Author: Alan Buddug

There was a recent yearly media event wherein the culture of celebrity doubles and even triples down on itself creating a feedback loop of vapid, self-congratulatory bullshit that people who are into that kind of thing cannot help but watch. I’m talking about the Oscars. At said celebrity event, a wealthy celebrity smacked another wealthy celebrity in the face in response to an insulting joke aimed at the smacker’s spouse. This insult-and-smacking event wasn’t interesting or important as far as I can tell, and yet it’s basically half of what the internet was talking about yesterday; however, it did reveal some interesting things about the audience.

Some of the audience found it funny (based on the standards of comedy that Hollywood created, it was legitimately funny). Some thought it tarnished something that they believed was noble and good… because they have no perspective. Many, though, thought that the slap, specifically, was basically a war crime and, you know, how dare he use violence. The slap-as-war-crime contingent is shocked — shocked! — that such a pleasant, well-mannered fellow could do something so barbaric. Perhaps I can help you broaden your perspective a bit.

First off, I’m certainly glad that Mr. Rock was not injured. That’s a good thing, and we should always accentuate the positive. He definitely didn’t deserve to be injured. You may not appreciate that a slap isn’t that big a deal in relation to the full range of possible violence that Mr. Smith could have applied to Mr. Rock, so let me explain. Mr. Smith could have chosen to punch him (instead of just the slap). After punching him, Mr. Smith could have chosen to continue applying violence to Mr. Rock and before security could have intervened, Mr. Rock could have had some very serious injuries; it’s entirely possible that he could have died. Mr. Smith could have used a weapon; that would have changed things a bit. Thankfully, Mr. Smith didn’t do any of those things because…

Mr. Smith was never out of control. He was not experiencing a rage blackout. He evaluated the situation, and used his intellect to decide on the best course of action (in his opinion), which he then executed. This narrative that a person using violence has somehow lost the use of their faculties is a destructive one that takes the blame off the person who chose violence and makes it seem like it was inevitable. Even someone who is drunk and very angry is making decisions about whether or not to use violence and what type of violence to use. I’m not saying that Mr. Smith made the best decision, but he did make a decision. For evidence, I will point out to you that he executed the slap perfectly; as I noted before, Mr. Rock was not injured at all. For contrast, I present this unfortunate Nazi (that’s a brain injury you’re seeing there).

In terms of whether the smack was the correct response, I don’t have an opinion about this. I don’t feel like this is any of my business, and it also isn’t important, but let me refer you to this Tumblr thread for some very nice illumination and nuance. However, I will say that some jokes do deserve a smack upside the head, and if you don’t think a joke ever deserves something like that, well, Ben Shapiro agrees with you, so that’s the boat you’re in.

But moving on: Hollywood promotes violence. Every day, all the time. They glorify it. Constantly. You’d be challenged to find a single person in that audience that has never worked on a project that included a representation of violence as a valid solution to a problem. Moreover, the relative wealth and security that everyone in that audience and everyone in the TV audience enjoys is underpinned with violence, most of which is not ethical. Maybe, 90% of those two audiences have never “resorted” to violence in person, but they’re still responsible for the violence done to benefit them. These are the “violence is never the answer” but also “hire more cops to combat poverty” people.

I don’t have much respect for the career of “actor” but I also don’t think they should have to sit around debasing one another for our entertainment. Do you want to observe celebrities insulting one another? Is that your idea of a good time? Could this event — The Slappening — result in hosts for vapid awards shows improving their behavior including perhaps coming up with some actual jokes that are genuinely entertaining and not just cruel? Wouldn’t that be a good thing? I’m not saying that Mr. Rock should be canceled; I think he’s already considering coming up with some better material and that he’s going to rise to the occasion and become a better entertainer as a result of being slapped. It’s almost like the slap — which, again, did not injure Mr. Rock — might, in the long term, improve him as a person, and even make our whole society better. Not that I’m advocating violence.

In today’s English, a Luddite is someone who hates technology, especially whatever the the current version is. History treats them as a foolish cult that destroyed industrial machinery because they thought it was a tool of the devil or something. In truth, though, the Luddites were not just reasonable, but correct.

Advances in technology quite often reduce the amount of work required. In a society focused on bettering the lot of humanity, that would mean that everyone benefits from the technology. In contrast, a dystopia like our current society leverages labor-saving devices to eliminate paid positions, and then those workers are simply without an income. If you’re living in a dystopia like ours, and they come out with a new labor-saving device, that device is your enemy by proxy because your enemies are going to use it to harm you.

The Industrial Revolution was between around 1733 and 1913, and was basically when western society went through a major shift from an agrarian economy to an industrial economy with mass production. Mass production meant that many kinds of jobs that had previously required a skilled worker could be done by anyone, and that meant the pay for those jobs dropped dramatically. The Luddites were workers who destroyed cotton and woolen mills between 1811 and 1816; the didn’t do it because they hated technology, but because this specific technology was being leveraged by capitalists to make them poorer; they were skilled tradespeople who were being destroyed economically by this new technology. The Luddites were right, but capitalist propaganda succeeded and now most people believe they were fools who were afraid of technology.

