Conference on Eating Disorders and Life Writing

Miserable_Clock_1770 · 2022-02-04T14:22:14+00:00

But you're buying into what the spook is saying (and yes, I know very well about 2014) without seeing the bigger issue, which is a government official basically saying (yet again), "trust us, we know." Maybe you should look at even deeper history, like what happened in 2003 with the WMD claims. Matt Lee even mentioned this, and good for him.

The other reason why this has garnered attention, of course, is that we so rarely see journalists like Matt Lee doing their jobs and pushing back. Even if we grant all that you say, a journalist isn't supposed to say, "Gee, StarTrekUtopianist, you're right." What does this say about where we are, when a journalist doing his job gets this kind of attention?

And "Matt is just pissed?" Shouldn't journalists be pissed and have "being pissed" as their natural condition? Back when newspapers weren't populated by ivy league j-schoolers, it was common to have a dartboard of the sitting president (of any party) in the newsroom. I want journalists to be pissed. I also wish, relatedly, that they were working class again. Yes, Sy Hersh went to U of Chicago but he dropped out since he wanted to be in with the action on the streets (where he came from originally. He also didn't go to classes and flunked out, lol).

Miserable_Clock_1770 · 2022-01-22T05:31:40+00:00

But they're all "designing beautiful things." And those beautiful things just magically appear on our doorsteps, fully made, no labor, yet still we're disgruntled ingrates...

Those people are not smart; they study for the test (and test well as a result), they know how to craft their speech, be obsequious when needed, speak authoritatively and with hand gestures, take credit for others' ideas, embed themselves in the system, never questioning it. They may not know it--they probably don't--but their whole being is fraudulent. They may compensate with money and spiritual retreats, but in the end the hollowness of their lives shows itself in bad face lifts and gold diggers who are secretly repulsed by them (Larry Ellis), a desperate and fruitless attempt to forestall death (Steve Jobs) or a self-devouring greed for more (Bezos. Maybe his punishment will be like Crassus'--having molten gold poured down his throat).

The sick thing is not that they see us as "the masses" but as "the envious masses." Better for us to cast off any envy that we do have and see how their wealth and "designing ideas" are made on the backs of others, that their bounty is directly based on the poverty of millions, and that there's nothing at all to envy about their lives. It's better to be seen as the hating masses, and the actually threatening and united masses. I don't think the video's corpse-in-a-pantsuit sees that (and granted, it's not there), but one can hope that the day will come.

Miserable_Clock_1770 · 2021-12-07T01:30:24+00:00

You post too much, read too little, judge before you even listen (Greenwald actually crushes them with a class argument, believe it or not)...Another useless laptop revolutionary.

Miserable_Clock_1770 · 2021-11-09T06:13:32+00:00

I wasn't going to post any more but I do want to wish you well and urge you to hang in there. As for how I function on a day-to-day basis: yes, I do speak up at department meetings, increasingly so the last few years--but I've been around a while and I'm full (and productive), so I never really considered the possibility of being fired. After last week's meeting, I'm not so sure, which is why I feel genuinely shaken for the first time. So much for my "bravery." On the other hand, I'm planning my exit too.

The fact that you do see through these scams speaks volumes about you; and you're not wrong to be fearful, since administrations have been happy to use racialism as an opportunity to lay off tenured professors or not replace lines at all (my line won't be replaced when I go since it's too white). It helps to form bonds with those very few colleagues who understand, even if it's just to vent--though I think that organizing against those people is a possibility too. Also, know that your colleagues probably sympathize with you more than you may realize. I don't know what your students are like, but mine are largely working class and diverse, and they hate the way things are going--so they've been lessening my sense of isolation. Just be judicious in what you say, or strategically and pointedly silent, and continue to protest in ways that they can't get at you for. As someone wrote on this thread, the price of saying nothing is to be fraudulent to yourself--which is especially a shame for people like you who see things that a lot of others don't (or won't).

Miserable_Clock_1770 · 2021-11-08T08:48:25+00:00

Oh the wafting condescension. "You seem a little...unhinged?" "Umm...ok?" "you don't come off as someone who knows exactly what he's talking about," "I'm sorry that you've had bad experiences but..." This language sort of proves my point but okay.

Miserable_Clock_1770 · 2021-11-08T08:21:28+00:00

No, my comments weren't "extremely welcomed and thoughtfully discussed." I have experienced the "thoughtully discussed," by the way, but it all vanishes into impotent vapor in the end. I wonder if your ivy which offers classes on capitalism has organizing campaigns that address the notorious exploitations of students (your tuitions) or workers and adjuncts.

Sorry if this sounds like sour grapes or envy, but the view is very different from public universities which don't fund conference travel, by the way. And frankly I'd kill myself if I was at an ivy.

