thenation--2020-04-28--WTF Is Jacobin’s Editor Thinking in Voting Green?

Bhaskar Sunkara , editor of the provocative and popular socialist Jacobin magazine , tweeted last week that he intends to vote for Green Party presidential candidate Howie Hawkins in November .
And yes , it matters .
Jacobin has a considerable reach .
It claims to have a paid print circulation of 50,000 , while its website draws over 2 million visitors a month .
Jacobin is particularly influential among young leftists , with more-radical-than-thou tendencies that reflect the idealism of recent recruits to left-wing ideas .
It was near-messianic in its devotion to Bernie Sanders ’ s candidacy .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ only takes a small number of votes in key swing states—Wisconsin , Michigan , Pennsylvania , Arizona , North Carolina , Nevada , New Hampshire , Virginia , Iowa , and Florida—where the margin of victory could be a few thousand or a few hundred votes , to hand Donald Trump a victory , as we saw in 2016 .
In Wisconsin , Trump ’ s margin over Clinton was 22,748 votes , while Green Party candidate Jill Stein won 31,072 votes .
In Michigan , Trump defeated Hillary Clinton by 10,704 votes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ In his 2019 book , The Socialist Manifesto : The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality , Sunkara expressed concern that American socialists had “ isolated ourselves in sectarian irrelevance.
” Instead , he wrote , socialists need to create “ an electoral strategy that can represent the distinct interests of working people , but without demanding that voters start immediately supporting unviable third-party candidacies.
” Hawkins , this year ’ s Stein , is about as unviable as one can imagine .
A perennial Green Party candidate , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Senate , the House , governor of New York , and Syracuse mayor , city council , and auditor—never garnering more than a handful of votes .
Sunkara lives in New York , a blue state where Joe Biden is in no danger of losing to Trump .
But Sunkara didn ’ t condition his support for Hawkins .
If just enough people in swing states follow Sunkara ’ s example and vote for Hawkins rather than Biden , it could help reelect a fascist-wannabe president .
The Covid-19 crisis and the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ignorance , mendacity , and incompetence for the world to see .
He ’ s demonstrated no compassion or concern for the 50,000 people who have already died .
He has used the crisis as an opportunity to promote his reelection , further his agenda of putting profits over people , and scapegoat immigrants , the media , China , the World Health Organization , and Democrats to divert attention from his own failures .
You don ’ t have to love Biden to understand that Trump unleashed for a second term will @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Trump will use every means at his disposal ( the FBI , the Justice Department , Supreme Court and other judicial nominations , and the post office ) to repress progressive movements and restrict the right to protest .
After four more years of Trump , our democracy will be on life support , in need of hard-to-find ventilators .
Biden is certainly no socialist .
In the past he ’ s taken some positions that made him look like a corporate shill .
In 2005 , for example , he supported @ @ @ @ @ @ @ banks and credit card companies over consumers .
At the time , Elizabeth Warren , then a Harvard law professor and bankruptcy expert , attacked Biden ’ s vote .
Now , Biden has embraced Warren ’ s plan to roll back the 2005 law and make it easier for people to go through the bankruptcy process , including allowing student loans to be treated like other debts .
Thanks in part to Sanders , and the Democratic Party ’ s leftward shift , Biden has adopted other progressive stances on key issues—the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ rights , abortion , climate change , and college debt—and could be pushed further left during the campaign and after he takes office .
Last week , for example , Biden said that the next round of coronavirus stimulus needs to be “ a hell of a lot bigger ” than last month ’ s $ 2 trillion CARES Act , including massive aid to states and cities to maintain essential services and avoid having to lay off teachers , cops , firefighters , and other public employees—and without the handouts to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the New New Left From the Old New Left Former leaders of the Students for a Democratic Society Responses to an ‘ Open Letter to the New New Left ’ The question for progressives isn ’ t whether they can fall in love with Joe Biden .
It is about changing the political playing field to increase the odds of winning fights for reforms that improve people ’ s lives .
Michael Harrington , the founder of Democratic Socialists of America , described that as pursuing the “ left wing of the possible.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ down to this : Who is more likely to respond to pressure to move us closer to Medicare for All , a Green New Deal , and an end to student debt : Biden or Trump ?
This is not a theoretical question .
Every vote for Hawkins in key swing states is , in reality , a vote for Trump .
Sunkara is a smart guy .
He can do the math .
In the past decade , after starting his magazine in 2010 while an undergraduate history major at George Washington @ @ @ @ @ @ @ presence on the left .
He ’ s written for The Guardian , Foreign Policy , The Nation , and other publications .
The 30-year-old has been profiled in The New York Times , The New Yorker , and Columbia Journalism Review , and is frequently quoted in the media as a representative of millennial and Generation Z leftists .
He was a vice chair of Democratic Socialists of America ( DSA ) until the organization eliminated that position three years ago .
Jacobin represents a young left that has enough adherents to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s example .
It occupies a similar political space in the left-wing media as The Young Turks and Chapo Trap House , appealing to young people radicalized after the Great Recession by the Occupy Wall Street , Black Lives Matter , Dreamers , # Metoo , and Sunrise movements .
Among young radicals , Jacobin and DSA are two of the most prominent sources of ideas and activism .
DSA has grown from 6,000 to 60,000 members in the past four years and has a much wider following .
A 2019 Gallup @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , including 70 percent of Democrats and 58 percent of 18–34-year-olds , believe that socialism would be a good thing for the country .
About 40 DSA members now serve in public office , including two members of Congress ( Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York ) and six members of the Chicago City Council .
In 2016 , and again this year , DSA members worked hard for Sanders .
Once he withdrew , the group ’ s leaders announced that they were not officially endorsing Biden , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ its own ranks—and among older leftists , including over 80 former members of Students for a Democratic Society ( SDS ) , the 1960s radical group , who published an open letter to DSAers urging them to support , if not totally embrace , Biden .
Jacobin quickly posted a rejoinder by Daniel Finn , one of its editors , titled “ An Open Letter from SDS Veterans Haranguing Young Socialists to Back Biden Was a Bad Idea.
” But DSA ’ s non-endorsement of Biden is strategically different from affirmative support for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ believe that most of the group ’ s members will vote for Biden .
Moreover , DSA chapters are working for progressive ( non-socialist ) Democrats for Congress , governors ’ seats , and state legislative campaigns .
So at least they ’ re getting out the Democratic vote , which in the end will help Biden defeat Trump .
In contrast , Sunkara ’ s stance is self-indulgent—an individual act of virtue signaling rather than part of a collective movement for justice .
At its worst , it is a reflection of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to real human suffering .
In a second term , Trump will double down on his fascist instincts and foment increasingly overt white supremacist violence , xenophobia , nativism , and anti-Semitism .
He ’ ll seek to dismantle unions and workers ’ rights , slash the already-torn safety net , eviscerate voting rights and civil liberties , and hand over more public funds and government services ( such as prisons , the post office , health care , national parks , and schools ) to big corporations .
Trump will try to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ funding for key services , as Mitch McConnell proposed in a memo leaked to the press last week .
McConnell ’ s plan is designed to punish Democratic cities and states and bust public-sector unions , who are leading the fight against Trump and the Republicans .
Trump will further populate the federal courts with reactionaries and likely get to appoint at least two more Kavanaugh-like right-wingers to the Supreme Court ( to replace Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Stephen Breyer ) , solidifying the court ’ s Republican supermajority .
As a result @ @ @ @ @ @ @ years fighting defensive battles , simply trying to stop things from getting much worse .
Any hope for moving a progressive agenda forward will be lost .
After withdrawing from the presidential contest , Sanders quickly endorsed Biden and said that not voting for the Democratic nominee against Trump is “ irresponsible.
” If Trump wins , thanks to enough people like Sunkara voting Green , he will no doubt deny any responsibility for the tens of millions of Americans who will lose their jobs , housing , health care , food stamps @ @ @ @ @ @ @ unions , civil rights , voting rights , right to abortion , and right to same-sex marriage , who will see their pay and pensions cut , or who will be deported .
What ’ s important is not the intent but the consequences of one ’ s actions .
Sunkara may be a young radical , but he ’ s old enough to know better .
This article has been updated .

