Coup de Idiots

“C’est pire qu’un crime. C’est une faute.“

— attributed to Charles Maurice de Talleyrand (disputed)

The attempted coup on January 6 should not have been much of a surprise to anyone but maybe the most naive. As I wrote back in 2016, Night of the Living Trumps:

“A geezer I am. I have lived through Nixon, Reagan and Dubya. Should I mention LBJ? One might think of this as yet another spell of really bad weather and verily the sun also rises. But there is a stink of existential threat from Trump that hasn’t been so strong in the air since Nixon.

“Part of it is Trump’s so nakedly disordered personality. Nearly everyone who aspires to be President is likely to be a bit insane, but until now most have been able to simulate normality. Part of it is the enthusiastic bigotry used to motivate Trump’s electorate; there’s no putting that back in the bottle while Trump holds office and the Republican caucuses control the legislature. Part of it is the solid wall of chaotic uncertainty about just what a governing Trump actually means in terms of policy.”

This post is written in early days post-riot, but my impression from a great distance is that the riot was essentially a clusterfuck, to use a bureaucratic term of art: The organizers had no plan beyond yelling and marching and consequently people went where anger and hysteria led them or the organizers had no plan beyond yelling and marching but others at the rally did have a plan or some (or all) of the organizers had a plan but it wasn’t shared with everyone. You might think of additional possibilities but regardless, people did bring young children, infants in fact, to the rally and march. What expectations do you think they had?

One ongoing discussion that I find particularly interesting is the examination of conspiracy theories as role-playing games. A good introduction to this (lots of links) is Reed Berkowitz’ A Game Designer’s Analysis of QAnon, posted back in September of 2020 at the curiouserinstitute. Berkowitz begins his analysis with:

“When I saw QAnon, I knew exactly what it was and what it was doing. I had seen it before. I had almost built it before. It was gaming’s evil twin. A game that plays people. (cue ominous music)

“QAnon has often been compared to ARGs and LARPs and rightly so. It uses many of the same gaming mechanisms and rewards. It has a game-like feel to it that is evident to anyone who has ever played an ARG, online role-play (RP) or LARP before. The similarities are so striking that it has often been referred to as a LARP or ARG. However this beast is very very different from a game.

“It is the differences that shed the light on how QAnon works and many of them are hard to see if you’re not involved in game development. QAnon is like the reflection of a game in a mirror, it looks just like one, but it is inverted.”

While the technology Berkowitz writes about is ideologically neutral (like Alinsky’s organizing techniques), this particular exercise was targeted:

“Another major difference between QAnon and an actual game, is that Q is almost pure propaganda. That IS the sole purpose of this. It’s not advertising a product, it’s not for fun, and it’s not an art project. There is no doubt about the political nature of the propaganda either. From ancient tropes about Jews and Democrats eating babies (blood-libel re-booted) to anti-science hysteria, this is all the solid reliable stuff of authoritarianism. This is the internet’s re-purposing of hatred’s oldest hits. The messaging is spot on. The “drops” implanted in an aspic of anti-Semitic, misogynist, and grotesque posts on posting boards that, indeed, have been implicated in many of the things the fake conspiracy is supposed to be guilty of!”

If Berkowitz’ analysis is even approximately accurate, it has important and existential implications for democracy, media, journalism, and politics generally. Yet that isn’t quite what got my attention. Berkowitz’ description of the QAnon phenomenon (“A game that plays people.”) suggests that it is a genuine meme, the first that I’ve actually heard of.

Wait. Meme? Don’t we see these every day, those graphical and sometimes comical little factoids that people trade back and forth? Well, yes and no. Richard Dawkins gets credit for coining the term in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. As Wikipedia helpfully explains:

“Dawkins wrote that evolution depended not on the particular chemical basis of genetics, but only on the existence of a self-replicating unit of transmission — in the case of biological evolution, the gene. For Dawkins, the meme exemplified another self-replicating unit with potential significance in explaining human behavior and cultural evolution.”

So “yes” in that an internet factoid could be a trivial example of the concept, “no” in the sense that some folks felt that these “replicating cultural entities” could do much more than entertain. They could conceivably warp human history, indeed even human evolution, as part of their process of natural selection. So if conspiracy explanations on the internet are in fact “memes,” QAnon is a research opportunity of major importance.

