Author Archives: The Red Queen

A Quick and Dirty Primer: Political Science & Legitimacy

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Political science is the study of how we delegate power. That’s it. It’s just a way of figuring out the systems and tools we human beings have designed and used in order to decide who gets to have power and who does not.

First things first- what is power? Power in less complex (meaning less specialized, less stratified, more egalitarian and usually pastoral) societies is generally a matter of respect given to a Big Man (or Big Woman) known to be wise and just. This is the person who recommends how to divide up food stores to insure against famine and settles disputes between neighbors. They do not have coercive power, meaning they cannot enforce or police their suggestions. But their decisions are usually followed anyways.

In a more stratified society, power means coercive authority. It is who we decide has the ability to tell us what to do and to punish us when we don’t do it. This is why politics is a big fucking deal. It’s almost like choosing your parents, but you don’t get to move out when you’re 18 if they are douchebags.

There are different types of power structures, straight up democracies, republics, monarchies, dictatorships, oligarchies, etc. The major difference in these is how the elites are chosen. Are they elected? Do they rule through divine right? Through military force? (A note on elections, just because it has elections does not actually make it a democracy or a republic, more on that later). Legitimacy, or the the belief the people have in the rulers right to rule, is a key part of this process. If you are in a country that has been traditionally ruled by a monarch with divine right, it will take a revolutionary act to get people to believe that they could choose their own leaders instead of letting god and dna do it for them. A leader who takes power without legitimacy is going to have a boatload of trouble keeping it. This is why secret police exist. Or George Bush’s Free Speech Zones.

For a system to be considered democratic (or republican, the more complex sibling of direct democracy) requires several things: free and fair elections, a choice of more than one party, and wikipedia says equal access to power. Than last one is a load of shit though. I mean we’ve been a democratic country for how many centuries now and no one that looks at the members of our government would think there is equal access to power for anyone who isn’t a white dude. You can be in a country that looks like a democracy, what with the voting and all, but if you only have one party to choose from or if your are going to get beaten to a pulp for not voting the right way or if you cannot be sure that your vote will be counted or that the ballot box has been stuffed, then you’re not living in a democracy.

So what does this have to do with our little red, white and blue republic? Let’s go back to legitimacy. We have exactly one option for exerting coercive force back on our little band of elites, voting. That’s it. Sure you can write letters, give money, throw public tantrums on the internet that may influence power, but the elites are not required by law to follow any of that. They are only required to abide by who the voters say gets to be there (or who the Supreme Court says gets to be there).

Nowhere in the constitution does it say anything about 2 parties. Nothing in the idea of democracy says there has to be only 2 parties, and as a matter of fact, most democracies have 3 or more. The only reason we have only 2 major parties comes from legitimacy. We do not give other parties legitimacy because we refuse to vote for them. Period. Third parties don’t win because we don’t vote for them. And that won’t change until we start to vote for them.

(you should at this point be able to see the circular logic we employ en masse on that- third parties don’t win so I won’t vote for one so third parties don’t win ad nauseum)

But we’re supposed to have 2 parties that represent the two polar views on governance and government happens somewhere in the middle of those two sides? Right? Uhm no.

The elites have one pretty fucking handy trick that gets overlooked. The elites decide what the topics of government are going to be. We don’t have a national referendum or initiative system. The only power we have is in who we choose to vote for . I can’t say this enough times. The only power we have is who we choose to vote for. We don’t get to decide what the most pressing issues are. We have no say in what bills get brought to congressional vote. We have no say in what orders the president signs or vetos. The only power we have is in choosing someone who will (we hope) bring up issues that mean something to us.

Political parties are not like sports teams. There is very little luck involved, first off, and when your party is having a crap year continuing to support them actually makes the problem worse. The only thing that changes political parties is who is voting for them. Political parties get to decide what the conversation is going to be, but we get to decide if they even get to talk in the first place.

Lemme give you a pretty concrete example of how parties (and their extensions) get to set the conversation. Blue Lyon got her blogger blog shut down during the primaries because she wasn’t full of unity pony sparkle. (Somewhere there is still a backup word press blog for this one should I ever get booted). Most of the contributers at Corrente have been kicked off the big access blogs at one point or another for questioning the Dems seemingly drastic shift in platform to a much more conservative track. And these are Dems. They didn’t vote for McCain. Never had the intention of voting for a Republican. But because they aren’t sticking to the dominant theme of “If the Dems do it, it’s for a a good reason but look over there, there’s a rethuglikan sex scandal” Anyone not sticking to the dominant political themes gets silenced. Not by police, but by other citizens.