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Bhaskar Sunkara, editor of the provocative and popular socialist Jacobin magazine, tweeted last week that he intends to vote for Green Party presidential candidate Howie Hawkins in November. And yes, it matters. Jacobin has a considerable reach. It claims to have a paid print circulation of 50,000, while its website draws over 2 million visitors a month. Jacobin is particularly influential among young leftists, with more-radical-than-thou tendencies that reflect the idealism of recent recruits to left-wing ideas. It was near-messianic in its devotion to Bernie Sanders’s candidacy.
I’m going to vote for @HowieHawkins But I’m not a believer in building the Green Party. No matter what your individual choice is in November, the political act is to organize on issues like Medicare for All, build orgs, and back downballot candidates supporting the Bernie agenda —Bhaskar Sunkara (@sunraysunray) April 22, 2020
The danger here is obvious. It only takes a small number of votes in key swing states—Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, North Carolina, Nevada, New Hampshire, Virginia, Iowa, and Florida—where the margin of victory could be a few thousand or a few hundred votes, to hand Donald Trump a victory, as we saw in 2016. In Wisconsin, Trump’s margin over Clinton was 22,748 votes, while Green Party candidate Jill Stein won 31,072 votes. In Michigan, Trump defeated Hillary Clinton by 10,704 votes, while Stein got 51,463 votes.
In his 2019 book, The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality, Sunkara expressed concern that American socialists had “isolated ourselves in sectarian irrelevance.” Instead, he wrote, socialists need to create “an electoral strategy that can represent the distinct interests of working people, but without demanding that voters start immediately supporting unviable third-party candidacies.” Current Issue View our current issue
Hawkins, this year’s Stein, is about as unviable as one can imagine. A perennial Green Party candidate, since 2008 he’s run for the Senate, the House, governor of New York, and Syracuse mayor, city council, and auditor—never garnering more than a handful of votes.
Sunkara lives in New York, a blue state where Joe Biden is in no danger of losing to Trump. But Sunkara didn’t condition his support for Hawkins. If just enough people in swing states follow Sunkara’s example and vote for Hawkins rather than Biden, it could help reelect a fascist-wannabe president.
The Covid-19 crisis and the economic collapse have exposed Trump’s ignorance, mendacity, and incompetence for the world to see. He’s demonstrated no compassion or concern for the 50,000 people who have already died. He has used the crisis as an opportunity to promote his reelection, further his agenda of putting profits over people, and scapegoat immigrants, the media, China, the World Health Organization, and Democrats to divert attention from his own failures. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann
You don’t have to love Biden to understand that Trump unleashed for a second term will be much worse than his first term. Trump will use every means at his disposal (the FBI, the Justice Department, Supreme Court and other judicial nominations, and the post office) to repress progressive movements and restrict the right to protest. After four more years of Trump, our democracy will be on life support, in need of hard-to-find ventilators.
Biden is certainly no socialist. In the past he’s taken some positions that made him look like a corporate shill. In 2005, for example, he supported an overhaul of bankruptcy law that favored banks and credit card companies over consumers. At the time, Elizabeth Warren, then a Harvard law professor and bankruptcy expert, attacked Biden’s vote. Now, Biden has embraced Warren’s plan to roll back the 2005 law and make it easier for people to go through the bankruptcy process, including allowing student loans to be treated like other debts. Thanks in part to Sanders, and the Democratic Party’s leftward shift, Biden has adopted other progressive stances on key issues—the minimum wage, health care, workers’ rights, abortion, climate change, and college debt—and could be pushed further left during the campaign and after he takes office. Last week, for example, Biden said that the next round of coronavirus stimulus needs to be “a hell of a lot bigger” than last month’s $2 trillion CARES Act, including massive aid to states and cities to maintain essential services and avoid having to lay off teachers, cops, firefighters, and other public employees—and without the handouts to corporate America . Election 2020 An Open Letter to the New New Left From the Old New Left Former leaders of the Students for a Democratic Society Responses to an ‘Open Letter to the New New Left’ David Duhalde and Mike Davis
The question for progressives isn’t whether they can fall in love with Joe Biden. It is about changing the political playing field to increase the odds of winning fights for reforms that improve people’s lives. Michael Harrington, the founder of Democratic Socialists of America, described that as pursuing the “left wing of the possible.”
For progressives, the question boils down to this: Who is more likely to respond to pressure to move us closer to Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, and an end to student debt: Biden or Trump? This is not a theoretical question. Every vote for Hawkins in key swing states is, in reality, a vote for Trump. Sunkara is a smart guy. He can do the math.
In the past decade, after starting his magazine in 2010 while an undergraduate history major at George Washington University, Sunkara has become a prominent presence on the left. He’s written for The Guardian, Foreign Policy, The Nation, and other publications. The 30-year-old has been profiled in The New York Times, The New Yorker, and Columbia Journalism Review, and is frequently quoted in the media as a representative of millennial and Generation Z leftists. He was a vice chair of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) until the organization eliminated that position three years ago.
Jacobin represents a young left that has enough adherents to help reelect Trump if they follow Sunkara’s example. It occupies a similar political space in the left-wing media as The Young Turks and Chapo Trap House, appealing to young people radicalized after the Great Recession by the Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, Dreamers, #Metoo, and Sunrise movements.
Among young radicals, Jacobin and DSA are two of the most prominent sources of ideas and activism. DSA has grown from 6,000 to 60,000 members in the past four years and has a much wider following. A 2019 Gallup Poll found that 43 percent of Americans, including 70 percent of Democrats and 58 percent of 18–34-year-olds, believe that socialism would be a good thing for the country. About 40 DSA members now serve in public office, including two members of Congress (Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York) and six members of the Chicago City Council.
In 2016, and again this year, DSA members worked hard for Sanders. Once he withdrew, the group’s leaders announced that they were not officially endorsing Biden, a move that stirred considerable controversy among its own ranks—and among older leftists, including over 80 former members of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the 1960s radical group, who published an open letter to DSAers urging them to support, if not totally embrace, Biden. Jacobin quickly posted a rejoinder by Daniel Finn, one of its editors, titled “An Open Letter from SDS Veterans Haranguing Young Socialists to Back Biden Was a Bad Idea.”
But DSA’s non-endorsement of Biden is strategically different from affirmative support for Hawkins. In fact, DSA insiders believe that most of the group’s members will vote for Biden. Moreover, DSA chapters are working for progressive (non-socialist) Democrats for Congress, governors’ seats, and state legislative campaigns. So at least they’re getting out the Democratic vote, which in the end will help Biden defeat Trump.
In contrast, Sunkara’s stance is self-indulgent—an individual act of virtue signaling rather than part of a collective movement for justice. At its worst, it is a reflection of what one can only view as indifference to real human suffering.
In a second term, Trump will double down on his fascist instincts and foment increasingly overt white supremacist violence, xenophobia, nativism, and anti-Semitism. He’ll seek to dismantle unions and workers’ rights, slash the already-torn safety net, eviscerate voting rights and civil liberties, and hand over more public funds and government services (such as prisons, the post office, health care, national parks, and schools) to big corporations. Trump will try to starve cities and states by denying federal funding for key services, as Mitch McConnell proposed in a memo leaked to the press last week. McConnell’s plan is designed to punish Democratic cities and states and bust public-sector unions, who are leading the fight against Trump and the Republicans.
Trump will further populate the federal courts with reactionaries and likely get to appoint at least two more Kavanaugh-like right-wingers to the Supreme Court (to replace Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Stephen Breyer), solidifying the court’s Republican supermajority.
As a result, progressives will spend the next four years fighting defensive battles, simply trying to stop things from getting much worse. Any hope for moving a progressive agenda forward will be lost.
After withdrawing from the presidential contest, Sanders quickly endorsed Biden and said that not voting for the Democratic nominee against Trump is “irresponsible.” If Trump wins, thanks to enough people like Sunkara voting Green, he will no doubt deny any responsibility for the tens of millions of Americans who will lose their jobs, housing, health care, food stamps, clean air, safe workplaces, unions, civil rights, voting rights, right to abortion, and right to same-sex marriage, who will see their pay and pensions cut, or who will be deported.
What’s important is not the intent but the consequences of one’s actions. Sunkara may be a young radical, but he’s old enough to know better.
This article has been updated.


