I'd forgotten how important the Colbert Report and Daily Show were for getting me through the Bush years and beyond. Truth is I've never been able to take conservative media straight, ever; too cruel and enraging and bad for my peace of mind. I need filters. So I've gone back to watching Colbert's opening monologues for his Late Show. These days they're almost always about the latest stupid affront to human decency perpetrated by the current regime and make it easier to laugh when you might otherwise feel like crying. Clearly a fan favorite are Colbert's impressions, mostly of Grump, but this one includes a hilariously spot on rendition of Bernie Sanders. For some much needed comic relief to our rolling disaster, I would like to suggest.
Likewise, I feel increasingly out of step with my age cohort on Israel and Palestine. When a longtime favorite music writer issued a hysterical post about the protests on college campuses against the war in Gaza last year I felt initially some sympathy for his obvious duress as a Jew but also felt increasingly alienated by the intransigence of his position. I believe Israel has a right to exist; I believe it has a right to defend itself against the violent attacks of its Arab Muslim neighbors. But I don't think it has a right to settler colonize the West Bank, or even the Muslim sections of Jerusalem, which it has been doing for decades. And I don't think it is has the right to indiscriminately bomb civilian targets in Gaza, as part of any military mission to remove Hamas, or win the return of hostages; and which, let's stipulate, nearly two years later has NOT achieved either of those goals but has resulted in over 50,000 deaths, many women and children, and, I'm sorry to say, at this point looks exactly like a genocidal terror campaign to ethnically cleanse Gaza of Arabs and Muslims. That is fucked up and wrong. And, of course, we shouldn't be harassing and jailing or even deporting people in the US for protesting Israel's war in Gaza. One of my go-to journalist sources, Josh Marshall @ TPM (might be behind a paywall; so subscribe, essential perspective on the news), shared the other day the longwinded reflections of a Jewish friend, worried about the impact of Mamdani's possible election as mayor of NYC. Not as hysterical as my music writer last year but my takeaway from this person's remarks was more or less the same: any opposition or protest of Israel or Zionism or Judaism has its way, even if unintended, of expanding antisemitism and so random violence and acts of terror against Jews. Maybe. There is certainly no lack of evidence of that in history. And I do think that terrible history does lend credibility to Zionism, the Jewish aspiration for a national homeland, even when I don't think Ethnonationalism as a rule is a very good idea. But this history can't exempt or pardon Israel from turning that same kind of violence and terror on others. Obviously, that is not okay and, equally obviously, it is only isolating Israel in the world. I hope Mamdani can reassure the Jewish community in NYC, while not abandoning the plight of Palestinians, because, to me, a Muslim-American mayor of NYC, the most populous center of Jewry outside Israel, a Muslim-American mayor that allies with Jews like Lander, and one that opposes all violence and war and terror in the Middle East between Muslims and Jews, might be in fact one of the best things that could possibly happen to the Israel vs Palestine conflict, or outside Israel anyway. Netanyahu is all pumped up with Israel's recent military success but Israel can't bomb their way out of their problems with their neighbors. Maybe some cooperation between Muslim and Jewish Americans can demonstrate a better way.
Anyway, now that I've heard Mamdani speak a little I'd have to say he sure doesn't sound like an antisemitic terrorist to me. Hear him for yourself.
"Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out," Bessie Smith (1929): And this is still pre-Crash!
My fanboy paraphrasing of a Keynes/Minsky (both gone) take on the billionaire oligarchy takeover in 2024:
In the 1930s and 1970s we advised socializing investment and reducing private speculation, committing investment to general progress while reducing excessive gambling in the markets. The public option, if you will. By contrast, you double down on market fundamentalist dictatorship and billionaire private equity speculators have taken over the US government. This is truly near diametrically opposite what we recommend:
Gov insures full employment, easy credit, eliminates working poverty, socializes investment (including, fundamentally, education, science, and technology) and "euthanizes" the predatory speculator class, which because we're civilized means retire them or transition them to some more productive job or pursuit.
Markets will thrive as a result, but expand more horizontally and less vertically. Successful local businesses will boom. All super big corporate organizations, the "Towering Heights" of the economy, where such scales are necessary, will partner with the state, with an operational state rule of thumb being the prevention of bean counter speculator takeovers. Consider this pattern of engineering led startups eventually being replaced at the top with bean counter cultures, precipitating the decline of quality standards of once great corporations: Intel, Boeing, GE, etc. Let the scientists and engineers run the labs and fabs.
Speculation, gambling, treating the economy like a casino, beyond being a fun sideshow, Keynes did enjoy playing the markets afterall, eventually makes everything worse. The dream of the current regime goes all the way back to the neolib Reagan Revolution. Wall Street. Financial elites. Corporate rule is divisive and just as sectional and narrow as you accuse labor of being. We warned you.
Wikipedia says Robyn's "triumph in rejection" has made her a LGBTQ icon. When I saw her at Neumos, 2010-ish, around the Body Talk record, a small club, semi-packed (hundreds, not thousands) she was like a soulful aerobics instructor, a bohemian cheerleader, baring her heartbreak with a steely defiant grace. Tender hearted, a winning sparkplug of energy; Robyn makes Pride-friendly latter day disco; work it out dance pop broken up with emotionally wrenching electro pop tearjerkers. She's emotionally raw and electric; a platinum livewire and former theater kid. TGIDF.
Her 2005 self-titled album, her fourth album, her first produced independently, Konichiwa Records, is one of my favorite albums of the 21st century. Admittedly, I've heard paltry amateur numbers of albums in this century at best but Robyn's independent album debut is special.
She put out a couple of tight R&B singles in the mid-'90s. Hearing them on the radio I thought she was Janet Jackson or somebody like that. She kind of was but actually from Sweden; sort of Prince and Madonna as a tough cookie hiphop b-girl from Europe. An original but big sweetheart next door vibe from the start.
But I've never entirely warmed to any of her other albums; they always sound like a single or two and filler; decent electro pop filler but filler. But Robyn, 2005, is all killer no filler; almost a concept album the pastiche of R&B and Hiphop studio pop, club beats, electronics, strings, sweet melodies, her gorgeously sensitive vocals tightly woven into a sonic portrait of, well, Robyn. Every song seductive feel good dance pop, every song under the feel good surface heart wrenchingly sad and sweet.
Anyway, brilliant, crafty, accomplished model of crossover global dance pop from 2005. Should not be missed; sounds almost utopian in 2025. Taylor Swift, Lorde, and Perfume Genius call her out as a big inspiration. Happy Pride Weekend.
My memory, spotty as it is, is that I first heard about The Fall from Carter Wood in 1979.
