We Pluribus Unum : No Thin Blue Lines

 

I want to talk about this flag but first I want to talk about infrastructure.

I live in a suburb that was founded in the late nineteenth century. Some of the houses date from then but there are a lot more that were built in the postwar boom in suburbanization. That means that the pipes we have under the street are getting old. The city was connected with water and sewer pipes and then streets and sidewalks were laid on top of that without much thought of how to access the pipes. The layout was not a problem when the village was shiny and new. But over time things break and you must access the pipes and sometimes that means digging a hole through asphalt and cement. Over time things degrade and you also might realize that the material you made the pipes with has a chance to leech heavy metal into the drinking water. Upgrades are necessary.

We’re looking at this with our sewers as the fall apart. There are connections that have lead that need to be replaced for safety reasons and legal reasons. The question is how to pay for it. Does it make sense to just have the homeowner connected closest to the problem pay out of pocket? Not really – it’s a big one-time expense that needs done and the whole community benefits. The most equitable way to fix it is through taxation or fees. Our village board is increasing the water rates. People aren’t happy since the cost of living continues to increase but this is the way that all users can invest in the system. It’s a village problem with a collective solution.

In the candy-colored world of elementary schools civics, this is what government is for at its most base level. It coordinates collective action to solve collective problems. Here our democratically elected board came to the decision that made the most sense for the community. But this isn’t always the case. People are often not involved in their civic life – our board elections only receive something like 20% turnout and even the presidential elections see a third of people not participating in the election for whatever reasons they have.

This abstention is in part because people are alienated from the process. The government doesn’t feel like an extension of our collective will. Though you will hear about our representative democracy – “A republic if you can keep it” – the people who represent us, especially at the higher levels, feel like a breed apart. At the federal level, even our representatives in the house represent about 700,000 people in spite of Madison’s warnings in the Federalists papers. Writ large, the various representatives are not responsive to their constituents but more so to their donors. Reading about the mechanics of the job it sounds like half of a rep’s time is spent in dialing for dollars, fundraising for themselves and the party so they can get reelected. It sounds like a horrible job despite its prestige. I’m very conscious that in multiple roles I have that I serve the public. I’m a local elected official and I work for a nonprofit that has state contracts, so in diverse ways I am a steward of the public trust. I am not apart from the community but a part of the community.

Others have different approaches – typified by the thin blue line flag. This symbol leans into the othering of the government and its servants as something apart from the people. This flag says that you and I are different and through my role I am special. That’s not just so. The original flag is a symbol of unity. The thirteen colonies coming together to make one United States, a nation with problems in practice but with grand ideals at its foundation. The recent shootings and the failure of the police in  Uvalde have had me reflecting on this symbolism. The children who were shot down were our children. Someone else gave birth to them but they were all ours and we failed to protect them as we failed the young man pulled the trigger as well. It’s a collective problem with collective solutions. No one stands apart.

Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? For Student Loan Forgiveness

 
The most recent floated proposals on student loan cancellations is that the Biden administration wants to cancel ten thousand in loans per borrower, with an income limit of about 300K per family.

I support this, in part because it will materially help me out, but it doesn’t go far enough.

Here’s what I’m think happens if this goes through.

1)      A lot of people are actually helped. Ten thousand dollars is a lot of money. It’s almost 1400 hours at the federal minimum wage which is like 34 weeks of full-time work.

2)      But it’s means tested. The whole problem with means testing versus universal programs is that means testing means that people fall through the cracks where they would otherwise be eligible. This is in itself a travesty when I’m sure a quick google would find all kinds of estimates of people who are eligible for current federal programs but don’t because there is onerous compliance. It might be less here since it would be a one-time thing but introducing hoops to the process means there will be people who won’t see relief.

3)      People are going to be mad. No matter what the dollar amount it will be spun out by the political opponents as a kind of handout to an undeserving population. They’re going to do this no matter what so why be snakebit and prematurely capitulate to the bad faith arguments?

4)      You proved, by doing any relief, that you have the legal authority to do all the relief.

5)      You don’t solve the debt burden problem. Ten thousand is a lot, but a small fraction for people who bought into the idea that you needed education to advance or are in low paying jobs that require a lot of education that will still have a lot of debt. I have teachers, social workers, and librarians in my orbit that will still have onerous debt burdens. The public service loan forgiveness program adjustments might help but are in their own morass of red tape and bureaucratic uncertainty.

6)      The important thing for me is that by doing a one-time, smaller fix you don’t create any urgency to fix the system. Higher education has evolved in the last 40 years as it has come under attack in how it is delivered and administered and paid for. Public schooling has moved from state support to individual tuition support and that tuition has been paid through loans and grants. It’s how we got here. There’s a lot of potential fixes for this constellation of  problems but they’ll remain in the ether as long as there’s no political urgency.  

