What are we doing here?
This Independence Day was a struggle.
The Supreme Court really knows how to take the wind out of any enthusiasm for celebration, too.
But we can celebrate those great occasional and seemingly fleeting victories among all the historic social and civil struggles, so far, should we somehow be lucky enough to actually learn about them, and take the joy from every little win and carry it forward.
“Where there is no joy there can be no courage,” wrote Edward Abbey in Desert Solitaire, “and without courage all other virtues are useless.” And whatever emotions inspired by the fascist death cult majority of Roberts, Alito, Thomas, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch and Coney-Barrett, it surely does not exude joy — spite, maybe, at best from its fans. These assholes are bought and paid for to do a particular job that, while not advertised as such, is clearly understood both by them and those from where their favors come.
Yes, “late stage” capitalism, whatever that is, is a drag. But that’s only because regulated capitalism itself is a system that best responds to human nature. If human civilization were really capable of self-discipline, why would we even need anyone to dream up ideologies like communism and libertarianism to begin with? Deregulated capitalism is not a stage that economic systems naturally go through on the way to some other ordered…