Alas, the study of memes hasn’t prospered, has failed to be naturally selected if you will for obvious (to me anyway) reasons: How do you operationalize the concept? How do you define and measure a meme so that it is possible to trace its ecology, evolution and spread? Also IMHO the concept carries an alarming burden of social Darwinism.

But if, conceptually, “meme” has such social Darwinist baggage, is discounting it as social science so unfortunate? Well, maybe, because there are analogous phenomena in the physical sciences: “quasiparticles” and “collective excitations.” These “are emergent phenomena that occur when a microscopically complicated system such as a solid behaves as if it contained different weakly interacting particles in vacuum.” Yeah, your computer and phone and any electronic solid state thing depend on an “emergent phenomenon.” Human consciousness is sometimes speculatively described as an emergent phenomena, a consequence of neural size and complexity. It may be that mass culture has emergent properties as well.

I think we’re in the process of finding out, through experience rather than research.

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Postscript: Among the people who took memes seriously is the science fiction author John Barnes. He wrote a series of speculative novels around memes, wherein he turned memes into something resembling computer viruses. All of the books are good albeit some are seriously depressing. I’d recommend (in order) Candle and The Sky So Big and Black. Barnes has gotten favorable cover blurbs from both Poul Anderson and Steven Brust…

“Down to Earth”

Subtitled “The Astronaut’s Perspective”, this is a lovely half-hour infomercial from NASA about serving aboard the International Space Station and low Earth orbit generally. You like space? This is worth a view:

Democratizing the Economy

The recording features a presentation at the December, 1980, Eurosocialism and America Conference by Olof Palme (1927 — 1986). At the time, Palme was a leader of the Swedish Social Democratic Party. He was then between two of his stints (1969-1976 and 1982-1986) as Prime Minister of Sweden. At the time, the Swedish Social Democrats were attempting to implement the “Meidner Plan” which would have euthanized the rentier class essentially by buying it out over time.

The Eurosocialism and America Conference was organized by the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC)’s 501c3 arm, the Institute for Democratic Socialism. A few years later, DSOC merged with the New American Movement to form the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). The conference was held at a strategic moment, after the pivotal November, 1980, election but before the January change in government. At least a few of Palme’s remarks are directed specifically at this. The conference was a Beltway wonder for a few weeks in that December but was ultimately buried by the flood basalts of the erupting Reagan Revolution.

Olof Palme is introduced by Chicago’s Carl Shier. Shier was an International Representative with the United Auto Workers Region 4 and a leader in the DSOC. While it is true that Olof Palme had many connections with the United Auto Workers, it is also true that a truly surprising number of foreign lefty politicians and union leaders knew Carl Shier, Palme among them.

[Recording time: 56:48]

This particular recording was among the several dozen tapes that Frank Llewellyn from the Democratic Socialists of America’s national office had sent to me sometime after the turn of the century. Allowing for duplications and individual tapes expiring from old age, I guessimated those tapes amounted to at least a week’s worth of full time work. I listened to a few of them and did an inventory, but that’s where I left it.

They remained in my closet for well over a decade. Now, voilà.

Purple Haze

Photo by Roman.

If you’re still seeing this after a couple of days, consult a physician.

Yip Abides in 2020

Here lies buried in 2020 the content of this here blog for that year. By category in reverse chronological order:

Audio

• The Right to be Healthy — a 1970s infomercial, featuring Dr. David Stark Murray, one of the founders of the British National Health Service.
• Norman Thomas and Max Shachtman — a rare recording of two major players on the mid-20th Century U.S. left.
• The Norman Thomas v. Barry Goldwater Debate — from November of 1961.
• The Crisis in Economic Theory — Michael Harrington, mid-1980.

