Who sent me a box o’ awesome from Paris including:

A ginormous movie poster of James Dean in Rebel Without A Cause. I actually have a bit of a thing for movie posters from foreign places and used to have some very cool Italian posters for Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. How E picked up on this, I have no idea. But James Dean is now occupying one full wall in my bedroom. Thankfully Boyfriend is not the jealous type.

A cloth map of Paris. I haven’t figured out where to put it yet, but I can point to where I stayed in the 13th on the map. (Near the Guy Moquet metro station!)

Shopping bags, including one covered in pictures of fromage. It’s fromage Grommit! Already put to use, btw.

A couple of French feminism pins that now live on the flap of my Guatemalan Hupjil purse. I’m so international it hurts, baby.

And a copy of the French feminism mag Causette which my language skills are not good enough to translate so I am reading bits online. Must read the article about the Hollywood of Nigeria next.

I am easily bribed, by the way. Send me presents and I write more. And gush profusely about your awesomeness.

Via The Other Elizabeth- the best damn response to the Tracy Morgan homophobia-fest you’ll read.

Public banking- we’ve got a model for success. (Actually I have thought for a long damn time that credit for some things, like homes, should be universal. A well regulated public banking system is a damn good start though).

Davidly on how we respond to tyranny.

What does it mean that Poland and the Czech Republic outrank us when it comes to fundamental rights? (Full report is linked at the bottom)

War! In Libya! Not actually for humanitarian reasons! You don’t say. Well knock me over with a feather because I would never have suspected President Anti-War to go killing people for commercial reasons.

“Walking out into this world everyday is very horrific and strange” Yep.

Cultural hegemony, it’s a big scary sounding term, right? If you break it down by word definitions it’s the dominance of one section over all of the shared values of a society. That still sounds wordy. Lemme sum up.

Cultural hegemony, in the simplest of terms, is the idea that the best interests of the elite become the basis for “common sense”.

Examples:
Ladies who drink in bars are setting themselves up for rape. It’s common sense that we should be careful to not drink near people. Except that the only thing that turns a drunk girl (or a sober one) into a rape victim is the presence of a rapist. So “common sense” in this case just serves to keep rape culture thriving by shifting the blame onto the victim and ignoring the (mostly) elite men who commit the crime.

It’s also “common sense” that you are better able to determine how to spend your dollars individually than the government is, and therefore taxes are bad. Except most of us can’t afford to buy a road, or have the equipment and education to check our food for ecoli and salmonella. We understand that bulk buying is a good thing (do you have a costco card? Then you understand the value of bulk buying) but “common sense” tells us that the same economic principles don’t work when applied to the government. Can’t imagine why the elites would be in favor of lower taxes? Can you?

So voting. We’ve all heard the schtick, from elementary school on, about how our little votes make a difference. It’s “common sense” to vote and be counted, have your voice heard, right? Can’t complain if you didn’t vote (though complaining even if you did vote doesn’t get you anywhere either).

But over and fucking over we end up with a government that ignores what the people want, even though we keep voting. Polls have been done for literally decades putting things like jobs, healthcare, education at the top of the list of things voters are concerned about while pols keep talking about MOAR WAR and deficits.
And it’s not just recently. How fucking long were we in Vietnam?

So what happens when we stop voting? What kind of legitimacy do you think a government could claim if only 20% of the population votes and barely more than half of that 20% votes for the ruling party? None, close to none? Can you rule with the approval of just 11% of the populace? I don’t think so (and wouldn’t it be cool if there was a mathy type out there who wanted to figure out at just what voting level does a government lose legitimacy?)But don’t take my blathering hypotheticals as proof, just think about any totalitarian state where voting is mandatory and not voting is punishable. Voting, even when there is NO CHOICE TO MAKE provides a veneer of legitimacy.

And it is the veneer of legitimacy that the elites want. It’s in their best interest that we think we have a say in who has power, that we think “being counted” means something. It doesn’t, not now. It could, but we are a long damn way from a time when voting means anything other than rubber stamping our own demise.

But decide for yourselves whether you are ready to give up on “common sense” by not voting at all, or maybe test the waters with voting third party (that’s what I did, and may still do. But you can be damn sure that neither ruling party will ever get my vote again). “But do try”, as my favorite prof used to say, “to use a little more Cartesian common sense and think for yourselves” rather than following along with the what the elites think we should be doing. Being counted is for cattle. Being heard is for humans.