thenation--2020-04-28--Congress Must Stand Up to the White House and Deliver Relief to the Postal Service

EDITOR ’ S NOTE : The Nation believes that helping readers stay informed about the impact of the coronavirus crisis is a form of public service .
For that reason , this article , and all of our coronavirus coverage , is now free .
Please subscribe to support our writers and staff , and stay healthy .
Each week we cross-post an excerpt from Katrina vanden Heuvel ’ s column at the WashingtonPost.com .
Read the full text of Katrina ’ s column here .
This month , the US Postal Service sounded the alarm : Mail revenue could @ @ @ @ @ @ @ year as a result of the novel coronavirus crisis .
Without a large federal cash infusion , the USPS may not survive he summer .
On Capitol Hill , leaders on both sides of the aisle supported a postal relief package , but President Trump and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin intervened to keep it out of the final $ 2.3 trillion stimulus deal .
Instead , the Postal Service received an offer of $ 10 billion in additional debt if it agreed to draconian conditions .
According to the Post , Trump and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to ram through long-sought hikes in package delivery rates and cuts to labor costs .
Lawmakers must stand up to the White House and deliver the relief the Postal Service needs—not only to survive but also to thrive .
Read the full text of Katrina ’ s column here .

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Nation believes that helping readers stay informed about the impact of the coronavirus crisis is a form of public service. For that reason, this article, and all of our coronavirus coverage, is now free. Please subscribe to support our writers and staff, and stay healthy. Each week we cross-post an excerpt from Katrina vanden Heuvel’s column at the WashingtonPost.com. Read the full text of Katrina’s column here.
Subscribe to The Nation Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month! Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month!
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This month, the US Postal Service sounded the alarm: Mail revenue could drop by more than 50 percent this year as a result of the novel coronavirus crisis. Without a large federal cash infusion, the USPS may not survive he summer.
On Capitol Hill, leaders on both sides of the aisle supported a postal relief package, but President Trump and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin intervened to keep it out of the final $2.3 trillion stimulus deal. Instead, the Postal Service received an offer of $10 billion in additional debt if it agreed to draconian conditions. According to the Post, Trump and Mnuchin are using the crisis as leverage to ram through long-sought hikes in package delivery rates and cuts to labor costs.
Lawmakers must stand up to the White House and deliver the relief the Postal Service needs—not only to survive but also to thrive.
Read the full text of Katrina’s column here.


thenation--2020-04-28--Under Europe’s Strictest Lockdown, the World Is Only As Big as Our Windows

One of the uncannier tortures of the current disaster is that so much of it has occurred out of sight .
A microbe is not a tornado or a tsunami .
It spreads without us seeing it .
Then , for a lot of us , quarantine slapped blinkers on our eyes , blocking out the world .
We can ’ t see each other anymore , and we can ’ t see our families—except for those of us who have no choice but to see them all the time .
If you ’ re lucky , the crisis itself @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it .
If you get sick enough yourself or if you ’ re homeless or you drive a taxi or work in a hospital , a morgue , an old folks ’ home , or an Amazon “ fulfillment center , ” you have no choice but to glimpse the wider scope of things , if not the virus itself then at least its world-halting consequences .
The rest of us have our phones and laptops to try to make sense of the moment , plus whatever we can see out our windows @ @ @ @ @ @ @ among the lucky , locked down in a small Barcelona apartment with two people I love , and lots of windows .
The strictest lockdown in Europe went into effect here on March 16 .
Since then , except for five memorable strolls to the grocery store and increasingly leisurely expeditions to take out the trash , my world has shrunk to the narrow , intersecting streets I can see through the windows , the parked cars that never move , the slivers of sky above it all .
Some days it all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ just stage props , two-dimensional , and the sky has been painted on .
When it rains , the windows fog and the whole world contracts into a small , soft , wrinkled , box .
Other days , the sunny ones , the world feels huge out there , like this block really does still connect to other blocks , to other streets and other cities , other countries and continents , other worlds , to a future as well as a past .
It helps that the air is cleaner now @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , probably cleaner than it has been for most of the last 150 years since textile factories , built with money from the slave trade and the sugar plantations of Cuba , began to make this city rich .
Those connections were never easy to see here either , except in the smog that stained the horizons .
Some of what I can see is almost reassuring .
I rarely spot a single passenger , but the buses swing around the corners like they used to .
The street cleaners come every day @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bins .
These days I don ’ t mind the racket they make , even when it wakes me : a sweet lullaby of farting engines and shattering glass announcing that the city is still alive .
It was too easy to miss them before , to imagine oneself alone in a city that somehow functioned on its own .
Now , more alone than ever , we see the lives that make it work , and the work that lets us live .
I see things I never used to .
People @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would have been disturbing just weeks ago .
Now it ’ s the bare faces that provoke an involuntary twinge of mistrust .
Last week I saw a woman walk by with two small children , all three of them wearing white fabric masks .
For a moment I was shocked at the sight of those little masks on those tiny , little-kid faces , but the kids didn ’ t seem to mind them .
They were poking each other , playing and screeching and racing ahead of their mom .
Seeing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that day .
I see a lot of the neighbors who live in the building behind ours .
Maybe too much .
Their apartments have spacious balconies about 15 feet from our kitchen window , which puts us on intimate enough terms with the couple opposite us and the couple in the apartment beneath them that my partner thought to name them .
There ’ s the “ upple , ” or upper couple , and the “ lupple , ” the lower one .
The upple , sour and depressed , have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cleans , hangs the laundry , smokes resentfully ; the male rolls endless joints , plays video games , and watches porn on his phone .
The lupple , beneath them , are newcomers .
They moved in at the beginning of the year , cheerful and in love .
Sometimes they wave up at us .
In the early weeks of lockdown , we would see them doing yoga together every day and sometimes , unbearably , singing to each other , as one strummed at guitar , in the evenings .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the virus hit , we were sure the upple was breaking up , but quarantine seems to have been good for them .
They ’ ve been talking more .
Sometimes the male even helps out with the laundry .
The lupple , meanwhile , have been looking more and more listless .
They haven ’ t sung to each other for weeks .
I fully expect the two couples to have switched roles before this is over , if it ever ends .
The police are out there too .
I see @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hour , cruising in slow loops .
Our upstairs neighbor tells me they ’ ve set up a checkpoint at the bottom of the hill and they ’ ll fine you if you can ’ t convince them you have a good reason to be out , but from the window I ’ ve only seen them stop someone once .
It was a young African guy .
Pandemic or no pandemic , some things don ’ t change .
I watched as four of them made him empty his pockets onto the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ let him go , then stood around laughing and spraying disinfectant on each other ’ s hands .
For a while , before the infection curve began at last to flatten , we were hearing sirens all the time .
We still see ambulances pulling up to the buildings across the street .
I make a point of not looking to see whom they cart off .
I would rather keep the sick and the dying in the category of the Things I Can not See Out the Window .
That category is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tens of thousands of dead , of course , and all the people toiling to keep the rest of us from joining them .
It includes the young African men I used to see scavenging scrap metal from the trash , and the migrants of a different sort , the herds of sunburned , moneyed tourists who have all flown home by now .
It includes the teenaged boys , mainly Moroccan , who live in the center for unaccompanied migrant youth up the block .
They must be going crazy behind those @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a prison .
I don ’ t see the people in the actual prisons either , or any of the things I know are there but didn ’ t see even in circumstances that counted once as normal : all the invisible labor , hidden theft , and not-so-secret violence that make a city and a society run .
We ’ re Struggling With the Coronavirus in Spain—but We ’ re Vastly More Prepared Than the US Vietnam May Have the Most Effective Response to Covid-19 More in this series But that ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t it ?
Many of us don ’ t usually see the people who pick our vegetables and slaughter the animals we eat , and we don ’ t see them now .
We ’ re suddenly more anxiously aware of things called “ supply chains , ” which are not things or chains but people : people working in fields , mines , factories , warehouses , ports , people whose health our health depends on , a vast web of interdependency that we also can not see .
We can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it either : the rent we can ’ t afford to pay , the management companies we ’ re supposed to write the check to , the private equity funds that hide behind them , skimming off the profits .
Just as they always did , things we can not see set the boundaries of the possible .
The enforced isolation of quarantine is just life under capitalism , only more so .
Then there are the birds , who see far more than us , and who gossip even more than we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ each morning and keep at it all day , chattier and bolder than they ever were back when the streets still clanged with our foibles .
Should it tell us something that this pause in the system is being celebrated by so many other living things ?
It should .
Our absence looks different to the birds .
They see the promise of a world no longer driven by the furies of consumption .
They see life opening up again , a different kind of web .
And surely they see us behind @ @ @ @ @ @ @ remembering in our misfortune how much we have failed to see , and doing our best—some of us—to see it all anew .

