Most people, on some bone-deep level, want the juice without the squeeze. The biggest appeal of a cruise or an all-inclusive vacation is the brief illusion that money doesn\u2019t exist and your desires are accommodated by magic. There\u2019s always a breakfast buffet with an omelette station to erase the hangover from the endless drinks, there are fresh and saltwater options for swimming. Unfortunately, life necessitates work\u2014if you\u2019re not doing it, someone else is. The grocery shelves must stay stocked, the infrastructure maintained, the sick cared for. <\/p>
Part One<\/a> | Part Two<\/a> | Part Three<\/a><\/p> What I\u2019ve Been Reading This Week:<\/strong><\/p> A People\u2019s History of the United States <\/em>by Howard Zinn: \u201cRobber Barons and Rebels,\u201d \u201cThe Empire and the People,\u201d and \u201cThe Socialist Challenge\u201d<\/p> Four Hundred Souls<\/em> edited by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain: Part Eight (1899-1904)<\/p> An Indigenous People\u2019s History of the United States<\/em> by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz: \u201cSix: The Last of the Mohicans and Andrew Jackson\u2019s White Republic\u201d and \u201cSeven: Sea to Shining Sea\u201d<\/p> In the years between the Civil War and Reconstruction\u2014maybe the evilest, most racist period in U.S. history\u2014no one wanted to work. Sorry, no one rich<\/em> wanted to work. The people who were working? Well, they weren\u2019t people<\/em>, you see. <\/p> Did you know about Angelo Herndon, the Black antifascist communist in 1930s Atlanta, from whom the epigraph is taken? Let\u2019s quote Robin D.G. Kelley a minute: \u201cDuring the summer of 1930, about 150 Atlanta business leaders, American Legionnaires, and key figures in law enforcement founded the American Fascisti Association and Order of Black Shirts. Their goals were to \u2018foster the princeiples of white supremacy\u2019\u2026\u201d Jump back a few decades. Did you know police tore up train tickets to try to prevent Black people from leaving during the Great Migration? I assume you know about the Great Migration, it certainly wasn\u2019t taught in my <\/em>high school history classes. Black people wanted 1) to live and 2) jobs with dignity and paycheck. White people everywhere were pretty opposed to the former and also obsessed with the latter. Meanwhile, all those \u201cwe\u2019ll never move west of the Mississippi, Indigenous people, don\u2019t worry\u201d promises from the colonizers were proving to exactly as trustworthy as those \u201cwe\u2019ll never move west of the Appalachian mountains\u201d promises. <\/p> The second the U.S. government even thought<\/em> about acquiring California, it was looking towards Pacific and Asian markets. Markets<\/em>, specifically. These people\u2014and they are still with us today\u2014are only satisfied when they are rich, when every natural resource (including human capital) is being \u201cput to use.<\/em>\u201d Nothing can simply be<\/em>, things must be used<\/em>. In the immortal words of Frenchie from The Departed<\/em>, \u201cthis is America, if you don\u2019t make money, you\u2019re a fuckin douchebag.<\/a>\u201d Don\u2019t even get me started on President McKinley, up all night fully anxietizing because he doesn\u2019t \u201cknow what to do with the Philippines\u201d now that the US has \u201cacquired\u201d it from Spain. Don\u2019t let them be. No, the way only way William \u201cwhy wasn\u2019t I one of the ones who was assassinated before I could do anything\u201d McKinley could sleep that night was by deciding \u201cwe\u201d needed to \u201cuplift and Christianize\u201d a people who hadn\u2019t been bothering anyone. <\/p> Consent is manufactured by newspapers today, well, so it was back then. The uniting cry of anyone who wasn\u2019t already a millionaire was for life and dignity, but if you\u2019re only using newspapers as a primary source, you\u2019d think a whole nation both 1) knew where Cuba\/the Philippines were and 2) were absolutely frothy-mouthed over the potentialities of their lumber markets. Every opinion columnist some combination of Thomas Friedman and Ross Douthat.<\/p> Dunbar-Ortiz points out that the US colonization of California began from the Pacific Coast\u2014thumbs-on-the-scales war games for manifest destiny, sea to shining sea cheat codes. It\u2019s difficult, I think, for USians to picture the United States as anything other than this <\/em>shape, Mexico as anything other than that<\/em> shape. Possible that I\u2019m just stupid\u2014I distinctly remember being in high school, hearing \u201cmanifest destiny,\u201d and thinking, \u201cwell sure, we\u2019re\u2026[traces country]<\/em>.\u201d The profit motive, of course, was there. Yet Indigenous people\u2014the greatest keepers of the land the planet has ever seen\u2014had to be taught profit motive, had to be taught the \u201cvalue\u201d of incurring debt, so how manifest is capitalism? <\/p> We\u2019re in a new Gilded Age now, and both scientific racism and hyper-racism are BACK, baby. Similarly, a new labor movement is ascendant. Let\u2019s not leave POC out of the labor revolution this time, huh? Unless 2020 was a total mirage and people have already forgotten Trayvon Martin or Breonna Taylor (seems like a lot of people have, let\u2019s not), we\u2019re in the midst of a new Civil Rights movement. We\u2019re certainly<\/em> in the midst of a major Black intellectual movement. Do we get to decide if the future is a place of equity, dignity, and caring for each other? Or do the Elon Musks and Chris Rufos and Hamish McKenzies get to decide our future? <\/p> LINKS!<\/strong><\/p> Something to listen to? Look, I\u2019m not gonna lie. I read seven chapters of Howard Zinn this week. Those are long chapters! And that\u2019s not even the only book I\u2019m reading! So it\u2019s all YouTube clips this week. First up, I can\u2019t stop watching the Anderson .Paak TinyDesk. Stay til the end to learn how classy of a joint NPR is.<\/p>![\"A](\"https:\/\/substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com\/public\/images\/ae4f1123-c8de-4af6-891a-5359e842a040.heic\")
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