What began in the Industrial Revolution has continued since then, and now, even skilled workers like medical doctors might eventually be replaced by automated systems. Doctoring will probably still be a safe career for a while, but truck drivers are about to get flushed down the toilet of history thanks to a recent change in the regulations regarding automobiles by the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Those changes now officially allow for a vehicle operating on US roads to lack any kind of direct controls for a human driver. What was once the most common job in 29 of the 50 states will eventually dwindle until it is almost unheard of to have that job, but the initial effect of this change might happen very soon (i.e., in the next few years) as the drop in demand for truck drivers pushes down wages for all of them. For details on this particular change, please see this video by Transport Evolved.

In addition to automating delivery vehicles, fleets of stocking robots are now going into service. Add a few robotic forklifts into the mix and now your self-checkout retail store has eliminated 95% of human workers. You’re down to just the security contractor, the repair contractors, and maybe a few onsite human managers.

Walmart is leading the way in automating retail (and eliminating retail employees), yet Walmart is also employs more people than any other company in America. Amazon is on track to overtake Walmart; it, too, is working toward automating everything. How will America keep buying stuff from Walmart and Amazon if everyone is losing their jobs to automation? Something will have to change. Either people will force the wealthy to allow them to exist (e.g., through some kind of Universal Basic Income or perhaps a series of welfare programs) or the wealthy will decide to abandon capitalism and directly control resources through force (and leave most of humanity to die). There’s certainly a third option (democracy), and though it isn’t very popular, it is the one we recommend. Will working-class Americans every be able to clear their heads of the misinformation flooding their world and see that a better world is possible? It seems like the answer is “no” and we’re running out of time.

The government can do very little about gas prices. If you don’t believe me, please believe this pro-capitalism financial journalist’s opinion:

Related: What Democrats don’t get about gas prices by Rick Newman

Please note that when he says “the left” he means Democrats, who are not the left.

Here are a few facts:

1. Oil companies don’t really control the price of oil. Oil is a publicly-traded commodity, so “the market” controls the price. Realistically, they can only choose to sell or not. That isn’t really what you’d normally think of as “control”.
2. The market is all about what investors believe to be true — not the facts — and the investors are out of touch with reality, their heads are completely up their own asses.
3. The oil market and gasoline market are separate entities, so the price of one doesn’t necessarily have a rational relationship to the price of the other. Even if they were directly related to each other, making gasoline out of oil takes time so we shouldn’t expect a drop in the price of oil to instantly drop the price of gasoline.
4. Only about 1/4 of US-produced oil comes from government-controlled land.
5. There is no “US oil” because oil is extracted by multinational companies that sell it on the global market. Just because oil is extracted in the US doesn’t mean it stays here; just because oil is extracted somewhere else doesn’t mean it can’t be sold in the US.
6. The US military is the largest institutional consumer of oil in the world (probably mostly in the form of diesel and jet fuel). Shut it down and watch the price of oil drop dramatically.
7. Our irrational addiction to fossil fuels is going to kill us all.

Yes, the Democrats are desperate to get the price of gasoline down before the mid-term elections, and yes, the voters (who are incredibly uninformed and irrational) will definitely punish them for high gasoline prices. Yet, there’s really very little they can do about it… except to create the impression that they’re doing everything they can.

Per usual, it is pretty hard to tell whether the Democrats know that burning fossil fuels is bad and that they have very little control over the price of gasoline (and are just playing six-dimensional chess for the sole purpose of maintaining power), or whether they are, in fact, idiots. I suppose it could be both.

Edit: A club member reminded me that I must always state the obvious, so here it is: If the United States wanted to stabilize the oil and gasoline supply for the sake of the American people, it could simply nationalize its oil. Once nationalized, oil and gasoline prices could be whatever we want them to be, but more importantly, those resources could more easily be phased out for other options that are more economical, strategic and sustainable. Neither political party is interested in pursuing that option; when I say that there’s nothing the Democrats can do, I mean within the confines of this two-party system. If we think outside that box, nationalizing oil would be the obvious solution.

When a narcissism looks at you and tries to imagine what you want as a person, they will quite often think that the one thing you’d most like to be doing is serving them. I mean, what else would be more fulfilling to you, right?

