SJA #17 - 24 September 2018 - What do you mean "Why"?!

• Rant - The Republicans are the party of racism
• Why all the racists in the GOP?
• Hate crimes surged alongside Trump's campaign
• The Southern Strategy
• Book Report - Battle Cry of Freedom
• Ford, Chicago, and Fascism in the University
• Orwellian "free speech" in Ontario
• Ford's "free speech" mandate
• The Chicago Statement
• Wikipedia's paragraph for context
• Not actually an esophagus, but good show!

SJA #16 - 17 September 2018 - Hurricane Florence

• Rant - Poverty and Responding to Natural Disasters - 0:30
• More Cop Shit - 07:05
• Cops and Klan go Hand in Hand
• Cop Goes in Wrong House, Kills Resident
• Teachers Fight for Facts - 12:50
• Doctor Rapes Unconscious Patient, Gets Probation - 14:45
• What Will the Blue Wave Look Like? - 16:40
• Nixon Lost, Will Keep Fighting
• Another DemSoc Beats Another Democrat
• Will We Pull to the Democratic Socialist Side?
• Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain - 22:15
• Manafort Flips - 26:45

Rant - Poverty and Responding to Natural Disasters

The rich get richer, the poor get screwed. It doesn't really matter what's going on. Peaceful times, nothing going on? The rich just settle in for the long haul, scamming wealth out of the stock market, financial instruments, and cutting wages. The economy tanks? They shrug all the debt onto other people and walk away with the profits. The economy booms? They pump up the bubble and get out early. There's always money to be made in war, both in making the weapons and in stealing land and resources from the people you "liberate".

And natural disasters? Tons of money. Cash in on insurance, buy land cheap, get government contracts, buy up debts and take people's homes... there's always a way to profit off of a natural disaster. And all of that is if you don't live anywhere near the coast. It's possible to rake in the cash without ever setting foot near the devastated region.

If you do live near the region... it doesn't actually make it easier to profit off of it. But it still helps to be rich. It helps a lot to be rich.

Because you can run away. Even if it's an earthquake or a volcano or something, you can run after the event. If it's a hurricane, you can see it coming and leave in comfort and style.

But if you're poor, you're fucked. You're fucked before, during, and after. There's not a goddamn thing you can do except sit and wait, sit and watch as everything you own is destroyed, sit and hope you don't die. Sit and probably die.

We live in a modern era, with computers the size of buses in outer space monitoring the weather. We have systems capable of organizing relief efforts overnight. We have the most fantastically wealthy society history has ever seen. Assholes on the right love to tout these things as the wonders of capitalism. But then disaster strikes and capitalism... does exactly what you expect. It extracts profit, and leaves people to suffer and die. There's no profit in helping people.

Our society should be able to do better. It definitely could. It would be easy. There's more to humanity than profit. We want to help people. We should help people. We can help people. We just don't. Helping people is Unamerican.

Well, Trump might show up and throw a few rolls of paper towels at people. We're good at photo ops. We're just terrible at compassion.

What would the world be like if we acknowledged human needs? What would it look like to put human concerns ahead of the economy? How would a society function if it were built to absorb and work around natural disaster, and minimize suffering instead of maximizing profit?

It sure as hell wouldn't look like anything the US has ever done. What's the opposite of genocide?

All of these thoughts are coming to me as I sit and watch my students work through a lab, the last class we'll have for the foreseeable future. Hurricane Florence is bearing down on us, ready to ruin the coastal Carolinas. It looks like it's going to be a category 4 or 5 storm, and it's going to run straight in from the ocean. A lot of people are going to lose their homes, everything they own, their jobs... The Thuglicans won't care. They'll walk away with all their money, and do what they can to help the white people in the Carolinas, and sit there smug in the knowledge that no one is getting any abortions if the roads are washed out.

And it'll be a year before we learn what the death toll is.

Fuck the US.

There's more to this whole story, of course. Environmental racism is insidious. Poor people get shunted to the worst areas, the places that get hit hardest by natural disasters. Rich people get better construction in places that don't get hit as hard. Poor people get the pollution, rich people get the products. Rich people get the air conditioning, poor people get the climate change. The rich get the treats, the poor pay the price. Always.

SJA #15 - 10 September 2018 - Fuck Evolutionary Psychology

• Rant - Evolutionary Psychology - 0:30
• Talk Nerdy's Gad Saad Episode
• Pence doubles down on christian supremacy - 9:30
• Redistribution isn't bad for growth - 12:30
• Slavery can be erased or remembered - 15:30
• Nike? Meh. - 18:05
• Nike is not the uniform of the resistance
• Nike is Garbage, but not because of Colin Kaepernick
• Hypocritical job-shaming, right vs left, class action? - 20:45
• India Decriminalizes Gay - 24:40
• Plaid Shirt Guy: the Democratic Socialist with the Honest Face - 26:45

SJA #14 - 3 September 2018 - Go Unions!

• Rant - Unions Are Good - 1:00
• Southern Studies? - 7:16
• Prison Strike Continued - 11:45
• Capitalism Must Die - 15:05
• Esquire Recognizes Fascism in the US - 20:03
• Lindsey Graham Prepares for Next Surrender - 23:20
• Or We Could Worry About Obergefell - 25:36
• Reversing Muscular Dystrophy - 26:45

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