2048: a novel

If I vanish from view for a long time, it'll probably be because I'm writing a book.

I've got a novel germinating in my brain lately.  As time goes by, thinking about it takes up increasing amounts of space in my head.  Which, when it comes to big projects, is usually an indication that it will be happening, one way or another.

Most of the writing I've done has been in the form of songs and essays.  Both are wonderful for what they are -- to share some recent news, to introduce people to a subject, or as a community-building exercise.

But as I think about trying to explain what a contemporary or near-future revolutionary social movement could look like, of the sort that might succeed in mobilizing forces in a society like the US to transform it and its politics and create something beautiful in its place, I find myself gravitating towards trying to tell this hypothetical story in the form of a novel.

I guess it's obvious why this calls for a long-form type of storytelling.  The idea is to tell the story of the process through which the world got to the dismal state of affairs that will be the 2030's, in my imaginings, and how, in the 2040's, it begins to dig its way out. 

I want to tell this story from many different angles -- centering in the tale the social movement participants and leaders, and many other elements integral to developments, such as press, politicians, intelligence agencies, and all sorts of other people from the many different countries that will be essential to the telling of this tale.

I've done enough writing to know how daunting this task is -- how time-consuming, and all-consuming such a project can be.  I find the idea of embarking on it enthralling, but also overwhelming.

One of the factors that tend to diminish my enthusiasm about spending inordinate amounts of time researching and writing and rewriting for a project like this is the prospect that it will never get published after it's done.  Another is even if it ever does get published, it still may not be widely read, and I may wonder why I isolated myself so long to work on it.

Other worries that may seem strange include the fear that I'll stop doing all other kinds of writing, once I embark on this project.  That's what happened when I started writing children's songs back in 2007 or so.  I didn't write anything else for about two years.  I could only think in terms of children's songs.

Of course, if I just keep going with writing more songs about Israel's genocidal bombing campaigns, or I write a novel, it probably doesn't change the world either way.  Or if it does, I wouldn't know which pursuit might be more or less worthwhile.

I feel like I'm circling around the edge of a volcano before I go jump in and see if it's hot in there.  Or perhaps it's more like standing on the edge of a lake before jumping in.  That sounds more reasonable.  Or tying up loose ends with relations before going off to work at the space station for an open-ended, long assignment.  Or perhaps the mines.

In any case, I guess this is just to let you know that if I disappear for a long time and you barely hear from me, it's because I'm writing.  Along the way I'll likely be looking for all kinds of help -- people to ask about cultural or technological questions, people to read and give me feedback, people involved with publishing, writer's retreats, and who knows what else.  Advice welcome!

The Anxiety

Some thoughts on anxiety, its sources and solutions.

I've been consuming global news from various sources on a daily basis since I was twelve.

Nothing quite like these exploding pagers and other devices has ever come up as a news story.  The horrors of the indiscriminate use of cluster bombs, land mines, white phosphorous, yes -- and there are many similarities in terms of the injuries.  The completely random, everywhere-at-once nature of these terrible events is different though.

Ever since Israel's Stuxnet virus attack on the Iranian nuclear industry, I've been anticipating something like this, as have others.  What's been happening in Lebanon over the past few days is a slight variation from a plot line I still intend to write about, part of a big-picture, near-future kind of novel, partially inspired by the recent hit, Ministry for the Future.  The fact that reality is playing out much like my fictionalized version of it had things going makes me want to write that novel even more.

Perhaps it won't just be the Lebanese, Palestinians, Syrians, or Iranians who can look forward to a future of never knowing whether your phone is going to blow up in your face, or you're going to be assassinated by a small drone which announced its presence with about as much fanfare as a large mosquito.

It's certainly not just them that can wonder whether their town is going to be swept away in a giant flood, or burned up in a fire.  Certainly not just them that can wonder when World War 3 between Russia and NATO may be coming to wipe out life as we knew it, or when the climate catastrophe is past its tipping point, and we're unstoppably on our way towards Venus.