So, when the Biden administration read a study about how psychologically damaging long-term unemployment is, they just assumed this had nothing to do with the stress of wondering if you’ll be able to survive and instead decided that it must be because you just really need to be out there serving the needs of assholes like them, and it certainly didn’t occur to them that the link between “employment” and “having money” is completely artificial. For reference, see this tweet:

According to Biden, the pain of long-term unemployment is worse than the impact of losing a family member. And that’s why it was so important to force everyone back to work in a raging pandemic and risk many hundreds of thousands of dead family members.https://t.co/snKX2F1fIy pic.twitter.com/hyCJjxxGnW

— wsbgnl (@wsbgnl) March 15, 2022

Unfortunately, this puts us in a place of nitpicking over what words mean. “Employment” specifically means working for an employer, and almost no one wants this; almost no one wants to be “employed”. We do want to “work” but on things that we feel are important, not what some assholes with their heads fully up their own asses think is important. We end up being employed, though, because the only way to get money most of the time is to be employed, and without money, we’re going to die. Wealthy people don’t have to be employed (by virtue of the fact that they are wealthy) so they never choose to be employed (sometimes they’re employed in name, but not really employed in the sense of having to do what someone else wants them to do).

The facts back up this perspective. When people don’t have to work, they do, in fact, do work — just not the shitty work that wealthy people would like them to be doing. The alternate perspective — that the only way to get people to work is to threaten them with death — has been firmly disproven.

To be fair, maybe the Biden administration is simply lying when it says that it made everyone go back to work in order to save us psychological trauma. Maybe it really just wanted to get the metaphorical firehose of money spraying in the faces of the ultra-rich back up to pressure. In either case, the Biden administration are horrible, shitty people, and that is reflected in how they allocate money, as illustrated by this recent speech that Joe Biden made at the National League of Cities Congressional City Conference (referenced in the above tweet).

We love you, Mr. Biden!

some sucker, or possibly a plant, at Joe Biden’s speech at the National League of Cities Congressional City Conference. How creepy is it that the decided to add this to the transcript?

The police think they are the good guys, and that the left, generally, are not just the bad guys, but literally Satanists (based on the fact that Soviet communism was anti-religion). Nevermind that there’s no correlation between being a good person and adherence to any major world religion, but imagine that if your worldview were so insane that you believed the mutual aid and community defense organizations in your area were literally the epitome of evil. You might be willing to do some really unethical things to destroy them.

Here are just a few of the things cops have done to attack the left:

• In the US, an FBI agent infiltrated an indigenous anti-pipeline group and gave the activist he was dating a gun. They later arrested her claiming she shot at police.
• In Britain, undercover cops were encourage to have sex with activists, presumably to help gain their trust. Undercover officers ‘encouraged to sleep with activists’ (BBC)
• In two other cases, the two different infiltrators actually went so far as to have children with their targets, then ghosted them.
• In fact, British police spies have been infiltrating left-wing groups for decades; the same goes for the US. See “COINTELPRO“.
• In the US, an FBI informant entrapped an environmental activist by encouraging him to behaving conspiratorially in the hope of romantic fulfillment.

Let me just emphasize that these are just a few examples of constant attacks from the police against organizers. Police routinely go so far as to have long-term sexual relationships with activists in an attempt to get them arrested. It wouldn’t be surprising if they took a dump in the coffee at your distro just to get you in trouble with the health department. They’ve already decided you’re guilty and that they can’t win ethically. They’re trying to live out the idiotic narrative of a police procedural — “We know the guy is dirty, we just can’t get him without bending the rules!”

With this as context, we were completely unsurprised to learn about the latest completely unethical and gross police infiltration of left-wing organizing. A Colorado Springs police officer infiltrated the local activist scene posing as a sex worker. Importantly, all of the organizations affected are completely above-ground, legal, and a shining example of human goodness. Per normal cop behavior, when they discovered that nothing illegal was going on, they shifted to trying to induce illegal behavior.

In this case, the cop’s strategy was to try to get the organizers to make a “straw purchase” of a weapon. Specifically, they tried to get at least two of the organizers to buy a gun and give it to the infiltrating cop (Colorado is a universal background check state), and even tried to entice them into participating in a full-on black-market gun business. It didn’t work, but you can see how a naïve organizer could be duped by a charismatic infiltrator into doing something that seems relatively fine, but that is very illegal.

A big crime isn’t necessary to get your people into trouble, either. If you’re not doing anything illegal, and they can’t induce you to do anything illegal, the infiltrator will just make a catalog of all your identities so that when you do something minor, but technically illegal — like stepping off the sidewalk during a protest — they can easily round you all up, interrogate you, violate your privacy in the most uncomfortable ways possible, and make you miss three days of work. Maybe break down your front door and kill your dog, too. That’s the best case scenario. If one of you happens to have a knife that’s a quarter inch too long, they could be trapped in jail for months. Maybe they didn’t have such a thing, but it somehow appeared in their pocket at the time of arrest.

In short: It takes more than just complying with the law to protect yourself and your community from the police. Yes, these are the same police that Biden wants to fund more, apparently. (Have I mentioned lately that the left hates Joe Biden?)

