Thoughts on production, alienation, and ideology
The effectiveness of masks? What a difference 7 months make! Back in the early days of COVID-19, evidence suggested homemade cloth masks probably don’t work. The CDC recommended against them. Now it seems like masks do everything. It’s a mask miracle.
Let’s take a look at this mask miracle.
With the December monthly reading list, I’ve added some TV shows! I’ve been starting and finishing a few shows lately. It just so happens that things came together recently and I finished three great shows.
In his new (first!) book – The Cult of Smart – Freddie deBoer argues that neoliberalism created around itself a myth of meritocratic success. He calls it…well…the cult of smart.
Let’s take a look at what Freddie has to say. The Cult of Smart gives us plenty to chew on.
We’ve seen a flurry of activity on the left. Yes, this includes activism on a wide range of issues. But I’m not talking about that here. Here, I’m talking about a flurry of new ways to label or describe our actions. The left increasingly uses elevator words to do these things.
What does that mean? The left uses loftier words for its actions than those actions warrant. It inflates the language. During the early months of COVID-19, activists proposed modest, temporary rent subsidies. But they called those subsidies ‘cancel rent.’ Even though the subsidies would do no such thing. I’ll post plenty more examples below. For now, I’ll note that things like this happen a lot these days.
I want to ask why. And not only why, but is it a bad thing? If so, how bad is it?
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