Speaking of Labor, if you don’t want to learn to code, there are alternatives:

* * *

Readers, feel free to contact me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, with (a) links, and even better (b) sources I should curate regularly, (c) how to send me a check if you are allergic to PayPal, and (d) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi and coral are deemed to be honorary plants! If you want your handle to appear as a credit, please place it at the start of your mail in parentheses: (thus). Otherwise, I will anonymize by using your initials. See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. Today’s plant (EJ):

We do have some leaves, and the wasps did make their nest out of plant matter, so I guess this is an honorary plant. But what I hope is that a hornet’s nest is appropriate for Labor Day!

* * *

Readers: Water Cooler is a standalone entity not covered by the annual NC fundraiser. So if you see a link you especially like, or an item you wouldn’t see anywhere else, please do not hesitate to express your appreciation in tangible form. Remember, a tip jar is for tipping! Regular positive feedback both makes me feel good and lets me know I’m on the right track with coverage. When I get no donations for five or ten days I get worried. More tangibly, a constant trickle of donations helps me with expenses, and I factor in that trickle when setting fundraising goals:




Here is the screen that will appear, which I have helpfully annotated.

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This entry was posted in Guest Post, Water Cooler on by .

About Lambert Strether

Readers, I have had a correspondent characterize my views as realistic cynical. Let me briefly explain them. I believe in universal programs that provide concrete material benefits, especially to the working class. Medicare for All is the prime example, but tuition-free college and a Post Office Bank also fall under this heading. So do a Jobs Guarantee and a Debt Jubilee. Clearly, neither liberal Democrats nor conservative Republicans can deliver on such programs, because the two are different flavors of neoliberalism (“Because markets”). I don’t much care about the “ism” that delivers the benefits, although whichever one does have to put common humanity first, as opposed to markets. Could be a second FDR saving capitalism, democratic socialism leashing and collaring it, or communism razing it. I don’t much care, as long as the benefits are delivered. To me, the key issue — and this is why Medicare for All is always first with me — is the tens of thousands of excess “deaths from despair,” as described by the Case-Deaton study, and other recent studies. That enormous body count makes Medicare for All, at the very least, a moral and strategic imperative. And that level of suffering and organic damage makes the concerns of identity politics — even the worthy fight to help the refugees Bush, Obama, and Clinton’s wars created — bright shiny objects by comparison. Hence my frustration with the news flow — currently in my view the swirling intersection of two, separate Shock Doctrine campaigns, one by the Administration, and the other by out-of-power liberals and their allies in the State and in the press — a news flow that constantly forces me to focus on matters that I regard as of secondary importance to the excess deaths. What kind of political economy is it that halts or even reverses the increases in life expectancy that civilized societies have achieved? I am also very hopeful that the continuing destruction of both party establishments will open the space for voices supporting programs similar to those I have listed; let’s call such voices “the left.” Volatility creates opportunity, especially if the Democrat establishment, which puts markets first and opposes all such programs, isn’t allowed to get back into the saddle. Eyes on the prize! I love the tactical level, and secretly love even the horse race, since I’ve been blogging about it daily for fourteen years, but everything I write has this perspective at the back of it.

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127 comments

  1. Carla

    LOVE “a hornet’s nest for Labor Day” !!!

    My Labor’s Day wish is for every U.S. labor union to begin, today, actively fighting for expanded, improved Medicare for All !

      1. petal

        Quick, somebody poke it with a stick! /s
        My brother found a large paper wasp nest in one of his trees recently. Very impressive.

      3. Darius

        I first thought it was some kind of jack o lantern. I also noticed the tree looks like a sycamore maple, Acer pseudoplatanus. So I assume this is in Europe somewhere.

          1. Amfortas the hippie

            I did college intermittently, because i was hiding from The Man…
            That was my Theme Song, as it were.
            I’d launch into an acapella version of it in the grocery store or wherever to make my bones as a crazy person.
            I am thus the Source of many local legends(Wild Man in the Woods, etc) across the South.

            1. Amfortas the hippie

              seriously.
              I’m the “Wild Man of Karen Switch”
              i was as shocked as anybody to learn of this.

                    1. Amfortas the hippie

                      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZxoZi4CMl8&list=PL213E94675102E81F

                      “This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.”
                      ― Walt Whitman

                      Namaste, NC.
                      Be

          2. jr

            o7

            (The above is how you salute someone in EVE.)

            Tried some salvia myself tonight but only got a headache.

