Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
I've been thinking about what this moment feels like, and in the
midst of the incessant, incremental, frenetic pace of news stories
and mediated events, it feels poised between the decisive action and
the impact. The election is over, the votes are counted, and yet we
are still waiting to see what will happen. The vaccine exists, but
we are waiting to know if distribution and roll-out will be
successful, waiting to get it ourselves, waiting to see the change
in the numbers we follow from day to day. After years of agonizing
and unnecessary brinksmanship, there is a Brexit deal, and we wait
to see what it will mean. 

There is a degree to which this sense of anticipation, of waiting
for a narrative twist or pay-off, is linked to the continual
plumbing of world events for spectacle. It's a part of the gruesome
will-he/ won't-he/ he-did/ oh-there-were-no-consequences that has
served us so poorly over the past four years. In fact, one of the
questions for the coming year is what will happen if the pace of
news, or at least the pace of outrage, slows to a trickle. 

But this extended wait is also scratching at our trust in the
foundational narratives of our societies, because the uncertainty of
this gap shouldn't exist. There's always a delay between the
election and the inauguration, but usually it's completely without
tension. The movie is supposed to end once the vaccine is
engineered, not because the logistics of distribution aren't
difficult, but because their outcome should be as boring and
predictable as an inauguration ceremony. 

This pause is the gap between intention and action; between the
stories we tell about ourselves and what we are. Will we manage to
do what we know we should? Are our countries democracies, after all?
Has our advanced science and medicine saved us? No and not by
itself, of course; these answers have been clear for a while. But
the gap in the surface storytelling may make it harder to pretend.
  

    
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
  

    
Via email from Marc Brubaker:

re: the climate crisis, I've seen some recent news (via 350.org's
social media 
https://cleantechnica.com/2021/01/04/net-zero-emissions-stabilize-climate-quic
kly-uk-scientist/ ) stating that a scientific consensus has started to form that reaching net-zero carbon emissions would cause heating to level off and stabilize within a decade. It doesn't reduce the difficulty of achieving net-zero emissions (and doesn't account for the many interrelated crises underway such as sea levels rise, ocean acidification, deforestation, species dieback, etc., etc.), but this does seem like some degree of good news -- takes the edge off, at least a little.

re: the "bullshit" list -- not sure how "Neoliberalism ruined  ... "
fits in there...
  

    
Via email from George Mokray: 

Most of this year, we seem to be living in a mash-up of two Jack
London novels:  The Iron Heel and The Scarlet Plague. 

More recently, the behavior of the Trumpublican Party has resembled
a mash-up of two Edgar Alan Poe stories:  The Masque of the Red
Death and Hop Frog.

As per
• regenerative agriculture / regenerative everything

My approach* to climate change is
100% renewables ASAP
zero emissions economy ASAP
carbon drawdown ASAP
geotherapy (not geoengineering) ASAP

Resources:
Healing Earth:  An Ecologist's Journey of Innovation and
Environmental Stewardship by John Todd
https://www.northatlanticbooks.com/shop/healing-earth/

Geotherapy:  Innovative Methods of Soil Fertility Restoration,
Carbon Sequestration, and Reversing CO2 Increase
https://www.crcpress.com/Geotherapy-Innovative-Methods-of-Soil-Fertility-Resto
ration-Carbon-Sequestration/Goreau-Larson-Campe/p/book/9781466595392

Biodiversity for a Livable Climate has been organizing conferences
on various aspects of geotherapy over the last few years.  Subjects
have covered not only soil carbon sequestration and regenerative
agriculture or forestry but also freshwater and ocean systems,
biodiversity and ecological design….
http://bio4climate.org/conferences/

Some climate scientists are beginning to see some data that after
zeroing out greenhouse gas emissions the atmosphere may restore
itself much more quickly than previously thought.  Geotherapy, using
ecological systems to repair the damage homo sap sap (that sap) has
done, also produces quicker than expected results, at least in some
instances.

* 
http://solarray.blogspot.com/2018/12/my-approach-to-climate-change.html
  

    
I agree with Dr Malka about the problematic aspects of the public
getting all gosh-wow and tech-grateful about the almighty vaccines,
but even though I'm personally grateful that the vaccines exist, I
don't think the vaccines will be perceived as glamorous tech
miracles that demonstrate our dominance of nature.

I think the vaccines will mostly be a source of anxiety, that their
manufacture, rollout and deployment will be extensively and
embarrassingly bungled, that they won't work perfectly or
permanently, and that new strains of the coronavirus will evade
them.  So my bet is that they'll be seen by the public as more as a
painful nuisance and a grim necessity than a shiny silver bullet.

