A commercial where a woman eats a giant, fatty fat, meaty burger with no mention of how “bad” she’s being.

A romantic comedy where a woman has to choose between 2 guys, the boring but handsome dream dude and the obnoxious dude-bro frenemy who really gets her. She decides her life is better without either and adopts a bunch of cats instead.

A law and order/csi type show where the women investigators aren’t all required to poke at dead bodies at crime scenes or chase down bad guys in full make-up, fake nails, and 4 inch stilettos.

Any version of Law and Order Criminal Intent that doesn’t include brilliant/damaged brooding dude detective and the woman detective who nods agreeably when needed. (Almost had it when Annabella Sciorra was on, but alas…..)

A female Doctor Who who won’t have her brain explode by seeing the time/space vortex.

PWD played by actors with disabilities. Also, black women played by black women (I’m looking at you Tyler Perry and Eddie Murphy).

And because I am pervy and like looking at pretty men- more gay men kissing on regular tv.

I am obsessed with Stump Lane and the spectacle idea. I think it’s the perfect explanation of one of my other favorite philosophers- Gramsci. It explains something that Marx missed, why capitalism is so very very seductive..

Yep- this is another of those rambly posts that no one will comment on cause it’s thinky instead of ranty. But right now you either get thinky or you get despondent and hopeless from me. Thinky is my attempt to subvert depression.

I’ve written before about Gramsci’s cultural hegemony and common sense. I only know about it because of an obscure reference in poly sci text book that was brushed off by my conservative poly sci proff. So of course- rabbit hole and books are bought and there ya go.(Dear old poly sci proff- this is why you had to use my papers to lecture from when it came to progressive philosophies).

So common sense, (not to be confused with Cartesian common sense- I think therefore I am) says things like women should be careful to avoid rape. That is an example of “common sense” reinforcing the values of the dominant class. Rapists aren’t responsible for rape, women are. Common sense says that hard work will get you the American dream, but hard work really just gets cheap labor from the non-elites to provide the elites with more wealth. It’s “common sense” that women want to be thin and attractive to men that keeps women too focused on food and starvation to realize that they are paid less and do more actual work (including unpaid labor) than men do (and totes ignores the women who don’t want to sleep with men).

These examples are mostly from a feminist perpsective, but you can find similar examples of “common sense” for any marginalized group.

So where does the idea of spectacle come in? Think about those three examples, single woman walking alone at night, the American dream, the thin, attractive woman. I bet that just those examples brought pretty specific images into your head. Those images don’t come from the ether, they are culturally reinforced ideas that we are shown images of over and over and over. Some of them are positive (you can have this, be this, if you just believe in it hard enough) and some are negative (if you don’t follow the approved narrative- you will be this).

Let’s look at the American dream, because the image of that is so generic that jokes are made about white picket fences. It starts with the house. Now as a homeless person, lemme tell you that the idea of a safe, secure place that is all you own is better than any sex fantasy. Shit, since I was a little kid I’ve been drawing house plans when I am stressed. I can, with no trouble at all, call up the exact images of my dream home in my head, right down to the baseboards and the window styles. Now everyone has different tastes when it comes to home, but the idea of owning a place that can never be taken from you is a huge one.

So what else goes with that American dream? Oh yeah, a car or two. Again, people have different tastes (if I won the lottery tomorrow I’d own a Volvo c70 hardtop convertible) but cars mean freedom, the ability to go where you want, when you want. That’s why access to transportation is a reoccurring problem in domestic violence. I owned 4 cars before I was ever “allowed” to drive one regularly.

Oh yeah, and the American dream comes complete with spouse (of the opposite sex) and children. Love, sex, procreation. Women are taught from childhood to dream of marshmallow dresses and Ken doll husbands and trained to see childcare and housework as fun with dolls and toy kitchens. Any grown woman with a hubby and/or kids will tell you that reality is hard work. Dolls don’t projectile vomit red Gatorade on you and you never worry about hunger in a toy kitchen. Men always have jobs that pay at least living wage for a family of 4. Etc, etc, etc.

So the American dream tells us that if we work hard enough at following the dominant narrative we will get security, freedom, love, sex. We will banish hunger and fear and loneliness. The American dream is about the ending of worry and fear.

But it doesn’t just tell us, it shows us. This is where the images are so important. You can see the dream house, dream car, dream kitchen, dream spouse, wedding dress, wedding cake etc. If I posted a picture of a man carrying a woman in a white dress over the threshold of a house with a picket fence, you’d know I was referencing the American dream.

