Hello, friends and enemies. I hope everyone had a festive Halloween! I decided to spend the evening of Halloween working a shift at the Lavender Library, which I figured was as good a reason as any to dress up a little. We usually don’t get a lot of trick or treaters, so we just put a bowl of candy out front and let people govern themselves, which worked out just fine.
Current Events
Serious question: What is this purpose of government? I would posit that the whole point of having a government is to provide for the needs of the citizens, and operating at scale helps us accomplish more than we could as individuals or small groups. Unfortunately, this does not seem to be the view of most of the people currently running the U.S. government.
The U.S. is currently in its longest government shutdown ever (40 days and counting) because Republicans think poor people should have nothing and be miserable while serving the ruling class. We are in a shutdown because Republicans and Democrats cannot agree on a budget, so the government is closed while they try to figure out a funding strategy that will get enough votes. The crux of the issue this time is that Democrats are refusing to approve budgets that do not extend Affordable Care Act subsidies. And for good reason! If the subsidies expire, insurance prices would increase dramatically, and insurance is already barely affordable for most Americans (medical bills are the cause of 40 percent of bankruptcies). Although Republicans have a majority in the senate, the budget can only pass if 60 percent of senators vote on it. In response to this impasse, Republicans have effectively closed the government and have been plastering every government website with a banner that shows they’re having a tantrum.
The government being closed for a stupid reason is bad enough, but to add insult to injury, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, aka the artist formerly known as food stamps, and known by different names in different states, like “CalFresh” in California) is now under attack. About 12 percent of the population—42 million people—relies on SNAP. Per the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, “more than 62% of SNAP participants are in families with children” and “more than 38% are in working families.” SNAP has reserve funds it can use for situations such as these, but the Trump administration has directed the government not to pay out SNAP benefits while the government is closed, even though SNAP payments were funded during the shutdown in Trump’s previous term. This has led to some legal drama with a federal judge ordering the administration to fund SNAP, which was shortly followed by the Supreme Court itself blocking SNAP payments while the appeals court rules on the issue. Some states did pay out SNAP payments before the stay, but the USDA is now directing states to recover the payments because they were “unauthorized.”
It’s hard to see this as anything other than a deliberate effort to demoralize and starve the population, especially amid steeply rising grocery prices. The USDA emailed retailers informing them that they should not offer any special discounts to people who normally receive SNAP. This is ironic given that conservatives love to talk about the free market and how great capitalism is because businesses can make decisions to meet the need to consumers. Okay, but now consumers can’t afford groceries, and they’re not supposed to lower prices?
I know everyone hates to hear this but Republicans announced their intentions to make it harder for people to access funds for food well before Trump became president again. “Reforming” SNAP is a part of Project 2025, the ultra-conservative plan for eviscerating our government. The plan’s chapter on the Department of Agriculture explains that the agency’s mission “was and is too broad” because it includes “serving as a major welfare agency through implementation of programs such as food stamps” (page 290). It goes on to state that 70 percent of the USDA’s budget is for nutrition assistance (page 291) and claims that the Biden administration’s “vision of a federal government developing a plan that ‘fixes’ agriculture and focuses on issues secondary to food production is very disturbing” (page 292). I think “disturbing” is a strange word choice here. It is not disturbing that the Department of Agriculture should be spending time and money on getting food to the people. The whole point of growing food is so that people can eat it. Most of the Project 2025 policy proposal specific to SNAP focuses on adding work requirements (we already saw that 40 percent of SNAP recipients work, many other recipients are disabled) and making it harder for people to get SNAP in general (pages 299 and 300). It was always the plan to make it harder for poor Americans to access food and the harm they are causing through this shutdown is completely intentional. The cruelty is the point.
It’s important to connect what is happening here in the U.S. with the global struggle. It’s not a coincidence that our government and the Israeli government are using the same tactic of denying people food. It’s much easier to control a hungry and tired population than a well-fed one. No doubt this is also why the United Nations has designated hunger and starvation as weapons of war. As with many of the other horrors we’re experiencing, we’re feeling the effects of the imperial boomerang, with the tactics the U.S. empire has used abroad now returning to be used against the population at home. This made me think about what I read last year in The Palestine Laboratory by Antony Loewenstein, which offers the thesis that Israel benefits financially from oppressing Palestinians, testing defense and cybersecurity products on the captive population before selling them to other countries. I don’t think the idea of a man-made famine needed more testing (just ask the Irish), but the fact is that the U.S. and Israel’s oppressive tactics seem to be synchronizing and now we’re all suffering together.
It’s not a coincidence that aesthetics of fascism also insist on a certain type of body. Especially for women, we are seeing more and more rhetoric around being thin, and I think that does get tied in with this concept of denying people food. Weak, hungry people cannot resist oppression. Fascism loves keeping up appearances and lauds manly looking men and feminine-presenting women. In the fascist worldview, women are small and need to be at home and have a big, strong man to tell them what to do (or, in the Trumpian version, need to perform a certain type of feminine drag to compete in beauty pageants). Women need to look beautiful and ornamental, not jacked like you’re going to throw a man out the window (my personal weightlifting goal) or carry some extra food supplies to your neighbors. Just yesterday, I saw a post on instagram in which a woman shared a progress photo of losing muscle and claiming she’s “never been happier”[citation needed]. Put another way: “For far-right women, there is no such thing as body positivity or body neutrality. Thinness is a moral imperative; it shows dominance over the body and aligns oneself with European beauty standards.”