If you love the Democratic party, but are disturbed by the rightward route it is taking, there is only one action you can take to change that. One. Don’t vote for the party until it moves in a direction to your liking.

Look, I’ve said about a gazillion times that the elites never do anything against their own self interest. Progressive action is against their own interest. It cuts directly into their pocketbooks (for both the corporate thieves and their underlings, politicians). The Democratic party will not act progressive unless it is threatened with a serious power loss. They have to be scared of another party taking their place. For generations, Dems have been able to rely on women and minorities to vote for them without hesitation because the only other viable option is so much worse for them. Because we are such reliable voting blocks, the party has no interest and no reason to cater to us. Period. We have been there and have always been there and will always be there because, what are we going to vote for a Republican? (How many times have we heard that tired refrain? Cause I’ve gotten it more than a dozen times in the last week).

But Republican is not the only option.

What I am, what you need to be if you are really committed to progress, is willing to lose in the short term for long term gain. Yes, that means we may end up with more rethuglikans in office until the dems come back to progress or until a third party (like say the Green party) becomes powerful enough to win.

But neither of those things are going to happen if we keep voting for dems as they are. And political infrastructures do not spring up overnight, but are grown through the blood, sweat and tears and most importantly VOTES of its members. If you want a more progressive political state, you have to vote for one.

You can’t wait for a legacy party to change. It’s not in their interest to do so as long as you are still willing to vote for them. They got what they want from you, and it didn’t cost them a damn thing. Obama (quoting Ghandi) said “Be the change you want to see in the world”. So be the change. Go vote your conscious. Vote your values. Vote in your own best interest. And chances are that your conscious, values, and best interest don’t lie with either the Republicans or the Democrats, but somewhere else.

My Old Neighborhood

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My old neighborhood in Seattle, where the Kid went from tiny boy child to a young man. Where we knew all the grocery store clerks and the pharmacist and who to watch out for on the street. Where our neighbors looked out for us and we looked out for them. We traded flour and sugar and eggs and bus fare and cigarettes. Where we were just a 7 minute walk from my work or Kid’s school or the the grocery or drugstore and a bus ride to everywhere else. Where the spectacle had a hard time taking hold because we all knew the realities of the world and couldn’t afford the cushioning to hide ourselves from it.

Where sometimes (and more often than sometimes as the Kid grew big enough to be easy prey- people will stop a stranger from hurting a small child in public but teens and near teens don’t have that layer of protection) bad shit happened. Police raids with those big things they use to ram doors, multiple shootings, a domestic dispute where my neighbors beat each other’s cars with baseball bats till there wasn’t a window or light intact. I think domestic violence is more obvious in poor neighborhoods, where small apartments can’t hide the screaming and constant financial stress leaves everyone more angry.

That long intro was just so i could show you all a video. I am homesick tonight.

Blue Scholars: Back Home

Certain scenes from this video (the girl walking past the construction site, for example) were shot right across the street from our old apartment. The grocery store where all the clerks knew the Kid’s name was in the same shopping center as the recruiting offices for each fucking branch of the military. They were well placed. That shopping center was were all the neighborhood high school kids, the ones who weren’t white kids bussed in from fancy craftsman homes in the north of the city to go to the AP program, would congregate when the afternoon bell rang at Garfield high school (which is also in the video). The kids would get their afternoon sugar fix at the Red Apple store or the AMPM, or the lucky ones with more than a buck or two would get a Starbucks coffee. And the recruiters were there. Just waiting for those black and brown and “other” kids to realize there wasn’t much else for them. There’s no college scholarship. There’s no job. But if you sign up, oh that can all be changed and you can be all that you can be.

When we moved into the big fancy craftsman house with Ruth and Bernard in the north of the city for that last year, we lost all that. We lost the neighbors and the grocery clerks and the friendships and the sense of community. We also lost the high likelihood of violence aimed at the kid. (Though I still saw plenty of cops doing crappy shit to brown kids in the fancy neighborhood, that didn’t change).