So what can you do? Here are a few suggestions. Some are stolen from the article in “It’s Going Down”. Many address mistakes we’ve made ourselves.

1. Don’t add strangers to group chats.
2. Don’t vouch for unvetted people at meetings.
3. Vet people and allow yourself to be vetted; vetting should be detailed, intimate, and unpredictable.
4. Don’t overshare with unvetted people.
5. Be wary of new people who just show up, especially if they have backstories that create a barrier to confirming anything about them (e.g., because it would be rude or awkward to ask).
6. Make an effort to understand the law regarding gray areas like drugs and guns; realize that, ultimately, all of the law is a gray area.
7. Never agree to do something illegal, even if you definitely don’t intend to follow through; they’ll get you for conspiracy even though you were just trying to placate the informant.
8. Don’t joke about breaking the law.
9. Don’t engage in hyperbole (especially in terms of violence).
10. Make a personal inventory of the kinds of strategies that would work against you.

To expand on #6 — if you are a firearm-centric organization like us, you must make sure that all your firearm transfers are 110% legal. That means that as an org, you understand national and state firearm law, and that you discuss any transfer as an org before it happens. That extra 10% above 100 might mean that any transfer involving any member of your org takes place at a federally licensed firearm dealer — even if you live in a state like Missouri that allows private transfers without a background check. If I wanted to buy someone a weapon, I would also make a point of never being in possession of that weapon myself. To clarify, I might shoot the gun at the range with the owner present, but I would never have it in my possession without the owner there with me. The person who passes the background check should be the only person who possesses it, and I wouldn’t even rely on the person having passed a check a few months ago; every gun transfer needs to come with an official background check.

I realize that hitting that 110% legal goal is likely to be extremely inconvenient, expensive, and might even be unjust or dangerous in some cases, but that’s how it is.

Above all else, we can’t let this constant harassment from law enforcement stop us from doing the right thing. We can’t even let it slow us down.

Before Russia invaded Ukraine, the voices of neoliberalism were strongly divided on the issue of whether it could happen. This division was despite the fact of the actual history of Russia’s behavior over the last decade (and, of course, much longer than that). Certainly, there were those who said they believed that Russia would invade — some even saying it was inevitable — but those who got it right are less interesting than those who got it wrong. What made some people think that the invasion was not possible?

Most westerners believe in the Invisible Hand of the Market more deeply than they believe in God. Their belief goes so deep that they don’t even say they believe in it — they say that they know. They know that when a person, nation, or corporation must choose between an action that benefits trade and the economy (especially their own economy) or an action that harms all that, they’ll make the “rational” choice. They looked at the situation with Russia and assume that Russia/Putin will make the rational choice in relation to their/his economy.

Related: The Impossible Suddenly Became Possible: When Russia invaded Ukraine, the West’s assumptions about the world became unsustainable. by Anne Applebaum, The Atlantic

Neoliberalism is a religion and the Invisible Hand of the Market is its false god. Moreover, money is not real. With that in mind, it is a fact that the choice that benefits “the economy” isn’t always the rational choice — in fact, more often than not, it is the irrational choice. That isn’t to say that Russia’s decision is rational, either — I’m just pointing out that there’s nothing rational about making choices that benefit “the economy”. I realize most people reading this are staring at the screen slack-jawed like Tucker Carlson, so I’ll try to expand on that.

“Rational” would be things like supporting the continued functioning of Earth’s biosphere, controlling actual resources (instead of money), acknowledging that violence is the only real power behind money, and realizing that money isn’t the thing that motivates people the most (it isn’t even the thing that best motivates selfish people). The biosphere creates more value for human beings than the entire world’s GDP — it just isn’t quantified in dollars. Actual resources are real in contrast with money, which is not real. Violence is the true power behind money — so applying violence directly is really just cutting out the middle man. There are millions of people working hard right now for free; see, for example “fan fiction”, “backyard chickens”, and “Stardew Valley mods”. If those millions of people weren’t constantly being threatened with death if they refuse to hold a paying job, they wouldn’t have a paying job at all, but they’d still be working.

There are rational elements to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This application of violence certainly had the potential to make Russia appear more dangerous, thus giving it more power, and certainly controlling territory and resources are rational goals that put into focus the irrationality of fetishizing cash. I’m certain that Putin believed that the west would protest effusively, but then ultimately allow the Russian occupation of Ukraine. He thought the US weak (because Biden seems weak and the country is divided) and Europe toothless and unwilling to risk exacerbating damage to the world economy. Ukraine could still end up in Russian hands, but thankfully, the west is currently refusing to focus on an economic analysis of the situation, and choosing a rational one instead.