Carter went to my high school, although we never hanged out in high school. He wrote for the school newspaper, took college prep classes, and was on the Honor Roll. In high school, by contrast, I was busy going to keggers with my buddies and trying to find ways to be alone with my girlfriend; and playing a little sports, although I wasn't all that good at that either. School was an afterthought; I felt no pressure to get good grades at home and found it exceedingly easy to skate by. In short, we didn't travel in the same circles. But a couple years into college, Carter going to Reed, me Portland State, we ran into each other at a Wipers show in Portland and we saw some more shows together over the next couple years; The Rats, Sado-Nation, Gang of Four, like that. He knew lots of punk or especially post-punk stuff like The Fall and turned me on to them.
Grotesque ('80) was the first album, The Fall's third long player, that I fell for. Truth be told, my initial reactions to earlier albums, Live at the Witch Trials ('79) and Dragnet ('79) were much less enthusiastic; too shambolic, too dry and tuneless to my virgin Fall ears. But already by '81's '77-'79 Early Years, a cassette collection I ended up playing to death before losing, I was already reevaluating and thrilling to a handful of early classic Fall numbers: "Crap Rap 2/Like to Blow," "Industrial Estate," "Repetition," "Psychic Mafia," and "Rowche Rumble," etc. Listening to this early stuff again recently I can't get "Bingo Master's Breakout," their debut single, out of my head.
The Fall were always on the surface forbidding, noisy, often sounding as if on the verge of collapse. They found some difficulty getting recorded in those earliest years, like other longstanding post-punk survivors The Mekons, because even independent record labels, like Rough Trade, thought they were too incompetent as musicians to sell records, or enough records to justify production and distribution costs anyway.
Mark E. Smith (MES), the band leader, always center of attention on the mic, talk-singer, poet or wordy crank, take your pick, was the initial draw and, as it has turned out nearly forty years later, the only lasting figure in The Fall. MES was a punk! Not the cliche punk stereotype but as if you had found a real one in the wilds of England (read: outside London). He came off like an update of one of those 17th century English ranters depicted in Christopher Hill's The World Turned Upside Down (1972). Angry, inscrutable, disjointed but unflappably cocky in his right to speak for himself. Whatever he was yammering on about he was a "Hip Priest," a "Slang King," and crucial to his staying power, he had a uncanny knack for writing catchy, impossible to escape earworm hooks.
Again, not that I ever had much of an idea of what was really going on in MES's lyrics or ever studied them too closely. I've learned later he was into the books of Philip K. Dick, John le Carre, Aldous Huxley, Wyndham Lewis, H.P. Lovecraft, and other weird fiction authors. I knew The Fall name came from an Albert Camus novel. But his earworms, for me, were never more than a hook, a fragment of the lyrics, and often as earwormy for the catchy way his vocal played off and against the music, his sneering slurs and chants set against angular, cut-up, bass-drum-driven (equally catchy) tempos; in short, as catchy for the music as for his actual words or anything they added up to. I've learned only much later that the words in one of my favorite earworms by The Fall were not even MES's original lyrics.
A longstanding early favorite of mine was "Lie Dream of the Casino Soul" (1981). It lived in my brain for years as an impossible to escape earworm; specifically, a dramatic bridge that is repeated twice in the track. The music drops out, a simple circus-y keyboard figure and a chunky guitar riff strike a spare groove, before MES intones dramatically, "Meanwhile in the States/Proles retch/Dancing in the streets." It took the internet age for me to finally learn that the actual MES lyric in "Lie Dream" goes: "Meanwhile in the sticks/Proles rich/Dance in cardboard pants"?! Obviously, I was projecting. But, also, it just goes to show that often MES/The Fall's knack for hooks was as much about the music, the sonic punch of a musical passage, as about MES's words.
Still, MES definitely had a way with hooks made out of trigger words and provocatively conspiratorial language; "Hail the new puritan," "Jew on a motorbike," "What About Us?" etc. This was his earworm superpower. "LEAVE THE CAPITOL! EXIT THIS ROMAN SHELL!" off the Slates EP,* also '81, maybe my first wave Fall peak, was another MES hook stuck in my head for eons. But I really had little idea what he was actually going on about, other than he hated London and wanted to blame it on Rome. I never looked into it too much. More recently, I thought I'd maybe ran into the source of "Exit This Roman Shell" in this history book I ran into recently, Escape From Rome, before I realized the book came out in 2019. Still, a rich historical allusion is what MES's image of London or Britain trapped in dead Roman traditions tapped into.
"New Face in Hell," another early fave, sported lines that went: "Wireless enthusiast intercepts government secret radio band and uncovers secrets and scandals of deceitful type proportions." He appeared to be mocking communications snoops while confessing his avid curiosity in scuttlebutt. Like he's swapping shop talk with his conspiracy theory buddies at the pub. MES was also often satirizing the pop music process; the hype machines at NME and elsewhere in the music press. Or bragging about how legendary he was and is to the bitter end; or bitching about how unappreciated he remains. He was funny, caustic, obscure, over half the time I experienced his vocals mostly as gruff barks, yowls, cleverly accenting the tempos, that varied between circus funereal melodrama and Bo Diddley on drugs.
The title of "NFIH" refers to a movie from 1968, the paranoid conspiracy theory vibe "of deceitful type proportions" is vintage MES.
Original postpunk sublimity. The Fall's music in the early 1980s was called "Mancabilly," for Manchester rockabilly; or MES called it "Country 'n' Northern," as in northern England. MES sums up his favorite things as: "Scottish people, cats, Coronation Street [British soap opera set in Manchester], and Can." Like Can, OG German Krautrockers, already legends by the late '70s, the Fall were a mixture of high and low, progressive primitivists, if you will; MES going all in for the spoken word as performance art but always set to shambolic tribal postpunk sounds. He asserts "I am Damo Suzuki," former Can vocalist, notorious for his improvised free-associative lyrics, in one Fall song. In sum, The Fall, 1980 to 1984, that lineup, MES, Marc Riley (keyboards, guitar, banjo), Craig Scanlon (guitar, piano), Steve Hanley (bass, guitar), Paul Stanley (drums, keyboards), Karl Burns (drums, guitar), and Brix Smith (guitar), were the Fall peak in my first wave experience of the band.
I know some people think the Fall were over after Hex Enduction Hour ('82), when Marc Riley left the band and Brix joined. I'm less partisan about Riley or Brix on guitar; I love both Grotesque ('80) and Hex Enduction Hour, Riley's albums, and Perverted By Language and Wonderful and Frightening World of The Fall ('84), (more or less) Brix's albums, for different reasons but more or less equally. During this classic period the band could do the slow Sturm und Drang, darkening MES's working class crank poetry (like Suzuki, like Pere Ubu, like Nick Cave), but were best for my money at uptempo, polyrhythmic, heavy melodic bass rumble and clatter (including often two drummers and always some pounding extras, plinky keyboards, kazoos, etc). The thick bass center of that now classic Fall sound is as signature post-punk Manchester as New Order's Peter Hook or anybody else. This was peak postpunk Fall for me.
