The Antisocial Socialist

A few things, though.

In addition to legalizing tailgating, which I truly thought was already legal but I'm not that kind of white person so I've never done it, paying an unknown amount of money to spread untruths about the carbon tax, and getting his MPPs to tweet "RESPECT MAH AUTHORITY"*, Ford is quickly working on dismantling Ontario's healthcare system. He gave the province all of 48 hours to participate in "consultations"; he actually didn't want to do any consultations at all but someone leaked that this was going on. 1,594 Ontarians applied for a spot to speak to the bill in committee, but the government limited the number of presenters to 30.

I happen to know one of those 30 people and she sent me the video of her testimony. I think it's really important to watch. I think it's particularly important that it gets out to the media that the only patients consulted on drastic changes to health care, including cancer care, were given a total of 8 minutes to speak. The media, thus far, has not been interested in what patients have to say any more than the government is, but maybe you know someone who knows someone? She has given me permission to share this publicly. TW for discussion of cancer.

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On a broader note, I have Many Thoughts about the death of liberal (small-l) democracy. And I'll get around to posting them as soon as things calm down a little. Now, I do not personally believe that electoral democracy structured along national lines with a market-based economy is the best or only possible configuration for a society—I'm basically a Marxist, after all—but I do think it's better than where we're headed. Furthermore, I believe that the market-based part of that equation ensures that the liberal and democratic side of it is, long-term, doomed.

I think that the final form of capitalism doesn't look like the United States or Canada in the 1950s and 1960s, which is kind of what capitalist's proponents want it to look like. I think it looks a lot more like Russia or China, formerly communist countries that are vastly better at capitalism than we are. And I don't believe that the step from here to there is all that big, or that the bulk of the population would put up any meaningful resistance whatsoever to the change.

This post is what I'm talking about. I think it's important to read because what this guy says, pseudonymously, is what I suspect is going through a lot of people's heads as the world goes to hell.

Democracy is pretty overrated. I would be totally content with a benevolent oligarchy making policy decisions for me. I’m not an expert in medicine, so I don’t decide who gets to be a doctor, and I’m not an expert in engine repair, so I don’t decide who gets to be a mechanic. Since I’m also not an expert in government, so why insist that I decide who governs me?

As Americans, we are so thoroughly conditioned to hold voting rights sacred and to insist that we have a say in our government. I think we’d all be a lot happier if we worried less about who was running for what office and let someone else make those decisions for us, but to a lot of people that sounds downright un-American.

Give it a read, and you'll have more of an idea of why I don't sleep anymore.

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* He removed the tweet but North99 got a screenshot.

One hopes one's enemies meet their demise courtesy of a bullet to the head on the firing squad, not from cancer.

I don't wish the Honourable Wife-Beater all the best—I don't possess that sort of grace or capacity for forgiveness, nor do wishes do any good—but I am not enjoying this development, nor do I look forward to the inevitable armchair commentary on positive thinking, speculation on whether it was caused by his many poor lifestyle choices or not, or any manner of football metaphors as applied to the medical process of cancer treatment.

Were I a more eloquent, or at least awake, blogger, I would write a very long post analyzing Hugo Chavez's triumphs and failures, and speculating on what his death means to both Latin America and the rest of the world in terms of socialism and resistance to the unsustainable and inhumane neoliberal economic order.

But I'm pretty burnt out at the moment so I'll say that while he made a lot of mistakes, particularly towards the end of his life, I had a lot of respect for the man and what he was trying to do in Venezuela, and I'm sad to see him go.

Also, fuck cancer.

You know, I am truly and genuinely sad about Christopher Hitchens' death.

I've spilled a good number of pixels here bashing the man, and he entirely deserved it, but he was a complicated villain, and thus generally more interesting than the people I typically mock on his blog. He switched from the right side of history to the wrong one, but I can't forget that he wrote The Trial of Henry Kissinger or that he subjected himself to the same torture techniques that he endorsed, and having done so, changed his mind about them.

So yes, he was racist, misogynistic, and warmongering, but as far as racist, misogynistic warmongers go, I had a strange and twisted affection for the bastard. I'm sorry we don't have him to kick around anymore.

A few things that didn't go in the last post but I wanted to mention before packing it in for the night:

Via upstart_crow: The criminalization of walking.

Some of you may have heard of the story from Atlanta about a mother with three kids who, after getting off at a bus stop, attempted to cross a street when one of the kids broke away. He was hit and killed by a drunk driver on painkillers with a history of hit and runs. The bastard who killed a 4-year-old child was allowed to plead out, whereas the mom who lost her son was convicted of vehicular homicide and faces three years in jail. She was judged, not by a jury of her peers, but by a jury of middle-class white people who'd never even had to ride a bus.