                1. RWood

                  Nature is orderly. That which appears to be chaotic in nature is only a more complex kind of order.
                  Gary Snyder

      2. jr

        Related note:

        Teachers, including my sister, are returning to school tomorrow here in NYC. Chancellor and UFT said to go back. No talk of a strike. Kids return the 21st. She said no one knows a thing about protocols or PPE. Cuomo said something to the effect that schools can reopen if they submit “detailed plans” for reopening…..so plans must exist, right?

        1. Chris

          It’s a tough thing. I think the moment when the teachers could have shaped things and had a meaningful strike was months ago.

          I think if teachers strike now the public will not support them. Especially parents. I believe that COVID could spell the death of public schools and teacher’s unions because parents are desperate for help and will support any alternative that keeps their kids occupied.

          1. Amfortas the hippie

            “I believe that COVID could spell the death of public schools”

            as was the Plan, pulled from a drawer in some basement in the Pentagon, for just these circumstances
            We’re all a bunch of Marks.

            and:
            “we’re all indians, now”-Russel Means.

              1. Chris

                Yeah…after going through the spring, it really does feel like we have a codified, official, enforced, caste system. It wasn’t so obvious before. But now, there’s no denying we all want to be Brahmans :/

            2. drumlin woodchuckles

              This sounds like a minor quibble, but I don’t think that basement would be in the Pentagon. I think that basement would be at Langley or the NSA or one of the super-richest “private” “foundations” or some such place.

          2. jr

            Can’t disagree. Probably why they waited. Now my sister gets to babysit the children of the hardest hit communities in NYC so their parents can fix tires and make egg wraps for affluent Manhattanites. One thing is for sure, no learning will get done.

  5. ambrit

    The Tik Tok House.
    It sounds like something out of L Frank Baum and the “Wonderful Land of Oz.”
    More realistically, it sounds like something from Phillip Jose Farmer’s send up of “Oz.”
    See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Barnstormer_in_Oz#:~:text=A%20Barnstormer%20in%20Oz%3A%20A,The%20Wonderful%20Wizard%20of%20Oz.

    All the people seen in the “house” are supposedly doing is working. All the time? Where do they live? Do they even ‘have’ lives? Who pays them? Is there a sufficient supply of “well offs” to support even this low level of endeavour, much less an actual ‘industry’ full of such persons?
    A resounding “NO” for this dystopian vision.
    It is also all dependent on electronics working properly.

    2. Count Zero

      Not just the electronics, ambrit: it depends on invisible labourers producing their electricity supply — not to mention their food, clothing and everything else they depend on.

      They all seem very pleased with themselves.

      1. Amfortas the hippie

        a peeve of mine:
        every medieval or post apocalypse show i see, there’s all manner of candles lit….especially in the day time.
        what the hell is up with that?
        who provides all those candles that they can be so profligate?

        1. Phil in KC

          Very similar to my pet peeve, specific to post-apocalypse shows (Walking Dead, for example): who is mowing the lawns? There’s still yard work being done during the collapse of civilization?

          1. Greg

            I think there’s an argument to be made that yard work falls within the category of “zombie jobs”. It certainly makes me feel zombie-like, I don’t see any reason the undead wouldn’t continue to push a mower around.

          1. Wukchumni

            p.s.

            My pet peeve is that everybody in historical period pieces on tv/movies tends to be wearing brand new clothes.

            1. The Rev Kev

              And they show people with full bodies of hair. But without shampoos and hair products, most people’s hair would be oily and slicked back flat. You see this often in 19th century photos.

            2. Mel

              But yes, they were. They hadn’t had those intervening years to become old.
              “I was not always as you see me now.” — Crooked physician in The Wrong Box, as performed by P.Sellers

    3. richard

      not one of those people would be missed for an instant if they decided not to do their “job”
      barnacles

    4. hunkerdown

      It’s a residential coworking space for freelance advertising specialists and cultural producers, arguably a very important worker from the rulers’ standpoint. Well, it’s not like teens can afford or are going to self-actualize, so they may as well do it vicariously.

      Labor times industry is far more productive than they would rather you believe. There is plenty of surplus being appropriated from labor to materially provision such flights of fancy, and routed to the performers via endorsement deals, gifts, subscriptions, and so on. They serve basically the same function as any other celebrity of limited reach.

        1. JBird4049

          Are we thinking that something or someone is doing some “work?” I wouldn’t be shocked if so, but random bad things happen all the time. Some people just got some really unfortunate rolls.