And nowhere near the shopping center that housed the new grocery store (Whole Foods) and the drugstore and the super expensive kitchen gadget store, and the Dania furniture store, was a military recruiting office, even though the high school was right there.

The kids in that neighborhood were paler and richer. College was inevitable, though which one was the question. There wasn’t going to be a hard awakening for those kids about the realities of the world that would drive them into the Army recruiter’s storefront. These are kids for whom the afternoon Starbucks is a mandatory expense along with music lessons and sports teams and SAT tutoring. In my old neighborhood, coming up with the testing fees alone would have been a challenge. Tutoring was out of the question.

But the real issue is, for those poor kids whose reality doesn’t include SATs and college applications or even the possibility of a living wage job, is it really a choice when the only option left is military service. Is this kind of disparity it’s own sort of underhanded draft in order to, once again and as always, pull poor boys and girls into fighting with and the killing of and dying at the hands of other poor boys and girls, all while the strings are pulled by the parents of the kids who can always afford an after school Starbucks.

Allegiance to a label is not a substitute for actual integrity

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I get how hard it is to separate yourself from a political party you have been a member of for your entire life, cause I was a member of that same party since I was old enough to know that there were 2 choices.

But when that party no longer holds firm on any of the things that used to make up its core beliefs, when it betrays the people who have made up it’s base and shits on things that should be sacred, it’s time to give up the allegiance to the label, or change what your definition of Democrat is and embrace the neoliberal.

The right of a citizen not to be executed without a fair trial: unless you’re a muslim.

The fundamental right of women to control their own bodies: While some may say “this doesn’t fundamentally change anything” they are generally people without a uterus. And for me, being a woman, who has worked for the party SPECIFICALLY because it is the party of choice, this shows a move away from the moral highground. This is not “Safe, legal and rare”. This is “your body is a political football and those of us in power have decided to punt you”.

Being anti-torture: Here’s the thing, if you refuse to prosecute government agents who commit torture, it ain’t much different from just being pro-torture. If there is no enforcement of a law, then it isn’t really illegal.

The environment, including no offshore drilling and “clean” coal: it doesn’t matter that these projects won’t be finished and doing actual harm to the environment until after Obama leaves office. It matters that dems started the projects and that dems sold out the environment. We expect that from rethuglikans, that is what they are. But dems are supposed to be the crunchy granola, protect the spotted owl, Al Gore in fleece and flannel explaining global warming, good guys. But offshore drilling and clean coal are bad bad bad, no matter how many ways you try to frame it.

Social Security is the untouchable third rail, or not: Every time some new right wing bloviator would whinge on about how out of control Social Security spending is for the last 15 years or so, I’d remember that every time I saw a left leaning economist talk about it, they’d laugh at the stupidity. Social Security all ready pays for itself. There mechanisms to keep it paying for itself. Anyone who talks about “runaway entitlement spending” is 1) usually a rethuglikan and 2) usually dead wrong. So what does it say that the person who is going to bring about the death of Social Security is not someone with a George W. privatization scheme, but a Democrat.

Spying on citizens is for rethuglikans, except when it’s not:Do I even need to break this down for you all, or is it a matter of IOKIYAR has now become “It’s not really a fundamental breach of your rights if it’s done by a Democrat”. The same can be applied to that fucking Stupak executive order.

How about the Dems are the party of regulating bad boy industries: You know, under Clinton tobacco companies were sued and states got fat wads of money to cover the health problems created by smoking plus insuring children. Under Obama and his merry band of banksters, we get ………


it would create a system highly dependent on the wisdom and good intentions of government officials. And as the history of the last decade demonstrates, trusting in the quality of officials can be dangerous to the economy’s health.

Just to give you an idea of the quality of officials currently running the show, here’s a little story about Timmy Geithner and AIG.

i haven’t even gotten into things like health care (the bill passed was fine with rethuglikans like Mitt Romney and Bob Dole) and unemployment and foreclosures and tent cities and and and.

And I haven’t gotten into things like a Democratic commander in chief should not be the head of an army that kills pregnant women and teenagers and then covers it up.

If you want to keep calling yourself a Democrat, that’s fine. But please understand that I am now going to believe that your fundamental belief system is one that is anti-woman, anti-environment, pro-torture, pro-wiretapping, kill social security, love s big corrupt industries and approves of murder.

You can either be loyal to a party or you can have your ideals. But you can’t have both, not anymore.