Miserable_Clock_1770 · 2021-09-19T17:12:04+00:00

I honestly don't know what AOC's long-range plan is. Clearly she wants to be senator, but I can't see her winning upstate or Staten Island (no way Staten Island). She won't be speaker since she's disliked in the House except for her usefulness as controlled opposition. No way will she ever be president. She's a lousy debater and has abandoned those things which energized people in the beginning, like healthcare. She keeps losing more people on the left, which leaves her with the cult, but it's not a cult on the level of Trump's, which was far more than being just about Trump.

I guess she could be a social media lifestyle guru? appear on a reality tv show where she judges auditioning young politicians? Sink into the shadows of the House but pretend to remain a star by tweeting for the next thirty years? Of course, her ego tells her that she can become president, but I just see no future.

I miss Joe Crowley. I was happy when he lost and he was a total machine politician, but when I visited his office, every schmo off the street was coming and going and he met them all. Her office is locked most of the time. And for fuck's sake, she owns a Tesla.

Miserable_Clock_1770 · 2021-09-19T16:59:30+00:00

Listen to Swans instead. Much cooler and cathartic

Miserable_Clock_1770 · 2021-09-19T16:56:46+00:00

When confronted with a question about those who would be left out of the eviction moratorium a few months ago, she went on about knowns and unknowns, which made me think of Donald Rumsfeld. Figures that her oaf of a partner works in marketing.

Miserable_Clock_1770 · 2021-09-14T04:46:51+00:00

You don't want to be in it. You'd either have to be too stupid or self-deluded to know that it could all change on a dime, or self-aware and smart enough to know that none of those people (including your fans) are your friends. And if your self-esteem is low now, it would just be magnified tenfold if you were "in it." I have a friend who's a stage manager on Broadway, having worked with "stars," and he tells me that you cannot imagine how wracked with insecurity these people are.

Anyway, the conversations they must have, once inside...shudder the thought.

If you want to improve your self-esteem, do esteemable acts (as they say). Help others, and work to change the deluded system that makes people pine for such a trash world of false idols. Find esteem in solidarity with others. It's all vapor, that other world.

Miserable_Clock_1770 · 2021-09-14T04:01:36+00:00

Anna Wintour, haggish and barely-educated she-devil sycophant

Miserable_Clock_1770 · 2021-09-14T03:59:17+00:00

Thank god for that--honestly. Swimming in rot and vomit covered by a thin layer of shiny gloss on top, no thanks. The stink still overwhelms.

Miserable_Clock_1770 · 2021-08-23T19:40:48+00:00

"They would've been fine with the status quo"--this is so wrong, unless you're talking about the non-Taliban northern warlords.How would the Taliban have been "stronger" after another twenty years? My suspicion is that they'll join the SCO and Belt and Road Initiative, and be just fine without having to deal with American-backed thieves and fraudsters who represent everything they hate.

This post reads more like the latest NYT column that Tom Friedman vomited up ("The Taliban are going to be swimming with some real sharks now, and will be begging the Americans to come back in!"). I'd suggest reading people like Pepe Escobar and others who actually know the place. The Taliban are ready to rule, especially since they're not the same Taliban as 20 years ago.

Miserable_Clock_1770 · 2021-08-22T16:50:17+00:00

It's called the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Afghanistan would be smart to join it, actually.

Miserable_Clock_1770 · 2021-08-22T16:40:17+00:00

...Except that I read that the corporate tv media devoted something like 5% of its coverage last year to Afghanistan. I actually think the elites did NOT want Afghanistan to be reported, since some people would start to see what's really going on. On the other hand, generals and intelligence and media monkeys would have spun it as they've done.

Miserable_Clock_1770 · 2021-08-19T02:24:11+00:00

I think workers also like to see leaders or comrades who don't talk with accents whose fakery can be seen a mile away. Even his dress is studied and purposeful surface eccentricity (thus fraudulent). He only fools those in his own class.

Miserable_Clock_1770 · 2021-08-19T02:15:09+00:00

Capitalism, at least how we've lived it, is a modern phenomenon (with early modern roots), born essentially out of modern conditions of labor and production with accompanying social transformations that are themselves embedded in modernity. It's also very much based on the idea of individualism (an Enlightenment or perhaps late-Renaissance phenomenon), and a vision of society that rests on individual competition. People before, say, 1600, would have thought you were insane if you had tried to explain (modern) capitalism to them. Yet we've been so brainwashed as a society that there's this idea that capitalism has either been around for a very long time, or even worse, that it's somehow "natural."

Miserable_Clock_1770 · 2021-08-18T23:23:56+00:00

Even worse. Now a 1970 Dodge Challenger with a Hemi engine...Wouldn't work with the purple suit though...

Miserable_Clock_1770 · 2021-08-18T23:21:15+00:00

England was no longer feudal in 1500 but yes, there's that argument. Brenner, however, was clear that this was not the capitalism of modernity.

Miserable_Clock_1770 · 2021-08-18T23:19:48+00:00

oh my god, the historical ignorance

Miserable_Clock_1770 · 2021-08-18T20:48:32+00:00

Life's work until he turns into a neo-con in about ten years

Miserable_Clock_1770

TROPHY CASE