When I visited Lebanon way back in 2005, one of the many things that made an impression on me was how most of the people I got to know there were on anti-anxiety medication, and talked about it.

Israel's horrific bombing campaign of 2006 had not yet happened, but Prime Minister Rafic Hariri had recently been assassinated in a massive bombing, and a lot of the more middle class elements of Beirut society who had in recent years started returning, after the end of the civil war, were now leaving again.  The rest were on anti-anxiety medication.

Another thing that made an impression on me in Lebanon and in Palestine -- in Nablus and Jenin, specifically -- was the sense of calm and clarity emanating from the men with guns, of whichever faction.

I wouldn't want in any way to minimize the PTSD and associated ills you can find within the ranks of soldiers worldwide, including soldiers of guerrilla armies.  But it's also easy to observe among the ranks of those who have committed their lives to a struggle like that that participants can find a sort of solace in their commitment, and there is a certain relief to be found in giving up your life like that.  All of them are expecting to die violent deaths.

I don't know if reliable statistics exist, but my impression is there are a lot of people in the US on anti-anxiety medications of all sorts as well, but maybe more in Beirut.

I was listening to a program yesterday, I think it was on NPR, though it could have been BBC or Al-Jazeera.  (As different as they can be from each other in various ways, they all tend to blend together in my head after the fact.) 

When they got to the part where the psychologist was being interviewed about what people, maybe particularly young people, might do about anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts, etc., related to the climate crisis, I almost turned it off.  I expected some kind of nonsense about how we all need to help each other look at the bright side, while recycling our garbage more enthusiastically.

Instead, the expert, whose name now escapes me, talked about how the efforts of people to "look at the bright side" just tend to make things worse.  It's a lot like telling someone who is facing off with a growling bear to calm down because probably the bear will end up walking the other way eventually.  The climate crisis is as real as the bear, and looking at the bright side isn't going to make it go away, or calm anxieties.

The expert explained further that what does tend to demonstrably alleviate anxiety and other such ills for people concerned with the climate crisis, and the future of life on Earth and such, is solidarity and mutual understanding.  The ones who are part of a community that is trying to change things in one way or another are the ones best able to cope with the anxiety.

I'm paraphrasing, but her conclusions were something like that, and I think they were based on broader studies, not just her own clients.  It was one of those many moments when I hear about a scientific study and feel a bit smug, because of the way they so often tend to prove things that people involved with activism or the arts have known for a long time.

I long ago began to notice that it was so often the case that people I knew who were involved with healing themselves from past trauma by doing lots of therapy, reading books about self-improvement, trying to live low-stress lives, etc., often just got worse and worse over time, the more they "did the work."  If anyone has ever wanted to know my recommendation for overcoming trauma, anxiety (existential or otherwise), depression, and other related ills, I have long said that joining a group or network or community involved with solidarity and building a social movement may actually do you far more emotional good than withdrawing from all that and "working on yourself."

There was another scientific study that demonstrated that people process words very differently, depending on whether they are spoken or sung.  Words, when sung, go right to the emotional centers of the brain.  All the musicians intuitively knew that already.

There is also lots of evidence to support the notion that communities of people that make music together tend to be much closer and happier than those that don't.

For me, personally, it all very much falls into place, when I hear about these studies, because of my ongoing life experience.  I could be a good case study, probably, with regards to the impact of climate anxiety, and other anxieties, and how they vary depending on circumstances.

It's been many years since I've felt like I was plugged in to some kind of active social movement in my home country, the US.  There were many years when I was continually immersed in one or several concurrent social movements in the US, but that was a long time ago now.

In recent years, I spend eight months out of the year in the US, mostly at home, doing very few gigs, experiencing pretty much constant anxiety about the state of the world and the state of the left, coping with the anxiety by various means, none of them particularly effective.

The other four months of the year I'm on tour, mainly in other countries, where there are still social movements that I'm plugged into, that I can participate in musically and otherwise while I'm in the various places I regularly return to.

