Reading Wednesday

[sabotabby]

Just finished: A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster by Rebecca Solnit. Go read this one if you haven't. It's a mostly uplifting read about the patterns of altruism, solidarity, and mutual aid that emerge in disasters, and why. It's a good pairing with Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine; initially it seems contradictory, but they're complementary. Essentially the reaction of ordinary people when faced with adversity is to help each other; the reaction of elites is to try to grab as much as they can. The more empowered regular people are, the less bad behaviour you typically see—hoarding and vigilantism arise when people feel helpless and disconnected. I think it provides a good framework for what we're seeing now: the prevalence of caremongering communities and the heroism of frontline workers vs. attempts to militarize and enhance the surveillance state by the elites. What I don't think is adequately accounted for here is what happens when you have actually functional institutions and authorities. Solnit mentions Cuba's hurricane response but doesn't go into detail. Most of her examples (the US during the San Francisco earthquake, 9/11, and Hurricane Katrina, Mexico during the 1985 earthquake under the PRI) are situations where government interference made things much worse. Which is in line with an anarchist perspective, but I don't actually think it's always the case. The difference between the reactions of governments in, say, Sweden vs Iceland, Denmark, and Norway to the pandemic suggests that evidence-based leadership actually does matter and there is a role for institutions to play.

Currently reading: Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir. Yay, my hold came back after it expired with my 2/3 through the book, so I'm back on my lesbian space necromancer bullshit. Ahhhhh it's a fun read. Great worldbuilding, fun little mystery, lots of lush description about death and decay.

Comments

[kore]

That's an interesting suggestion about governments that work -- some good examples right now are Angela Merkel in Germany, and Jacinda Ardern in NZ. Or even Jay Inslee here in WA has kept a pretty good lid on things. OTOH, the Republican federal governments here definitely made shit worse during Katrina, Puerto Rico, and now this pandemic. Hmmm it's almost like starving the country's infrastructure results in shitty organizations!

Solnit's interesting to me because she's the opposite of that "we're six meals away from starvation" viewpoint, but she's not soppy about it. She's hopeful and rigorous, which is pretty rare.

[sabotabby]

Hmmm it's almost like starving the country's infrastructure results in shitty organizations!

IMAGINE THAT!

We have a curious situation where absolutely our infrastructure has been starved, but there's been enough residual skills and knowledge that we're getting through. Not as amazingly as we could be had Ford not cut health care, or if federal agencies weren't cut to the bone, but better than it might have been had we, say, had 15 years of Tory rule in Ontario instead of two.

Solnit's interesting to me because she's the opposite of that "we're six meals away from starvation" viewpoint, but she's not soppy about it. She's hopeful and rigorous, which is pretty rare.

I think she is very much "we're six meals away from starvation" but it's more "we're six meals away from starvation and here is what people are doing/can do to ensure that those six meals keep coming." It's a very measured, practical sort of optimism.

[kore]

Yeah, it's amazing the damage Trump has done in under four years....or rather, the damage people like Mitch McConnell and Stephen Miller and Jared Kushner have done, I doubt Trump really knows what day it is most of the time. Rachel Maddow was comparing the difference between CDC documents outlining how to treat food plants before and after Trump, and the stuff after Trump was all "suggested" so that the workers/public could be pacified, but the workers also couldn't sue the giant meatpacking plants for damages or compensation or even fucking protective gear. That's some horrifying bullshit right there. I keep thinking Upton Sinclair is whizzing around in his grave.

It's a very measured, practical sort of optimism.

Exactly! I'm sure there were people trying to refute the "in disasters, civilization breaks down and we're all ANIMALS" bullshit before, but she does it so rationally.

[sabotabby]

With citations, no less!

I just really wish it didn't feel so much like preaching to the converted. For me, the takeaways are:

1) Shit happens. Be prepared. That doesn't mean basement bunkers, it means properly funding infrastructure.
2) Most people are going to be altruistic in a disaster, so support that where it happens and get out of the way if you can't support that. Adding militarization and surveillance is the fastest way to break things down.

But I feel like that message (*cough*socialism*cough*) gets buried both because humans are bad at risk assessment and think they're more likely to get eaten by a tiger (metaphorical) than die of cancer, so we put our preparedness into the military, police, and security theatre rather than into healthcare and renewable energy, and because we've got the media shoving Walking Dead shit in our faces. And your average voter is familiar with Walking Dead and not Rebecca Solnit.

[kore]

Adding militarization and surveillance is the fastest way to break things down.

And also in an example I can't decide is pathetic or hilarious, the National Guard built hell out of a field hospital here in a giant football stadium, then whoopsie, we didn't need it? so they unbuilt it in three days without its having seen a single patient and off they went somewhere else. Ditto that giant Naval hospital ship Comfort, which treated something like maybe 100 patients, got sailors on board infected, and is now steaming back to VA having done pretty much bupkus. But hey, those were both great PR for the military/Trumpty.

so we put our preparedness into the military, police, and security theatre rather than into healthcare and renewable energy, and because we've got the media shoving Walking Dead shit in our faces. And your average voter is familiar with Walking Dead and not Rebecca Solnit.

Fucking seriously. Or she's famous for "mansplaining," which is a good and important cultural addition, but really not the most important thing she's ever done.

*

[minoanmiss]

*continues taking delighted notes on your riding*

Re: *

[sabotabby]

I need to be able to scream with people about books. It's a compulsion at this point.

[dagibbs]

Gideon the Ninth was great fun!

[sabotabby]

It is thus far!