Photo Wall

• Street Lit  — the 21st 19th Century considered.
• Interface — more photo-noodling.
• Crystallizing — pretty close to what I had aimed for.
• Ball and ? — some clever work by Jason Brammer.
• The Sun Also Sets — and the glass is half empty on a Winter’s day in Rogers Park.
• A Thousand Points — of wishful thinking.
• Summertime… — a postcard from.
• Rootabaga Redux — What can I say? I dig roots.
• Avenue of Light and Shadow — caution: turbulent magic ahead.
• And After — a peek at Loyola Park after the storms.
• Dancing without a Net — mischievous public art.
• Rays — I have this thing about light.
• Turbulence — .
• Spring as Remembered Mid-Winter — .
• Extra Dimensional Jupiter — photo-noodling.
• Hardly Worth Scalping — !
• Contemplating Betelgeuse — poof!
• The Fay in Winter — hidden magic.
• The Black Hand Detachment — hidden terror.
• Winter’s Green Thumb? — or perhaps wintergreen thumb.
• The Man Who Wasn’t There Goes Away — .
• Braveheart — in a very tiny dog.
• Grill of My Dreams — .
• Gangway of Shadows — in Rogers Park.
• Downtown — This view of the south Loop came out nicely, imho.
• Miró Revisited — another view of the downtown Chicago sculpture, in part.
• Winter Chillin’ — at home with The Yip.
• Lurking — where the night goes on Greenleaf Avenue.
• “Who?” — he asked owlishly.
• Glass, Night and Light — that’s exactly what it is.
• Spring — as it was on one day on Jarvis Avenue.
• The Oil God Rising — actually, I really dug the way the new show curtain liner caught the sun.
• Sprung! — flowers do this in the Spring.
• Manufacturing Culture — my title for a mural fragment under a CTA viaduct.
  
• Flowers — spring eternal?
• Maw — the proper name for this sculpture is “The Receptor” but it could be a wormhole.
• Chicago! — anonymous street art on a CTA viaduct.
• Even Trees… — get warts. No: It is not a pregnant wood nymph.
• Pebblean Way — a sidewalk as a Roman road.
• Shamrock Shadows — nothing more forlorn than a bar after a cancelled St. Patrick’s Day.
• The Roc Nebula — this began as a photo of a water stain.
• UFO — No, really, it is.
• Caught in the Headlights — You know, I never gave this critter a name.
• All Her Hopes Abandoned — the existential spider.
• A Furrow in the Sky — that’s what it looks like.
• A Confusion of Shadow and Light — one of my obsessions indulged.
• Reaching for Spring — more shadow and light.
• The Wonder Bird of Tomorrow — anonymous street art on Morse Avenue.
• Interstitial Dive — precisely.
• Vertigo
• Dancing Photons — Trippin’ the light fantastic to the music of the spheres.
• Subtle Suds — an abstract in wash water.
• More Reflections — glass bricks are not just industrial.
• There’s a Fungus Among Us — for real. After while, crocodile.
• Von Neumann Machines Eat the Moon — well, that’s what it looks like, anyway.
• Bitter Light — an abstract composed from light, glass and software.
• The Awakening — it was slow, this year.
• Basket of Shadow — “Love is a basket of light.”
• These Are Your Lives — in so many of the alternate universes, why does your life change so little?
• Please Don’t Eat the Daisies — Cute bunny? Looks like lunch to me. Plus a few notes about humor.
• Luminiferous Aether — more abstraction.
• Leopard Tree in Bloom — soon there will be cats to harvest.
• CPAC! — the automobile of a true believer.
• Shelter from the Storm — a restful interior view.
• Reaching for the Star — what every plant does…
• Maple Sky — more about light and shadow.
• Space Opera Aria — you know the words.
• The Guardian — nothing you’d want to shake a rain stick at.
• Light in Motion — or is it the hideous visage of a lovecraftian diety?
• Rock-Paper-Candy — listening makes no sound until it shrieks.
• Moon Walking
• Light Conception — it could be about love, but what would that mean?
• The Illuminated Heart — how could one not follow one’s heart?
• Light Notes
• The Illuminated Egg — Humpty-Dumpty awakes to a fall.
• Ring of Light — an experiment with light and water.
• The Book of Light — are there things humans should not know?
• April Flowers — viewed as a painting.
• Flower Eyes — stare at the meadow… and the meadow stares back…
• The Wreckage of Agathon — the remains of a candle.
• Nested Donuts? — a selfie at the Midnight Sabbath.
• Rock-Paper-Candy 2 — on Estes Avenue.
• Just One Step Closer, Please… be my fertilizer.
• The Washing of the Brain — a sun-lit moment.
• Radiator — I liked the pattern of shadow.
• Fading Away
• Luminosity — the almost numinous quality of morning light.
• Crayon Explosion — order and chaos.*
• “It’s life, Jim, but not as we know it!” — fun with a filter I found.
• The Anarchist’s Dream — it’s a form of liberation, I guess.
  