While I'm on these tours, the state of near-constant anxiety is replaced by a state that is nearly ecstatic by comparison.  The feelings of mutual understanding and solidarity can be overwhelming, in all the best ways, when you're surrounded by a large group of other people who have the same concerns, the same desires, and who are together, literally singing the same song.  

Speaking on a purely emotional level, having an experience like that on a daily basis induces a near-constant state of bliss.  Even every other day will do the trick, and this despite the fact that I miss my small children terribly whenever we're apart for more than a few hours.

I imagine most of the people the climate anxiety psychologist has studied either have an isolated, depressed life full of anxiety, or they've found some kind of community of resistance to be part of.  I'm guessing folks like me, who jaggedly go back and forth from one reality to the other, are less common.

In any case, there's no question either in the studies or in my own experience that when it comes to existential anxiety, being part of a vibrant community of resistance is extremely therapeutic, and the absence of one is extremely anxiety-producing.

I'm not sure how I'd feel if I were Palestinian or Lebanese, though. In those cases I'd likely just prefer whichever option is the least fatal.

I Survived Chicago

 The Ministry of Culture had very little to do in Chicago, but we were there.

As Kamala Emanuel (the Other Kamala) and I were touring on the west coast, people frequently wished us luck in Chicago, particularly with regards to the Chicago police, who will, for good reason, forever be associated with the police riots at the Democratic National Convention in 1968.

I wasn't worried about the cops.  I've been to Chicago lots of times, and played at lots of protests in Chicago over the decades.  What I was worried about was the protests themselves, and just how much they would suck.  Unfortunately, my expectations that they would indeed suck were borne out 1,000%.

If you are by now bristling with the sentiment that "if you don't have anything good to say, don't say anything," stop reading now!  But if you want my reportback on what a captured, defeated social movement looks like, and my ruminations on how to instead build one that has a chance of actually growing, read on.

When I survey the history of social movements in the US in my lifetime, there are patterns that are fairly easy to observe, that are very strongly supported by the vast amounts of information gleaned from the raid on the FBI offices in Pennsylvania way back when, that revealed in great detail the way the FBI coordinates with local authorities to systematically undermine social movements.

It's easy enough to read about the ways they have historically sought to undermine social movements -- promoting ultraleft tactics, suppressing the careers of prominent figures of all kinds so they don't become too influential, embracing views that may appear righteous but which are actually intended to alienate the public.

What has been easy to observe directly and through various FOIA requests and leaks along the way is that these sorts of efforts have continued unabated since the FBI's Counter-Intelligence Program was first exposed and supposedly ended.  The red squads are alive and well.  We only get the occasional, but clear, hint that the program continues.  

The big picture is one that always has to just be pieced together approximately, until decades later, as a general rule.  But at the risk of once again being called a "conspiracist," whatever that is, I'll tell you what I've been observing since I've been actively involved with social movements in the US and other countries.  Actually I'll start with what my boomer friends observed before my time, since it is just an extension of the same pattern that I've observed throughout my adult life.

The Movement, as it was known to participants, in the 1960's, had become a serious social force to be reckoned with.  There were millions of people who considered themselves to be members of Students for a Democratic Society, whether or not they technically had joined a local club or not.  They had chapters on every campus, and could shut down campuses across the country if they wanted to, which they and the broader student movement regularly did.

The interracial cultural renaissance with its centers in places like San Francisco, Detroit, and New York City had swept the nation and the world with the new sounds of a rebel movement that existed in stark opposition to militarism, racism, and capitalism.  In large part as a result of this deeply musical and inclusive movement's pervasive spread into every corner of the country, the US would not involve its military in a major war for decades, with what they called "Vietnam Syndrome" having infected the hearts and minds of much of the country -- not only because of the horrors of the actual war itself, not only because of the heroic and massive resistance of the Vietnamese people to the imperial invaders, but because of this domestic social movement as well.