I remained on board through Wonderful and Frightening World (WAFW). I mean, I listened to each of their studio releases from Grotesque to WAFW pretty soon after they came out and played them many times. But I started to drift after that, turning to other music, other records, giving only glancing attention to The Frenz Experiment ('88), and then nothing for years after I am Kurious Oranj ('88). I even saw them a couple of times in this period, good shows. I liked the title track "I am Kurious Oranj. Another bass-centered guitar jangle, reggae inflected, flourishes of atonality, MES rocking his claptrap about being the unappreciated hitmaker. The sound is there but, and this had maybe been coming on for me for a bit, maybe "Slang King," which I liked, but maybe sealed the deal for me in 1984. It felt like MES was already settling into a schtick, too much repeating himself, the cut-up poetry of a self-aggrandizing crank from working class Manchester, England.
Cool but I drifted away. To be sure, some of it was what I was doing with many of my punk/new wave/postpunk favorites in the late '80s. They quit or fizzled or I lost interest and moved on to something else: Husker Du, Public Enemy, MJ, Madonna, New Zealand's Flying Nun Records, etc. Really, too much music, too little time for listening to music. But maybe some of it was I ran into a wall with the MES persona? It had grown stale.
Rip It Up and Start Again
I returned to The Fall recently while reading Simon Reynold's Rip It Up and Start Again (2005).
Reynold's avowedly "personal history" of postpunk music between 1978 and 1984. I've gathered since reading the book it has its critics. I will paraphrase: Too British, too much Green Gartside/Scritti Politti, a whole section devoted to the tenuously postpunk, "The New Pop and New Rock" (from Human League to Frankie Goes to Hollywood)." I have some sympathy here for both sides (more Talking Heads/Eno in the next edition, please) but I liked the angle Reynolds takes: postpunk was any music that was essentially created as inspiration or reaction to the Sex Pistols hostile takeover of the British charts at the end of 1977 and beginning of 1978. This covers the conventional postpunk canon, PIL to Throbbing Gristle. But also 2-Tone to Duran Duran, the latter of whom early on explicitly cite the Sex Pistols commando assault on the charts as a model (even if they were equally committed to not sounding anything like ugly punk rock, which they snarked in the music press at the time).
Anyway, Reynold's write-up of The Fall tweaked my interest. He makes a compelling case for recognizing Hex Enduction Hour ('82) as their best album. I feel like I toggle between HEH and Perverted by Language ('83). But what I realized most in Reynold's informative review of The Fall's long career was how much more Fall there was after I tuned out. MES died in 2018 at the age of sixty; he was a alcoholic and struggled with his health for years. Still, the most lasting legacy of The Fall might be how long they lasted. Between 1988, when I tuned out, and 2018, MES's death, The Fall put out twenty more albums. They've put out over fifty live albums, only a couple of which I've heard. And a bunch of singles; most I'd heard up to "Free Range" from 1992 but I don't think anything after that.
At any rate, ready to acquaint myself with more of the Fall catalog I poked around and decided I'd also read long-time Fall bassist Steve Hanley's book The Big Midweek: Life Inside The Fall (2014) while digging into some more Fall. I always like doing this: reading about some music while listening to it. But it used to be magazines and music zines; now it's books. In this instance, this turned out limiting in that Hanley's account of the Fall's records stops in 1998 in a fiery breakup. So nothing really on The Fall's last two decades of records but good background on the longest-tenured Fall operation from 1980 to 1998.
The Fall have gone through many lineup changes since their beginning. The only mainstay 1977 to 2017 is MES. But Steve Hanley, bassist, is the longest running Fall member besides MES, lasting in the band from 1979 to 1998. Moreover, his resonant bass sound is considered, and this take has been endorsed by MES, foundational to the original blueprint of The Fall sound. Riley and Hanley were roadies, hauling the band's equipment before being asked to join the band as teenagers in '79. Once up and running Hanley's bass became the axel around which The Fall's sound evolved.
Not sure if I've ever read a book about touring musicians who actually loved touring. Living on the road is hard. In the best circumstances the musicians enjoy some intensely strong performances and, hopefully, maybe some groupie party action, notably none in Hanley's account for The Fall, but life on the road generally sucks. In short, the corrosive grind of touring with an erratic, endlessly combative MES for eighteen years is the prevailing theme of Hanley's book.
And the final straw for the original lineup, or what was left of it, Hanley and Burns, was MES messing with their instruments on stage during a performance in 1998. They fought, stormed off stage, and finally once and for all any remnant of the early Fall band broke-up. That was that. But, must say, I actually remember seeing MES doing something like that on stage, messing with other band member's equipment and them visibly not enjoying it, at least ten years earlier. The last straw was likely a long time coming.
Another limitation of Hanley's book is as a source for greater insights into MES's lyrics. Hanley doesn't offer much. You'd like a phrase or two but then nowhere, he opines. And undeniable. MES at least some if not most the time, reportedly, used a cut-up style, remixing randomly a bag of lyrics; like Dadaists, William S. Burroughs. In Hanley's account the guys in the band paid most attention to MES's lyrics when they thought they heard lines insulting them. Otherwise, not much to offer.
(I don't know if I'll ever get to it but I see now there is a book about MES called Messing Up the Paintwork: The Wit and Wisdom of Mark E Smith from 2018 that might answer any remaining questions about MES's wordsmithing.)
Some of MES's irritating ticks were funny, though. Hanley complains that on early tours he was constantly making the band watch The Producers (1967) or Zulu (1964), so making fun of Nazis and Britain's Alamo last stand against native Africans. While in the tour van Hanley and his bandmates got into listening to The Clash, or especially other Manchester groups of the day, Joy Division, New Order, Echo & the Bunnymen, Smiths, and MES would invariably grouch about what shit they all were and force the band to listen to Frank Zappa.
If Hanley has an axe to grind it's that MES doesn't give the band or him enough credit for The Fall's music. As Hanley tells it, from 1980 to '98, some music was composed with the band all together, collaboratively, but most of it was MES writing the lyrics on his own, or early on with Riley or Scanlon, and the band, led by Hanley, coming up with the music on their own, without MES, and then going back and forth with MES editing songs via cassette copies and then finally rehearsals all together.
There is also a scene in Hanley's book when some reputable studio producer is having a final meltdown, fed up with MES's methods, lamenting his efforts to make the instruments and recording sound good in the studio, only to have MES take the recording home and alter it with a home cassette recorder and then ask the producer to turn his cassette recorded version into the record they put out! MES, not much of a musician, was instrumental to the Fall sound, from beginning to end; for better or worse.
And Hanley's bass sound was totally essential to the original blueprint of The Fall sound. Both these things, MES and Hanley being crucial to the original, peak or classic, Fall sound, regardless of Hanley's grousing, are still true.