• Wax Plate Tectonics
• Mud Puddle 2020 — belongs to summer just like corn on the cob.
• Unlucky — or a portal to another dimension.
• Flash! — fireworks daily if you know where to look.
• My Litter Box — as it appears at night.
• Glass Tomatoes — Here. Take some. Please.
• Crystallography — one of my early but discarded loves.
• Bug Alone — but together we were a rowdy pair.
• Shades of Green — living plants glowing.
• Survivor — not every tree did.
• Portrait of a Streetlight as a Showerhead — over-wrought iron.
• Plan Bee — I always did like wildflower honey.
• Tree Brane — a bad and meritoriously obscure pun, but the photo ain’t bad.
• Life on the Edge — Rogers Park’s concrete jungle.
• Branding — when deviance fails and negativity don’t pull you through.
• Summer Leaves — and Fall has arrived.
• Swirl — come be my guinea pig. It’s experimental!
  
• Nightscape — through the crystal.
• Not There and Square — no one seems to understand this. I think. Or maybe they do?
• Framed — that’s what we all say.
• Experiment 3797 — vampire defense?
• Broken Dreams — and broken mirrors.
• Auntie Virus Protection — but only if the FDA doesn’t find out.
• Jeepster for a Shine — that’s about it.
• Experiment 3958 — came out pretty well, IIDSSM.
• Morning Sky with Woodpecker — yes it was.
• A Butter Whirled in Berth — actually yet another experiment with camera filters and editing filters.
• What Rhyme or Reason — is there for a place to park poetry?
• Light Shield Boss — for protection against light sabers, of course.
• Inarticulate Abstract Expressionism — painting done as if by Homo Erectus… which is why we’ve found none.
• Torn Apart — another tornado survivor.
• A Golden Compass — but no direction home.
• Silence — in Chicago!
• It Was a Beautiful Day That Day.
• Mysterious — reflections.
• Well of Light — I’m really pleased with this.
• Morning Descending — As if a bird alighting.
• That Light at the End of the Tunnel — is what it is. Whatever it is.
• Coming Soon… — Trick or Treat??
• Vague Expressionism — art as “you know what I mean?”
• Rock-Paper-Candy 3 — when you vote.
• Gold Water — an apt metaphor for modern conservativism.
• Nightscape 2 — alleyscape.
• Eye Sky — 1.
• Eye Gomorrah — 2.
• Aye, Cat — And in conclusion: 3.
• The Plastic Wave — interpretation of quantum physics.
• Forest Shadow and Light — earthworms are an invasive species.
• The Remains of the Season — getting toward the last of Autumn.
• Autumnal — grass and tree.
• Patchworld — maybe really small crustal plates.
• Hellgate 1 — spiritual science fiction is a thing; now see it on TV!
• Walking the Plank — a bug’s eye view.
• On Our Way to Alexandria — the ghosts of librarians past.
• Depressionware 1 — another experiment using crockery as a lens filter.
• On Our Way to the Trading Post — it’s just up the creek.
• Lief or Not — a caterpillar’s got to eat.
• Depressionware 2 — as it says.
• Which Way to Grow? — some trees have a problem.
• Logic Gates — steel and glass.
• Fishing Bird Abstracted — as it says.
• Swallow Condos — in the sand.
• Our Next Stop Will Be — Evanston?
• Dancer — shadow dimensions.
• Shelter — in greyscale.
• That Mytic Silver Lining — sometimes appears.
• Static in the Attic — an example.
• The Face in the Door Revisited — in living color!
• Portrait of Benjamin — at a particular point in his life.
• Waves Are Rising — no matter the perspective.
• A Fine Summer Dog — yes it was.
• Algae Shore — an attempt at salvaging the best characteristic of a photo.
• Floral Memory — RIP 2020, though I suspect a wooden stake is urgently needed to finish the job.