Also, the anti-vax people are entrenched, and Bill Gates, who is one
of the more morally-attractive Big Tech oligarchs, has been
extensively vilified for his efforts to do good.   Even if Bill
pulled a Jimmy Carter and spent the rest of his life personally
injecting the needy, the folklore about Bill as a Vaccine Microchip
Nosferatu is, in my opinion, permanent.  Bill's good works may have
salved his conscience but his reputation is befouled with oceans of
rumor and slander.    

That's irrational, but it's emotively powerful, and these new forms
of superstition are inherent in the architecture of participation in
social media.  The networks breed the nuttiness we have; they're
hotbeds of rumor and crowd-mania; we're enduring the direct
consequences of what we built here.
  

    

I see a lot of stark surveillance-capitalism fear from people who
are nowhere near so blatantly nuts as antivaxxers, but similarly
buffaloed in coming to terms with existent reality.  They'll compile
dreadful lists of the many cruel ways in which Amazon numbers every
hair on your head, but they don't seem to notice that Amazon's own
employees will drop dead and Amazon doesn't notice or care.   They
also forget that Jeff Bezos got doxxed for a love affair and it
ruined his marriage, estranged his kids and cost him the largest
divorce settlement in the history of the universe.  The masters of
surveillance are among its biggest victims.

 Also, if the surveillance is so intense, fearsome and
all-encompassing now, then why is public life so obviously loose,
corrupt and poorly organized?  Shouldn't grifters be immediately
outed for all their dirty money, because of something they said
while Alexa was snooping?  If surveillance capitalism and its Big
Data algorithms worked as well as alarmists feared they worked, then
our world ought to be one of neatly freeze-dried technocratic
police-state order, but that's not what daily life actually looks
like under modern social conditions.  Sure, everything is
sorta-kinda surveilled, but there's no sense of decency or
propriety, and we're a lot more piratical than we are panoptical.
  

    

However, I think that this year the surveillance debate will
improve.   I see hints of some new common-sense emerging.   It's a
little bit like pitifully afraid of  wicked spies under the bed, but
when you're actually governed by wicked spies, as the Russians are,
you're less irrationally respectful of them, and you get a better
understanding of their inherent limits as power-players.   Not that
the problems go away, mind you; you just get a better grip on the
existent situation.

Little Tech used to move fast and break things, but Big Tech moves
slow and still breaks things, so they make a much easier target than
they once did.  And, they know that.  So they're adjusting — but not
nimbly.  They move like elephants now.
  

    
I'm wondering why "crypto-" didn't make the bullshit list,
particularly with regard to "cryptocurrency" and its supposed
disruptive effects. Is it because it's not bullshit, or that it fits
under heading "disrupt the industry," or for some other reason? 
  

    
[<echodog> posted while I was composing. In WELL terminology, we say
that he "slipped," i.e. his post slipped in ahead of mine. My post
was inspired by Bruce's latest.]

The established technology infrastructure we've grown over the last
three decades is rather chaotic, I think by design. The Internet was
built to support decentralization and innovation at the edges, and
that's been happening. And it was built from a kind of political
utopian idealism that seemed valid enough at the time, because
initial users were nerds who were innocent of the potential evil
ways the technology might be leveraged as it became mainstream. In
fact, many of us never suspected that it would mainstream as
successfully and pervasively as it has. The garden of Eden has been
growing and spreading over the planet, and filling with all sorts of
weeds and thorns, and opportunistic beasts creeping through the
understory.
  

    
My question for Bruce: What's the point of calling bullshit on the long
list of terms in post <13>? Are these the topics you feel are no longer
deserving of attention, or it this a call to get busy with our
'composting' efforts?
  

    
Good question, Craig.

Wondering about what Jon said about the Internet being "built from a
kind of political utopian idealism." The people I found most
interesting in the 90s - present company in many cases very much
included - were hopeful about changing the world in ways that
included and supported everyone. Somehow. Maybe slightly varied
flavors of Utopia. 

But we all knew the infrastructure threading us together came from
military research as well as hippie hacker homebrew activists, and
always had phone companies and other big money players salivating
over it. So power and profits were never much of an afterthought, no
matter the joys of freely playing with like minded people in corners
of the then largely unknown networks.

I have been doing pandemic cleaning, tossing a lot of
three-hole-punch binders and proceedings from conferences from that
decade. The fanciful and aspirational voices were a minority. Some
of them were sincere and rousing but slightly ridiculous at the time
and more so in retrospect. 

