oligarchy and resistance

+ some fiction to ease the pain

arts

Charlie Lee on the legacy of Catholic-turned-Hollywood-turned-communist Icelandic novelist Halldór Laxness

“It is scenes like this that linger in the mind from Laxness’s best works: moments of aching intensity when the brittle solitude of his characters gently crumbles. This is the essence of Laxness’s project: an exploration not of self-reliance, as Anglophone critics would have it, but of isolation and mutual dependence. Such moments happen always at the far reaches of experience, at births and deaths and final leave-takings, when the promise of transformation and the knowledge of futility seem most entwined.”

labor

Eric Blanc interviews Amazon Labor Union’s Christian Smalls, Angelika Maldonado, and Michelle Valentin Nieves

“Let your coworkers know how important a union is. Try to find people in union families and have them explain exactly how certain people and jobs benefit from unions. And let them know that no matter where you work, you deserve to have certain rights that other workers in other companies do.”

media

Chris Hedges on Democratic oligarchs, Roe v. Wade and Christian fascism

“Withholding the federal contracts until Amazon permitted free and open union organizing would be a powerful stand on behalf of workers, still waiting for the $15 minimum wage Joe Biden promised as a candidate. But behind the walls of the Democratic Party’s Potemkin village stands the billionaire class. Democrats have failed to address the structural injustices that turned America into an oligarchic state, where the obscenely rich squabble like children in a sandbox over multibillion-dollar toys. The longer this game of political theater continues, the worse things will get.

The Christian fascists have coalesced in cult-like fashion around Donald Trump. They are bankrolled by the most retrograde forces of capitalism. The capitalists permit the stupidities of the Christian fascists and their self-destructive social and cultural wars. In exchange, the billionaire class gets corporate monopolies, union busting, privatized state and municipal services, including public education, and revoked environmental regulations, and can engage in a virtual tax boycott.”