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Nation believes that helping readers stay informed about the impact of the coronavirus crisis is a form of public service. For that reason, this article, and all of our coronavirus coverage, is now free. Please subscribe to support our writers and staff, and stay healthy.
Subscribe to The Nation Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month! Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month!
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One of the uncannier tortures of the current disaster is that so much of it has occurred out of sight. A microbe is not a tornado or a tsunami. It spreads without us seeing it. Then, for a lot of us, quarantine slapped blinkers on our eyes, blocking out the world. We can’t see one another anymore, and we can’t see our families—except for those of us who have no choice but to see them all the time. If you’re lucky, the crisis unfolds where you can’t see it. If you get sick enough or you’re homeless or you drive a taxi or work in a hospital, a morgue, an old folks’ home, or an Amazon fulfillment center, you have no choice but to glimpse the wider scope of things—if not Covid-19 itself, then at least its world-halting consequences. The rest of us have our phones and laptops to try to make sense of the moment, plus whatever we can see out our windows.
So far, I’ve been among the lucky, locked down in a small Barcelona apartment with two people I love and lots of windows. The strictest lockdown in Europe went into effect here on March 16. Since then, except for five memorable strolls to the grocery store and increasingly leisurely expeditions to take out the trash, my world has shrunk to the narrow, intersecting streets I can see through the windows, the parked cars that never move, the slivers of sky above it all. Some days it all feels tiny, as if the buildings are just stage props, two-dimensional, and the sky has been painted on. When it rains, the windows fog, and the whole world contracts into a small, soft, wrinkled box.
Other days, the sunny ones, the world feels huge out there, as though this block really does still connect to other blocks, to other streets and other cities, other countries and continents, other worlds, to a future as well as a past. It helps that the air is cleaner now than I’ve ever known it, probably cleaner than it has been for most of the past 150 years since textile factories, built with money from the slave trade and the sugar plantations of Cuba, began to make this city rich. Those connections were never easy to see here, either, except in the smog that stained the horizons.
Some of what I can see is almost reassuring. I rarely spot a single passenger, but the buses swing around the corners as they used to. The street cleaners come every day, and the garbage trucks empty the bins. These days I don’t mind the racket they make, even when it wakes me: a sweet lullaby of farting engines and shattering glass announcing that the city is still alive. It was too easy to miss them before, to imagine oneself alone in a city that somehow functioned on its own. Now more alone than ever, we see the lives that make it work and the work that lets us live. Current Issue View our current issue
I see things I never used to. People in masks, of course. That would have been disturbing just weeks ago. Now it’s the bare faces that provoke an involuntary twinge of mistrust. Last week I saw a woman walk by with two small children, all three of them wearing white fabric masks. For a moment I was shocked by the sight of those little masks on those tiny faces, but the kids didn’t seem to mind them. They were poking each other, playing and screeching and racing ahead of their mom. Seeing them was the best thing that happened that day. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann
I see a lot of the neighbors who live in the building behind ours. Maybe too much. Their apartments have spacious balconies about 15 feet from our kitchen window, which puts us on intimate enough terms with the couple opposite us and the couple in the apartment beneath them that my partner thought to name them. There’s the “upple,” or upper couple, and the “lupple,” the lower one. The upple, sour and depressed, have always avoided eye contact. The female cleans, hangs the laundry, smokes resentfully; the male rolls endless joints, plays video games, and watches porn on his phone.
The lupple are newcomers. They moved in at the beginning of the year, cheerful and in love. Sometimes they wave at us. In the early weeks of lockdown, we would see them doing yoga together every day and sometimes, unbearably, singing to each other as one strummed a guitar in the evenings. For a while last winter, before the virus hit, we were sure the upple was breaking up, but quarantine seems to have been good for them. They’ve been talking more. Sometimes the male even helps out with the laundry. The lupple, meanwhile, have been looking more and more listless. They haven’t sung to each other for weeks. I fully expect the two couples to have switched roles before this is over, if it ever ends.
The police are out there too. I see them drive by at least once an hour, cruising in slow loops. Our upstairs neighbor told me they’ve set up a checkpoint at the bottom of the hill and they’ll fine you if you can’t convince them you have a good reason to be out, but from the window I’ve seen them stop someone only once. It was a young African guy. Pandemic or no pandemic, some things don’t change. I watched as four of them made him empty his pockets onto the roof of their car. They finally let him go, then stood around laughing and spraying disinfectant on each other’s hands.
For a while, before the infection curve began at last to flatten, we were hearing sirens all the time. We still see ambulances pulling up to the buildings across the street. I make a point of not looking to see whom they cart off. I would rather keep the sick and the dying in the category of the Things I Cannot See out the Window. That category is a large one. It includes the tens of thousands of dead, of course, and all the people toiling to keep the rest of us from joining them. It includes the young African men I used to see scavenging scrap metal from the trash and the migrants of a different sort, the herds of sunburned, moneyed tourists who have all flown home by now. It includes the teenage boys, mainly Moroccan, who live in the center for unaccompanied migrant youths up the block. They must be going crazy behind those grated windows, their shelter transformed into a prison. I don’t see the people in the actual prisons, either, or any of the things I know are there but didn’t see even in circumstances that counted once as normal: all the invisible labor, hidden theft, and not-so-secret violence that make a city and a society run. Covid-19 We’re Struggling With the Coronavirus in Spain—but We’re Vastly More Prepared Than the US Ben Ehrenreich Vietnam May Have the Most Effective Response to Covid-19 George Black
But that’s how it always is, isn’t it? Many of us don’t usually see the people who pick our vegetables and slaughter the animals we eat, and we don’t see them now. We’re suddenly more anxiously aware of things called supply chains, which are not things or chains but people: people working in fields, mines, factories, warehouses, ports, people whose health our health depends on, a vast web of interdependency that we also cannot see. We can’t see the spiders lurking in it, either—the rent we can’t afford to pay, the management companies we’re supposed to write the check to, the private equity funds that hide behind them, skimming off the profits. Just as they always did, things we cannot see set the boundaries of the possible. The enforced isolation of quarantine is just life under capitalism, only more so.
Then there are the birds, which see far more than us and gossip even more than we do. They start at about five each morning and keep at it all day, chattier and bolder than they ever were back when the streets still clanged with our foibles. Should it tell us something that this pause in the system is being celebrated by so many other living things? It should. Our absence looks different to the birds. They see the promise of a world no longer driven by the furies of consumption. They see life opening up again, a different kind of web. And surely they see us behind our windows gazing out at them, remembering in our misfortune how much we have failed to see and doing our best—some of us—to see it all anew.