More stuff I've learned reading about and listening to The Fall again recently:
1) There is this Complete Peel Sessions box set of The Fall doing 15-20 minute live set recordings with DJ John Peel at the BBC studios that came out in 2005. The box compiles 24 sessions the band recorded for Peel's radio show between 1978 and 2004. The uncanny part is how Peel seems to get the best out of The Fall, many live in the BBC versions besting LP versions of Fall songs.
Sample classic session from 1980:
I'm not saying there are no duds in the Peel Sessions-- again, late '90s was obviously a very rough period, MES going through some kind of substance abuse breakdown-- but with Peel the strong sets stretch into the '90s easy, even the early '00s, after MES's breakdown. If there needs to be a one-stop- shop record with The Fall this would have to be my recommendation. It's very expensive but free all over youtube.
2) So, again, keeping in mind I knew almost nothing about The Fall's recorded output after '88, so Hanley's second and last decade, and then the next two decades this century, when MES put out 12 more albums. Maybe a song here or there but no albums. But I've been dabbling enough around these last three decades of The Fall lately to suggest it appears clearly that the breakup with Hanley and the old lineup in 1998, actually, artistically rejuvenates MES some. The Unutterable (2000), especially Fall Heads Roll ('05), and Your Future Our Clutter ('10), for examples of his post-breakup output, sound stronger again to me. Like MES learned how to rock out with his band again, even if this likely meant bossing them around, nearly all his post-'98 bandmates are a generation younger; and meant bossing them around in a way Hanley and the long list of other bandmate casualties could no longer endure. At any rate, in my best rock critic voice, if haphazard and terribly incomplete survey, MES's post-'98 records show MES was still integral to the composition of The Fall sound and could reproduce that sound, or exhilarating facsimiles, with other groups of musicians.
For instance, immersing myself again in The Fall for the past few months, what's striking to me is how much I've returned to this 27 minute master-mix of various versions of a song called "Blindness" or "(Deaf And) Blindness" that MES recorded with a Fall lineup in the '00s, after his breakup with the Hanley unit. A version appears on the last Peel Session in '04 and a studio version appears on the Fall Heads Roll LP* released in 2005. In addition to his knack for the verbal hook, MES retained a remarkable knack for recreating the classic Fall sound: Shambolic bass tunes, dirty metal guitar riffing, some twisted pop keyboards; the band loose but tight with MES. "Blindness" locks into this thick hypnotic groove, riffing guitar, heavy bass swagger, and a perfect minimalist keyboard melody. An intoxicating rocker you want to go on forever and it almost does clocking in at over 26 minutes of drone rock madness. MES barks out stuff, name drops some dead celebrities, a hook he repeats only the way he can,"Hey Blindman, Have Mercy On me," is about all of any story I pickup but there is again, all these years later, MES and his way with the hook. Also, this is very late postpunk mind you, even towards the end of the early '00s neo-postpunk thing, Interpol, The Killers, and near 30 minutes of a postpunk superjam bliss by The Fall to my ears.
At any rate, I'm not saying there are not times, before and after '98, when MES doesn't sound like the indecipherable crank street drunk calling out everybody; barking, slurring, semi-coherently at best. Again, I rarely pick up more than a phrase here and there without looking at a lyric sheet. But it must be said, what Fall albums and records I've sampled before and after the big breakup he never sounds again quite as sick and bad as he did in those final few years with the original lineup, and he remains to the end the inscrutable and hostile postpunk wordsmith; "Your Future Our Clutter," "Sub-Lingual Tablet," and, ending in 2018 with, "New Facts Emerge." Indeed they do.
3) Going way back to This Nation's Saving Grace ('85), regarded by the faithful as The Fall's best, or according to allmusic.com anyway, and Bend Sinister ('86), both of which I shamefully missed when I dropped out with The Fall in the mid-'80s, I would now add to their classic period, stretching that period from 1980 to 1986. TNSG burnishes MES's northern Mancunian nativist schtick while adding electro beats and proving again his mastery with the long edgy jams. "Bend Sinister," again, absolutely no memory beyond maybe "Mr. Pharmacist" via college radio, which stood out to me as a cover I knew, doubles down on "LA" from TNSG, and might be Brix's biggest Fall album. It appears to have more Brix song credits than ever. And there's this California surf-noir guitar/bass sound, not unheard of in the earlier Fall, but never more prevalent than on Bend Sinister that could be attributable to Brix. Anyway, both albums still focused in a way that starts to unravel and/or lose steam with The Frenz Experiment and I'm Curious Oranj, or that's my case anyway and I'm sticking to it for now.
Also, still notable that their only proper Mancunian anthem, "Hit the North," doesn't appear before The Frenz Experiment ('88), when it appears they were losing sufficient steam as a band to produce engaging albums and were becoming preoccupied with turning into a non-hit singles band. They maybe couldn't figure their way out of that stuck-place for awhile. Another tension in Hanley's book is he and Brix really wanted to see The Fall get big hits. MES wanted that too but only on his incorrigible terms, which were way too weird and tuneless and hostile for Top 40.
4) So how big of asshole and creep was MES really?
In Hanley's telling, basically, MES was a drunk, so was Hanley eventually, but MES was drunk most the time, and an even bigger asshole when he wasn't drunk; according to Hanley throughout several parts of the 1980 to 1998 period you could measure how long MES had gone without a drink by his temper. At about 45 minutes it was always time to duck and cover.
MES was also proudly nativist. He acted like he was a local polka king, and fancied he had connections with the local mafia, according to Hanley. He was incessantly oppositional, hated most everything that wasn't Scottish or from Manchester. Right from the get-go, in "Bingo Master's Breakout," it's like he imagines he's MC at a local bingo night, a mouthy nutcase breaking from the script and ranting to the local hangers on in a language he imagines only fellow Mancunians can understand.
This gives MES and The Fall a certain rooted charm but also had its limits. When asked about Brexit shortly before his death he is reported to have expressed support for Brexit and insisted that next England should immediately go to war again with France.
MES drops N-words in songs. I know of a couple instances. Once as "obligatory N-word plural," qualifying it as a scorned social role, not necessarily Black. And another time in relation to the Irish, I think. So I've never caught him using it in direct reference to a Black person but the N-word metaphor as a trigger word is part of MES's vocabulary, for sure. And maybe the school teacher in me but I can't hear it without cringing defensively. On the other hand, The Fall played in several Rock Against Racism benefit concerts back in the day, even though MES became a total crank about the music benefit concert scene once it blew up in the '80s. And MES relates with pride, true or not, that Bo Diddley once told him that The Fall were his favorite English group.