I need to have a gushy moment. My darling friends have been tittering about how I have a capital B-oyfriend. “Lizzie never uses that word. Teeheeheee”.

Peeps, I gotta tell you, I am a smitten kitten. And yes, Charlotte Lucas would say that all relationships tend towards vexation eventually (terribly paraphrased, btw). But there is a whole lot of basic feminism 101 stuff I don’t have to explain, argue, or even just hash out with him. Do you know how often that has happened in my excessively long dating history? Never. He’s sweet and thoughtful and kind and worries about me and sticks up for me. We make a pretty damn good team (though both of us share superhero level powers of cutting through bureaucratic red tape).

Why, oh why, might people, even after being bombarded with shit like Michelle Obama’s “Let’s (steal money from the food stamp program) Move” campaign and, I dunno, every single form of media beating us over the head about how we don’t eat enough fruits and veggies or exercise enough, why might people be eating fewer veggies and doing less exercise?

Perhaps declining standards of living, disemployment, skyrocketing food costs all combine to make it harder for people to do things like eat salads and join a fucking gym.

Health, healthy foods, safe and affordable places to exercise (for those physically able to do so) are all social justice issues. Just like telling women to be less bitchy, but not too timid, doesn’t actually close the wage gap, telling poor people to eat more fruits and vegetables doesn’t actually make them affordable.

So how about if the shitheads responsible for the new food non-pyramid and all those craptastic PSAs shut the fuck up and use the money to give folks the ability to actually buy healthy groceries or pay for an exercise activity. Not only would people eat better and be healthier, but since every dollar spent on food stamps actually puts a buck sixty-something back into the economy imagine the bump that small businesses would get if people could use a voucher to take a pilates or karate class?

But what the fuck do I know? I’m just your average poor person. The government’s only interest in me is using me as an example of what not to do to scare all the rest of y’all into behaving.

After I got my ultrasound back, I made a panicked (couple of) call(s) to my awesome doctor’s medical assistant. After reviewing the results, Awesome Doc asked MA to pass on that “No, (my fucked up) uterus would not make getting an IUD difficult, but here’s a couple of valium (because I was obviously freaked out about the whole thing)”.


Cut to Friday afternoon. Valium taken, legs in stirrups, scary pokey medical instruments jacking open my bits like they need a flat tire changed. And the doctor says “huhmm, there’s just no obvious path in there”. 


So my kinky uterus is, in fact, an impediment to getting an IUD. All hope is not lost, however. Next month I get to take a dose of misoprostol, one of the drugs used for medical abortions, the night before my appointment to open up my bits. Fun huh?

Bear with, cause it’s about to get rambly up in here.

I’ve heard, hell I’ve said, that what we need right now is an FDR, not a BHO. We need a new New Deal, a new WPA, a new social contract to break the strangle hold Big Money has on us in every single aspect of life. But if we look at things with a cold, hard, historical eye then we’d have to admit to ourselves that just having an FDR wouldn’t bring about the changes we desperately need.

We’ve all heard the Gandhi quote “Be the change you want to see in the world”. Sometimes that seems a bit trite when such powerful forces are using every effort to keep squashed. But if we think back to what kind of push back the elites were receiving when FDR was president, then we can see concrete examples of what be the change means.

FDR was able to get his progressive policies passed because in the world at the time there was a MASSIVE push from the underclass. There were socialists and communists and anarchists on every corner. There were strikes and pickets and rallies and speeches. There were average people making the elites afraid.

And the elites ONLY EVER ACT IN THEIR OWN BEST INTEREST. FDR could be a progressive capitalist because to the elites progressive capitalism was preferential to straight up socialism, or god forbid, communism and state seizure of property and capital. But, and this is a big, questionable but, part of the fear the elites were feeling was physical. I love Emma Goldman and all her big, bold ideas, but she was a proponent of actual physical violence.

It is long past time that us progressives started acting offensively instead responding defensively to the increasing levels of state violence. I’m not a pacifist, I do firmly believe in the right of people to defend themselves. But I also know that when we let revolution come at the hands of violent uprising, the philosophy of the winning elites may change in tone but the violent tools used to contain the populace do not change. And quite frankly I am tired of the prison industrial complex and the military industrial complex and economic blackmail of us peasantry. I don’t want those things to be part of my world anymore.

