Aug 19, 2023·edited Aug 20, 2023Liked by Freddie deBoer
I reciprocate your Mitski video with this newest song from her: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WW7cuAm-7Y I am embarrassed at how obsessed I am with this song--as if I am a star-struck, angsty Gen Zer instead of a staid mid-50s professor.
Enjoyed the excerpt, looking forward to the book in a couple weeks. Much as I enjoy various blogs and webfics, it's been far too long since I read an Actual Real Book. Time to Get Serious again.
It's also personally interesting for me as a sort of...anthology of The Year(s) That Was. 2020 was the year I finally weaned myself off WaPo, NYT, and their ilk. Despite living through those times - I'll never forget what it was like working through the panic-buying times as a grocery grunt, it almost made the GFC doldrums seem appealing - it's been remarkable discovering how little I actually understood contemporaneous events. Shockingly, it turns out that consuming exclusively establishment-approved media gives one a jaundiced view of history. (Class lens? What's that?) Glad to finally catch up and make a little more sense of what my lying eyes kept telling me all those years.
Enjoyed the excerpt, looking forward to the book in a couple weeks. Much as I enjoy various blogs and webfics, it's been far too long since I read an Actual Real Book. Time to Get Serious again.
It's also personally interesting for me as a sort of...anthology of The Year(s) That Was. 2020 was the year I finally weaned myself off WaPo, NYT, and their ilk. Despite living through those times - I'll never forget what it was like working through the panic-buying times as a grocery grunt, it almost made the GFC doldrums seem appealing - it's been remarkable discovering how little I actually understood contemporaneous events. Shockingly, it turns out that consuming exclusively establishment-approved media gives one a jaundiced view of history. (Class lens? What's that?) Glad to finally catch up and make a little more sense of what my lying eyes kept telling me all those years.
Oh cool. I thought I had somehow missed the Chauvin winner-post. Looking forward to it.
I reciprocate your Mitski video with this newest song from her: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WW7cuAm-7Y I am embarrassed at how obsessed I am with this song--as if I am a star-struck, angsty Gen Zer instead of a staid mid-50s professor.
Enjoyed the excerpt, looking forward to the book in a couple weeks. Much as I enjoy various blogs and webfics, it's been far too long since I read an Actual Real Book. Time to Get Serious again.
It's also personally interesting for me as a sort of...anthology of The Year(s) That Was. 2020 was the year I finally weaned myself off WaPo, NYT, and their ilk. Despite living through those times - I'll never forget what it was like working through the panic-buying times as a grocery grunt, it almost made the GFC doldrums seem appealing - it's been remarkable discovering how little I actually understood contemporaneous events. Shockingly, it turns out that consuming exclusively establishment-approved media gives one a jaundiced view of history. (Class lens? What's that?) Glad to finally catch up and make a little more sense of what my lying eyes kept telling me all those years.
Enjoyed the excerpt, looking forward to the book in a couple weeks. Much as I enjoy various blogs and webfics, it's been far too long since I read an Actual Real Book. Time to Get Serious again.
It's also personally interesting for me as a sort of...anthology of The Year(s) That Was. 2020 was the year I finally weaned myself off WaPo, NYT, and their ilk. Despite living through those times - I'll never forget what it was like working through the panic-buying times as a grocery grunt, it almost made the GFC doldrums seem appealing - it's been remarkable discovering how little I actually understood contemporaneous events. Shockingly, it turns out that consuming exclusively establishment-approved media gives one a jaundiced view of history. (Class lens? What's that?) Glad to finally catch up and make a little more sense of what my lying eyes kept telling me all those years.
Now if you want higher wages, let me tell you what to do
You gotta talk to the workers in the shop with you
You gotta build you a union, gotta make it strong
But if you all stick together, boys, it won’t be long-
You'll get shorter hours
Better working conditions
Vacations with pay, take your kid to the seashore
Now it ain’t quite this simple, so I’d better explain
Why you got to ride on the union train
Because if you wait for the boss man to raise your pay
We'll all be waiting 'til Judgment Day-
You’ll all be buried
Gone to Heaven
Saint Peter will be the straw boss then
Now, you know you're underpaid but the boss says you ain't
And he speeds up the work 'til you're about to faint
You may be down and out, but you ain't beaten
You can pass out a leaflet, call a meetin'-
Talk it over
Speak your mind
Decide to do something about it
Of course, the boss may persuade some poor damn fool
To go to your meeting and act like a stool
But you can always tell a stool, though, and that's a fact
He's got a yellow streak running down his back-
He doesn't have to stool
He'll always get along
On what he takes out of blind men's cups
So you got a union now, and you're sittin' pretty
Put some of the boys on the steering committee
The boss won't listen if one guy squawks
But he's got to listen if the union talks, he’d better-
It’d be mighty lonely
If everybody decided to walk out on him
Suppose he's working you so hard that it's just outrageous
And he’s paying you all starvation wages
You go to the boss, and the boss would yell
"Before I'd raise your pay I'd see you all in Hell"
Well, he's puffing a big cigar, feeling mighty slick
Thinks he's got your union licked
But he looks out the window, and what does he see
But a thousand pickets, and they all agree-
He's a bastard
Unfair!
Slave driver
Bet he beats his wife
Now, boys, you've come to the hardest time, the boss will try to bust your picket line
They'll call out the police, the National Guard
They’ll tell you it's a crime to have a union card
They'll raid your meeting, they’ll hit you on the head
They’ll call every one of you a damn Red-
Unpatriotic
Moscow agents
Sabotaging national security
Well out in Detroit here's what they found
Out in Frisco here's what they found
Down in Bethlehem here's what they found
Out in Pittsburgh here's what they found-
That if you don't let red-baiting break you up
If you don't let stool pigeons break you up
If you don't let vigilantes break you up
And if you don't let race hatred break you up-
You'll win!
What I mean is, you know, take it easy! But take it!
Would love to see a similar research in adhd and TikTok.
>What we “center” in our political campaigns is a matter of outcomes, not a matter of morals.
I don't see the difference. Your morals are the outcomes you work for -- nothing else.