MES was also a serial homophobe in his lyrics, as I've alluded before, but nothing, thankfully, more insulting or criminal comes out in Hanley's long account. You get the impression early on he felt menaced by the aggressive interests of gay men, which as long as no one got hurt strikes me as funny. MES fleeing his gay fans. Another group to disdain with his petty hatreds.
As for women, Brix looks like a post-punk trophy wife to be sure, and MES was from the early '80s on mostly aloof and imperious with his bands, but he was also always bringing his girlfriends into the band, often to the chagrin of the rest of the old hands. Also then perhaps reflecting a small check on his tyrannical tendencies.
In Hanley's account MES is frequently throwing stuff in fits of rage, acting like a "Little Hitler" around shows, bossing people around, spitting invective. He throws pipsqueak publicists out of The Fall's backstage tour space on the regular. But MES's victims were typically, as the saying goes, and as it goes with most misanthropes, the people closest to him.
5) Finally, feeling more generous this time around with The Fall, here's their late classic phase again. (The Brix years, basically.) When they're scoring theatrical productions and going on TV. They still look awkward, then and now. It's their glammy pop phase, Smith in purple, Hanley looking like he's dressed for church, and Brix adding the LA glam punk Blondie wannabe look to our awkwardly turned out provincial northern lads.
But what an impossibly insider-baseball catchy post-punk doomed bid at a pop record. "Big New Prinz" ('88) is so preposterously not a Top 40 record and so undeniably a Fall record that you imagine maybe it was a big hit record. But, not quite, peaking at 59; "There's a Ghost in My House" was their actual chart peak reaching 30 in 1987. This was the best The Fall could do when they were actually trying to sell out. A triumph of style and personality. The tune has got that clap and stomp along Fall tempo, the choppy repetition, the compellingly postpunk tribal rumble of bass and drums. The noir guitar riffing is pro forma but encases the snotty attitude of a combustible pop song concoction. And then MES on the mic:
Check the record
Check the record
Check the guy's track record
Check the record
Check the guy's rock record
Then the band chanting in the background:
He is not appreciated
And then follows a salute to the legend, Slang King, The Big New Prinz:
Drink the long draught down
Drink the long draught
Drink the long draught down for the Big Priest!
He, apparently, drink too many long draughts down but is now a marvel for how long he actually did last as a postpunk Hip Priest, a proto-postpunk rapper, as if he were barking and shrieking into a bullhorn on a street corner, an oppositional crank and earworm artist to the very end!
“We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both," Louis Brandeis
"If Aristotle saw aristocracy degrading into oligarchy, Trump is oligarchy degrading into kleptocracy," Timothy Noah
"But Aristotle offered no guidance on what to do about an oligarchy that acquires power by democratic means. Nor did he reckon that the middle class [which he saw as democracies' class protector] would dwindle—from 61 percent in 1971, according to a Pew Research Center study, to 51 percent in 2023.
Aristotle could not possibly conceive the proliferation and growing wealth of the American billionaire. In 1976, Getty died the world’s richest man, with $6 billion. Musk has $431 billion. Correcting for inflation, the richest man in the world today is more than 10 times wealthier than the richest man in the world half a century ago. Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg are each six times wealthier than Getty was. Larry Ellison and Warren Buffett are five times wealthier.
When you possess this much money, buying political influence looks like a bargain. Warren Stephens spent a combined $7 million to purchase his ambassadorship. But that’s nothing compared to the $31 million he paid a decade ago to buy a mansion in Carmel, California. Jeff Bezos spent $250 million to buy The Washington Post a dozen years ago. But he paid twice that to purchase the world’s largest sailing yacht, which clocks in at 417 feet and plies the seven seas with a support vessel that’s 246 feet long and carries additional crew.
The oligarch Donald Trump, in auctioning himself and American government to the highest bidder, may well match or surpass the stew of corruption that Washington created during the Gilded Age. That’s on him. But it’s on the rest of us that over 50 years, through economic policies that coddled the rich under both Democrats and Republicans, American wealth concentrated to such a degree that a Trump presidency—make that two Trump presidencies—was not only possible, but perhaps inevitable."
A brief overview of concentrated wealth and oligarchy in US history. Also includes several relevant book references, only one of which I've already read; including the authors's 2013 book, The Great Divergence, which I plan to read shortly.
(And another "great divergence"! Love the big turning points in history genre and reviewing the cases for them.)
Timothy Mellon, grandson of Andrew Mellon, a big business tycoon and plutocrat who ran the US economy (and much of the government) in the 1920s; his grandson, Timothy, was second only to Musk, maybe first, in donations to Trump's 2024 campaign. Making in a way 2024 perhaps the final total (totalitarian) triumph of the big business Billionaire oligarchy in American history. An 1848 triumph of capital for the 21st century.
True it appears very likely a terrible falling-on-one's-own-sword pyrrhic victory; self-destructive, doubling down on burn-baby-burn climate change denial. MAGA's forever bigot wars have control now and desperately want to become the new mainstream. And the media is maddeningly deferential and plays along. But Trump's regime is still thankfully ten points or more underwater and unpopular. And no wonder, his agenda is bad for everyone but himself and a small circle of his best cronies. Maybe bad for them too? I mean, all this criming has to catch up with them eventually, no? But I know, not yet!
Still, very bad; let us count just a few ways: 1) The grifter's economic idiocy; 2) DOGE's AI surveillance technology takeover; 3) the stupid anti-education and science agenda; 4) the stupid anti-DEI divisiveness; and 5) the anti-worker living wages and condescending rich guy hostility towards the cost of living for workers and care work and the caring economy and the general disdain for the public infrastructure of prosperity.
In world history, or over the last millennia in western Europe at any rate,* the State first created, expanded, and regulated markets for the sake of national security. The goal was to build strong militaries to protect the State and the society over which the state ruled. And then, second, to expand and grow the economic provisioning of prosperity for all of society; which was always in tension with big private capital interests maximizing their take. Some might say the collective provisioning function has always been squeezed by big capital interests; imposing on the real economy austerity and efficiencies that only serve private profits.
I'm not sure I've ever seen a US admin so disdainful of the working classes and encouraging to corruption. It's Hayek's collectivist nightmare and extreme bigotry in revolt against democracy and basic human rights; the latter better known as the "woke mind virus." It's libertarianism radicalized into a narcissistic pathology. I doubt you can keep a good country going for long like this, let alone a democracy. We might have already lost the latter.
So much hateful horrific stuff has been added to the pile on since 2015 it is easy to forget where this fascist descent in the US began was with Grump's racist birther reaction to Obama. So I suppose it shouldn't come as any surprise that he would snub Juneteenth, it's another national holiday recognizing the importance of DEI and CRT to the story of the country. But that doesn't make it any less cringeworthy when he dishonors this history, again; in 2025. Come on people! Here's the real history of Juneteenth, as American as apple pie and hotdogs. And a big victory over the violent bigotry that now rules over the country again. Respect.