          1. hunkerdown

            Well, that’s three, and bad things come in threes. Those neoliberals that died, Cain and the other one, well, good things come in twos. We just need more twos. Five is right out, or to quote a different movie, time to set the building on fire.

            Confidential to M.H.: Save your work frequently, please.

        2. ambrit

          The Dreaded Pathogen is a perfect cover for various and sundry “accidents” that could befall those not “in with the In Crowd.”
          I worry too.
          This Pandemic has actually established a rationale for creating a class of worker to clean telephones.
          Imagine a big Circle Jerk in the Sky; Art, Life, Art, Life, ad absurdum.

      2. Robert Gray

        I remember when in the Spring of 1980 J-P Sartre, Alfred Hitchcock and Marshal Tito all went within three weeks.

  8. Anonymous

    Seems we should have “Debtor’s Day” – a day of morning, flags at 1/2 mast.

    Also, Labor Day should be renamed “Wage Slave Day”, since how many have a choice? Also a day of morning, flags at 1/2 mast.

  11. JWP

    Lil Portland update:
    While on my morning bike ride, I saw two “Federal Protection Police” cars driving around. Doesn’t look like this crackdown on our own citizens is letting up soon

  12. petal

    Was just out with my dogs and saw neighbours a few doors down have raised an enormous Biden flag. It’s at least 5′ long. They are a new Tuck couple from NJ with a new giant white truck with big off-road tires, a newish BMW, new matching kayaks, etc etc. Instead of parking in one of the convenient guest spots this weekend, he parked on the lawn and sidewalk next to his regular spot. You have to drive up over the tall kerb to do this. You get the idea. First new Biden anything I’ve really seen.

    1. Toshiro_Mifune

      I (already in NJ) have also seen my 1st Biden lawn sign. This is outweighed by about 8 to 1 by Trump signage I see when I go running.

      1. petal

        I thought there would be Harris-Biden signs by now? It’s been a few weeks since the convention so I had thought people would’ve jumped all over those. Maybe I am wrong and it’s a production issue?

            1. Amfortas the hippie

              Trump2020 all over town.

              like mushrooms.

              zero Biden.

              wasn’t 3 years ago and most republicans i know were ashamed of Himself.

              So Well Done, Dems!
              for providing no alternative to get all excited about.
              Well done, All!

              1. richard

                not that it matters now
                but the Sanders that lived in my head in 2019 is getting ready to landslide trump w/wins in texas, florida, virginia, nc, and arizona. In this alternate reality, I’ve moved back to idaho for my ideal Sanders to Help Swing Idaho Blue! Millions of new voters
                Don Trump meet Alf Landis!
                what they could have had!
                not that I dare to scold Them
                just an idle observation

          2. Discouraged in WI

            I have seen amusing signs, also –“Anyone But Trump” and “Any Functioning Adult”. –in addition to about equal numbers of Biden or Trump signs.

        2. Acacia

          Production of the signs outsourced to SE Asia in order to produce more/cheaper (and what good is grift if you can’t keep most of it?), then held up by Covid-related supply chain woes?

        3. Tom Stone

          I live outside of Sebastopol CA, which has a lot of highly educated people as residents.
          In 2016 there were hundreds of Bernie and HRC bumper stickers and yard signs and several dozen for Trump.
          This year between Santa Rosa (Our “Big City”), Sebastopol, Forestville and Bodega Bay I have seen one Trump Bumper sticker and one yard sign.
          For Biden/Harris two yard signs and one bumper sticker.
          I was out and about yesterday morning and saw several dozen yard signs for local candidates.
          “Nothing fundamental will change” may be the most inspiring message Biden/Harris can come up with but the deplorables don’t seem to be eating the dog food.

        4. nippersdad

          We saw our first Biden/Harris signs (two) several weeks ago. They were in a cemetary.

          For some reason we thought that was an appropriate place to find them.

    2. Dr. John Carpenter

      I took a drive the other day just to look for yard signs. I saw many generic “black lives matter” or other non-politics signs. Saw a few for local candidates. And I saw a grand total of four Biden signs. The best one was parked next to a sign that declared “PROUD CONSERVATIVE”, which sums it all up nicely, I think.

      To be fair, I didn’t see any Trump signs. However, this area I was in would be PMC country, Eli Lilly and Raytheon people. In 2016, I was in this area much more and saw a lot of signs for blithe Hillary and Trump. This year, you’d hardly thing a presidential election was happening. Very strange.