This is where that whole snow globe thing comes into play. We see this ideal life in perfect clarity. It’s probably easier for you to right now imagine and describe your dream kitchen than it is to describe your actual kitchen. (Perhaps the poverty gourmand in me is projecting the idea that everyone has a dream kitchen. If so, pick your dream house vs. actual home, or dream car vs. actual car).

This ideal is fake, and impossible, for all but the already elite. You can’t get it. You can buy parts of it (and that’s what they are counting on- buy buy buy), but the dream house doesn’t have toilets that need scrubbing or gutters that need cleaning or a mortgage that needs paying. Dream kitchens never have dirty dishes in the sink or coffee rings on the counter or stinky garbage that needs to be taken out.

That is the magic of the spectacle. We are shown that we can eliminate the very real feelings of fear and hunger and loneliness if we follow the spectacle’s rules of produce and consume. Work work work, buy buy buy. We become horrible mindless blobs eating our way through our own shit (produce! consume!) spurred on by shiny flashing pictures in front of our eyes.

And we don’t even know we are eating our own shit because production is so distant and specialized. A lot of us spend our lives “making copies”, pushing pieces of paper around that sell or buy (produce! consume!) pieces of things that make other things.

So what happens when you can’t or won’t follow that dominant narrative? What happens if you can’t produce because you are sick or injured? What happens if you don’t have or want a husband but you already have kids? What happens if your dream spouse is the same gender as you? Or if you’re not the same color as the happy (white)couple on top of the wedding cake? You might be able to make up for it (if you work twice as hard and are willing to sell out others), but mostly not following the dominant narrative leads to poverty, fear, lack of security, hunger, incarceration, violence. You know, all the things those images are supposed to replace.

Corrente is trying to figure out how we get around the do nothing Democratic party, so is Violet.

The only way this can ever work is if all the marginalized factions who will makeup this party agree- we float together or we sink apart. The sinking apart thing is how they keep us down. Think about abolition and suffrage. They went together, hand in hand, in women like Elizabeth Cady Stanton. But when push came to shove, black men got the vote first (technically) and shoved women of all colors under the bus for the right. But Jim Crow laws made it near impossible for them to exercise that right. I wonder if Jim Crow laws would have been as easy to enact if suffrage was universal at the time?

The kyriarchy does that to marginalized groups whenever it’s structure is threatened. It gives one group the appearance of gain in order to squash the demands of another group. Think about the EDNA (employment non-discrimination act) that sold out trans folks. Think about health care reform that leaves women out and punishes sick people for having a pre-existing condition with mandates and tax penalties but gives insurance companies an extra year before pre-existing conditions are made moot. And I can’t even start to point out the millions of ways poor people are routinely shoved to the side for any reason. A stiff breeze is enough for people to sell the poor out.

We float together or we sink apart.

This new party, whether it’s outside inside or third party or a mass sign up for the Greens, has to require us, all of us, to make a promise to each other. We will not sell out one group for the gain of another. If we don’t make that promise and keep it, then this new thing is really just another flavor of the old thing and it won’t work.

I don’t even know if I can get this out of my head properly. The idea is a slippery silver scaled fish.

Corrente linked to this which linked to this and I fell down the philosophy rabbit hole.

The spectacle, the thing we watch, the thing we create, but that we aren’t part of. It makes me think of a snow globe, a perfect, idealized microcosm. But in our case, we don’t know that the snow isn’t real or that the tiny people aren’t people at all. We’re like children, believing what we see but can’t touch.

And then I think back to being a child and wondering how those people live in the tv? Which is actually relevant because the tv, internet, books, music, films, all manner of media reinforce the message of the spectacle.

The spectacle is the disconnect between power and the people. It creates the Overton windows and explains why what most people want from their government will be the last thing the government gives them. It’s why we get distracted by celebrity. Oh shiny look over there.

It also explains the hatred of the poor. We are the furthest from that snow globe, closer to the earth, to things that are made and touched and felt as real. Real is lonely, hungry, tired, dirty, scared. The snow globe is shiny want, want of things. As if things are real. The real is not made up of shiny things.

But we are told by the snow globe that real is crisp and perfect, and you can buy your way into it. You can feel connected with the latest cell phone, you can feel less hungry with this set of pots and pans, you can feel less scared with this giant car.Feel less dirty with this body wash. Feel less tired with this kind of mattress. Feel less, be numb, that is the message of the snow globe. Dull yourself down. Feel less, want more.

Wanting is what takes reality’s place. Those of us at the bottom have a problem though, we can’t tune out the feelings. Can’t tune out pain or hunger or fear, at least not for long.

