Germination
Pop your seeds before you plant them
I have a few pieces in the chute, each awaiting fill and polish:
And I have been bandying about a few other topics in my head the past couple weeks:
The Impending Reinvigoration of the Drug War.
This time with military action in Mexico, domestic crackdowns, and the rebirth of the Just Say NO!/Partnership for a Drug-Free America. The Drug War was American Fascism of the last decades of the 20th century, complete with private corporations providing free services (ad campaigns, storylines in popular TV shows and movies) on behalf of the state, a mass social movement against the Enemy Within, rising imprisonments and increased policing powers as part of a more disciplinary nation-state.
The Post WWII Crisis of Authenticity & Our Current Crisis of Legitimacy.
Mass consumer culture was the reward offered the working class, following the global depression and re-institutionalization of Capital through the nation-state in the 1930’s. The Second World War further empowered the American nation-state to follow a philosophy of domestic social support of consumers.
Consumption of non-necessities created massive potential for growth. That which was once produced in the home through labor became prefabricated, and creativity commercialized in the form of visual and audio entertainment. The consumer culture lacked authenticity—which shares a root with author. This crisis persisted through the end of the twentieth century.
With the rise in consumer credit—to offset the detachment of productivity and wages that began in the 1970’s—we see increasing personal bankruptcy. People who tried to do their job as consumers but found their labor-power undervalued relative to the productivity they were increasing with it. The credit they were issued to help resolve Capital’s problem actually made it worse for workers. Federal government debt by Reagan, Bush, and Bush created the illusion of economic stimulus, when it was actually the government being the purchaser of last first resort.
The legitimacy of the nation-state, the political parties, the candidates, the officeholders, religion, the family, personal identity, history, and facts all fell into question. Trump thrived in a political culture where all the old institutions were crumbling.
Major League Baseball has made a show of being slightly less sexist.
People were told that Jen Powal being the first female umpire to call an MLB game is an important milestone. The skills and abilities that make an effective umpire are: excellent eyesight and depth perception; full knowledge of game rules and positions to be in to make calls; and timely decisiveness. All of these have been automated, and Major League Baseball has been discussing “robot umpires” publicly for over a decade, and have an automated ball/strike calling system in the high minor leagues for disputed calls (though rules expressly forbid arguing balls and strikes). I suppose they wanted to be on record for avoiding total sex discrimination, before they did away with the humans completely.
I need to do other pieces on Seattle Hempfest and the Boston Freedom Rally.
While I have covered some elements of the public pedagogy of the cannabis reform rally under criminal prohibition, there is way, way more to share about the volunteer communities that staged these events, their respective local cannabis cultures, my personal favorites and highlights of each, and how one has persisted while the other has seen a loving farewell.
Porn shoot on Boston Common, during the Freedom Rally? An alcoholic headliner who demanded his bottle before taking the stage in Seattle? Pounds of cannabis products worth thousands of dollars at the time being swapped, bought, and sold—under tables, between tents, and through fences? I kept bi-coastal reform tutus!
There’s much more to come. Spread the good word about “Practicing Sociology Without a License.” Free subscriptions are available—because we win by doing what they are unwilling to do. Paid subscriptions are graciously encouraged.