Video Wall

• Important — a good intro to the Canadian-flavored humor found in abundance at the Good Cop Great Cop Vimeo site.
• Anyu — about the inner life of a refugee child.
• Mickey Was Here — maybe not the universal veteran, but for many, the wars go on.
• 2alt — unlike any popcorn you’ve ever eaten.
• To Die By Your Side — a literary love story from Spike Jonze…
• Looking for Love in the Wrong Place — wherein a horny leopard tries to seduce her own image.
• Monju Hunters of Sofugan Island — a look back at a bygone way of life.
• The Endless Chase — Pecos Hank looks back on 2019.
• Reverent — wherein Mike Olbinski captures some spectacular storm structure.
• Happy Valentine’s Day — a crashing success or a crashing failure.
• Timeline of the Next 80 Years — a presentation that brought to mind Edward Tufte.
• Dinosaurs in Love — she says it like it was.
• Dance Dance — some truly odd floral effects.
• Love’s Last Words — a couple’s final words to each other accidentally recorded.
• Magic — clever, cute, commercial.
• Third Stone from the Sun — Jimi Hendrix as a “pioneering 20th Century Afro-Futurist.”
• Putin — kinda cute and, yes, Trump makes an appearance.
• The Well — one small creature escapes to… where?
• i. Emergence — part 1
• ii. Masks — part 2
• iii. The Spring — part 3 and the best of, imho.
• La Mort de Tau — Another short film by Jérome Boulbès with music by Michel Korb. It really is worth a dime of your time.
• The Pet Files — drama involving an obscure division of the FBI.
• Rascagnes — Another short by Jérome Boulbès with music by Michel Korb, a pilot for a never produced feature length movie.
• Mirror for Eyes — psychedelic…
• Bless You — a re-run appropriate to the pandemic… or not.
• Boycycle — a coming of age story for the 21st Century chimera.
• Chunyun — a poetic documentation of the world’s largest annual human migration.
• Disposition — Dance. Music.
• Toilet Paper — Remember the Great Toilet Paper Panic of 1973?
• Backpedal — a young woman laments her teen years, her hometown, and the death of a friend.
• Raymonde or the Vertical Escape — in the quest for sex and love and the immensity of the sky.
• Solipsism — a short video for the philosophical or the intoxicated.
• Tones on Tail: Go — I hate music videos but I really dig Ub Iwerks.
• Basic — This is really good story-telling. Other than that, I’m not sure.
• Staying at Home — a comedic PSA featuring Barnaby Dixon’s Dab Chick.
• Shoe Huffing — the scourge of feline shoe huffing.
• A Bird Ballet — flocks of starlings in flight: always amazing.
• “Facelift” — Do you live your life or does your life live you? Surreal words to live by.
• Balcony — primal scream therapy as it relates to community organizing. (It’s funnier than that.)
• Wurlitzer — technically a music video, I prefer to think of it as a brief SF fantasy.
• Where Is Happiness? — another of Sherren Lee’s quirky productions.
• Reflections — What do our memories become?
• Conspiracy Cruise — it’s the age of the grifter…
• At the End of the Cul-de-Sac — I took this as a metaphor for private government, but it’s probably about stoning.
• Kukuschka — amazing stop-action animation.
• Night Cab — a slightly delirious take on being a cab or ride-share driver at night.
• Games for Girls — mind-bendingly strange, I thought.
• Alive — brief, disorienting, surreal.
• Trump’s Good Old Days — this is a re-run, but apt for the times.
• Passage — dance and digital video technology.
• We Are George Floyd — featuring Cornel West and Killer Mike.
• Cosmic Corruption — noise as art.
• Selfies — dread-full and disturbing and ubiquitous.
• The Blood is at the Doorstep — no longer available, except by rental or purchase.
• Coup d’état Math — four stories of immigrants.
• Pura Vida — courtship in the 21st Century.
• “The Man with the Beautiful Eyes” — an animated poem.
• Revolution Is Crime, Crime Is Revolution? — unanswered, but the dance and animation are cool.
• The Atlas of False Desires — a short piece that is ambiguously fiction.
• “Music and Clowns” — culture, education, healthcare and love.
• “Zone Rouge” — wars never end; they merely slow the rate of killing.
• Tornado and Derecho! — a very few of you may have wondered…
• “Good Luck Yonpey” — weird. I haven’t been able to describe it any other way.
• Fork — and its history.
• “Love Me, Fear Me” — beautiful and psychedelic stop frame animation.
• “Into the Cave of Wonders” — a short history and tour of the caves in Arcena, Spain.
• “Toyota Man” — an immigrant rights music video with lots of pop references.
• Reflections — really cool visually.
• The Mundane — it was a normal day of Sassi.
• megadance — a celebration from puppeteer Barnaby Dixon.
• “Who Dat” — a dancing pigeon.
• “The Kármán Line” — Highly recommended, sez me.
  