        3. edmondo

          Diet Coke versus Diet Pepsi

          The only difference is that one of these two sodas has the keys to the nuclear arsenal.

          1. hunkerdown

            The one nice thing about authoritarian fevers is that they tend to eliminate, if only from sight, the conditions that are the anchor of their power, which makes them self-limiting. Neoliberalism is a selective incapacity of thought that plays for keeps and reproduces itself with high fidelity.

            So my choice is “or death”? I’ll have the chicken then, please.

          2. Aumua

            It’s a pleasure to listen to Dr. West speak. It’s fresh air, and to watch him too is something else.

    3. Tom Doak

      There are tons of signs where I live, both for Trump and for Biden, and a few Biden / Harris as well. I’d guess there are five times more than in 2016, but I’m not sure whether it means anything, really. In 2016 our state went for Trump, to the shock of Hillary voters, so this time every PMC Democrat wants to be sure you know they believe in the Rule of Law, Science, and all of the approved Identity Politics. But I”m not sure the distribution of voters is any different than last time, they are just much more vocal about it.

  13. Jeremy Grimm

    The Archdruid recently posted an essay on Jung’s idea of Synchronicity. [https://www.ecosophia.net/a-few-notes-on-synchronicity] Having experienced Synchronicity on several occasion in my life I found a special interest in what the Archdruid had to say. I also think this was an especially well-written essay.

      1. Jeremy Grimm

        I worked as a road-shopper contract engineer moving from DoD contract to contract all around the country. In my early middle age I was still single, my employment as a contractor allowed for gaps and there were enough jobs that I didn’t worry too much about leaving from work for a year. I used half of that year to travel around the Orient to Japan, Hong Kong, and Korea. It was the middle 1980’s when Japan seemed to be overtaking our economy and surpassing our technology. I was curious whether Japan was likely and suited to wrest away the US dominance.

        At that time I still hoped I could invent something or develop something so I could become free from the control and direction of a workplace. I wanted to build my own small work-shop/lab where I could tinker. I came up with what now seems a strange idea. I became fascinated with shorthand and stenography and Stenotype machines [I still have a used stenotype machine I bought then]. I thought there might be a way to represent Japanese and Chinese characters using a multi-key writing machine like a stenotype. I had seen a Japanese word processor at a trade-show I had gone to and was curious to see a Japanese typewriter. I don’t remember how I planned to represent Japanese and Chinese on the stenotype machine. But after identifying a character I would need to find the standard computer codes used to represent each different character.

        The first stop on my trip was Tokyo, Japan where I stayed at student hostel. I don’t speak or read Japanese and in the 1980s few Japanese spoke English. I got around by following one of the many guide books I brought with me, and trusting to my luck. I found the address for the government printing office bookstore in the neighborhood of the Emperor’s Palace. I walked there from the nearest subway station. Inside the bookstore all the books were in Kanji; there were no English signs anywhere; and the clerk in the store ignored me completely. I spent just under an hour looking at books with Kanji titles and Kanji contents before finding the coding standard for Kanji, Kana, and Hirigana.

        My next stop was Hong Kong. The flight arrived early in the morning and rooms were hard to find. All the YMCA had was one room with two beds and price double the price for a single, — more than I had planned to pay. A guy who came in with me on the flight suggested we could share the room just for the night. We were both dead tired so that was what we did. The next morning we ate breakfast together at a small cafe. He was married to a Japanese woman but she didn’t want to come on the trip with him. He had made arrangements with a retired school principal in Hong Kong to travel up the river to visit the principal’s home town deep in the middle of Mainland China. He agreed to pay all the costs for the trip in return for the principal’s help translating and making arrangements for places to stay and eat. He asked me if I wanted to join him and the principal for the trip. He said they planned to spend two weeks travelling up river and back. I turned down the offer, because I was frightened of the adventure. Kowloon and Hong Kong Island were as much adventure as I was ready for then. After breakfast we each went our separate ways.

        I had no idea where I might find books on the computer codes for Chinese. I spent most of the two months I stayed in Hong Kong walking the streets of Kowloon and Hong Kong Island hunting for places to stay where I could afford a night, looking in shops, and trying different foods. I loved riding the ferry back and forth between Kowloon and Hong Kong Island — especially after dark when all the neon signs were switched on. One day I decided to take the subway to a stop in Kowloon — I don’t remember why I was going there. I left the train at my destination, a large very crowded station with tourists and locals rushing about … and guess who I ran into. The same guy I met coming in to Hong Kong had just returned from his trip up the river in China. He was flying back to Tokyo that evening and wanted to grab lunch before going to the airport. He was excited to show off the movies he took of places along his trip up the river and tell what he saw. Of course I joined him for lunch. After lunch he wanted to pick up a book to take back on the flight. He found a small bookstore and I went in with him. While he looked for his book I walked toward a colorful display of books and happened to look in the shelf of a bookcase next to it. There were dictionaries on that shelf. As long as I was there I decided why not make a quick look for the Chinese coding standard among the dictionaries. I found the Chinese stroke coding standard after checking a few book spines.

