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On Popularism

The political strategy characterized by advising politicians, particularly Democrats, to prioritize policies with majority support supported by Wall Street while avoiding divisive, ideologically extreme, or unpopular issues, popularism consists of poll-driven, focused-grouped balderdash designed to resonate with existing public sentiment. While following polls is a bad approach, lefty or progressive stances that poll strongly are often not considered at all. Popularism is pseudo-analysis that elides clear public support for things like funding childcare and protecting immigrant communities, aka communities.
What are some leading issues? Are they popular? It’s an election year – let’s advise our candidates.
Over the past year, the White House has courted tech billionaires and gone out of its way to protect the AI industry’s agenda, fast-tracking permits for data centre construction and approving the sales of advanced chips to China while cracking down on states’ attempts to regulate chatbots … But across the US, citizens, clergy and elected officials in conservative communities are leading a grassroots rebellion against the rapid rollout of the technology.
Conclusion: not popular

And it was all too easy to be pessimistic about the prospects both for cooperation and for persuading voters to accept even modest future-oriented sacrifices.

Then came the renewable energy revolution. Solar and wind power have become cost-competitive with fossil fuels — they are, in particular, clearly cheaper than coal. Huge progress in batteries has rapidly reduced the problem of intermittency (the sun doesn’t always shine, the wind doesn’t always blow.) There’s now a clear path for a transition to an “electrotech” economy in which renewable-generated electricity heats our homes, powers our cars, and much more.

Conclusion: very pop– wait. It seems that the Trump administration has decided to block/rollback this transition that would benefit the planet, ensuring that the US will be left behind in global competition. Oh well.

ICE detention centers:

Communities across the country have been shocked to learn that DHS wants to use warehouses in their towns for detention space amid the ongoing immigration crackdown.

Conclusion: as popular as the plague. And speaking of…

The bipartisan American investment, which the Trump administration led, was absolutely key to containing a horrific global pandemic which could have been exponentially worse without the stunning accelerated development of mRNA vaccines — one of the great public health triumphs in modern history. But this miracle cure was only the beginning. The massive investment in mRNA opened doors to numerous other medical advances…

These mRNA advances would obviously benefit people in the United States, who would be much less likely to die of cancer, flu, pandemics, and a range of other illnesses.

Conclusion: popular, live-saving, beneficial across borders and populations. Unfortunately, also vulnerable to disinformation by cranks and malefactors willing to lie to enrich themselves and endanger others.

So even among this small variety of issues, clear policy preferences can be sorted. Public opinion has a role to play, and it’s especially important in the face of corporate media with thumbs on the scale, keeping unpopular issues and policies in a kind of eternal toggle state where the jury is still out. These should not be avoided. Look for candidates who run toward your preferences. Some might even already be there.

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Master and Slave

The Time of the Assassins is Henry Miller’s study of Rimbaud, but in it he loops in all manner of late-nineteenth century tragic figure – Van Gogh, Dostoevsky, Gogol – he even mentions Jesus Christ in a way that completely makes sense. He’s talking about poetry, genius, death and magic. From page 96:

Always it is some invisible wand, some magic star, which beckons, and then the old wisdom, the old magic, is done for. Death and transfiguration, that is the eternal song. Some seek the death they choose, whether of form, body, wisdom or soul, directly; others approach it deviously. Some accentuate the drama by disappearing from the face of the earth, leaving no clues, no traces; others make their life an even more inspiring spectacle than the confession which is their work. Rimbaud drew his death out woefully. he spread his ruin all about him, so that none could fail to comprehend the utter futility of his flight. Anywhere, out of the world! That is the cry of those for whom life no longer has any meaning. Rimbaud discovered the true world as a child; he tried to proclaim it as a youth; he betrayed it as a man. Forbidden access to the world of love, all his endowments were in vain. His hell did not go deep enough, he roasted in the vestibule. It was too brief a period, this season, as we know, because the rest of his life becomes a purgatory. Did he lack the courage to swim the deep? We do not know. We know only that he surrenders his treasure – as if it were the burden. But the guilt which he suffers from no man escapes, not even those who are born in the light. His failure seems stupendous, though it brought him through to victory. But it is not Rimbaud who triumphs, it is the unquenchable spirit that was within him. As Victor Hugo said: ‘Angel is the only word in the language that cannot be worn out.”

“Creation begin with painful separation from God and the creation of an independent will to the end that this separation may be overcome in a type of higher unity than that with which the process began.”* [The Mystic Will, by H.H. Brinton]

At the age of nineteen, in the very middle of his life, Rimbaud gave up the ghost. “His Muse died at his side, among his massacred dreams,” says one biographer. Nevertheless, he was a prodigy who in three years gave the impression of exhausting whole cycles of art. “It is as if he contained whole careers within himself,” said Jacques Riviere. To which Matthew Josephson adds” “Indeed literature ever since Rimbaud has been engaged in the struggle to circumvent him.” Why? Because, as the latter says, “he made poetry too dangerous.” Rimbaud himself declares, in the Season, that he “became a fabulous opera.” Opera or not, he remains fabulous – nothing less. The one side of his life is just as fabulous as the other, that is the amazing thing. Dreamer and man of action, he is both at once. It is like combining Shakespeare and Bonaparte. And now listen to his own words… “I saw that all beings are fatally attracted to happiness: action is not life, but a way of dissipating one’s strength, and enervation.” And then, as if to prove it, he plunges into the maelstrom. he crosses and recrosses Europe on foot, ships in one boat after another for foreign ports, is returned ill and penniless again and again; he takes a thousand and one jobs, learns a dozen or more languages, and, in lieu of dealing words deals in coffee, spices, ivory, skins, gold, muskets, slaves. Adventure, exploration, study; association with every type of man, race, nationality; always work, work, work, which he loathed. But above all, ennui! Always bored. Incurably bored. But what activity! What a wealth of experiences! And what emptiness!

Read the whole thing; buy extra copies for your friends.