Regarding irrational motivations for Russia’s invasion, I think we can put the blame firmly on Putin, but it’s hard to say whether narcissism or psychopathy is the better diagnosis. In either case, warming up the nukes is an irrational choice that indicates that he either doesn’t have a normal, healthy sense of fear (indicating psychopathy) or he would rather literally destroy the world than to look weak (indicating narcissism). In either case, economic sanctions won’t work by influencing him directly — they will work by influencing other people who will hopefully influence Putin.

In this moment, I’m slightly hopeful. That so many people are willing to ignore the economy and aid Ukraine despite the cost of gasoline (for example) is a very good sign. Perhaps, too, it will help people see that creating a hierarchy of selfishness, with the most selfish asshole at the top, is not a rational or safe way to order a society.

The following is preliminary information; I will edit as the known facts change.

A protest peacekeeper named Brandy Knightly was murdered in Portland on Saturday, February 19 by a fascist extremist named Benjamin (Ben) Smith. Brandy Knightly was assisting with a march in solidarity with Amir Locke, an innocent man who was tragically murdered by police serving a no-knock warrant in pursuit of a different person. Knightly was 60 years old and was a fixture of Portland’s protest community. According to Portland DSA, “Her favorite color was green. She was a mother. She protected and nurtured her community.” Kathleen Saadat described Knightly to OregonLive, saying, “She was a warm, giving and kind person who spent time trying to think of things she could do to make the world better and to make herself better in the world.” Knightly was fulfilling her role as a protest peacekeeper at the time Smith murdered her; she was unarmed, wearing a safety vest, and attempting to de-escalate him. Knightly required the use of a cane for extended periods of walking and was using one at the time.

Like most conservatives, Ben Smith had often expressed hatred of “commies” and “antifa” and was generally angry about mask mandates, protests, and the existence of liberals. A fan of genocide, he often expressed that all such people, including anyone participating in BLM activities, should be killed, and expressed that he would love to shoot them himself. Smith was also a furry, but had been banned from FurryCon for his fascist rhetoric. Smith was noted to be anti-Semitic, misogynistic, and racist and was radicalized by Donald Trump and Trump’s followers according to his roommate. Not willing to limit the killing to his enemies, he also expressed that anyone “mouthing off” or disrespecting someone’s property should be killed. His brother claims that Smith can’t possibly be a right-wing nutjob because he is a master machinist.

We know that Andy Ngo is responsible for contributing to Ben Smith’s delusional and violent beliefs, and that Ngo is now spreading misinformation about the murder. His misinformation appears to all fit the narrative that Smith was defending his property (not true) and was attacked by violent extremists (not true). In fact, Smith was not protecting his property; he exited his home and walked some distance toward his victims before yelling insults at them and shooting them. His home was never threatened or trespassed upon, he just hated that his enemies were anywhere near it; the protest had not even begun when he attacked the group of peacekeepers. In fact, Brandy Knightly was not armed and at this time there’s no evidence that any of Smith’s other victims were armed. There’s no evidence to suggest that anyone present to participate in the protest was openly carrying a weapon of any kind (though, certainly the person who ended Smith’s rampage was armed). In response to Andy Ngo’s lies, his followers are calling for more people to be murdered.

The mass shooting occurred at around 8pm on February 19 near the corner of Northeast 55th Avenue and Northeast Hassalo Street. It appears that the killer was agitated because there was a protest near his home; this may have been a longstanding source of agitation for him. He approached a group of protest peacekeepers wearing safety vests, called them “violent terrorists” and “terrorist cunts”, and said that if they came past his house (which indicates that they had not even come past his house), he would shoot them. Then, he fired into the group hitting 5 people, some multiple times. Knightly was struck in the head. In response, someone attending the protest responded appropriately and fired back at the killer, severely wounding him. The entire exchange lasted less than two minutes. The killer and two others are still in critical condition; one of Smith’s victims is paralyzed.

The protesters did not cooperate with the police and the police say that “critical evidence” was removed from the scene; I can only guess that they may have wanted to protect the identity of the person who ended the rampage. You may recall how Portland police executed Michael Forest Reinoehl in 2020. Reinoehl shot a Trump supporter who threatened a protest with a gun; generally, it is legal to shoot someone who is brandishing a gun (i.e., because you fear for your life or the life of another person), but the rules are different for leftists, apparently. Reinoehl admitted to the shooting saying, “I had no choice.” When police went to arrest him, they all mysteriously failed to use their body cams and since Reinoehl is dead, we have only their version of what happened during the arrest.

On February 22, after I wrote the above text, we learned that the person who shot Ben Smith (ending his rampage) had been released by the police. That person stayed on the scene after the event and cooperated with police. The was a rumor that the defending shooter had basically left the scene and then turned themself in later; this is not true, but sparked lively debate about the wisdom of doing that and the ethics of advising others to turn themselves in. Strictly speaking, if you justifiably shoot someone, you are obliged to stay at the scene and cooperate with the police, just like if you are involved in a vehicle collision, you’re supposed to stay at the scene. The issue is more complicated for the left (or anyone the police prejudicially consider to be an enemy) and I would advise anyone to consider your options carefully, but generally, making the scene safe for everyone (including the police) and then cooperating with them is going to be the best bet from a purely practical perspective.