My first time speaking to a technical body was at a IEEE gathering
facing a roomful of engineers with pocket protectors - I respected
that! I thought there would be worthwhile cultural crossover. But
values are deep. Respect for a better salary and more opportunity
for self and family might be deeper. Whatever the brilliant
engineers heard that day about designing privacy and inclusion into
the applications to come was certainly an afterthought to the
presentations of new ideas and fresh patents for presenting
streaming entertainment, and visions of well-paid work leading to
profitable enterprises. Big corporate money was always in the
invisible room. And I know racism and misogeny were there along with
the dreams and visions of harmony. 
 
But that's looking backwards. Old timers. at the very least, have no
excuse for being naive about opportunistic beasts. At some point,
from someone's point of view, we are all such beasts. At some time
we are acting for ourselves (or for the survival of our children)
and all of us are thinking we might as well get good at it.  
  
Short of utopia, how do we get to a mostly benign and relatively
cooperative human condition? Do most people even want that, or is it
more exciting to fight and even die for your
community/religion/nation/compound/cadre/tribe? Wrapped in glory and
egged on as heroes...    
 
Anyway, about that utopian idealism. Long may that vision be part of
the blend. But not a blinder to all the other forces at play.
  

    
Are we surprised? 

People have said there would be violence and a coup attempt, the
perpetrators said what they were planning to do. It has been said
over and over again. And yet, Twitter is peppered with comments of
the "I can't believe this is happening here" variety. 

In part, this is US exceptionalism, the same kind that created the
"it's like a third-world country" [sic] responses to Hurricane
Katrina, another disaster both predicted and predictable. 

There's another kind of exceptionalism going on as well, one that
seeks to separate the moment of crisis from everything before. I see
this often in disaster research; the not-normalness of the disaster,
the sense of break, becomes almost talismanic. It is a defensive
response: <i>This is not real.<i> But believing in the
exceptionalism of disaster also means separating it from the long
roots that lead up to almost every one. 

What I learned working in disaster response is that the sooner you
can change your mentality from "normal" work to disaster mode, the
better your response will be. What I learned researching disasters
is that people try very hard to make disasters exogenous, Acts of
God or inexplicable tribalism or sudden and unprecedented or all of
the above. That's a way of hiding the causes of the crisis and
avoiding accountability.
  

    
When we were in Greece a few years ago we drove past their
parliament building and saw several dozen members of Golden Dawn, in
their black-and-gold regalia, standing on the lawn in front of the
building. The Proud Boys have adopted their color scheme and their
fascist politics, and today they're being more aggressive than
Golden Dawn was.
  

    
Jake Angeli "QAnon Shaman" is already my favorite among the Trump
occupation militia. To see a shamanic figure in a horned headdress
sending Senators fleeing was like witnessing yuppies levitating the
Pentagon.

My wife once stormed a capital building during a revolution.  If
Trump had won re-election the Republicans would have very likely
simply given him term number three and then the seditionaries would
be a different demographic.

Militias have been busting into statehouses for some time now, so to
be all flatfooted and surprised about this is simply to betray one's
naivete.  Even if Washington is put under lockdown I'd be expecting
trouble at Red State statehouses; the "Patriots" are gonna compare
notes and they will gleefully bully anybody who flinches and
appeases them.
  

    
I'm having trouble seeing the humor in sending senators fleeing from
their chamber, no matter how fancy one's silly hat is.
  

    
What a collision between substance and the
almost-ex-comemierda-in-chief's cult of superficiality (he *acts*
like a millionaire so he must be a millionaire; he's a millionaire
so he must be a savvy businessman; he fires people on TV so he must
be a CEO; ETC). In substance, the insurrectionists accomplished very
little last night, other than property damage; if anything, they
seem to have set back their shambolic "cause" by pushing some
Congress people away from their objections. It is almost ridiculous
that they thought breaking things and taking selfies in a mostly
empty building might change the results of an election. 

But symbolically, they were successful. Those selfies will
aggrandize them to their friends and followers and uncertain
hangers-on; by playing out their fantasies on camera they draped
themselves in the connotations of the action movie heroes they were
cosplaying; above all, the immunity with which they proceeded to
attack the symbols of legitimate power will embolden others and
diminish that legitimacy in their eyes. 

Both successful and a failure, depending on what you see and what
you value. What will it take to move people towards valuing
substance over superficiality?
  

    
I think the insurrection makes my point about the weakness of
surveillance.  These guys are surveilling themselves committing
these deeds and spreading them virally.  All the Global War on
Terror gear installed at such pains and expense in Washington might
as well have been tissue.