thenation--2020-04-29--Finding Humor When ‘Shit Is So Terrible’: A Conversation With Samantha Irby

Samantha Irby is pretty sure she ’ s “ the last person on earth who still has a [ personal ] blog.
” And that ’ s not a bad thing .
The best-selling author—and sometimes spicy Twitter user—has done something most of us couldn ’ t do well if we tried : made a career out of writing jokes about her butthole on the Internet .
Irby ’ s persona can be described as equal parts confessional and raunchy , vulnerable and raw .
Her work spans defecation disasters and the travails of dating and grief .
Irby started @ @ @ @ @ @ @ attempt to impress a crush—before she moved it to a new domain and christened it Bitches Got ta Eat .
The blog , along with her participation in Chicago ’ s “ live lit ” scene , gained her a following .
She wrote her first essay collection , 2013 ’ s Meaty , while working her then-day job as an animal hospital receptionist .
Since then , she ’ s published two more essay collections and forayed into TV writing .
She still updates Bitches Got ta Eat , though it ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ she recaps episodes of Judge Mathis , a courtroom reality TV show .
In her most recent collection , Wow , No Thank You , Irby navigates a new set of life changes like settling into married life with a partner with kids and making new friends as an adult .
As in her previous collections , she plays with the formal structure of the essay : Fluent in the language of the Internet , she tells her stories through memes , lists , and run-on sentences .
In “ Girls Gone Mild @ @ @ @ @ @ @ old to party , she takes us on a timestamped play-by-play leading up to a night of clubbing as an almost-40-year-old , describing the physical and mental exhaustion of going out : deliberating an appropriate way to cancel plans , figuring out if pajamas can look like going-out clothes .
She places these considerations side-by-side with memories of her 20s , when she could wreak havoc on her body without paying for it immediately .
Her body ’ s various betrayals are something that she regularly documents in her work , often in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ essay called “ Hysterical !
” she recounts her decision to get a hysterectomy , drenching us in the horror of experiencing her period soak through hotel bedsheets , explaining her choice to “ take a blowtorch to the entire apparatus , ” and making sense of the post-surgery haze .
We talked about privacy , chronic illness , and how to actually enjoy social media .
Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity .
Rima Parikh : In “ Lesbian Bed Death , ” you structure the essay as a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is fun , but… ” A similar thing happens in “ Hello , 911 ?
” Does Twitter have a role in helping you generate ideas ?
Samantha Irby : I saw those two joke formats and was like , “ This could be a framework to make my point about never wanting to get banged.
” Those are two that I happened to see and happened to be current .
Maybe not anymore—they ’ re probably on their way out in terms of being current .
But those worked well .
Not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ traditional essay .
For instance , there ’ s a piece in the book about going out as a 40-year-old person .
I was like , “ I could write a story about going out that sort of telegraphs what I ’ m trying to say about being a person with arthritis at the club , ” but it was so much more fun and propulsive to write it as a play-by-play : “ At 8 o ’ clock I do this , at 9 , this happens.
” RP : What ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , especially with essays that have a meme-inspired format ?
SI : A lot of my writing is a stream of consciousness .
When I sit down , I ’ m like , “ Let me puke all of this out and then shuffle it around.
” I do a lot of staring at the screen and talking it out to myself .
After I started my blog , I did a lot of storytelling and live readings in Chicago , so I ’ m always thinking about how this would sound if @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to it .
That ’ s when it feels like it ’ s good to me—when I can read it to someone and make them laugh .
Also when I start something , I always know how it ’ s going to end .
Always .
I don ’ t write a thing unless I know the punchline or however it ’ s going to close .
With lists , where there ’ s a cadence , I read those out loud and see how it flows and move it around .
I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ something is structured , the harder it is to make it sound natural .
RP : In “ Hung Up !
” you write about the joys of being on your phone .
How do you stay sane on the Internet ?
SI : Here ’ s the tea : You have to mute and unfollow shit that stresses you out .
Like first of all , I deleted my Facebook—that was step one .
It ’ s not a moral thing , like , “ Oh , privacy.
” I don ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that .
Nothing is private .
The whole format stressed me out .
Once you ’ ve friended friends of friends of friends , it ’ s hard to go through and delete people .
Scorched-earth Facebook—it ’ s been like a year and a half .
No regrets .
Instagram is easy because if there ’ s someone you feel like you need to follow out of obligation , but their posts drive you fucking batshit , you just mute them .
And then Twitter is the same deal .
On Twitter @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is truly the greatest social media gift .
RP : Do you feel like there ’ s more leniency with privacy since there ’ s an understanding that these are jokes ?
SI : One hundred percent .
Like people know—even in the early days of my blog , especially when I would just rip someone a new asshole—it was in a nice , funny way .
I have never had anyone who actually knew how to get in touch with me come to me and say , “ That thing you wrote @ @ @ @ @ @ @ me.
” Like in the last book , I wrote about two serious relationships with men , and I used their real names , talked about our real experiences , and I sent them each the essays and was like , “ If you hate this , I will not put it in the book.
” But especially now , I think people know what to expect .
Sometimes shit will happen , and my friends will be like , “ You ’ re going to write about this , right ?
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ No , but that ’ s cute that you want me to .
I mean , maybe ?
Maybe it ’ ll come up somewhere.
” At this point in my life , everyone I hang with knows that it ’ s a possibility , but they also know that I ’ d change their name if they wanted .
I would never intentionally be like , “ I ’ m going to air this bitch out.
” RP : Do you feel like strangers talk to you like they know you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is that weird ?
SI : All the time .
I don ’ t put everything [ about myself ] in there—I have to have something to base intimate relationships on .
Otherwise nothing feels real , if I ’ m talking to someone about the same shit that they read in the books or online or whatever .
But it ’ s never weird to me .
I ’ m so humbled by it .
I never get offended when someone is too familiar , because it ’ s like , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ intimate stuff.
” I would be such a shithead if I were like , “ Uh , don ’ t talk to me like you know me.
” You do know me .
You do .
You just don ’ t know all of it .
The parts that I keep to myself are really the most undesirable parts , so they do know my best self .
And that ’ s flattering .
That ’ s nice .
I like that .
When people come up to me , arms outstretched , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” I ’ m like “ I love you , too !
” RP : You describe chronic illness in a way that ’ s funny but doesn ’ t diminish it .
How do you strike that balance between emphasizing the weight of an issue while also being conversational about it ?
SI : My knee-jerk response to everything is to find the nugget of humor , because when shit is so terrible , I need to know : Can I laugh at that ?
What ’ s the part of that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ then it feels manageable .
If you can find the one absurd piece , it ’ s like , “ OK , this is ridiculous—I can deal with this.
” People find their empathy center better when they ’ re laughing , when you ’ re not beating them over the head and telling them they ’ re bad .
I never want anyone to think it doesn ’ t hurt or that it ’ s not inconvenient or I ’ m not struggling , because that ’ s not it either .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ like , “ Hey , look , it ’ s hilarious I shit in this diaper—but also , I ’ m an adult wearing a diaper who had to clean her own liquid waste out of it.
” I don ’ t know if it ’ s anything overt that I do .
It ’ s just like , “ Well , I got ta talk about why being this sick with no health insurance is a crime , but also why being this sick and still trying to date and explaining to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a Depends is also hilarious.
” That is me boiled down to my essence : trying to make somebody laugh , while not wanting you to laugh so much that you don ’ t feel sorry .
RP : With “ Body Negativity , ” you detail insecurities about individual body parts to show how impossible women ’ s beauty standards are , especially when they ’ re couched as “ self-care.
” What was the experience of writing that piece ?
SI : One I really liked , because it felt like @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
I was like , “ What are all the things that are ‘ required ’ of us ?
Like , how are we made to feel we can do any of these things , let alone all of them ?
It ’ s impossible for my toes to look nice , and my eyebrows , and also to have a job—all of these things can ’ t be done !
” I was really feeling like people are going to read that and they ’ re going to understand .
It was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I also had a really good time with “ Girls Gone Mild , ” because that was just truly the play-by-play of that day and how I really felt like I was leaving my body being out and awake and still wearing pants after midnight .
RP : You write about shame in a way that feels visceral .
What ’ s the process of reliving embarrassing moments for you ?
Do you have a journal ?
SI : Where shame is concerned , it ’ s imprinted on my psyche .
If @ @ @ @ @ @ @ moments , it ’ s half a second of thinking and it ’ s right there in vivid detail .
I can call it up at any moment , whether I want to or not .
I could think about a person I had an embarrassing moment with , and it comes right back—like that kind of shit , the pain does not dull with time .
Anytime I ’ ve made a fool out of myself , it still stings .
If I had a journal , I would probably burn it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ blog , even after all this time .
What made you want to continue it ?
SI : I don ’ t know how to stop a blog .
And it ’ s shifted now anyway—I mostly write about Judge Mathis .
It ’ s changed because my regular life was so boring that having a blog about myself meant I didn ’ t need to update it all the time .
But I don ’ t want to shut it down and lose all those archives .
Also you need practice , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ study writing or take a class or go to college or do anything , so writing the blog was just practice to keep the muscles strong .
When you ’ re writing butt jokes , are you really strengthening any muscles ?