The divide-and-rulers did many things to undermine the movement then -- all the usual things that should by now be familiar to you, dear reader, if you live in the US and you've been around a few years, especially.  They promoted ultraleft tactics that would be designed to alienate most people at a given time and place, which would be engaged in, as usual, by a combination of undercover agents and enthusiastic revolutionaries.  They did their best to sow ideological as well as interpersonal divisions within the movement.  

But in addition to trying to divide the grassroots groups that made up the movement, they took their efforts a step further by creating new organizations, that generally seemed to come out of thin air.

At most every point when there has been a movement that involved genuine coalitions of grassroots organizations doing things like organizing massive rallies and other events, there has arisen some form of ideologically rigid caricature of a grassroots coalition that seems to exist entirely in order to undermine the efforts of the actual grassroots coalition.

In the late 1960's this was the process through which SDS was destroyed by the cultish uber-militant group calling itself the Progressive Labor Party, which essentially rejected all the things that had built the movement into what it was, in the name of working class militancy, naturally destroying it, as they clearly intended to do from the outset.

Since first reading Kirkpatrick Sale's extensive history of SDS a long time ago, I believe I have seen this pattern resurrect itself as clear as day on multiple occasions.  Whether I'm right in my suspicions may or may not ever be known, but the pattern I have observed is one that must at least be described, because whoever is responsible for the state we have now arrived at, we will never dig ourselves out of this hole until we start to be able to identify the nature of the hole we are in.

I don't need to consult any elders or read any books to tell you what I've directly observed as an active participant in protests across the US from the 1980's to the present.

I remember the date of the big protest against the gathering war against the government of Iraq -- January 26th, 1991.  The ad hoc antiwar coalition that had come together announced their national protest planned for DC and San Francisco.  No sooner had they done this than another group made up mostly of groups no one seemed to have heard about organized a national protest to take place in the same locations, but a week earlier.

Once the antiwar coalition disintegrated, after the withdrawal of most of the US military at that time from the region, the other antiwar group also disappeared.  Years later, after 9/11 and the invasion of Afghanistan, the same sorts of grassroots organizations once again came together to form an ad hoc national antiwar coalition, called United for Peace and Justice.  

Once again, another group made up of organizations no one had ever heard of came into existence, and started planning protests to happen a week before the ones UFPJ announced.  Once again, this other coalition seemed to come out of nowhere, and though it was full of people no one had ever heard of, it had massive resources, always got permits for their protests, and always got lots of media coverage.  Once again, their protests were full of clearly sectarian, black-and-white thinking people shouting into microphones, with virtually no live music.

The contrast between the grassroots coalition made of up groups people had heard of -- with speakers and performers who generally consisted of the sorts of activists, authors, professors, leftwing politicians, whistleblowers, actors, musicians, etc., that at least some element of the folks going to the protests were familiar with -- as opposed to the coalition that only had sectarian people ranting at the crowd and nothing else, would be impossible to overstate.

In one case you have an inclusive variety of left speakers and artists trying to build a movement, and in the other you have unknown people shouting at you, with no art or music involved in the shouting, either.  In one case an effort at movement-building, in the other, a clear case of an effort at movement-destroying.

With the genocidal war on Gaza since last October, this traditional phenomenon can once again be observed, sort of.  Now, however, there is no competition between a coalition oriented towards building a movement and one oriented towards destroying it.  We only have the destroyers running the show, to the very slight extent that there is even a show to be running, in the US, as opposed to other countries, where the protests are usually far bigger and far more frequent.

I point out this stark reality not to discount the efforts of so many good people who want to raise their voices against the genocide, to somehow put a stop to it.  I'm among this group that desperately wants to see the genocide stop!  Which is why I'm so horrified by the movement-destroying nonsense that I witnessed in Chicago, which I suppose we call protests. 

Unrelated to the horrible programming choices or the rallies, or the decision by some ultraleft elements to try to "shut down the DNC" with a handful of teenagers against 2,500 cops, the city of Chicago was making it impossible for anyone to have a permit to hold a protest or a march anywhere near the United Center, the venue where the main DNC events were taking place.  

