Reading Wednesday

Currently reading: Left-Wing Melancholia: Marxism, History, and Memory by Enzo Traverso. A friend of mine, who's a giant Traverso fanboy, invited me to a talk he was giving at York on trains and revolution. I'm not up on my contemporary Marxist academics, so I was like, this is rad as fuck, what's he written, and the title alone of this one got me. It's a look at the left—broadly speaking, from social democrats to hardline Marxists to anarchists—in defeat. Traverso's jumping off point is of course Walter Benjamin, who exemplifies both in his writing and life a non-positivist view of revolution.

As Billy Bragg put it, "there's simply no guarantee of a happy ending to history."

This feels very much like the thing to be reading right now, a book about how to form meaning and momentum out of defeat and despair. It's dense and sprawling, spanning history, psychoanalysis, and (my favourite chapter) cinema, and it's really good. I've been reading too much trashy fantasy and I'm tired so much flies over my head, but I'll definitely be checking out more of his work.

Things I can't believe except I can

Doug Ford's response to people objecting to martial law and no paid sick days was to go into hiding.

Then he claimed he was exposed to covid from a staffer and was self-isolating, even though he'd tested negative.

Except the timing doesn't work out. He was in hiding before the staffer's positive test, and he was tested too soon after for the results to be accurate.

Most of all, people pointed out that he himself is taking advantage of paid sick leave, a necessity that he denies to essential workers who are risking their lives and health. In fact, he is making more in one day of isolation than someone on disability makes in an entire month. And he's on his third consecutive paid sick day.

That's not even the hilarious part. What's hilarious is the reason he was out of touch: His staff needed to get him a laptop and teach him how to use it. He still uses a 2014 Blackberry for his shitposting needs, and doesn't know how to use a computer.

This is a man who lambasts the public on not being able to navigate the byzantine system(s) for booking vaccines in Ontario, who believes in forced elearning for all students, who talks about being a businessman and open for business. He's a millionaire. He doesn't know how to use a computer. He claimed it was because he was an ancient 56, so now #hes56 is trending on Twitter.

Meanwhile, there's a 22.4% positivity rate in Brampton.

This is like Rob Ford but way less funny because Rob Ford only killed, like, the one dude.