This article appears in the June 1/8, 2020 issue.
Samantha Irby is pretty sure she’s “the last person on earth who still has a [personal] blog.” And that’s not a bad thing. The best-selling author—and sometimes spicy Twitter user—has done something most of us couldn’t do well if we tried: made a career out of writing jokes about her butthole on the Internet. Irby’s persona can be described as equal parts confessional and raunchy, vulnerable and raw. Her work spans defecation disasters and the travails of dating and grief.
Irby started a blog on MySpace in 2008—a futile attempt to impress a crush—before she moved it to a new domain and christened it Bitches Gotta Eat. The blog, along with her participation in Chicago’s “live lit” scene, gained her a following. She wrote her first essay collection, 2013’s Meaty, while working her then-day job as an animal hospital receptionist. Since then, she’s published two more essay collections and forayed into TV writing. She still updates Bitches Gotta Eat, though it’s evolved into a newsletter in which she recaps episodes of Judge Mathis, a courtroom reality TV show.
In her most recent collection, Wow, No Thank You, Irby navigates a new set of life changes like settling into married life with a partner with kids and making new friends as an adult. As in her previous collections, she plays with the formal structure of the essay: Fluent in the language of the Internet, she tells her stories through memes, lists, and run-on sentences. In “Girls Gone Mild,” an essay about being too old to party, she takes us on a timestamped play-by-play leading up to a night of clubbing as an almost-40-year-old, describing the physical and mental exhaustion of going out: deliberating an appropriate way to cancel plans, figuring out if pajamas can look like going-out clothes. She places these considerations side-by-side with memories of her 20s, when she could wreak havoc on her body without paying for it immediately. Her body’s various betrayals are something that she regularly documents in her work, often in grotesque and painstaking detail. In an essay called “Hysterical!” she recounts her decision to get a hysterectomy, drenching us in the horror of experiencing her period soak through hotel bedsheets, explaining her choice to “take a blowtorch to the entire apparatus,” and making sense of the post-surgery haze.
We talked about privacy, chronic illness, and how to actually enjoy social media. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
—Rima Parikh
Rima Parikh: In “Lesbian Bed Death,” you structure the essay as a list using the meme format “Sex is fun, but…” A similar thing happens in “Hello, 911?” Does Twitter have a role in helping you generate ideas? Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann
Samantha Irby: I saw those two joke formats and was like, “This could be a framework to make my point about never wanting to get banged.” Those are two that I happened to see and happened to be current. Maybe not anymore—they’re probably on their way out in terms of being current. But those worked well. Not everything can be a story or a traditional essay. For instance, there’s a piece in the book about going out as a 40-year-old person. I was like, “I could write a story about going out that sort of telegraphs what I’m trying to say about being a person with arthritis at the club,” but it was so much more fun and propulsive to write it as a play-by-play: “At 8 o’clock I do this, at 9, this happens.”
RP: What’s your process editing and organizing jokes, especially with essays that have a meme-inspired format?
SI: A lot of my writing is a stream of consciousness. When I sit down, I’m like, “Let me puke all of this out and then shuffle it around.” I do a lot of staring at the screen and talking it out to myself. After I started my blog, I did a lot of storytelling and live readings in Chicago, so I’m always thinking about how this would sound if an audience had to listen and react to it. That’s when it feels like it’s good to me—when I can read it to someone and make them laugh.
Also when I start something, I always know how it’s going to end. Always. I don’t write a thing unless I know the punchline or however it’s going to close. With lists, where there’s a cadence, I read those out loud and see how it flows and move it around. I learned the hard way that the worse something is structured, the harder it is to make it sound natural.
RP: In “Hung Up!” you write about the joys of being on your phone. How do you stay sane on the Internet?
SI: Here’s the tea: You have to mute and unfollow shit that stresses you out. Like first of all, I deleted my Facebook—that was step one. It’s not a moral thing, like, “Oh, privacy.” I don’t give a shit about any of that. Nothing is private. The whole format stressed me out. Once you’ve friended friends of friends of friends, it’s hard to go through and delete people. Scorched-earth Facebook—it’s been like a year and a half. No regrets. Instagram is easy because if there’s someone you feel like you need to follow out of obligation, but their posts drive you fucking batshit, you just mute them. And then Twitter is the same deal. On Twitter I mute words. The mute function is truly the greatest social media gift.
RP: Do you feel like there’s more leniency with privacy since there’s an understanding that these are jokes?
SI: One hundred percent. Like people know—even in the early days of my blog, especially when I would just rip someone a new asshole—it was in a nice, funny way. I have never had anyone who actually knew how to get in touch with me come to me and say, “That thing you wrote? I hated the way you depicted me.” Like in the last book, I wrote about two serious relationships with men, and I used their real names, talked about our real experiences, and I sent them each the essays and was like, “If you hate this, I will not put it in the book.”
But especially now, I think people know what to expect. Sometimes shit will happen, and my friends will be like, “You’re going to write about this, right?” And I’ll be like, “No, but that’s cute that you want me to. I mean, maybe? Maybe it’ll come up somewhere.” At this point in my life, everyone I hang with knows that it’s a possibility, but they also know that I’d change their name if they wanted. I would never intentionally be like, “I’m going to air this bitch out.”
RP: Do you feel like strangers talk to you like they know you and you know them—and if so, is that weird?
SI: All the time. I don’t put everything [about myself] in there—I have to have something to base intimate relationships on. Otherwise nothing feels real, if I’m talking to someone about the same shit that they read in the books or online or whatever. But it’s never weird to me. I’m so humbled by it. I never get offended when someone is too familiar, because it’s like, ”They just read 400 pages of my intimate stuff.” I would be such a shithead if I were like, “Uh, don’t talk to me like you know me.” You do know me. You do. You just don’t know all of it. The parts that I keep to myself are really the most undesirable parts, so they do know my best self. And that’s flattering. That’s nice. I like that. When people come up to me, arms outstretched, like “I love you!,” I’m like “I love you, too!”
RP: You describe chronic illness in a way that’s funny but doesn’t diminish it. How do you strike that balance between emphasizing the weight of an issue while also being conversational about it?
SI: My knee-jerk response to everything is to find the nugget of humor, because when shit is so terrible, I need to know: Can I laugh at that? What’s the part of that that will make me laugh? And then it feels manageable. If you can find the one absurd piece, it’s like, “OK, this is ridiculous—I can deal with this.”
People find their empathy center better when they’re laughing, when you’re not beating them over the head and telling them they’re bad. I never want anyone to think it doesn’t hurt or that it’s not inconvenient or I’m not struggling, because that’s not it either. It’s in equal measure, like, “Hey, look, it’s hilarious I shit in this diaper—but also, I’m an adult wearing a diaper who had to clean her own liquid waste out of it.” I don’t know if it’s anything overt that I do. It’s just like, “Well, I gotta talk about why being this sick with no health insurance is a crime, but also why being this sick and still trying to date and explaining to my hookup why I’m wearing a Depends is also hilarious.” That is me boiled down to my essence: trying to make somebody laugh, while not wanting you to laugh so much that you don’t feel sorry.
RP: With “Body Negativity,” you detail insecurities about individual body parts to show how impossible women’s beauty standards are, especially when they’re couched as “self-care.” What was the experience of writing that piece?
SI: One I really liked, because it felt like I was really doing something with it. I was like, “What are all the things that are ‘required’ of us? Like, how are we made to feel we can do any of these things, let alone all of them? It’s impossible for my toes to look nice, and my eyebrows, and also to have a job—all of these things can’t be done!” I was really feeling like people are going to read that and they’re going to understand. It was like my mini–rage against the machine. I also had a really good time with “Girls Gone Mild,” because that was just truly the play-by-play of that day and how I really felt like I was leaving my body being out and awake and still wearing pants after midnight.
RP: You write about shame in a way that feels visceral. What’s the process of reliving embarrassing moments for you? Do you have a journal?
SI: Where shame is concerned, it’s imprinted on my psyche. If I need to tap into some embarrassing moments, it’s half a second of thinking and it’s right there in vivid detail. I can call it up at any moment, whether I want to or not. I could think about a person I had an embarrassing moment with, and it comes right back—like that kind of shit, the pain does not dull with time. Anytime I’ve made a fool out of myself, it still stings. If I had a journal, I would probably burn it.
RP: You still update your blog, even after all this time. What made you want to continue it?
SI: I don’t know how to stop a blog. And it’s shifted now anyway—I mostly write about Judge Mathis. It’s changed because my regular life was so boring that having a blog about myself meant I didn’t need to update it all the time. But I don’t want to shut it down and lose all those archives. Also you need practice, and I’m never going to study writing or take a class or go to college or do anything, so writing the blog was just practice to keep the muscles strong. When you’re writing butt jokes, are you really strengthening any muscles?