Permits were not granted until days before the protests.  It would be impossible to overstate what a devastating impact this kind of anti-democratic orientation displayed by the Chicago authorities probably had on attendance at the protests, when so much was totally up in the air until the very last minute.

But what the people who did show up ultimately had to experience was the sort of debacle that had nothing to do with the holdup in getting a permit or anything else.  Chicago is full of brilliant organizers and artists who could have provided some fantastic content for all the media who were there filming everything.  We could have had medical practitioners just back from Gaza, talking about the horrors they witnessed in the hospitals.  We could have had Medea Benjamin fresh from disrupting DNC events to talk about her recent months spent harassing Congresspeople and beseeching them to stop the genocide.  We could have had musicians performing on the stage whose very moving music about the genocide has been featured on Al-Jazeera.  We could have had this program in place just drawing on local Chicago people, to say nothing of the many people in from out of town.

Instead, what the world's media and a few thousand people who had come from around Chicago and around the world were treated to was a string of speakers most people there had never heard of, shouting at them.  Sometimes shouting about their outrage against the genocide and the American politicians facilitating it, and sometimes shouting at the crowd about how they need to stop just going to protests, and do more to stop the genocide, on the assumption that all they do is go to protests now and then.  The kind of nonsense I heard from the stage at those rallies could only be rivalled by an ANSWER rally, because, as far as I can tell, it's exactly the same sorts of people speaking.

How did this ultra-sectarian element, these obviously black-and-white thinkers who have a clear revulsion for any kind of communication that might be actually effective, who have no interest in art or music or other actually effective means of communication, get to determine the programming for all the rallies in Chicago?

It's a fascinating process, that we can also observe as I mentioned in 1991, 2002, etc.  A group can claim to be a coalition, and get lots of different groups to help get the word out and mobilize people to go to the protests, but in the end somehow or other all of the speakers seem to be from the same extremely sectarian faction that believes in shouting at the people in attendance and engaging in interminable bouts of very boring chants in between each rant.

How this all happens is not entirely clear to me, but that it does, is beyond any doubt at all.  It's easily observable to all, much to the collective horror of anyone who understands anything about what kinds of efforts tend to build a movement, and what kinds of efforts tend to destroy one.

As people know who read my blog regularly, since last October, every time I leave the US, up until last month, I play at protests everywhere, often several times a week, against the war in Gaza.  That organizers of a protest should say "yes" to having me sing at the protest when I'm in town is a no-brainer.  Everyone outside of the US knows that music moves people in so many ways that can be so positive.  Everyone knows how it fosters a sense of community, gives people hope and a sense of purpose.  Everyone knows this, everywhere but in the US.

The biggest of the protests, which had around 3,000 people at it, by my estimation, involved a very nice sound system, though no one might have known how good the sound system was, except if they were there when the thing was being set up, and they were playing music through it.  Once the rally began, the sound system would only be used as a sort of giant bullhorn.

The oft-stated excuse for not including music in the program is that there are too many sponsoring organizations, and everyone wants to speak.  This argument is preposterous in the first place, when you have 200 organizations signed on, and you're obviously not going to have 200 speakers.  It's even more preposterous when you see that the rally started 38 minutes late.

38 minutes during which musicians could have been performing songs about the horrors going on Gaza, filmed by the world's media.  38 minutes when we could have been winning over the hearts and minds of passersby, and drawing them into the park.  38 minutes when we could have been keeping all those children entertained, instead of having them stand around, literally crying from boredom.  38 minutes of dead air.

Then the interminable chanting began.  Eventually, after it seemed impossible that anyone could rasp "free, free Palestine" yet another time, the speakers began shouting at us.

Normally, as a rally continues, it draws in more people, who are interested in the stories being shared, and excited by the music the performers are sharing.  With all of these rallies in Chicago, as new people were arriving, because they were getting in late, others who had already been there since the beginning were leaving.  Not just a few people, either, but most anyone with children.  These were not child-friendly events -- children can get lots out of a good rally with moving speakers and musicians, but they don't like being shouted at.  They like it even less than adults do.