I could be mixing it up with something else but I'm fever dreaming Brian Eno had to be listening to this Miles Davis recording of a David Crosby song, "Guinnever," when Eno collaborated with Jon Hassell to make his much beloved by me (and, yes, his hilariously pretentiously titled), Fourth World, Vol.1: Possible Musics (1980) and his solo album On Land (1982), both abstract portraits of "possible" geographic spaces.
Apparently, when Crosby first heard Mile's version of his song he was so disapproving Davis kicked him out of his studio. Crosby's beautiful melancholy folk pastoral, "Guinnevere," is stretched truly beyond recognition, and to nearly a half an hour of music in the version I share below. It's like the barest pulse of a melodic bass line from the original, everything stretched out as if surveying strange mysterious landscapes, not unlike Eno's later ambient albums. This barest ambient impression of a melodic bassline in "Guinnevere," which Xgau says actually was already coming from Mile's Sketches of Spain classic, functions as ambient launchpad into percolating tempos of the thick steamy tropics, fluttering in and out of exotic slow-building bird mating rituals, Arabian sandstorms and lunar space landing keyboards, ghostly horn fantasias, epic ambient tableaus of jazzy space rock soundtrack music.
Miles recorded "Guinnevere" in 1970, with a lot of his fusion regulars of the day, Wayne Shorter, Airto, John McLaughlin, Chick Corea, Bennie Maupin; a long list of musicians contributed to the recording. The album with a seven minute version came out in 1979, on Circle in the Round, just in time for Eno, always in the mix in those days, working with Jon Hassell, experimental trumpet player (actually, to my crude ears he sounds more than a little like a spacey foghorn tape-manipulated version of Miles), and composer (Vol. 2 of the Fourth World series on his own is equally stirring; and he has other very good ambient albums as well). And then Eno's On Land in '82; again, sonically sketching geographic terrain like Mile's "Guinnevere." There it is several of Eno's key ambient moves in early electric Miles.
By ambient, big word now, I mean in the OG sense: unimposing and slow developing soundscapes that work well as background music. They fill the space without overwhelming the space; you can ignore the music if you want but if you do pay attention to it you can sometimes find ambient music mesmerizing and in moments physically and/or emotionally stimulating. Eno's original definition of ambient music, basically.
I know there's all kinds of other shades of ambient music now but I'm going back to Eno's '70s originals, and even before that, the proto-ambient music source, early electric Miles Davis, 1970 to 1974, outtakes from his Bitches Brew, Jack Johnson, On the Corner sessions, stretched out, sprung like Stockhausen ambient jazz landscapes, exotic soundscapes, beautiful black and blue soundtracks like "Guinnevere."
Like a space age Black Power music; Miles electric '70s peers with some of Sun Ra or Coltrane's most out there free spiritual jazz. But Miles is strictly secular, his spirituality rooted in the blues. His electric music an Afro-futurist meditation on the blues in 1970s that sounds cold, fierce, and visually other-worldly. Miles on another high modernist musical tip, like music writer Greg Tate was always writing about him.
I still don't know how much this is Miles and how much producer Teo Macero, a topic of some controversy apparently. This half hour long suite was left off the studio release of Bitches Brew (1970) and appears first on the 1998 release of The Complete Bitches Brew sessions. In the same vein try "Calypso Frelimo" off Get Up with It (1974). Space rock funk at another early ambient peak for Miles.
Miles was a mother in these years; a jazzy space rock exorcist unable to escape his demons. Churning out beautifully dark and visionary music.
Here's the Crosby, Stills, & Nash original, 1969, all melancholy pastoral acoustica, beautifully forlorn harmonies, "she/Ma'lady/we shall all be free," or for the purposes of enjoying the song anyway. Works for me but how Miles got from this CSN song to his electric voodoo Miles in outer space version I do not know but at any rate what a near miraculous act of musical creativity. Crosby warmed to it years later.
I know electric Miles is way too slow and freaky austere for casual CSN pop music fans; think "Almost Cut My Hair" stretched and slowed down to three times its original length. But if you're into jazz or ambient or exotic longform background music early electric Miles and Eno should not be missed. Sonic safari music that goes well with reading. And strong coffee. Recommended.
If it took CSN for you to read this far I don't have any problem with that.
There is this now somewhat buried but nevertheless enduring and corrosive factional conflict amongst Dems going back to the 2016 primaries (at least). It is between Bernie Sanders leftists/democratic socialists and Hilary Clinton's moderate/centrist corporate elites. In its most caricature form, back when I was on Facebook/Twitter, Bernie Bros vs HRC's "Me Too" Pussyhats. Now it's Bernie/Warren/AOC, "stop the genocide in Gaza," progressive Dems vs corporate DNC septuagenarian plus pro-crypto Dems. My sympathies have always been more with the good gov "dirtbag left" (read: poor or in sympathy with the multicultural working poor) Berniecrats but I voted for HRC in '16 without hesitation.
And some of this partisan circular firing squad stuff is probably inescapable after a electoral loss but nevertheless it drives me nuts how much of a self-defeating distraction it becomes when the contest that unites us is violent bigot fascism and monstrously corrupt corporate oligarchy. So I tend to avoid these squabbles like the plague. But looking up something about Thomas Piketty (my favorite academic economist) I found this story from 2018. Some reporting from Salon's Keith A. Spencer's about Piketty's take on this enduring factional Dem debate. In brief:
"Left" parties — e.g. the Democrats in the United States, Labour in the U.K. or the Socialist Party in France — have lost the constituencies they once supported [working class people] and now appeal to the [educated and wealthy] elites, leaving a vast underclass politically unrepresented and rudderless," and, I might add, easy prey to reactionary bigots hating on whatever cultural scapegoats they are hating on this year, and violent crackdown style law and order made-for-TV bullshit.
But do I really think Bernie could have beat Trump in 2016? I doubt it. But do I think the Dem leadership's on and off hostility towards the progressive left wing of the party was/is, basically, proxy for the DNC's resistance to taking clear progressive positions on working class priorities like living wages, health care for all, and other basic cost of living measures because their big corporate billionaire donors don't want them to? Absolutely.
"It is worth noting that this immigration system is not an original component of US governance. Whereas the first government under the US constitution formed in 1789, there were no federal immigration laws until the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, and even this law was limited in the sense that it banned a specific class of immigrants. The US did not have closed borders until the Immigration Act of 1924, which established national origins quotas across the board.
The primary justifications for these early immigration laws were xenophobia, eugenics, and overt racism. By the 1990s, however, multinational corporations understood that closed borders – especially combined with free trade agreements freeing multinational companies to shop around for “cheap” workers, while at the same time constraining the options of workers to move around and look for better jobs – were a powerful weapon in their arsenal to squeeze ever more profit out of global supply chains. While cleverly hidden behind discourses of “security” and “sovereignty,” our immigration system is actually a scam rigged to guarantee an upward flow of wealth at the cost of human rights.
