This Constant Struggle

I became aware of just how fleeting the sense of happiness was, and how flimsy its basis: a warm restaurant after having come in from the rain, the smell of food and wine, interesting conversation, daylight falling weakly on the polished cherrywood of the tables. It took so little to move the mood from one level to another, as one might push pieces on a chessboard. Even to be aware of this, in the midst of a happy moment, was to push one of those pieces, and to become slightly less happy.

And later in the book:

How petty seemed to me the human condition, that we were subject to this constant struggle to modulate the internal environment, this endless being tossed about like a cloud.

Teju Cole, Open City

Obama != Romney

Below are my thoughts on a recent Truth-Out post entitled: Closer Than You Think: Top 15 Things Romney and Obama Agree On.

On foreign policy and the security state this is largely accurate, however on domestic policy I think it conflates political pragmatism with ideology in a way that is rather deceptive. It is one thing to say that they both agree on the use of drones, it is another to say that they both agree on the minimum wage or card check. Without a super-majority there is no way in hell that Obama could get this, especially when it is opposed by a significant minority within the Democrats as well. But I think he does support such policies and doesn’t agree with Romney on them. Yes, it is true he is a lot more to the center on a lot of issues than many of his supporters would like him to be, but the Republicans really are much, much, farther still to the right on these issues.

Moreover, I think the nature of the list hides the importance of these differences for America’s working poor: (1) While the stimulus was far less than it should have been, it is arguable that millions more would have been trapped in poverty without it. And (2) many existing policies, like labor laws, safety laws, and environmental laws were not enforced under Bush but have been enforced under Obama. This last point I think especially deserves much more attention than it has gotten, as the non-enforcement of these laws is essentially a huge policy shift away from the national consensus (i.e. “the center”).

A lot of people on the left seem to want to punish Obama for not being more to the left, but a Romney win would probably just punish the poor and move the Democratic Party even further to the right. I wrote before the 2008 election that we need a grassroots movement to push the Dems further to the left. But I worry when occupying Wall Street means abandoning electoral politics and turning over the keys to the White House to Romney.

Seven Ways to Talk to a White Man

…over the years I’ve compiled a mental inventory of the various ways in which people [in Taiwan] respond to the challenge of having to talk to a foreigner. What follows is a list of seven ways strangers react when they have to talk to me…

Who is indigenous?

In recent years, however, when being indigenous can qualify you for particular aid or presenting concerns through the language of indigeneity has greater impact, the identification of indigenous people has become problematic and contentious. In lowland areas of Bolivia, for example, in certain cases the number of people identifying as belonging to an indigenous group has more than doubled in two years; in others people continue to be unwilling to identify themselves as such because of the profound racism in those areas. In highland areas the people who are most likely to identify themselves as indigenous are educated urban intellectuals or political activists, not the Aymara-speaking rural peasants who follow “traditional” lifestyles.

Canessa, Andrew (2007) Who is indigenous? Self-identification, Indigeneity, and Claims to Justice in Contemporary Bolivia.

Quoted here less because of the selected text than because it is a nicely written article – good for thinking about indigeneity – and it is available in an Open Access repository.

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