Base and Superstructure

Thoughts on production, alienation, and ideology

Month: October 2019 (Page 2 of 2)

booksmart good boys

Booksmart and Good Boys

October 14, 2019 /

In DJ Shadow’s 2016 Classic Nobody Speak, El-P from the hip-hop duo Run the Jewels starts off the song as follows:

Picture this
I’m a bag of dicks
Put me to your lips
I am sick
I will punch a baby bear in his shit

Two 2019 coming-of-age films feature this charming tune. First, we have Booksmart, which I wrote about a bit earlier as one of the best films of the year so far. And second, we have Good Boys. Good Boys is…something different. This might say something about gender, film, and childhood in the US.

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Tenants Unions and Public Speaking

October 11, 2019 /

Hi all – I’ve got a couple of upcoming public speaking events on tenants union activism! First, a brief talk with a college class. That’s not a public event, exactly. Second, a brief chat during a breakout session this Saturday at the Quad Cities Socialism Summit, hosted by the Quad Cities DSA. It’s this weekend.

Public speaking isn’t exactly my favorite thing to do, but I’ve gotten comfortable enough with it over the years.

As I’m sure some of you are aware, I’ve written about tenants unions here before. And I’m a board member of the Iowa City Tenants Union. We held our first meeting back in June, and now we’re hard at work on various issues related to security deposit theft, maintenance, discrimination, direct action, utilities justice, and housing policy.

Criticizing Bernie: 5 Theses

October 7, 2019 /

criticizing bernie

One of my first pieces of political writing I can still recall was a criticism of an allegedly socialist House member in the late 1990s for voting in favor of US intervention in Yugoslavia. That House member was, of course, Bernie Sanders. I still think there’s value in criticizing Bernie in some ways and in some circumstances. But let’s talk a bit more about that.

Twitter debate over the Bernie Sanders campaign degenerated into a dumpster fire a long time ago. Or, to put it more accurately, it degenerated twice. Once during the 2016 race against Hillary Clinton. And then a second time during the 2020 campaign. And so, I’m writing a post about criticizing Bernie in light of all this. Do people do it well or poorly? And how do we do it well?

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