The North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) illustrates this dynamic. Signed in 1992, Nafta created a free trade zone among Mexico, Canada and the US, specifically making it easier for goods, capital and corporations to move freely while conspicuously ignoring the movement of workers."
So much that I don't get about the present (or past, for that matter) but one piece relevant here: aren't a lot of industries, agriculture and construction, to name only two of the bigger concerns, major beneficiaries of the cheap labor this immigration system allows but at the same time big supporters of Trump, who radically threatens this cheap labor source? I suppose we might assume, like a lot of his supporters, they thought Trump was only talking about deporting the criminals amongst these immigrants but he was always bragging in his campaign about deporting 10-20 million undocumented immigrants. I'm pretty sure there aren't 10-20 million immigrant gang members in the US, nor 10-20 million undocumented poor immigrants, without cutting into significant numbers of those harvesting food for our tables, building our homes, and mowing our lawns. I just heard the other day that as much as 40% of the agricultural work force in the central valley of California is made up of undocumented immigrants. Why would those businesses support Trump? Why anybody, I know, but still you expect businesses to watch closely their bottom lines, if nothing else.
Nonviolent protests are twice as likely to succeed as armed conflicts – and those engaging a threshold of 3.5% of the population have never failed to bring about change.
There are, of course, many ethical reasons to use nonviolent strategies. But compelling research by Erica Chenoweth, a political scientist at Harvard University, confirms that civil disobedience is not only the moral choice; it is also the most powerful way of shaping world politics – by a long way.
Looking at hundreds of campaigns over the last century, Chenoweth found that nonviolent campaigns are twice as likely to achieve their goals as violent campaigns. And although the exact dynamics will depend on many factors, she has shown it takes around 3.5% of the population actively participating in the protests to ensure serious political change.
I became a fan of Power Pop very early on; Beatles, The Who, Badfinger, the Guess Who, like that. My young love for the stuff peaked in the late '70s with Cheap Trick; their album Heaven Tonight (1978) is a platonic ideal of Power Pop in my book. So a version of Beatlesque remains a constant to this day in my affection for the stuff but with a few formal refinements to the prototype formula. Ringing guitars are good but more important than whatever instrumentation is the uptempo insistent and urgent (with the occasional heartbreaker slow one) Mod or rocker-like '60s tempos; The Shoes, The Records, The Bangles, The Veronicas, all still power pop. To be honest, I often find a lot of latter day power pop, neo-Power pop or Pop Punk, too formulaic. But it's still power pop. Power pop doesn't have to have a British accent for me either; although an accent, say, Big Star's Memphis drawl does add welcome flavor. My bare minimum for power pop rests on vocal group harmonies, even if mostly the creation of studio multitracking. I want a group of voices blended together in big chorus harmonies and sing-along hooks. Power pop has to have stacked vocal group harmonies and be semi-fast or hard; not hard like hard rock hard but hard like a Jolly Rancher. So important are the harmonies that they often put over otherwise by-the-numbers 1980s-1990s neo-power pop like this Redd Kross single from their album Phaseshifter (1993). It's those bubblegum sweet rave-up harmonies. Still works for me.
"Any eulogy for this relationship [ Trump and Musk] must first and foremost be a eulogy for the United States of America. An amoral billionaire who by rights should have been impeached and barred from running for office for life became president again—legitimately this time, as far as we know—put the world’s richest multibillionaire in charge of a sensitive task that he oversaw with the delicacy of a hyena stripping a wildebeest carcass clean. Their efforts have already resulted in deaths around the globe and will cause untold harm in this country over time.
And now they’re engaged in a “substantive” argument that can be summarized like this. One, Trump wants a bill that is the usual Republican recipe for fiscal disaster—massive tax cuts for the rich, cuts to programs that help working and poor people, huge deficits and debts as far as the eye can see. The other, Musk, at least professes to care about the deficits and debt, but he’s totally chill with the massive tax cuts for the rich. He’s just against the “pork,” which is rich-man speak for things that might actually benefit people and communities.
It’s tragic that working Americans are held hostage to this madness."
Amen. But this analysis goes on to suggest Musk can bring down Trump if he likes? The case is that Musk can bring down Grump with X/Twitter. I am willing to entertain evidence Musk's X/Twitter won the election for Trump. I expect it exists. But the proposition that Musk can bring down Trump by tweaking the algorithms at X/Twitter and trash-talking Grump with an army of troll-bots into being impeached strikes me as a bit of a stretch. We'll see.
Musk's Starlink satellite system and Space X remain Musk's greatest leverage over the gov; the former is apparently essential now to national security. Tesla, on the other hand, might already be irrelevant. Anyway, the gov needs Musk, Starlink, and Musk needs the gov to fund his tech interests in AI, a Mars mission, and protection from China's superior models of EVs.
One ironic turn in this saga might include Trump. He just threatened-- I know, so just as likely more TACO-- to end all government contracts and subsidies going to Musk. Besides being impossible in the short run for national security reasons already stated, if Trump were to go nuclear because that's the kind of crazy he is, watching Musk twist in the wind articulating his new position on the constitutional importance of the anti-Impoundment law will be a special treat.
More likely, Musk returns to his front row seat and settles for mouthing off now and then about how he's going start a new political party for the middle 80%. And Trump blunders on building his golden parachute and Project 2025's Christian Nationalist surveillance state, or until a serious economic recession sets in and the electorate realizes they've been had, again.
And then again, if running the country with X/Twitter isn't cartoon evil enough for you, here's a snapshot of the whole "Dark MAGA/Dark Enlightenment" conspiracy theory, which Musk apparently reps for when he wears his Dark MAGA black hat:
— There’s a “Dark MAGA/Dark Enlightenment” conspiracy theory going around where Musk destroys Trump and he and his tech bro buddies take over our democracy. I’ve written before about the “Dark Enlightenment” movement that’s all the rage among tech billionaires and followers of Curtis Yarvin. The basic theory is that democracy is “out of date software” that needs to be “rebooted” by replacing our presidency with a CEO-style dictator (Yarvin says we must “get over our dislike of dictators”) drawn from the ranks of tech billionaires. Elon Musk and JD Vance are both apparently proponents of the concept, so the theory going around is that they’re conspiring to get Trump’s Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment, declare Trump incompetent, and remove him from office, putting Vance in charge of the country. Vance will then bring in the tech bros to replace the Cabinet, expand the DOGE project, deconstruct our New Deal/Great Society social safety nets and rule of law, and turn America into an authoritarian state that runs with greater efficiency and productivity. It sounds nuts, but these people are apparently dead serious about it, as David Gardner writes over at Daily Beast. He notes that Musk wears black MAGA hats as a signal to the Dark Enlightenment advocates, and their goal is pretty clear: “Federal employees would be fired in such quantities that the government would no longer be manageable. Elections would be deemed obsolete. Policies would engender fear and distract the population. The Dark MAGA or Dark Enlightenment theory says it is the remit of the tech billionaires to run the world because they are the only ones with the resources and the know-how to fix it.” Will the Musk/Trump falling out speed up this project or slow it down or even kill it? Stay tuned…
We must get over our dislike of dictators, because Big Tech CEO dictators are how we get things done! Strikingly similar argument to to the one Putin makes for his takeover in Russia in the '90s; or so that's my memory of Masha Gessen's account in The Future is History from 2017. Democracy means chaos and conflict; my dictatorship will make the trains run on time again, etc. And all rolled up in a snowball of media hype about foreign threats and internal enemies; immigrants of color, Nazis, Trans, homosexuals, the liberal rule of constitutional law, etc.