thenation--2020-04-29--How to Reopen Congress Quickly, Safely—and Remotely

Congress was upended in mid-March when the coronavirus pandemic forced most of its members to join their constituents in staying home from workplaces .
While millions of Americans are now Zooming into their jobs , using readily available technologies for communicating and deliberating , the House and the Senate remain offline .
That suits a lot of Republicans just fine .
They don ’ t choose to serve as anything more than backstops for President Trump , who has dominated the discourse with a steady stream of “ don ’ t blame me ” press briefings and tweets .
Members @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to basic oversight of how the administration is responding to the crisis—even as Congress consents , with scant debate , to trillions of dollars in new spending to address health care demands and mass unemployment .
Things got especially ugly last week , when one of the president ’ s most outrageous defenders , Ohio Republican Jim Jordan , blew up during a rare and sparsely attended session of the House Rules Committee .
Jordan attacked a Democratic proposal for a select panel to oversee the federal coronavirus response .
“ This is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to go after the president , ” grumbled Jordan .
Jordan ’ s over-the-top performance drew a rebuke from Maryland Democrat Jamie Raskin .
“ I can not accept the counterfeit outrage of people upset about the fact that we ’ re creating a committee to conduct oversight over the trillions of dollars of the taxpayers ’ money that ’ s going out the door to try to clean up after the messes created by the government , ” said Raskin .
“ I would so love to hear how my friends would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ our country to its knees economically in public health , and constitutionally , the way this president has .
Can you imagine what they ’ d be saying if we were wearing masks up here under President Obama ?
” Congress Desperately Needs to Call Out Trump ’ s Authoritarianism The charged incident revealed the extent to which Congress is out of order .
Jordan and Raskin were going at it from opposite ends of an almost empty room .
Many of their colleagues were out of town , and those who were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ because of social distancing requirements .
If the House were formally set up to hold virtual hearings , Raskin notes , committee members could have been present virtually .
They could have seen each other on-screen and debated and voted in relatively normal fashion .
But even now , weeks into the crisis , the House remains disconnected .
That ’ s got to change .
Congress , particularly the Democrat-led House , needs to get back to the work of holding hearings , debating , voting , and generally checking and balancing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ claim that the only way to reopen Congress is by abandoning the safety protocols put in place to prevent the spread of the disease .
Democrats know that ’ s not true .
Under pressure from members of the House Democratic Caucus , House Speaker Nancy Pelosi began moving last week to put in place procedures for proxy voting , which would allow the House to take formal action on major issues and to put pressure on the Republican-led Senate to do the same .
Unfortunately , Pelosi and her team scrapped the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that was to be led by McCarthy and House majority leader Steny Hoyer to come up with a bipartisan proposal .
The effort appears to have gone off the rails ; McCarthy has proven to be far more interested in attacking Pelosi than in doing his job .
So Pelosi and Hoyer are now signaling that the House could vote as soon as next week on a plan to effectively allow members who can not travel to DC to vote remotely .
The move is popular with the Democratic caucus , as a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to Politico , “ Pelosi asked members to text her if they supported proxy voting .
The result of the informal survery , Pelosi said , was 20 to 1 in favor.
” It is clear that if Republicans object , a Democratic majority can make the change on its own .
Covid-19 Is Forcing Us to Rethink How We Consume Energy Take Action Now : Bail Out People , Not Corporations More in this series The Democrats should not hesitate to do so .
Nor should they hesitate to go all-in for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the administration ’ s coronavirus response and of spending associated with the “ Coronavirus Aid , Relief , and .
Economic Security Act ” ( CARES ) legislation that was hastily approved in late March by the House and Senate .
If Republicans choose to complain , as a McCarthy aide did Monday , that “ Democrats are now willing to sacrifice over 200 years of precedent to atone for their lack of planning and leadership , ” so be it .
The pandemic has upended plenty of precedents , and the economic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ so .
Americans have proven to be strikingly adaptable .
In addition to businesses and schools , state and local legislative bodies are operating remotely—holding hearings , debates , and votes .
Congress can do the same .
After all , the key precedent with regard to Congress is the one outlined in the Constitution of the United States , which established separate branches of government and a system of checks and balances , and stated unequivocally in Article 1 : “ Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings.
” It @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of a revolution against imperial power , would have wanted the House to sit idly by as an imperial president makes himself the face of the federal government .
They would have recognized , as Representative Dean Phillips does , that “ we can not leave it just to the administration to have the megaphone.
” The need to amplify the House will only become more acute in the coming weeks , as the debate over how and when to “ reopen ” the states heats up .
Raskin , who has worked @ @ @ @ @ @ @ write comprehensive legislation to help states implement safe , sustainable , and science-based reopening plans , is at the center of that debate .
He argues that any federal role in this process must be defined by Congress—not Trump ’ s outbursts .
If Congress is sidelined , he warns , “ that ’ s a real problem.
” The answer to the problem is to recognize that members can respect # StayAtHome orders while utilizing new technologies for virtual hearings and remote voting to do their jobs .
No matter what the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ safely and quickly reopen Congress .