"Panoptical" and "piratical" are the same thing.

The "little green men" secessionists in the Ukraine War did a ton of
this; they were covert operatives in homemade camouflage, but they
were also relentless about spreading memes, shooting digital videos
and wearing socially-designed roleplay costumes.  They looked
comical at first, but once the shooting started their tactics
improved a lot; they've a frozen conflict zone but their ethnic
fighters are formidable combat veterans.

Interesting article in the  pro-Trumpian WASHINGTON TIMES in which
home-made zealots use "face recognition" to deliberately
mis-identify rather well-known right-wing activists as "Antifa." 
They're using the allure of computer surveillance to flood the zone
with bullshit.

This propaganda of the deed has accomplished a lot for the
alt-right; I don't doubt some of them will go to prison, but the
others are a lot closer to the right-wing goal of becoming captains
of fascist squadristi.  We're gonna see no-go zones and the other
associated lawlessness you see with say, narcoterror activities —
they're ethnonational patriots, but they're also tireless grifters,
so there's gonna be a whole lot of black money involved.  

My guess is that the Trump Regime goes underground now, and they
just start accumulating tough-guy untouchables.  They've committed
so many offenses that they kinda need a militia to stay out of
prison, and I'm thinking that's Florida, a kind of Trump Disneyland
with don't-tread-on-me private security.

Also, if the Alt-Right looks much stronger, the US Congress looks
much, much weaker.  To see them cringing and sniveling in their seat
of power as they couldn't certify a free election, that's the kind
of bad optics you just don't get over; they've been profaned and
stripped of dignity with a Trumpian thoroughness; they're really
just, ripped-off suckers and loser weak-sisters.
  

    
<inkwell.vue.510.37> <malka>

"Twitter is peppered with comments of the 'I can't believe this is
happening here' variety."

I also said "I can't believe this was happening," but I was
responding to the fact that it seemed to finally sink in with the
Trumpists formerly known as Republican legislators that they were
backing a seriously demented horse in a race to the Apocalypse. I
had pretty much decided they'd gone morally blind.

Appreciate your insight about the blindness around preventable
disasters (especially those that emerge slowly, e.g. anthropogenic
climate change.)

<inkwell.vue.510.42> <malka>

"It is almost ridiculous that they thought breaking things and
taking selfies in a mostly empty building might change the results
of an election."

I'm not thinking they expected success in overturning the election,
though perhaps they were deluded enough to think so. However I think
they were riding the crest of Trump's irrational anger, acting as
instruments of his rage. As with any tantrum, there was likely no
goal beyond acting out.

In that they were no doubt successful.

<inkwell.vue.510.42> <bruces>

"All the Global War on Terror gear installed at such pains and
expense in Washington might as well have been tissue."

Because they were welcomed as friendlies, apparently. I'm hearing
that some of the Capitol police removed barricades and let the
insurrectionists into the building, even shot selfies with them. 

"To see them cringing and sniveling in their seat of power as they
couldn't certify a free election, that's the kind of bad optics you
just don't get over; they've been profaned and stripped of dignity
with a Trumpian thoroughness; they're really just, ripped-off
suckers and loser weak-sisters."

This might be true if they'd simply crawled away, but when the
building was secure they came back and did their business, and in
the process regained dignity. It was surprising and heartening to
see someone like Kelly Loeffler, who'd just lost her election,
renounce her objection to the vote, as did several others. 

Today's NY Times had this headline: "Congress Confirms Biden's Win,
Defying Mob Attack."
  

    
Two anonymous comments from "fruitbatpangolin":

#1

Keeping in mind that the real reason that the sun never sets on the
British Empire is because God doesn’t trust the British in the dark,
and while pestilence stalks the globe, that even Jesus was killed by
a cross contamination, I would allow a bit of snarky humour in
witnessing senators scattered by half naked representatives of the
popular Tory splinter group, “Vikings Against Migration” (logo; an
image of a longship, with a big red cross over the top of it).

Facetious sardony in the face of crisis is one of the most
functional aspects of humour. Giggle a bit at last night, is only
going to get weirder and more stupid from here on out. Here be
dragons, and they’re all playing naked bicycle polo.

#2

As we awaken, or struggle through on brandy coffee and buckfast, it
seems that a popular Republican take on the night’s events appears
to be; 

‘The unforgivable invasion of the capital building by half naked men
in comedy Viking hats was a noble and edifying protest by an
entirely justified and peacefully violent mob of democracy loving
all American patriots who want to stop the election, Joe Biden is
therefore responsible for all of this, and furthermore, it was
perpetrated by a secret qabal of antifa, cleverly disguised as well
known qanon uchube slebs, enabling evasion of police while they took
selfies with them.’