Other nations didn’t make the same decisions regarding city design and transportation as the US, and there’s evidence that the US model contributes significantly to poverty and homelessness. Yes, there is less poverty and homelessness in European cities. An article by Walter Jaegerhaus in Common Edge explores the question of what went wrong with American cities and concludes that, “The insistence on optimizing spaces for the automobile or not is the fork in the road that separates European and American cities.” In essence, by focusing on the automobile as the vehicle that maximizes individual freedom, the US has created an economic dystopia that ironically reduces freedom for most people (by siphoning away their time and money) and dramatically increases the probability that a person will fall on hard times.

Per Jaegerhaus, Europe and the US started out in the same position. It was right after World War I and everyone had decided that cities were “instruments of oppression and sources of widespread misery” and that cars were, conversely, instruments of liberation for working class people. This “modern” model of the city required individual, freestanding houses, which meant the suburbs Americans are so familiar with today, as well as freestanding towers, which translated to the characterless apartment buildings everyone hates to look at. Both of these structures reduce housing density dramatically compared to traditional city design.

By the 1980’s, Europeans saw how the modern model contributed to sprawl that ruined the open countryside, and created massive traffic congestion and a generally unpleasant habitat for human beings. However, the real thing that stopped the modern city model in Europe was that they simply did not have room for it. Meanwhile, in the US, space was available and the economics of sprawl were extremely beneficial to the real estate and banking industries. Moreover, Europe lacked the philosophy of promoting selfishness to the point where the individual is harmed. As a result of all this, Europe switched back to a traditional model of city design; the only return to traditional city design that occurred in the US was in terms of aesthetics.

U.S. cities, especially in the Southwest, seem to attract an ever-growing collection of random problems—congestion, homelessness, displacement, housing shortage, rent escalation, construction cost escalation, escalating carbon footprints per capita—each in desperate need of a solution. Residents, meanwhile, find themselves in a “city” few of them love, but they still object to change thanks to NIMBY fears that doing so will only make things worse.

We’ve certainly seen these problems in the Columbia, Missouri area with the city continually oozing further and further into Boone County. Construction quality is generally poor, and the city uses physical expansion as a scam to increase tax revenue, requiring that newly acquired areas be neglected in terms of city services until they can be funded by taxes from the next area that is conquered. When it can’t expand, the city cuts services, making a difficult living situation even worse (see, for example, the ridiculous trash situation). Even in the city center, new homes are separate, individual houses surrounded by just enough space to park a car or two are required to support a car for each apartment. Not surprisingly, developers appear to be the ones running city council, but the voters participate in the problem because they won’t let go of the “modern” model of city design that centers the automobile rather than human beings.

To be clear, returning to the traditional model of city design doesn’t mean giving up automobiles entirely; it does mean owning fewer of them and using them less often. San Marino, California is highly automobile dependent and has an ownership rate of about 1.26 cars per person, whereas Vienna, Austria has a rate of 0.37 cars per person, but that’s not the important part. The important detail is that you can live in Vienna without a car, but in San Marino, it simply is not possible; i.e., in Vienna you have the freedom to choose to own a car or not. While someone who lives in Vienna takes a walk or rides a bike to get to work, an American worker has to drive for an average of 27 minutes to get to work, essentially losing another hour in addition to the 9 hour (8 hours plus breaks) of the work day, and spending that time sitting on their ass (which contributes to Americans’ poor health).

There’s a rule of thumb in urban planning that says that cities are more efficient than suburbs or rural areas, but that’s only true if you are comparing efficiently designed cities to the suburbs and rural areas; the US model of city design is more accurately called sprawl and the city is functionally part of the suburban and rural areas that surround it. Not only is housing density not as high as in the traditional model, but everyone ends up driving everywhere anyway, eliminating the transportation efficiency of the city entirely. Not only must everyone have a car, but they have to have a place to put it, and when they go to work, there has to be yet another space for that automobile to sit while they work. Because of the economics of this model that benefit developers and bankers while harming everyone else, cities become impoverished and chaotic in their centers, which further encourages people to move away from the center, which makes the rot spread outward, encouraging people to move even further away and continually pumping up the cost of rent and mortgages. This is true even without the racism of “white flight” though I’m confident that plays a part.

I used to live in a one-car, inner city household; we even managed to walk to work. We moved out to exurbia for the very reasons most people do — the decay, chaos, and hopelessness of the automobile-centered inner city environment — and now we have two cars and drive at least one every day. Part of the decision to move was based on the fact that I’d gotten a new job on the other side of the city and it required me to drive for the same amount of time that we do now; the transportation advantage of living in the city no longer applied to us. It is more common than not for an American to have to commute even if they live in a city; sprawl is the reason.

