We are so back!

Trolls 2: A movie about Goblins.

Sorry (not sorry), Chase, but you’re a bastard.

“WWRBGD?”

What is, stubbornly cling onto her position of power and die after a Republican was sworn into office, giving them a free seat to fill with another rabid conservative?

I mean that shit is legitimately funny. Personally, I don’t care that much that these people are using the current fad* to (potentially) destroy the business model Adobe popularized. The real questions are this:

• Is this project even maintainable?
• will a community of maintainers even exist long term?

Damn that sounds cool!

You should look into reading the book Health Communism, I’m currently working through it, but the argument in so many words presented by the authors is, “Yes”, but likely not for the reasons you think.

The “welfare” state is something that arises through the contradiction between capitalism and health itself. Health under capitalism acts as capitalism’s host, but because of that fact, health takes on the important characteristic as capitalism’s key vulnerability. In order for there to be productivity, capitalism needs to identify and maintain productive bodies, and in the same breath, claims that doing so is in no way a requirement under capitalism. This contradiction explains why health systems both new and yet-to-be implemented under capitalism are so desperately attacked.

Health, according to the authors, has no fixed meaning; it is fluid. They describe it as a “race/class-stratified matrix” defined by artificial scarcity and negation; non-cancerous, non-disabled, etc. The capitalist definition of health ultimately is one where a person must be productive, normative, and able to buy health. They draw on the works of the Socialist Patient’s Collective (SPK), who described “Health” to be a purely ideological ideal, a “biological, fascist fantasy” that conceals the social conditions of illness. The goal of the book is to reclaim the notion of Health from this fantasy, under the concept they call Health Communism.

They argue that Health under capitalism is used to divide populations. Capitalism separates people into deserving and undeserving lots. Separate workers from the “surplus” (those who have been biologically certified unfit to work). This surplus population then becomes marked for “extractive abandonment”, then framed as eugenic or debt burdens to gut and block reforms. They argue that to abolish capitalism, we must shatter the worker/surplus binary, and center the surplus population in our struggle. Health Communism then becomes a goal where people are not simply provided the care they need (since, “need” is often decided by the welfare state), to all care for all people. It must go beyond equitable redistribution or state-provided “socialized medicine” inside of capitalism. They argue for an internationalist, anti-austerity, anti-border, approach that demands a radical abundance of care.

As others have pointed out, socialized medicine within capitalism is insufficient. The NHS, Canadian Medicare, etc. remain capitalist and imperialist systems. They do not exist as “islands of socialism” within capitalism. For this reason, they state that Medicare for All is not enough by itself and that health insurance companies are not in the business of providing care but instead simply financial risk-management institutions with no place in society.

They go on to define health as broader than simply healthcare. Housing, clean air, water, sanitation, social supports, in-home aid, and a livable planet are all healthcare, alongside traditional care. These European-style social democracies are the shining example of the limitations of healthcare under capitalism. They support themselves through imperialism, gatekeep care through the debt/waste frame, divide the proletariate into “productive” and “unproductive” masses, and use these tools of clasification as means of labor discipline. The threat of becoming “unproductive” looms over us all.

There have been countless stories in the past few years that highlight these points. In the UK, Jodey Whiting was housebound with chronic pain when the DWP judged her “fit to work” and stopped her benefits; she took her life two weeks later, and a coroner ruled the wrongful withdrawal was “the trigger.” Errol Graham starved to death eight months after his disability benefits were stopped. Philippa Day was found dead with a letter beside her refusing her a home assessment visit. Laura Winham lay dead in her flat for three years after her benefits were cut off. Academic research has linked the work capability assessment to 590 suicides in a single three-year period. These are not anomalies. They are the predictable output of a system that recertifies the surplus as “capable” to make good on its promise to eliminate “waste” and cut down on “debt”. The “waste” that they eliminate, quite literally, are people.

The current incarnation of healthcare under capitalism is obviously insufficient. We should not be championing its destruction, by following the lead of rightists hellbent on subsuming the entire system into private hands. However, I also cannot say that the system that should replace it would look anything like the systems that exist today. We’re talking about a system where people simply get cared for; no questions asked, no qualifications necessary, no need to be certified as needing that care. We need a more radical demand, one where “we are not basing the value of human life on one’s willingness or ability to be productive within the current political economy.”