So how do we make the elites afraid enough to let change happen without becoming brutal hooligans? The first step is to strip the system of it’s veneer of legitimacy. Legitimacy is a huge part of political theory. It is the main tool used for distributing power, political and economic. Legitimacy has been established through the divine right of kings, or the brute force of military dictatorships, or through the simple act of voting. When we vote, we grant the political class legitimacy to govern us. For decades we’ve been told to vote based on defensive fear. Vote for one side of the binary or the other out of fear of what the other side will do if they win the horse race. But politics, like many things, is not a simple binary system. There are more, many many more, ways to distribute power and resources in a society than just Neoliberal and Neoconservative. By voting for the lesser evil, we guarantee a system that is still evil and we give that system legitimacy. We put our actual mark of legitimacy on things that we abhor. 

The first step to creating fear in the elites is to stop giving them legitimacy through elections. Vote for anyone other than a legacy party politician (even the so-called good ones) or don’t vote at all.  It doesn’t matter if you vote Green or Socialist or even for the damn Libertarians. Just don’t give either of the two big parties the legitimacy they need to keep stealing from us. Be the change by being the person who commits the single, radical act of not voting for your own demise.

Without that kind of change, the powers that be will continue to have the permission of the populace to squash and crush us. Without that kind of change, there is no mechanism for creating the fear that the elites need to allow positive change to happen. Not voting for evil is simple, cheap and non-violent. It doesn’t even require us to risk jail time for protesting. It can be done by just about every citizen (excluding, of course, those citizens and residents that the state has already decreed dangerous to the system by purging them from voting rolls). It was fear of lost legitimacy that made a rich man like Roosevelt the champion of the poor and disemployed. We have to put that same fear in the heart of every democrat and republican, every banker and insurance exec. Once they realize that we no longer consider them legitimate, change can happen. But not before then.

I started writing a BIG IMPORTANT(ish) POST about Roosevelt. But today is the day I get my bits cracked open with the jaws of life (speculum and cervix stabilizer) and I just can’t concentrate long enough to get it right. I”ll think about it while I’m in the stirrups, for sure.

Actually, I am freaking the fuck out about this little gynecological adventure. Yes, I’ve had a baby. Yes I’ve had worse procedures done. But the idea of anything pain creating near my bits makes me nauseous. The plus side is, if this works- no babies, no more awful week long communist invasions. These are the good things that have kept me from just canceling the appointment altogether.

So enjoy this song by the Black Keys. Yes the video is problematic in that it does that overplayed and BORING love triangle, boys fighting shit. But I like the song. There’s whistling!

I’ve been thinking about Obama and his “do nothing” stance on disemployment. I know that a lot of us lefties pine for a New Deal leader ala Mr. Roosevelt, but if he were around today FDR would probably do the same things Obama is doing.

What? Heresy! Sacrilege! Not our FDR!

We’ve got to remember a few things from history. When FDR was president, there was nearly 30 years of socialist/communist/anarchist organization. There were poor people who weren’t afraid of committing acts of political violence against the elites (then, as now, the elites have NO problem committing acts of political violence against the peasantry.) Whether you are the staunchest pacifist or not, that created a legitimate fear of violent upheaval in the minds of progressive capitalists like Roosevelt.

The elites have nothing to fear from us now. They’ve turned the most violent among us into tea partiers, basically kapos who keep us in line in exchange for tiny advantage from the ruling class.

There is one way to non-violently endow some fear into one section of the elites, the political class. That way is to not vote for them. Not for Democrats. Not for Republicans. Not even the “good” ones. Vote for anyone else, third parties- doesn’t matter which one. It’s the only chance we have at agenda setting, to break up the control of the legacy parties. It doesn’t even matter too much which 3rd party you pick. Make up a party called the Nose Pickers of America and run a giant nostril.

The elites don’t need us. Not as workers. Not as consumers. We are in their way with our little, base demands for things like food and shelter and jobs and healthcare and education. But they keep their veneer of legitimacy by allowing us to cast a vote every now and then. It’s like dating a guy (or girl) who says from the very beginning “I’m going to cheat on you and take your wallet” and every 4 years we take them back because they changed their shirt or hair color.