As I mentioned previously, it isn’t just the real estate and banking industries pushing bad city design — it is also the American fixation on absolute freedom at the cost of everything, even if it means self-destruction (a state that necessarily eliminates one’s freedom). If you like cars like I do, you might enjoy this documentary on YouTube about the Lambourghini Countach that appeared in the movie Cannonball Run. If not, I’ll pass along an interesting bit of wisdom I found tucked inside it. Brock Yates meant Cannonball Run to be a rebellion against Ralph Nader and the latter’s crusade to make US highways safe for everyone to use for transportation. An important element of Nader’s strategy was to standardize national highway speed limits to 55 miles per hour — a state of affairs that deeply offended self-centered thrill-seekers like Sammy Hagar.

The race involved driving from coast to coast. The route was not specified; you just had to get there in the same car you left in. This wasn’t something everyone was allowed to participate in, though; Yates personally approved each person who intended to race and rejected drivers if they lacked the skill or character to finish the race safely. Then, one day, a man asked to participate and showed Yates his new Lambourghini Countach; it was able to sustain nearly 200 miles per hour, which at the time was nightmarishly fast compared to everything else. Yates looked at the car and decided that there would never be another Cannonball Run — because someone would die. I hope you see the irony. Yates essentially agreed that speed kills and that he couldn’t change that fact — only work around it by controlling who participated.

On the open roads of America, a speed limit is necessary because everyone has to be able to drive to get to work, which means that a driver’s speed must be limited to what the average driver can handle — not a batch of hand-picked, exceptional drivers. Eventually, the “I can’t drive 55” libertarians won, and not only did the speed limit get raised to 70 miles per hour in most places (85 in Texas), but police routinely ignore violations of the speed limit if they’re less than 20 miles per hour over the limit. The overall effect has been more deaths on US roads (though, higher speed limits actually slightly reduce the number of collisions). Nader’s contribution to vehicle safety ironically made it safer to travel at these speeds. Regardless, it’s probably true that Brock Yates thought that he could drive a Countach across the country safely even if he didn’t think someone else could.

By the way, the Countach that killed the Cannonball Run ended up in the movie based on the real race and people continued trying to improve their Cannonball Run times even after Yates killed the official event. The best time of about 25 hours was produced during the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown, which was a reduction of about 6 hours compared to pre-lockdown records.

But here’s the situation: The automobile-centered design of US cities hurts Americans in a number of ways, including:

• More deaths
• Less money due to having to purchase and maintain a car, including fuel costs (nearly $2000 per year)
• Less money due to sprawl pushing up the cost of housing
• More pollution (including CO2)
• More energy resources used per capita
• Much more homelessness and poverty
• More time spent on work (because the commute is part of the work day), less free time
• More general misery
• Worse health
• More perceived freedom, but less actual freedom

What is there to do about this? Unfortunately, Americans are highly resistant to change or even new ideas; however:

There is a simplistic, but authentic answer: one could design and build new U.S. neighborhoods people would like to live in, and at rates they can afford. This is not hyperbole. Situations like this exist elsewhere in the world. There are current urban models being exhibited in several European cities, but they also occur in other countries.

Naturally, Americans will have numerous dumb excuses for why they can’t change. This is just self-centered laziness having no relationship to the facts; as with many other problems America faces, the only real obstacle is narcissistic cowards who just don’t feel like doing things differently. Jaegerhaus does a great job explaining what would be necessary in his article. In contrast, consider Columbia’s approach to homelessness has so far been a great example of what not to do (though there might be hope for the future): We can see that an automobile-centric city creates poverty and homelessness, and we of course realize that most homeless people are lacking a reliable car. So why would the City of Columbia keep trying to find places far from the city center to hide homeless services? What would make sense is for those services — including both a permanent camp and permanent shelters — to be located in the city center so people who need those services have access to more resources within walking distance (though, Columbia is an American city so resources are far apart even in the center). That would give them the opportunity that is a prerequisite for success.

You may have heard of the recent criticism of Texas A&M coach Sydney Carter’s clothing. In full, her job with Texas A&M’s women’s basketball is “player development coach and assistant recruiting coordinator”. Coach Carter wore some clothes at a game that were more stereotypically feminine in style, and the critics said she should have worn something more stereotypically coach-like instead. So what are the politics of this situation?

From a fascist perspective, women shouldn’t be coaches because coaching (and leadership, generally) are a man’s domain, and we have this absurd history of men coaching women’s sports. So this criticism of her clothes is not a fascist criticism. From a neoliberal perspective, anyone can perform any job regardless of their group membership, but they must conform to the job — they must become the job. This is why the pantsuit exists — a woman can’t just come into a management position as a woman. She must discard her woman-ness and put on manager-ness — i.e., she must wear a suit. Paradoxically, neoliberal feminism sees the pantsuit as a symbol of power (because they only see it relative to the fascist position) rather than a symbol of conformity.