Seems perfectly legit and very normal.

I definitely witness no glaringly wide, expansive, and possibly
bottomless logical chasms capable of sailing a moderately sized
flotilla of aircraft carriers through. No sirree.

The US shouldn’t be too glum though. Was looking pretty similar last
night to the vast majority of legislative handover processes in
history. I suppose that it was even somewhat democratic, in that
sense.
  

    
>... it seemed to finally sink in with the
>Trumpists formerly known as Republican legislators that they were
>backing a seriously demented horse in a race to the Apocalypse.

True in the Senate, much less so in the House, where 121 Republican
representatives voted to sustain the objection to Arizona's
electoral votes.
  

    
Via email from Michael Bravo:

I wanted to add a few little nitpicks early on, and a solitary
observation that might be of some interest

Year of the Ox is still ahead of us, it begins in February on the
Western calendar. Until then, we are stuck with the Rat.

"Little green men" in Ukraine, or, more specifically, in Crimea
where the term originated from, were not at all covert operatives,
nor were they local secessionists. They were overtly-deployed, full
gear, masked, spec-ops Russian forces, just without any recognizable
markings and a strict "silent smile, no comments" policy. There was,
and is, a sizable disinformation campaign going on around the whole
mess, with memes and lies and all the juicy Olgino troll factory
stuff, but it doesn't intersect with boots on the ground.

As to the Trumpism, I have been observing with some interest the
parallels between its rise and the happenings in a massive online
game called EvE Online, where a few years back a group of people
hailing from forums on a website SomethingAwful have created an
ingame association labeled GoonSwarm, with all the faux-punk,
in-your-face, nihilist, 4Chan-flavoured demeanor that is so often
proudly displayed in this parallel, real-life cult-ish movement.
Luckily, EvE can be experienced entirely virtually, but the social
similarities and raging passions are quite something.
  

    
<inkwell.vue.510.45> <sweeney>

Thanks for pointing that out. It's true that I was mostly looking at
the Senate. As for the House, I'm thinking there should be an base
IQ test requirement for Congressional candidates...
  

    
Historian Heather Cox Richardson published a detailed account of
yesterday's events in DC:
<https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-6-2021?r=44cfz&utm_campaig
n=post&utm_medium=email&utm_source=copy>

Excerpt:

"Within an hour, a violent mob stormed the Capitol and Cruz, along
with the rest of the lawmakers, was rushed to safety (four
quick-thinking staffers brought along the electoral ballots, in
their ceremonial boxes). As the rioters broke in, police shot and
killed one of them: Ashli Babbitt, an Air Force veteran from San
Diego, QAnon believer, and staunch Trump supporter. The
insurrectionists broke into the Senate chamber, where one was
photographed on the dais of the Senate, shirtless and wearing a bull
costume that revealed a Ku Klux Klan tattoo on his abdomen. They
roamed the Capitol looking for Pence and other lawmakers they
considered enemies. Not finding them, they ransacked offices. One
rioter photographed himself sitting at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s
desk with his feet on it.

"They carried with them the Confederate flag.

"Capitol police provided little obstruction, apparently eager to
avoid confrontations that could be used as propaganda on social
media. The intruders seemed a little surprised at their success,
taking selfies and wandering around like tourists. One stole a
lectern."
  

    
Judd Legum reports that CEOs are considering cutting off donations
to politicians who supported Trump's coup attempt:
https://popular.info/p/the-chickens-come-home-to-roost?r=44cfz&utm_campaign=po
st&utm_medium=web&utm_source=copy

"On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reported on 'a virtual
gathering of chief executives' to 'discuss political turbulence
stemming from the 2020 election.' On the call, 'leaders of some of
the largest U.S. companies said they were considering withholding
donations to Republican lawmakers seeking to impede the presidential
transition.'

"The group included executives from Deloitte, Disney, Accenture, and
Goldman Sachs, among others. Many members of the group have signed
statements acknowledging Biden's victory and calling for a peaceful
transfer of power. But the group also discussed 'withholding
political contributions, which some viewed as more meaningful than
public statements.' Some executives also said, 'they would
reconsider hiring, business and investments in states whose
officials were fighting the transition.'"
  

    
"One in five voters - including 45% of Republicans - approve of the
storming of the Capitol building"

https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/2021/01/06/US-capito
l-trump-poll