And Big Tech as "the only ones" that "know-how to fix it," by nearly all accounts, are deeply into hedging their bets that the earth, only they can save, is in fact un-savable, and they are busy, Space X and Blue Horizon, innovating ways for people to live off world, in giant space stations, or on Mars. Okay, so invest in their space exploration; some competition for NASA is probably a good idea. But when was it ever a good idea to let guys like these, Trump, Musk, Tech Bros, all conservative republican billionaires, run the world?
Absolutely never.
John Maynard Keynes:
"How could I bring myself to be a Conservative? They offer me neither food nor drink-- neither intellectual or spiritual consolation. I should not be amused or excited or edified. That which is common to the atmosphere, the mentality, the view of life of-- well, I will not mention names--promotes neither my self-interest nor the public good. It leads nowhere; it satisfies no ideal; it conforms to no intellectual standard; it is not even safe, or calculated to preserve from spoilers that degree of civilization which we have already attained." From "Am I a Liberal?" 1925
The one song for us all? Rolling Stone had this at 145 on their list of 500 Greatest Songs of All Time in 2004; up to 109 on the 2021 list. That's the right direction but when I saw Sly deliver this at the end of Questlove's Summer of Soul in 2021 I cried. I am sure it meant a lot in 1968 and 1969. It's regarded as one of the most popular songs of the 1960s. Now it feels like manna from heaven, "We got to live together." Shaking his afro, rocking his freak flag, Sly: "Iiiiiiiii am Everyday People." Yes you are! And you and you too!
"Heads Will Roll," Yeah Yeah Yeahs (2009): I think YYY's fan base sneer at this as desperate late career stab at commercial success; selling out their underground rock cred. But by far the best thing I know by them. Maybe they ought to have sold out sooner? Hard to think of a bigger gothic disco statement this century: "The men cry out the girls cry out. Oh no." Karen O as Ice Queen dominatrix. I'm not entirely sure of her intent when she asserts, "Off off off with your head" ("Free your mind and your ass will follow"?) but it sure does sound sexy and a little pushy scary the way she says it. Shivers of psychedelic bliss and raunchy guitar riffing elevate the chorus. Heads are still rolling.
"Vampire lesbos are after me." In the beginning The Fall were Manchester cousins to The Cramps, without the monster movie getups. A stylized version of primitivist rockabilly. Do the frug in a beautiful garden! The Cramps made great dance music. Your moment of zen.
Musk finally leaving the government was a big story this past week. A theme of good riddance prevails in what's left of the credible press, naturally -- so outside his Tech Bros and gamer foot soldiers, anyway-- but in various takes there also appears, and I share, a note of incredulousness.
"The implications of DOGE’s actions for Americans are huge. DOGE operatives are now embedded in the U.S. government, where they are mining Americans’ data to create a master database that can sort and find individuals. Former Ohio Democratic Party chair David Pepper called it “a full-scale redirection of the government’s digital nervous system into the hands of an unelected billionaire.”
Specifically, an unelected billionaire relentlessly disdainful of any government service, all of which he apparently understands as reducible to standing in line at the DMV, condemning all the wasteful deficit spending by the government. But makes no mention of his own massive tax cuts and his own government contracts in the hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of dollars. Is he leaving because he's finally being driven out for his callous inhumanity and destructive incompetence,* as he should be, or did he just finish his phase of the campaign, a blitzkrieg (which, more or less, appears to be his celebrated business mode of operations; a Nazi military strategy, "move fast and break things"; known in tech business circles as Blitzscaling), leaving the independent departments of the US government in disarray and so ready to be reorganized by his brother in digital arms, Peter Thiel's Palantir; ready to be reorganized into a fascist surveillance state apparatus?
(I know I'm a crazy paranoid with TDS. I hope you're right.)
"The Trump administration has already sought access to hundreds of data points on citizens and others through government databases, including their bank account numbers, the amount of their student debt, their medical claims and any disability status.
Mr. Trump could potentially use such information to advance his political agenda by policing immigrants and punishing critics, Democratic lawmakers and critics have said."
I've always thought that I was for expanding database links across administrative bureaucracies in our communities and government. Hell, one of my first jobs in Seattle was setting up a paradox database system for an energy assistance program at a local non-profit. My own budding techno-optimism going all the way back to the 1980s. To this day it feels backwards when I encounter a lack of such links in the health care system. It came as a humiliating slap in the face when I finally learned after my sister's death that the missing person's reports my family filed in Oregon and Washington, many years before, were completely inaccessible to missing person searches in any of the other 48 states, including California where she ended up. And I was astounded to learn some years ago that there is not only no national database tracking guns and gun violence but the NRA has consistently and successfully lobbied to thwart any efforts to develop such a database for decades. Moreover, conservatives like to complain about election integrity, without any evidence let's stipulate, and then use their scaremongering to create greater obstacles to voting. Why not establish a national database for all eligible voters? For one reason, of course, because conservatives really don't want to solve the problem but actually suppress the vote. But why not make it easier for all eligible voters to vote in elections? Or so I've always thought. But all these reflections are based on my perhaps naive assumption that we live in a functioning democracy with laws and basic legal protections for individual privacy and human rights. But when the two billionaire technocrats behind the development of these new proposed national databases are, in fact, openly and flagrantly disdainful of democracy and the rule of law and basic human rights, one cannot help but think this big database they are building cannot be good. This whole AI project evokes Skynet more than good governance or a public service; apparently, even many people working for Palantir think so.
*-"Internationally, Musk’s destruction of the United States Agency for International Development, slashing about 80% of its grants, is killing about 103 people an hour, most of them children. The total so far is about 300,000 people, according to Boston University infectious disease mathematical modeller Dr. Brooke Nichols. Ryan Cooper of The American Prospect reported today that about 1,500 babies a day are born HIV-positive because Musk’s cuts stopped their mothers’ medication." -HCR
