Politics – An Echo That's Reversing

Monsters

One of my favorite political commentators slash Canadians slash humorists is Jeet Heer. Also: cool name. His podcast is “The Time of Monsters” and the title references a quote from the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci. To my shame I had never heard of it (quote) or him (author) before Heer’s reference and it is these happy necessities or current events (wtf, “happy”?) that present such introductions.

It’s an absolutely beautiful quote that is, in English:

The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: Now is the time of monsters.

Not gonna link to it even if you can reverse-image search because I still have time to buy it.

There’s too much politics to think about

There’s too much politics to think about. And that’s kindof an avoidance because calling waves hands what has just happened and what bleak anniversary just occurred, and the scars almost lining up, politics is not politics. There’s just too much to think about.

Untitled, signed 57/150, from the Grifo Edition of Crepax prints of Valentina

Spectacle

But a lie that can no longer be challenged becomes a form of madness.

Over the past six or so months I’ve on and off been reading Guy Debord’s The Society of Spectacle. I had encountered his ideas in an essay which used them to explain much of modern social media, key is applying his observation of how capitalism molds “people” into “consumers” in such a way as to make their primary identities not only what they purchase, but the act of purchasing. See: YouTube videos of product influencers and the post-apocalyptically odd phenomenon of pre-teens making thousands of dollars a week off of unboxing videos. “Apple is better than Windows” has supplanted the identity of ideas with the identity of product.

(as always: my understanding of him may be a bit naive)

The Year of Italy

I started at some point to give years names. This may have/probably has been inspired by the completely unfortunate aspect in the novel Infinite Jest where the US sells years to corporations in order to make money. After corporate purchase years would become: The Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment, or The Year of the Whisper-Quiet Maytag Dishmaster, etc. It’s a bleak mirror within a literary conceit of pretty much what we’ve become.

So, less bleakly, I started to give my years themes. This, 2025, is The Year of Italy.

No title

(it’s been almost a month)