Many women see their woman-ness as an important part of their identity and do not want to discard it. These women are placed in a position where they are asked to choose between their femininity and power. It’s nice to see Coach Carter reject this false choice and present herself the way she chooses to. I very much hope this works out for her.

A bigger issue than clothing exists, though, for women who are able to have children and are interested in pursuing that life choice. Neoliberal feminism tells them that they must either employ strangers to raise their children, reject biological motherhood entirely, or accept a life of poverty (and powerlessness). The creation and enculturation of new human beings is probably the single most important job there is and yet this is how we treat them. As a result, there’s a growing concern (and preliminary evidence) about the existence of a “radical feminist to tradwife” pipeline, where women who are understandably concerned about the status of women relative to their potential role in creating and raising children find no support in neoliberal feminism and end up embracing a “tradwife” (traditional wife) ideology instead. Neoliberal feminism clearly looks down on any person who chooses childcare over climbing the corporate ladder. While I don’t think tradwife ideology is the right choice, I also see that there is no right choice available.

Related: #TradWives: sexism as gateway to white supremacy by Miranda Christou (opendemocracy.net)

A better way to deal with this would be to accept an aspiring mother’s life choice and treat that vocation with the respect it deserves. Women who cannot bear children as well as men could greatly benefit, too, as they are certainly capable of caring for children and many would like to do just that. Again: The creation of new human beings and the enculturation of those new human beings are two of the most important jobs that exist on this planet.

If we have to have money (a position I reject) then the logical solution would be to pay them. Yes, if money is how we value everything, then a person who creates a child should be compensated with money. If money is how we value everything, then a person who raises a child should be compensated with money. I’m not talking about a pathetic, trifling wage; I’m talking about an income that says clearly that this job is valuable. This money should not come from the person who donated sperm to the project, either; the current model where people who raise children are funded by their domestic partners only impoverishes families. (For conservatives, I mean that the model where stay-at-home moms are funded by their husbands — thus cutting a family’s income in half — ultimately hurts families.)

I appreciate that some people would like to hire child-care professionals to do this job, and I support this choice, but let’s look at how much those people are paid, too. Are we really getting the quality of work out of those workers that the importance of the job requires? Are we really expressing the true value of this job with the amount they are paid? So, if you look at the Democrats’ child care proposals that have come up since Biden happened, they are not solving this important problem. It almost seems like they are treating children as “developing labor resources” rather than human beings; in the long term, this approach creates not only problematic human beings, but also insufficient labor resources — which brings up a good point:

There’s something deeper than the typical fascists-vs-neoliberals narrative. Both of those groups say that they believe in capitalism; you’d think they’d be finding ways to make sure “investment” is made in “our most precious resource” but they aren’t. Both approach it with half-measures that really serve their ideologies rather than the labor market; they choose to focus on the short term, which damages the economy in the long term (by creating a working class that isn’t sufficiently skilled and is often antisocial). I reject capitalism, but this is just one of many examples that appear to show that the established order may be served by capitalism, rather than the other way around. When the irrational, narcissistic desires of the ultra-powerful (who are also ultra-rich) go against capitalism (in the sense of a rational market economy), capitalism loses. I realize this is largely an issue of framing, but it also short-circuits the popular claim that people who control corporations have “no choice” but to do the wrong thing because capitalism requires it.

Last night was a victory for Columbia as advocates for our homeless community members convinced the city council to change the threshold for opening the city’s only emergency overnight warming center from 9 degrees Fahrenheit to 25 degrees Fahrenheit. The emergency warming center’s purpose is simply to keep people alive who might otherwise perish during overnight cold snaps and does not offer significant amenities; I mention this to emphasize that there’s nothing luxurious about this particular service because I realize that some people get very angry when people without money receive something nice without suffering horribly for it.

Those that spoke at the city council meeting included representatives from JB Mobile Soup Kitchen; Race Matters, Friends COMO; Loaves and Fishes; Operation Safe Winter CoMo; People Before Projects; and CoMo for Progress. JB Mobile Soup Kitchen was started by members of the John Brown Gun Club, but now operates independently to provide hot meals to the various camps in Columbia. Race Matters, Friends COMO is an organization working for racial justice. Loaves and Fishes provides a hot meal for our homeless community daily at Wilkes United Methodist Church and is supported by many local churches and organizations. Operation Safe Winter CoMo provides tents, coats and related items to our homeless community. People Before Projects advocates for federal relief funds to be used to benefit people with less income first (rather than being given directly to wealthy people). CoMo for Progress is a political advocacy group of progressive Democrats. Members of our club associate with all of the above organizations.

The Columbia Missourian covered the city council meeting in this article.