The Opposite of a Hagiography: Winston Churchill by Tariq Ali

 

The subtitle here is “His Times, His Crimes,” and as much as I wanted it to be “His Life and Crimes,” the subtitle works. The book is a little over four hundred pages and there is a lot of the historical context baked in – much more than in a typical biography. Ali also covers his crimes, bringing to light things I didn’t know about the man. For example, his repression of a popular government in Greece in the post war era isn’t talked about much. The man was the spoiled child of the late Victorian elite and through his class position and the historical circumstances, his reputation gets elevated. This new biography shows why that is wrong.

Some books I read, May 2022

 Scorched Earth: Jonathan Crary

The author of this text really does not like modernity. And in this book he explains why. I think the only real problem with it is that he talks about the inevitable post-capitalist future but he doesn't really align with any sort of positive post-capitalist future. With path dependency it's hard to see how we go from here to anything good. Perhaps it will be in his next text.

Undoing the Demos: Wendy Brown

Before I say anything about the content of this book I think I need to say something about the physical nature of it. For some reason the Press decided to make it about an inch wider than a normal paperback should be so that it's really awkward to read.

As for the content, it's pretty good. Basically she tracks a social shift from a political creature to an economic creature on the broader umbrella of what neoliberalism is. My only real complaint is that it might lean a little too heavily on Foucault. I kept joking to myself when I was reading the difference between economics as a discipline as it exists and everything else is that economics doesn't mention Foucault, but once you mention Foucault they become sociology. I feel as if the work in her argument gets stronger towards the end as she leans less heavily on Foucault directly and develops her own evidence. Definitely worth reading but it took a minute to get through.

Squire: Sara Alfageeh & Nadia Shammas

Squire is a cute little story about a young girl who comes from a subordinate class in an Empire. To gain citizenship and to have Adventure she joins the army but over the course of the text she realizes that these Adventures and the violence that's part of it are too much. So what you end up here is an anti-war book starring a young girl and her friend group. It's not too didactic and I would say overall it works..

Dead Dog’s Bite: Tyler Boss

This book is kind of like a small town murder mystery where people are going missing and the main character is trying to uncover what's going on. It's not bad, just not really memorable. I'd say it's got some Shirley Jackson The Lottery vibes.

Fine: Rhea Ewing

I have a sense that gender is like sexuality and that it is a spectrum but also that it is fluid and that it could change over time. But also that how we talk about gender is also shaped by what's available in the culture. Trying to figure out who you are is a huge part of growing up and I think it's good that right now at least in the culture we're allowed to talk about where we fit in instead of trying to shove everything down. It's probably healthier psychologically for everybody involved. In this graphic examination Ewing Interviews a number of people about their own experience with gender over time. It's not systemic or scientific but it's a good journalistic examination. And I think that it's good that they did it in a graphic form so that it's more accessible than someone having to go pull Judith Butler off the shelf. The reader can see there are all sorts of types of gender expressions available to them and they are not stuck into a hard-and-fast binary. And this goes for everybody, not just anyone who might be questioning their own gender expressions. I think we'd all be best served if we understood that there isn't a hard-and-fast binary.

Hyperion: Dan Simmons

I came across this book when I was researching my Master's thesis on science fiction. It was mentioned that there was a book structured like the Canterbury Tales and I thought that was interesting. I have some mixed emotions about this text. because it is kind of like the Canterbury Tales in that there are pilgrims going to a place and they're telling a tale. The difference is that all the tales the pilgrims are telling here are related to the larger frame story. so there is more thematic coherence. 

I think the problem is that the larger frame story is kind of interesting in itself but I don't know if the structure that the author chose is the best way to develop the idea he had. Additionally, only a couple of the Pilgrim's Tales are actually interesting. It's a real slog to read as you transition from one story to another. He does some stuff with making each of the individual stories such that they could be stand-alone novellas. Two of them really work like that, and one doesn't fully rely on the frame story at all. So it's like this really ambitious book that doesn't fully come together. Finally. I think the worst sin of all for me is that it doesn't resolve within one text. So instead of a coherent novel it really more feels like a setup to a series and I'm not interested in reading more of the series. 

The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction: Istvan Csicsey-Ronay Jr.

I really enjoyed the Seven Beauties of Science Fiction. It is a book of theory but it also has little bits of how the author would apply the theory to different texts and it shows how his theoretical concepts apply in practice. It's a very beautiful way of going about it. I think what was best for me is that he really gave me a vocabulary to describe and criticize science fiction in a academic manner. There are a lot of themes and tropes and characters and settings n that are present in science fiction that don't really have a place of your come from a place of criticism of realistic fiction,  and so it gives you a way to talk about it. This is the book I would give anybody who was trying to write a paper or to think more critically about science fiction. It's a very good starting place and you'll be glad you read it.

Mistaken Identity: Asad Haider

This book, when it comes down to it, is more than anything a call to solidarity across whatever traditional identity category you might draw. I think it is important because a lot of times as he points out that whatever these categories are drawn by the oppressor so that we really need to make sure we have solidarity because the world is hard and it's relentless.