I post this in part because it's a horrific story that needs to be told, in part because the article is a well-written analysis of city planning flaws, and mostly because this the logical conclusion of the Ford Nation worldview, wherein drivers are citizens—sorry, taxpayers—and those who rely on transit, bikes, or their own feet to get around are criminalized by virtue of not being able to afford a car.

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The next thing is sillier but I thought you folks might appreciate it: Molson Coors is making a beer for the ladies! It has all kinds of weird crap in it besides the usual watery swill, and—get this—it is pink. Because ladies like pink things.

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If you live in Canada, you already know that Jack Layton has temporarily stepped down as leader of the NDP, having been diagnosed with cancer. It's a pretty awful situation and I sincerely hope that he'll be able to fight it and win. Should you want to send a get-well message, you can do so here.

Oh teh nooes. I'm being Not Very Nice about Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

For the most part, I'm against wearing awareness ribbons of any sort. I used to wear a red ribbon, for AIDS awareness, back when people weren't that aware about AIDS. But there's a good argument to be made for awareness when you're talking about a stigmatized disease with a lot of bizarre myths around it. I was also wearing a ribbon, I might add, in the days before those annoying rubber bracelets came into fashion. I have one in my pocket that someone gave to me at a demo. It's a white one. Make Poverty History. I fling it at people when I'm bored. As if some rubber bracelet made in a sweatshop is going to do a damned thing for poverty.

The worst awareness campaign I can think of is the one where Republican chickenhawks slap Support Our Troops ribbons on their Hummers. But a close second is the pink ribbon campaign. I can't stand it. Some people are very emotionally invested in it, and I understand. Cancer is horrible, overwhelmingly, mindbogglingly horrible. You feel helpless, and you want to do something. Along come the corporate shills, trying to get you to buy something pink, promising that you'll be helping to cure breast cancer if you buy their stuff.


Breast Cancer Barbie, courtesy of Feministe

Cancer is natural. The massive increase in cancer rates that we're seeing is not. It is more common in industrialized countries than in non-industrialized countries. Very few people ask why. Very few people have much to say about these seemingly altruistic companies that donate a sliver of the massive profits that they make to "awareness" campaigns (or, on occasion, to a legitimate research foundation).

Breast Cancer Action singles out BMW as one of the participating companies that makes a product that gives people cancer. But the same point could likely be made for many of the companies involved with pink ribbon marketing campaigns.

If one honestly wishes to stop people from dying of cancer—and this is a laudable goal; there's nothing I want more—then one, of course, wants a cure. But prevention is also important. And particularly in the U.S., the cost of treatment is important. I might not be quite as hostile to the pink ribbon if more money went to helping women without health insurance pay for treatment. But helping poor women who have cancer now survive long enough to get the mythical cure doesn't seem to be a high priority for the pink brigade. If the cost of treatment was factored into this campaign of awareness, we'd forced to examine some uncomfortable questions. A white American woman is more likely to get breast cancer than a black American woman, but the latter is more likely to die of it. A cure is meaningless if no one can afford it.

The pink ribbon campaign, as Ehrenreich points out in her article, also normalizes cancer. Breast cancer becomes a natural part of life, a right of passage for every woman. There is a danger in normalizing disease, in joking around that, "well, everything causes cancer; we're all going to die of it eventually." We become passive, placid, when what we need is action and advocacy.

Some of this money is going to research, and that's good, but the money also funds massive PR campaigns, which is why companies agree to participate in the first place. It foists the duty to maintain good health upon the individual ("Get squished!") and on the private sector. You buy the products, the companies belch out carcinogens, and if you're lucky, one day, someone will sell you a cure. Ultimately, we can't spew so many toxins into the air. We can't consume so much. The pink ribbon campaign asks us to consume more.

The reaction to the original post in metaquotes (which I believe was from a cancer survivor) was mixed; many people could relate, many more were hostile. I wonder at the hostility, because these are basic questions: Where is the money going? Which organizations are being supported, and what are they doing? Are they concentrating on finding a cure or improving treatment? Are they assisting uninsured or low-income women?* Is a single pink cent directed at lobbying for pollution reduction initiatives, clean energy, the banning of growth hormones in livestock?

Of course, you ask these sorts of questions and you're immediately attacking cancer patients, non-profit groups, and kittens and puppies. Which I'm not. By all means, give to legitimate organizations directly—they need it—but medical research should not rely on individual charity for funding. And we owe it to everyone who's ever sat in a doctor's office and heard, "I'm afraid I have some bad news" to ask if these pink teddy bears, pink bracelets, pink golf clubs, pink cancer Barbies (hair and boobs included, of course) are doing any good.

* And this isn't just an issue in the U.S. Even in countries with relatively sane health care systems, your treatment may be covered, but how many people can afford to take time off work?