(Dear Maude, I feel like I’m getting all zen here- is that the point? Do they have a point? Feckles)

Then I wanted to be all sanctimonious cause I own almost nothing and don’t really want anything. Except I’ve skipped the whole needing to posses things because I have a computer and the internet and can see images of things that I want anytime. So yeah, I, poor person, suck because I am not separated from reality by stuff but by pictures of stuff.

That’s what I got and I’ve only gone through the first chapter. Well, that and a long rant at Wonder about how I like technology and how stupid it was that BSG ended with them deciding to give up modern things like medicine so they can go “run around in the mud”. And also a wee lecture on the development of societies and how surplus creates hierarchies.

See ya’ll- slippery fish philosophizing.

(sadly, this is what it looks like in my head most of the time, this meandering mush. Usually I clean it up nice and pretty for you all, but what the hell, you might as well see how the sausage gets made).

I love the giant outdoor installations of Jeanne-Claude and Christo. I love the

to fear mongering, foaming-mouthed, 24 torture porn enthusiast Neocons is that Khalid Shaikh Mohamed could be tried in criminal court with all the due process given to ordinary defendants and be found guilty.

Yep, you read that right. They are afraid that the justice system will work for terrorists just like it’s supposed to for everyone.*

If the normal, everyday, non-extraordinary tools we use for justice work just the same for people who commit acts of terror, then all the excuses for torture and extraordinary rendition and unlawful combatants and denial of the basic rights that have been part of this country’s legal system since it’s infancy go out the window.

If the normal, ordinary, everyday tools of justice work for the most heinous of crimes, then how will they scare us into giving up our liberty in exchange for safety? Can a threat that is stopped by a judge in black robes and a jury and a couple of lawyers and a mountain of paperwork really be as much of a big bad as they say?

No doubt, 911 was terrifying. The threat of more terrorism is terrifying (by design, it’s not called happy fun time, after all). But are they so bad that we can justify becoming a society that is less free and has less justice?

No.

(* Understanding that justice is far from perfect in this country. Yes, a brown man with a foreign name and a religion that isn’t Christian accused of terrorism is not likely to get a impartial jury, but at least he gets a jury and a judge and legal representation, which is a far cry from a waterboard).

is a running joke in my family. Let’s see, we’ve got 2 wheelchair users, a cane/scooter user, someone is missing fingers, several of us have fibromyalgia or similar nerve pain, and the kid has a nervous system problem where his muscles don’t get the amount of electrical charge that they should.

And then the lovely BlueLyon is getting a pacemaker today.

So this is a post about the awesomeness when good technology meets medical need.

I’ve been thinking about what a post-revolution society would look like.

The first thing we have to do is value all lives. I know that sounds all sorts of forced pregnancy hypocritical, but it’s not, really. Right now we value people based on how much money they have, what country they were born in, who they sleep with, how they look, what they produce, etc. That is not valuing life or people, that is valuing certain characteristics.

We have to value people simply because they exist, and not for any other reason. People, all people, regardless of any characteristics they may or may not possess, must be more important than money, or borders, or property, or ideas, or religion, or theory. No matter how different a person is from you, or how far from “ideal” a person’s life is, they still have the exact same value as the ideal. They still have all the same rights.

Put people first, and suddenly the world will make a lot more sense.

My aunt once said (it’s a day for Auntie sayings, I guess) “No social worker worth their salt will pick on a poor person for smoking and drinking coffee. They know poor parents use those things to keep them going while their kids get whatever food is available.”

I am coming to have the same kind of contempt for the “Left” as I do for the Rethuglikans and Christian blow hards. I already hate the virtuous foodies bad enough that given half a chance I’d watch them choke on organic apples before I’d perform the Heimlich. Fair’s fair, after all. They’d watch my family starve to death rather than see us eat “crap”. (Of course they still buy their organic produce people who don’t make a living wage and couldn’t afford to shop in the places they work,but hypocrisy is not monopolized by the right).

You cannot backtrack on pure meanness once it is unleashed

He’s right. The left has lost compassion. Worse than that even, they’ve lost the fucking good sense that got us out of the last Depression, the truth that Roosevelt knew was that when we all do better, we ALL do better. Call it enlightened self interest, but the constant squashing of the weakest segments of society is not healthy for any society. Maybe, like the machiladoras who only hire teenage girls because they are less likely to fight, we’ve let poverty become feminized and disabled in this country because they think we are less likely to fight back. But bougie left may want to check themselves, us poor girls fight dirty and I know more than a few disabled peeps whose trigger fingers still work just fine.