Podcast #156
John Steppling, Hiroyuki Hamada, Dennis Riches, and Roger Johnson
https://giveabook.org.uk/book/ahdaf-soueif-prisoner-of-love-by-jean-genet/
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2006/03/09/he-walked-with-a-zombie/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWXHbrt3kvU&t=1s
https://monthlyreview.org/features/the-dismantling-of-yugoslavia/
https://www.urmedium.net/c/presstv/133271
I was paying attention to what Hiroyuki as saying. I think he was saying that he is optimistic that there are people working on raising awareness/consciousness to our situation in late-stage capitalism, but it is difficult because as the system collapses on itself, people feel correctly that it collapses on them/us, on us all. And life is short relatively and the colonized and domesticated class feel that correctly, more urgently, than the ruling class. So anyway, I wanted to hear more about what he was saying.
Feeling isolated here in a small forest town along a river in Northern California, where my friend recently organized a local march against Trump, decrying how he is destroying democracy and dissing our NATO friends, defunding the FBI and CIA and and all that other crap.
She recently told me she was dissapointed that I discrimintaed against the trans community, the most marginalized in the country (WHAT????) by not agreeing to recognize a man who calls himself a woman as a woman and actively speak out against helping poor trans kids get so-called "gender-affirming care." So the interview with SusanCox was illuminating. I was able to draw a direct correlation from so-called queer theory to this current trans ideology.
I am interested in what part of the discussion, or Cox's analysis, John does not agree with.
As for tech fails, we lose power during some storms every year and it requires I pull out my big old gas Honda generator and run wires throughout my home to power what I need to power until PGE can fix the downed lines or blown capacitor.
I am dependent on the electric grid although many of my neighbors are self sufficient.
Anyway, another good podcast.
The sidebar at the end regarding "tech progress" could lead to some good discussion if you pick up the topic again later. In my view, there is this paradox where the more convenient tech becomes, the more lazy people get learning to use it, and thus cut themselves off from its benefits. This is particularly true for arts and entertainment. CDs and DVDs created a renaissance of sorts, making the home theater experience more accessible, and led to the reissues of great albums and films. But when MP3s came along, you'd go to someone's house to hang out or have a party, and they'd be playing music through laptop speakers, or listening to crap-quality digital rips in their car. Nowadays, I have my CD collection (and more) ripped onto an external drive, along with a huge library of films and TV series. But whenever I try to share some music or a movie with someone, they don't know how to play it because all they know is Spotify and Netflix. So many people I know don't have home stereos or TV sets. It's just whatever streams through their phone or nothing. Even people who have TVs, they can't figure out how to connect their laptop with an HDMI cable, or stick a USB in the side connector -- people who are both younger and older than me. It's like the days of physical media were actually more convenient, perhaps because the technology was universal or tangible, or maybe because the "medium is the message," as a wise person once said.