• “Five minutes to sea” — a lovely and sweet animation about time and age.
• Portland’s Burning Heart” — photojournalist Beth Nakamura of “The Oregonian”.
• “Ars Poetica #100: I Believe” — the poetry comes close to cliche but the animation is pretty cool.
• “Sundown” — I know: storyboards! Duh! But I still say you can almost see the framing. This is nicely done.
• “Avarya” — Gökalp Gönen’s work is a masterpiece, imho. Don’t forget to turn on the subtitles.
• “No Blue Without Yellow” — Van Gogh’s art animated to tell his bio. Really cool.

Poetry

• Backpedal — based on a poem written and performed by Olivia Gatwood.
• B.S. — a dismal bit of doggerel.
• “The Man with the Beautiful Eyes” — animation based on a poem by Charles Bukowski.
• Catpa
• “Ars Poetica #100: I Believe” — the poetry comes close to being a cliché but the animation is pretty cool.
• Work List — this is not a poem.

Politics

• Mickey Was Here — the war goes on.
• Timeline of the Next 80 Years — global warming, two scenarios compared.
• Send in the Clowns — is surreal the new irony?
• Why We Need Socialism in America — for May Day, this classic argument by the late Michael Harrington.
• Trump’s Good Old Days — a symphony of dog whistles. (May not be available.)
  
• We Are George Floyd — featuring Cornel West and Killer Mike.
• The Blood is at the Doorstep — no longer available, except by rental or purchase.
• CPAC! — the proposed Civilian Police Accountability Council.
• The Right to be Healthy — featuring Dr. David Stark Murray, one of the founders of the British National Health Service.
• Rock-Paper-Candy — found along Touhy Avenue.
• Coup d’etat Math — four stories.
• Revolution is Crime, Crime Is Revolution? — unanswered, but the dance and animation are cool.
• Rock-Paper-Candy 2 — on Estes Avenue.
• “Music and Clowns” — culture, education, healthcare and love.
• “Zone Rouge” — disarming battlefields.
• Norman Thomas and Max Shachtman — recorded live in Chicago, 1958.
• Mr. President — a message for Donald.
• 1968 — commentary about the year from Garry Wills and the Daughters of Albion.
• The Norman Thomas v. Barry Goldwater Debate — from 1961. Spoiler alert…
• “Toyota Man” — an immigrant rights music video with lots of pop references.
• Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg — Marion Teniade said it.
• The Crisis in Economic Theory — Michael Harrington, mid-1980.
• Gold Water — an apt metaphor for modern conservativism. Anyone want to buy a tinned can?
  
• “Portland’s Burning Heart” — photojournalist Beth Nakamura of “The Oregonian”.

Prose

• Sty Sight — it’s about pigs.
• A Murmuration of Starling Thoughts — life is tough and then you’re eaten.
• A Cat Passing in the Night — bye bye kitty. What else is there to say?
• The Painful Blue Finger of Death — introducing Achenbach’s Syndrome.
• The Guardian — the power of magical thinking.
• Light in Motion — fantasy in waves.
• The Illuminated Egg — the egg came first.
• The Ballad of Dick the Pigeon — trash-talking the predators. (Some parts of this story are true?)
  
• Early in the Morning — magic?

Reviews

• Buying Legal Weed in Illinois — quite the experience…
• Review Updates — “Quillifer” and “Rosewater”

Meet the New Year…
Same as the Old Year.