Eventually, the rally became a march, with many of the young participants wearing masks and referring to each other by code names, I guess in order to more thoroughly alienate themselves from each other and from anyone not involved with the march who might be wondering what's going on.

A breakaway group of masked youth from the march headed over to the fenced-off area surrounding the United Center, and pulled some of the fencing down, before being detained and arrested.

This kind of effort used to be the sort of thing that would be organized well in advance, and might involve thousands of people, in which case it might be successful.  Or on many other occasions it might involve thousands of people surrounding the fenced-off area in order to try to shut down the farcical proceedings.  But a few dozen people pulling at a fence and getting arrested?  It's a symbolic act that serves no purpose, aside from making protesters look disorganized, ineffective, and hyper-militant.

It's also a type of action that seems to have become increasingly common over the past 15 years or so in the US -- much more common than well-organized, well-planned acts of civil disobedience, and certainly much more common than efforts at reaching out to the broader world.

You could say there's been a competition for a long time now, between authentic people trying to do authentic organizing, and these groups that appear fabricated, synthetic, made up of strange people who shout all the time when they get on stages, who appear to be a caricature of a left group, as if invented by a low-budget TV studio.  When these two groupings on the broader left were represented by groups as different as UFPJ and ANSWER, it was abundantly obvious to anyone who went to actions organized by both coalitions that UFPJ was trying to organize a movement, and ANSWER was trying to kill it.

Now, however much I might hope for it, there is no equivalent to UFPJ anymore.  There is no group like that organizing protests to oppose this genocide.  We are left only with the rabid sectarians who only know how to organize shouting matches.  The sectarians have won, the left as some of us once knew it is gone, or certainly not in evidence in the past week in Chicago.

As to the circus that was was taking place within the confines of the United Center, I'll leave that for another commentary.  What was going on outside of it was a circus of a different kind.

Tim Walz

In the spring of 2022 I found myself for a week or so to be a member of staff for a man who was running in the Democratic primaries in Minnesota, hoping to be the next Congressional representative in Minnesota's 1st District.

The 1st Congressional District of Minnesota is largely rural, with towns like Red Wing being the main population centers. Red Wing is mainly known for its prison, and its shoe company. It's a lovely, though somewhat run-down and post-industrial, little town.

During the week I was there there were these gatherings all over the district that all the folks running for the Congressional seat attended, along with local Democratic Party elected officials and volunteers.

Governor Walz was running for office again along with other state-level Democrats, and they were busily traveling from one of these party gatherings to the next, not just in the 1st district, but in all the rest of them as well.

He and his entourage arrived at several of the events my candidate and I attended. Each time, they interrupted whatever was going on to give their pitch for the Democratic slate, and when they were done, they sped away to their next destination. In one case, my candidate was in the middle of his allotted three minutes to speak to the assembled group in a high school auditorium in some little town, when Governor Walz and his group entered the room.

One of the local Democrats, or perhaps a member of the Walz team, came onto the stage and asked my candidate to stop speaking and let the governor's team do their thing, rather than waiting until his three minutes were up first. They let him resume giving his three-minute speech after the governor and his crew were gone.

Walz seemed to have the same pitch wherever he went, or if he were modifying it for more rural areas like the one he was in, I couldn't tell. Mostly he talked about how intolerant the Republicans were, and how he and the Democrats, on the other hand, supported the rights of teenagers to choose their own gender.

Walz owned the stage, moving around and engaging with the audience, like someone who had given more than a few speeches in his life. People seemed impressed to have such a local celebrity in their midst. The content of his speech, however, didn't appear to me to be connecting with anyone in the room.

I don't know anything else about the guy, but he certainly struck me as a Democrat who embraced whatever the Democratic Party talking points for that election cycle were supposed to be, and he seemed to be functioning on autopilot. None of which is shocking, but I thought I'd share my very limited experience being in the same room as the guy who may soon be the Vice President of the US.