Dear Green Party:

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Lemme do some advertising for you. Really.

Blue Lyon has a post up called Where to go from here? that is all about the great big sucking hole of depression that has set in for those of us realizing that there is no hope coming from traditional methods of change.

I’m familiar with that feeling. I get gloomy sometimes. But just for a little bit. Then it’s time to pick yourself up and jump back into the fight.

This is what I wrote to Blue Lyon

I am so familiar with that deep crushing sense of despair.
We keep doing what we are doing. We keep holding feet to the fire. We keep on keeping on.
What gives me a wee bit of hope (and I may just be kidding myself, but a girl’s gotta dream) is this: the parties we have now have not always existed, and they have not always been what they are (or claim to be). Republicans started out as radical anti-slavery progressives. Dems were the conservative party.
I think the republicans will eat themselves, because really they don’t have a purpose anymore. The democrats have taken over as the party of corporate interests and screw the little people.
So there is room for a new second party, and that room isn’t being made on the right, but on the left. I still like the Greens. There is nothing in their platform that I disagree with so far. I like their candidates (except for Nader, but that might be residual democratic sour grapes) . I like that they are already established and have a (fledgling) infrastructure. If I am going to put my work into politics, I will put it there.
Otherwise, I’m building a commune in Iceland (or Spain- pro women, pro gays, pro human rights, my favorite wines and nice weather).
Sorry for the long ramble. I’m wordy lately

Neither of the 2 main parties are serving the left in any way, manner, shape or form. I think the numbers of lefties who are disillusioned with the whole process is growing, quietly but fast. I think it’s a fan-fucking-tastic time for another party to step in.

Hello Greens!

So if I had some $ and some power and the Green Party was listening to me, I would start running commercials. I would focus on the things that Greens and Dems should (or used to) have in common. Talk about single payer health care, talk about finance reform and regulation, talk about opposition to off shore drilling and the environment, a women’s right to control her own body. Run a series of images. A child getting a checkup, a bankster going to jail, a gorgeous shoreline nature shot, a middle aged mom standing behind her 20 something daughter.

Then it ends with:

There is only one party that shares your beliefs and won’t compromise them

See what else you have in common with the Green Party by checking out gp.org

That’s it. That’s all you need to start with. You just have to remind disappointed lefties that there is another option, and by putting the commercials on you give the party more legitimacy (if they have the $ to run the commericals then they aren’t just a bunch of crusty hippies in someone’s basement).

PS- Blue Lyon, you have a Green candidate running for governor of your state. I bet he wouldn’t mind if you threw all that volunteering muscle you used to use for the Democratic party into his campaign.

Happy Birthday Ouyang Dan!

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Since you, so graciously gave me a bloody period cake for my birthday, it’s only fair that I return the favor.

Why yes darling, that is a wedding cake made out of tampons.

You have done some amazing shit this year and I am proud as punch to have you as my friend.

Big lip smacking smooches and many many sparkles.

PS- I tried really hard to make sure this posted at exactly midnight oon your actual birthday where you are- did it work?)

(cake is by Vadis Turner at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art)

A Quick and Dirty Primer: The Inevitable Downward Spiral Of Capitalism (now with stick figure illustrations!)

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I wrote once long ago about how the Civil War was not really fought for the noble ideal of ending slavery, but because slavery was anathema to capitalism because it does not give the elites the same measure of pressure to control costs such as labor.

In the last week or so there have been lots of outcries about the rise of unpaid internships. It’s not surprising that when allowed to, businesses will stoop to not actually paying people for their work. These are the same members of society that brought us child labor, sweatshops, and the romantic lifestyle of the migrant farm workers, after all. The only difference is that unpaid interns tend to come from white, educated, middle class backgrounds. OMG we can’t exploit the young white people! That’s criminal.

But it was always going to come to this.

First, let’s start with some basics. Economists (some, most even) and Libertarians will tell you that the job market is a market just like any other and there should be no restrictions on it because restrictions interfere with competition and the invisible hand. Employees and employers are considered equal in their negotiations.

If you don’t like your job, you can find another job.

But anyone who has ever worked knows that’s not how it really works.

Despite whatever its mission statement might say, all businesses have one, single, solitary function. To make profit.

