I don’t get it. Here is a site under the aegis of a self-declared Marxist and socialist, Freddie DeBoer, whose followers (though clearly not all of them) regularly applaud his posts with the warmest accolades, yet one gets the impression that such terms as “expropriation” or “worker solidarity” are absurdly out of place here. These terms are not memes. They are ideas that should be assessed on their merits. Expropriated state-owned banks are hardly peculiar to Hugo Chavez’ Venezuela. Sure, the stupid comments may be toxic internet voices, but the degradation of political discourse is awful in any case. I thought we confronted and got beyond the “too big to fail” rationale decades ago. Does government interference cause economic stagnation? If it did, the state of the economy must have been dismal when the Glass-Steagall Act was still in effect, dismal before Ronald Reagan declared government to be the problem. The opposite was the case. After the recent failure of the Silicone Valley Bank, you could read that its managers had failed to heed the lessons of “Banking 101.” Ask anyone in the insurance industry and they will tell you that “Actuarial Science” is a cut-and-dried affair. What then is the point of private ownership and private enterprise in the sphere of finance capital or insurance? Have those private industries produced such stellar results for the world? The same can be asked of all monopolistic spheres of the economy. Meanwhile, enterprise that really does represent constructive initiative tells us that their business is stifled by the monopolistic power of Amazon.
Expropriation of monopolistic industries is not a particularly radical demand. So we don’t have the political clout to bring it about? Well then, by all means let’s gag ourselves! Let’s ban such things from our political discourse! Why, we might upset the powerful! And notice that I’m not proposing that expropriation should be a plank in the 2024 Democratic Party platform. But why does political discourse have to bind itself to what is expedient? Isn’t it obvious to all that unfettered competition is driving us toward planetary ruin? If we can’t propose expropriation of the monopolists as a party platform plank, couldn’t we at least scrawl it on walls?
On the weekend my daughter and her boyfriend Michael were here. I spent an hour and a half chatting with him at Panera and in the evening the three of us went out for dinner. I hit it off with Michael: a bright, good-humored young guy that Hannah knew from Urbana. They seem happy together, and I sensed that my getting along well with him made my daughter see me differently and no longer through the filter of the fear and loathing imposed by my wife’s inexplicable attitude. I will die without ever learning what it was that destroyed our wonderfully happy and harmonious marriage. I am afraid she doesn’t know herself. When I’m gone, I can only hope that she won’t turn that inner rage against herself. Notwithstanding the torment of recent years, I am immeasurably grateful for all the happiness that she has bestowed on our lives. Knowing what I know now, I would change nothing. Except that I could offer anyone facing this situation advice. Never raise your voice. And never confront someone who is struggling with reality with the falsehoods and fantasies they’re desperately clinging to.
The emotional strain of the weekend has weakened my body noticeably. It was worth it.
Signed,
Andrew (Weeks)
Normal Thoughts 