        I think that is what you meant for me to detail. Sorry if I was a little long-winded. I’m not sure what I could leave out without leaving a lot of questions.

        1. Janie

          Not too long. Interesting story, interesting life. Enjoyed it.

          I read the Archdruid’s post also and remembered that, when I was a child, a doctor told my father he should move to a certain climate. He and mother were discussing it when he received s long distance call. It was from an old friend offering him a job in the recommended climate. .

        2. jr

          Not at all, great yarn! I’ve had a few, the best were the two times I was desperate for a place to live and I went on Craigslist to find a retired ladies looking to exchange lodgings for work. One was a crack addled Franklin and Marshall sociologist in a crumbling mansion and the other a septuagenarian multi-millionaire in one of the ritziest neighborhoods in Brooklyn who would drink half a fifth of Wild Turkey a night. Both times they came at the last minute. When I told my then newly dumped GF in New York that I’d found yet another free place to stay, neutralizing her kicking me out, her mouth dropped. She asked me how the heck I managed that twice; she looked at me as if I had sprouted horns.

          And I had.

        3. Jeremy Grimm

          Thank you for sharing your stories of synchronicity. My theory is that a strong desire, quest, and need for something aids synchronicity in some way. There do seem to be other things that help synchronicity occur but I will have to give that speculation more thought.

  14. pendaran (was periol)

    Here’s a Twitter thread with pics from a group of hikers trapped by the Creek Fire in California and their journey to safety. Harrowing stuff.

    https://twitter.com/ashasquasha/status/1303003437626318850

    The winds have shifted today and smoke from the fires has blanketed the Antelope Valley. I’m sitting next to an air purifier, but very worried for our chickens. No garage, so nowhere to hide them from the smoke. Going to have to build them a coop with an air purifier if this keeps up.

    Also, since this is an open thread, I’m going to use a new handle in the NC comments section from now on. Time to leave periol in the past. pendaran into the future. Sorry in advance for any confusion from people who don’t see this.

    Happy Labor Day

    1. lordkoos

      Here in central WA winds also shifted with a lower pressure front coming in, fanning the Evans Canyon fire and filling the valley with thick smoke. The house is closed up tight and I’m running the air filter, even so my eyes are burning a little.

      1. Wukchumni

        The forecast is for twice as much smoke as today over the next week in the higher climes, and everybody here is suffering from a case of smoke induced throat tickles, so the Silver City Resort is closing down for a week starting Wednesday. Can’t say as I blame them, and will be headed for the great indoors myself, enjoying the air conditioned lifestyle, cooped up.

  16. Jeremy Grimm

    James Hansen posted a discussion of a new climate paper that became available this morning. “Sentinel forthe Home Planet”, [http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2020/20200907_Sentinel.pdf] Hansen describes the new paper in his post as presenting most important information: “Two numbers, atmospheric CO2amount and globalsurface temperature, have received special prominence, and they deserve attention. However, this third number, Earth’s energy imbalance, is perhaps the most important.”

    The new paper became available for download the morning:
    “Heat stored in the Earth system: where does the energy go?”, by Karina von Schuckmann and 37 co-authors, [https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/12/2013/2020/essd-12-2013-2020.pdf]. [Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 12, 2013–2041, 2020 (essd)]

    I haven’t read the paper yet, but on first look it appears as significant as Hansen et al. 2016.

  17. jo6pac

    China and solar grids. This only 12:31 long and very interesting. If Tesla hadn’t lost the electric battle we would be better off by far. Storage is the next big thingy.

    “Smart grids delivering renewable energy across continents will be a crucial advance, but they will also require extremely long electricity transmission distances. Our existing power lines are becoming more and more inefficient as those distances grow. China is tackling the issue by switching from AC to DC power and ramping up the output to a truly eye-watering 1.1 million volts. An environmental breakthrough or a bid for global energy domination?”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rThkjp-bp8M&t=117s

  18. bayoustjohndavid

    When do we start calling it class reductionist day?