Which brings me back to the original question: What is this purpose of government? If a government cannot manage to feed, house, educate, and provide healthcare for the entire population, it’s failing. Government should improve our lives, not make them miserable. Many people say things like “if you’re working for a living, you should be able to afford to live!” I agree with this but I’m going to take it a step further: everyone should be able to afford to live, whether they work or not. There is enough housing and food and money on this earth for everyone to be fed and housed and reasonably comfortable, but instead we live in a society that has permitted eight men to amass half of all the wealth available in the whole world. I know some people always make the argument that there are unrepentant fuckups and irredeemable scoundrels who work the system, and surely those same scoundrels shouldn’t get rewarded for their scoundrelousness. I literally don’t care. Feed and house every single scoundrel. I would rather every single person has what they need and some scoundrels get a little more than their share than even one person who needs help not receive it because we’re so worried about someone “taking advantage” of the system. This whole fucking system we live with is a big game of taking advantage. People are hungry, exhausted, homeless, overworked, and can’t get anywhere. Meanwhile, Trump and his besties are throwing lavish parties while they insist that our most vulnerable citizens shouldn’t be able to pay for food. The purpose of this government is entirely centered on enriching itself and transferring even more wealth from the working class to the rich. We deserve and must demand a government that actually does something for us.
Books and Other Words
I found The Bruising of Qilwa by Naseem Jamnia on the shelf at the library and it sounded interesting so I checked it out! I did enjoy the book but it was doing an awful lot so it took a little bit to get into it. The author is using a fantasy setting to think about how people might represent their gender, and reflect on colonialism and immigration, while the plot focuses on a mysterious ailment that the protagonist’s magic isn’t able to cure.
Meanwhile, on the internet:
- How Zohran Mamdani rose from Queens lawmaker to mayor of New York via PBS. I don’t even live in NYC but seeing Mamdani win made me so hopeful. We can have politicians who actually care about things people want and are willing to fight for them. I hope he inspires hundreds of imitators and I hope we change the constitution so he can be president. I thoroughly enjoyed libbing out on the internet discourse and memes on Tuesday night. It feels good for something to not be horrible for once.
- Dick Cheney, one of the most powerful and polarizing vice presidents in US history, dies at 84 via AP news. Presented without comment.
- SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccines sensitize tumours to immune checkpoint blockade via Nature. Getting covid vaccines might improve survive rates for cancer patients. Another great reason to get vaccinated!
Computer World
I have been gradually trying to rely less on big tech companies like Google and Microsoft, which the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement has identified as a target, writing “the tech sector is a pillar of the apartheid economy that feeds Israel’s war chest, making up 20% of Israel’s GDP (in 2023) and 53% of its exports (2023).” There are also lots of compelling privacy and financial reasons to avoid these companies, which is why I’ve done things like switch to Linux. I have been using my own email domain for years now, although I still have my gmail account as a backup. This week, inspired by one of my friends quitting gmail, I decided to find an alternative for Google calendar and drive. I mostly keep track of appointments with a paper calendar, but I like the digital calendar for reminders about regularly occurring chores or reordering medical supplies, stuff like that. I don’t use drive much for backing up files but I do like being able to share documents. I picked Proton as my replacement for both of these things because it’s free (there are paid versions for more storage) and private. I haven’t monkeyed around with it too much yet, but I am hoping it’s going to work for me and I can use Google a little less.
Languages
As always, I am having fun with my languages and my Wikipedia translations. For my Spanish, I decided to do a silly one and translated the article about Tumblr’s favorite meme that actually explains a core statistical principle: Spiders Georg. Unfortunately, the Spanish wiki admins immediately hit this with a warning that it is not a notable topic and it will be deleted in 30 days. Well, I guess the important thing was the Spanish we learned along the way.
I’m feeling a little behind on my Icelandic even though there is no schedule or end date in mind. Still, I have a number of articles that we reviewed during class and I still haven’t posted to Wikipedia, in large part because I need to shake down the internet for citations (Icelandic wiki has a rather more cavalier attitude to including citations compared to its English language sister). That said, I did manage to finish articles on one particular subject, a woman named Monika Helgadóttir. She came up when I was translating all the articles about places in Skagafjörður, Iceland, but there was no article about her. I went looking for information and wrote an article in English for her, then translated it into Icelandic. It feels good to add new information to Wikipedia in addition to simply translating it.
Corporeal Form
I had my MRI and I mad it through without incident. It wasn’t so bad since scanning my knee meant I only had to be in the machine up to my hips. It was hard to stay so still for so long though, and of course the machine is very loud. At points, the process kind of felt like being at a rave with the big WUB WUB WUB WUB vibrating my bones, but other parts felt like a jackhammer so it wasn’t all fun. In any case, the good news is that my meniscus and all my knee ligaments are intact. The only issues are that I have arthritis and my cartilage is jacked up and things seem to be inflamed. I admit that I am disappointed to not have a clear-cut problem like a torn meniscus. Surgery would suck but at least it’s something that you do and then it’s done. All this tells me is I have to put in even more work managing the arthritis. Let us take a moment to remember that I’m only 39 years old (just a child!) so it really sucks to have to be dealing with this when I’m presumably going to live for at least another 40 years. The only remedies available right now are more physical therapy and a cortisone shot, which is supposed to make everything hurt less. I have appointments for both things in the coming weeks so I hope they help me.
Kitchen Witchery
It seems I didn’t do much cooking over the last two weeks, or at the very least it was nothing worth photographing. I did make some chili, acorn squash, and biscuits on Halloween (not pictured) and everyone agreed that it was good.
Cat Therapy
Finally, here are some cat photos for your nerves.