First you have to sell something. You have to make something that people want to buy, you have to price it at a price people will pay, and your costs for making a thing have to be less than the price people will buy it at. You will probably have investors, or even stockholders who have put up their own money for your business in exchange for getting a piece of the profit.

Now this might all be fine if there wasn’t massive constant pressure to increase profit. The shareholders want a bigger return on their investment, the CEO wants a bigger bonus payout. That screaming man on that money show will insult your company if it’s not growing profit margins enough

So things must be done. Companies are always looking for ways to maximize sales and minimize costs

And negotiations between employee and employer end up looking more like this

And since companies compete with each other, not just for customers but for stockholders, all companies eventually end up in the evil labor eating blob phase, unless there is another force at work to keep all companies from becoming sweatshops.

But unions only work if companies can’t do seedy shit to stop them. For that we need yet another external force

Government can do things like set minimum wages, create 40 hour weeks, mandate overtime pay and work safety standards. But they don’t do any of this unless they have pressure put on them, by say a large group of organized individuals who have people who can lobby for them. Like a union. Government can also set rules for the establishment of unions and make it so that companies can’t go around breaking the legs of striking workers.

But……..

So with neither the government nor unions working to keep companies from doing everything they can to screw the workers to maximize profit, unpaid interns are inevitable. You can’t go lower than zero on labor costs. Well yes you could. If companies start thinking that they would like to take a chunk out of the expensive college ed market by telling prospective students “You don’t need to go to that fancy school for 4 years, come do an apprenticeship here. We’ll only charge you half the tuition the university will, plus we’ll throw in valuable on-the-job experience. Can your uni offer you that?”

(Shit, should not have typed that. Somewhere there is a CEO coming up with fee-based apprenticeships right now)

Some fun for a Monday

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My darling friend Spring and I are trying to come up with drag queen themed food.

(There’s a wee back story, I’ve been trying to encourage Other Cousin to use the gorgeous church she owns for drag queen bingo. Spring thinks that Drag Queen Bingo should come with drag queen themed foods. )

Here’s what we’ve got so far:

Spring: Liza Minnelli-Vanelli Shake and anything with sausage

Me: Any female performers name+meatballs, The Dolly Parton Bangers and Mash:two giant mounds of fluffy mashed potatoes seperated by a long pork sausage

(Also said in facebook by me:I am totes seeing a business idea! Quick- gimmme drag queen themed food names. It will be like hooters, but all the boobs will be fake, or wait. That’s not right.)

So, gimme your best thoughts, and your worst

Things that are made of lose

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So you all know my other secret passion is interior design and architecture? Maybe not. It is a wee bit (more than a wee bit) like lottery shopping, or things I would buy if I had money. And I’m a wee bit ashamed of it because, you know, it’s all part of the spectacle. Then I justify it to myself by saying “it’s not like I have a house. If I had a house, then I might not spend so much time imagining a house”. So yeah, I give myself a pass on the lottery shopping bit because of poverty. Sue me, I ain’t perfect.

That was all a long into to explain why I was looking for window coverings that aren’t ugly. I was wondering if they made films for windows like they make wall decals, in some fab modernist design.

I have absolutely no idea if they do, because as soon as I saw this the guffaw went off in my head and I was bowled over by the stupidity.

(You know how I said people are rational actors, I still mean that, right up until the time the bong smoke pickles their melon or the 3rd vodka tonic goes to work. That’s kind of the point of most mind altering substances, to make you stop being rational).

So imagine this. You are a pot head, a wake and baker, the kind of person who doesn’t get out of bed without taking a toke. But right by your bed is a giant window looking out onto the street and you really don’t want to get busted by some random cop who happens to see you taking your first morning puff. But you’re also a minimalist. You hate curtains, or you’re like me and you hate mini blinds, plantation blinds or pretty much any mechanism which is going to leave bar shaped objects over your natural light source thus rendering your home into a glorified chicken coop. So you go searching for another solution.

I give you cannabis leaf window film.

So now instead of the off chance that random Officer Bob catches you taking a long bong toke through the window, you have the guarantee that every cop in the neighborhood plus anyone else who cares knows not only that you are a massive stoner, but you have killed so many of your short term memory cells that you forgot that advertising your pot smoking is probably more likely to get you busted than just getting over your fear of curtains.

And if you’re more a drug of the masses type, they’ve also got you covered. As long as your drug is Jesus flavored. Or your initial is a T.