    The replies to that tweet make me question my ability to understand 21st century communication.

    One reply:
    ‘ “Hi, we are all rich cis white straights that make a living promoting being those things and nothing else. Our exclusive audience is highly impressionable children” ‘

    Isn’t that young, woke hating?

    Very next reply:
    “Anyone that hates this is an old person screaming at kids to get off their lawn (I’m 50).

    Actor, model, agent? These are traditional Hollywood jobs and this is just how the hustle is done in 2020.”

    He’s somewhat correct, but only somewhat.

    1. ChrisAtRU

      Dawn of the topological age? – from #2PMWC on 9/4

      Meant to chime in and say thanks for this the day it was posted but never managed to. I do enjoy articles like this even though they are above my physics grade as well. So much to be potentially unlocked at the subatomic level, and physicists seemingly tantalizingly close at times to jiggling a misfit key just enough to open the door. This line from the summary struck me: “Such filtering is an essential ingredient for so-called spintronics, which aims to build electronic and computer technology based on currents of spin rather than charge”. I wondered if one extrapolation of this means less power requirements and subsequently less reliance on rarer elements for batteries and such.

      In any event, great read!

  20. Chris

    Sharing this info graphic as a response to the people who seem to be thrilled that “93% of the BLM protests were peaceful.” The police response is that 0.015% of all police interactions involve the use of force.

    Just like I don’t think it matters too much that the protests were “mostly peaceful” if your business was burnt to the ground, I don’t think it matters much to you that the vast majority of police interactions are peaceful if you’re injured in a no-knock raid. I think the people who believe that they can justify the riotious chaos and property damage that has passed this summer to the majority of those nice suburban voters are kidding themselves. The argument also stinks of the numberly arguments that the Democrat party thinks are useful. Like the 93% article was focus group tested before it was launched. “Let us tell you several numbers to make you think we’re smart and then we’ll tell you why those numbers prove we don’t have to change anything we’re currently doing…”

    1. OpenThePodBayDoorsHAL

      Reminds me of a billboard over a casino on the Vegas strip that I saw, it read “97% Payout!!!”

      So the poor soul wandering in with one dollar can get excited that they will be walking out with $0.97.

  21. jr

    An interesting exchange I had the other day at my morning coffee spot. The owner, a practical and hardworking guy, and I are buddies. I think he appreciates my weirdness as his life is dedicated to his business and I tell him about UFO’s and stuff. A wonderful man, treats his crew like gold.

    So we often talk about how bad everything is and how it’s getting worse etc. He told me the other day two rich drunkards came in and were dropping how wealthy they are and bumping around the place. He had to say something.

    So he looks at me. I know when he is dead serious. He said

    “You know, the rich aren’t human.”

    I was floored. I agreed with him, of course, but this man is no radical. He has eyes though, sees the pain the world is in: the panhandlers that orbit the morning crowd, the heroin addict who sits on his bench and drools onto his chest all afternoon, the cops who allow drug dens to openly sell, the insanity of the world. He sees these drunks are living high while Rome burns. He knows who his class enemies are.

    1. John k

      They’ve succeeded in keeping working class groups apart with fear of the other.
      We must hang together or we will hang separately. The 13 colonies overcame their fears and jealousies to hang together, and together we defeated the strongest nation in the world. We must find a way to emulate them.
      Meanwhile, IMO our best strategy is to weaken our main obstruction, the dem party. Far better if Biden loses.

      1. jr

        I am hearing you, that’s on the table for discussion, although I balk at the idea of supporting that orange lunatic as well.

        I had an argument with the GF tonight, the usual “but Trump!!!” has been getting more acute as, in Lambert’s words IIRC, the culmination of the “fun filled barrel of laughs” in November approaches.

        I explained, again, that there is no real choice, it’s basically mask off the corpse with Trump, mask back on with Biden. I’m voting 70% indica, 30% sativa White Truffle on Election Day.

        She won’t hear this, pressing me with questions like “Surely one is better than the other!!” And off we go.

        Thinking back, it occurs to me that this is existential for her and the PMC class in general. Not just for all the material reasons but because if Trump get’s re-elected it will absolutely hammer home for them how broken things are. (This point has nothing specific to do with my personal feelings about Trump. I mean the whole thing is broken.) Their bubble will be popped, perhaps forever. They need Biden to win so they can go back to sleeping at night, cozied by the notion that the political status remains intact.

        Biden Brand Band-Aids: now in tones of Healthy Democracy!

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