I finally convinced the medical system I should be on a GLP-1. I’ve already dropped like 5lbs in like two weeks after stalling at 214 for almost 6 months on the other medication I was on. No real side effects yet. I go up in dose this week, so we’ll see how that goes. My liver needs this shit. I’m also happy that the person I’m working with now isn’t pressuring me about working out after explaining how limited my time/space is. They also seemed to have more access to my medical records from my GP then they did previously, which cuts down on my least favorite health-care related activity, phone tag and information relay.

I have been reading Health Communism; it’s good; people should read it.

I gotta say, I’m feeling the squeeze on the schedule more and more since the end of summer vacation. It’s enough to make a person batty. This stuff will resolve at some point, but right now, I’m cooked.

Yeah, the film follows the boy from the story; he lives in a little town where the air is bad and everyone buys air from some dude who sells clean air. He is a rebellious child who wants to escape the bubble they live in, and eventually finds himself in the waste where the Once-ler lives. The Once-ler tells him the story of how the land got that way, and it’s very humanizing to the Once-ler. The Once-ler gives the kid the seed, which can grow and provide clean air for everyone to enjoy, which obviously the bad capitalist hates. So the bad capitalist attempts to destory the seed, capture the kid, you know, cartoony shit, to try to maintain his monoploy on the air. Eventually the kid rallies the town to his cause; they capture the bad capitalist, pant the seed, and through a brief time jump we see that the forest is slowly re-growing, the Once-ler is out helping tend the trees, and the Lorax comes back and is happy to see his friend.

It fucking sucks.

Lol but Obama will be campaigning with El-Sayed now.

Did techbro just invent libraries from first principles?

The movie is WAY too fucking soft on the Once-ler and humanizes him in ways that the book never did. It really ruins the whole thing, because it creates a bypolar message that if you just don’t listen to the corrupting influences (the Once-ler extended family), then maybe none of this would have happened to begin with. Making a movie out of The Lorax is a hard task and should probably prompt the question “Should we make a movie out of The Lorax?” But hey, business is business, you know? The book is very critical of the nature of business; it’s very explicit that the Once-ler isn’t concerned about the impact he’s causing until everything is burned to the ground and he’s lived in the waste. The movie pitches the Once-ler as a plucky runt, a black sheep of the family, a entrepid entrapanuer who is just trying to get his idea into the world. All he wants to do, his only motivation in the movie, is to prove his family wrong, and show that he can actually amount to something. In the end, it’s his family that inspires his greed. He betrays the Lorax to retain the love and adoration of his mother, brothers, and uncle, only to lose it anyway when the cash flow dries up. He’s become fully sympathetic, and the thing he is most sad about is breaking his promise to the Lorax.

When you contrast him against the other villain in the film, the person selling people air, he doesn’t seem so bad at all. I mean, he just wanted to sell a nice sweater and was caught up with interpersonal drama, and that’s the only reason he cut down all the trees. Not because businesses must grow, not because business inherently demands a shortsighted perspective. The book has a strong message: This is what businesses do, and unless someone speaks for the trees, this is going to happen over and over again. It causes so much damage that even the capitalists can’t ultimately escape. The movie, however, is different. The movie tells us that some capitalists are just plucky little guys who could do the right thing and sometimes don’t, who try to make good or useful things even though it might have harm to the environment, while others only exist to exploit you and the things you need to live. The reality is that all capitalists exploit the things you need to live because man does not exist outside of nature.

Congratulations!

But also, its giving:

I think “fitness” is fine here, and if anything is working in favor of the left more than people think it is. In this context, “fitness” relates back to the biological understanding of “fitness” but through the “social Darwinist” lens. They are taking “fitness” in this way and using it as a vehicle to critique eugenic thinking that is baked into capitalist society. The idea that people who rise the ranks of the capitalist ladder are simply the winners of the “survival of the fittest” game of capitalist life.

People who hold these brain worms or otherwise do not understand the biological concept of “fitness” and its misapplication by supporters of eugenics to human society will find themselves in the trap that’s being discussed in this video.

This is why I think using it is good, because there are people on “the left” who still hold onto eugenic thinking and still hold onto anti-natalist thinking (which is a form of eugenic thinking), who need to have these ideas confronted. Right-wingers are going to attach themselves to this regardless of how you self-police your language because they already believe disabled people should be culled anyway. If they had used the phrase “compatibility with capitalism” or something else, it would likely sidestep or weaken the critique of eugenics that they are trying to build.

It’s usage has exposed people on “the left” in ways that should be confronted, in their uncritical view of who is reporting this “outrage” and for their latent eugenic thinking.