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Congress was upended in mid-March when the coronavirus pandemic forced most of its members to join their constituents in staying home from workplaces. While millions of Americans are now Zooming into their jobs, using readily available technologies for communicating and deliberating, the House and the Senate remain offline.
That suits a lot of Republicans just fine. They don’t choose to serve as anything more than backstops for President Trump, who has dominated the discourse with a steady stream of “don’t blame me” press briefings and tweets. Members of the House Republican caucus are objecting to basic oversight of how the administration is responding to the crisis—even as Congress consents, with scant debate, to trillions of dollars in new spending to address health care demands and mass unemployment.
Things got especially ugly last week, when one of the president’s most outrageous defenders, Ohio Republican Jim Jordan, blew up during a rare and sparsely attended session of the House Rules Committee. Jordan attacked a Democratic proposal for a select panel to oversee the federal coronavirus response. “This is just one more attempt by the Democrats to go after the president,” grumbled Jordan.
Jordan’s over-the-top performance drew a rebuke from Maryland Democrat Jamie Raskin. “I cannot accept the counterfeit outrage of people upset about the fact that we’re creating a committee to conduct oversight over the trillions of dollars of the taxpayers’ money that’s going out the door to try to clean up after the messes created by the government,” said Raskin. “I would so love to hear how my friends would have reacted if President Obama had brought our country to its knees economically, in public health, and constitutionally, the way this president has. Can you imagine what they’d be saying if we were wearing masks up here under President Obama?” More From John Nichols A GOP Debate Without Trump Is the Definition of Pointlessness August 11, 2023 A Win for Abortion Rights, a Win for Democracy: Ohio Voters Reject Issue 1 August 9, 2023 The Biggest Threat to Donald Trump Could Be the Constitution Itself August 4, 2023
The charged incident revealed the extent to which Congress is out of order. Jordan and Raskin were going at it from opposite ends of an almost empty room. Many of their colleagues were out of town; many others who were in DC weren’t present, because of social distancing requirements.
If the House were formally set up to hold virtual hearings, Raskin notes, committee members could have been present virtually. They could have seen each other on-screen and debated and voted in relatively normal fashion.
But even now, weeks into the crisis, the House remains disconnected.
That’s got to change. Congress, particularly the Democrat-led House, needs to get back to the work of holding hearings, debating, voting, and aggressively checking and balancing the president and his cabinet. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann
Republicans claim that the only way to reopen Congress is by abandoning the safety protocols put in place to prevent the spread of the disease. Democrats know that’s not true.
Under pressure from members of the House Democratic Caucus, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi began moving last week to put in place procedures for proxy voting, which would allow the House to take formal action on major issues and to put pressure on the Republican-led Senate to do the same.
Predictably, House minority leader Kevin McCarthy balked.
Unfortunately, Pelosi and her team scrapped the initial plan and created a task force that was to be led by McCarthy and House majority leader Steny Hoyer to come up with a bipartisan proposal.
The effort appears to have gone off the rails; McCarthy has proven to be far more interested in attacking Pelosi than in doing his job.
So Pelosi and Hoyer are now signaling that the House could vote as soon as next week on a plan to effectively allow members who cannot travel to DC to vote remotely. The move is popular with the Democratic caucus, as a Monday call with members indicated. According to Politico, “Pelosi asked members to text her if they supported proxy voting. The result of the informal survery, Pelosi said, was 20 to 1 in favor.”
It is clear that if Republicans object, a Democratic majority can make the change on its own. Coronavirus Amid Partisan Politicking, Revelations on a Covid Origins Article Jimmy Tobias It’s Not “Unreasonable” to Want to Change Our Rotten Health Care System Gregg Gonsalves Covid Has Left Deep Wounds in America’s Rural Communities Anne N. Sosin
The Democrats should not hesitate to do so. Nor should they hesitate to go all-in for formal—if, for now, virtual—oversight of the administration’s coronavirus response and of spending associated with the “Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and. Economic Security Act” (CARES) legislation that was hastily approved in late March by the House and Senate.
If Republicans choose to complain, as a McCarthy aide did Monday, that “Democrats are now willing to sacrifice over 200 years of precedent to atone for their lack of planning and leadership,” so be it.
The pandemic has upended plenty of precedents, and the economic fallout from it will continue to do so. Americans have proven to be strikingly adaptable. In addition to businesses and schools, state and local legislative bodies are operating remotely—holding hearings, debates, and votes. Congress can do the same.
After all, the key precedent with regard to Congress is the one outlined in the Constitution of the United States, which established separate branches of government and a system of checks and balances, and stated unequivocally in Article 1: “Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings.”
It is unimaginable that the founders, veterans of a revolution against imperial power, would have wanted the House to sit idly by as an imperial president makes himself the face of the federal government. They would have recognized, as Representative Dean Phillips does, that “we cannot leave it just to the administration to have the megaphone.”
The need to amplify the House will only become more acute in the coming weeks, as the debate over how and when to “reopen” the states heats up. Raskin, who has worked with a group of House members to write comprehensive legislation to help states implement safe, sustainable, and science-based reopening plans, is at the center of that debate. He argues that any federal role in this process must be defined by Congress—not Trump’s outbursts. If Congress is sidelined, he warns, “that’s a real problem.” The answer to the problem is to recognize that members can respect #StayAtHome orders while utilizing new technologies for virtual hearings and remote voting to do their jobs.
No matter what the Republicans say, it is possible to safely and quickly reopen Congress.


thenation--2020-04-29--Scenes From a Pandemic: 5

Scenes From a Pandemic: 5

Phoenix .
May Day—The days are screaming at the tops of their lungs , coming from the center of somewhere far away and deep inside .
Something Is Happening Here is a collaboration between The Nation and Kopkind , a living memorial to radical journalist Andrew Kopkind , who from 1982–94 was the magazine ’ s chief political writer and analyst .
I have been trying to write this letter to you .
Due to Covid-19 , our anxieties are constellating into clusters of moonlit shock and bracing splendor .
Outside , a pair of shiny elevator doors hangs from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the sky .
Under the swaying , many of us are able only to hallucinate the act of sending you a check on the 1st .
I think of dates and time as the evening ’ s mountains in silhouette , a consecutive line .
I imagine scaling the dips and peaks into a Morse-coded message but , today , the hiking trails are packed with people who all had the same idea , and every body becomes a hatch mark in a throbbing line graph .
As a precaution to prevent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as much of our current health as we can , many of us have chosen to stay , as we have been strongly advised to , or been sent home .
Are you at home with your pets , with your family ?
I ’ m rationing my brothers ’ faces indefinitely because they ’ re not on Facebook or a Wi-Fi plan , and the US-Mexican border , like many others , is closed to nonessential travel : a desperate expression of divine entry , an imagined , immunological edge , but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of us have made a commute across that frontier—now a metal carcass with restless K9s and masked agents .
Here , instead of ordering N95 masks , we are trying to ensure a roof over our heads .
We have come together so we may represent our interests as people who give you money to claim a place to sleep .
Something Is Happening Here More in this series We are writing to request three things : • That you refuse to evict tenants from any of your properties .
• That you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who are unable to pay .
• That you turn toward a humming red regard for other human beings by denying a life contorted into stacks of possessions on your shelves .
On March 30 , the State of Arizona issued a shelter-in-place order : an official , on-record gasp stamped with a golden seal and signed by a nervous politician .
In an unprecedented statement , the same governor who had previously tried to cement a ban on sanctuary cites that help protect undocumented immigrants from being torn from their communities said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out of their home because of Covid-19.
” A recent news article read , “ The Discomfort You ’ re Feeling Is Grief.
” Many of us are scared for our health , let alone our means of living .
We hope you will do what is right , and this hope is a hope that does not rely on a virus to wake people up .
No virus can sustain a revolution in anything other than a human body .
We are prepared to know your true name , to stand six @ @ @ @ @ @ @ together like an outburst of laughter in a new world ’ s throat .
Something Is Happening Here is a collaboration between The Nation and Kopkind , offering scenes from a pandemic—a series of dispatches from Kopkind ’ s far-flung network of participants , advisers , guests , and friends .
Edited by Nation contributor and Kopkind program director JoAnn Wypijewski , it will appear weekly on thenation.com and kopkind.org .

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Nation believes that helping readers stay informed about the impact of the coronavirus crisis is a form of public service. For that reason, this article, and all of our coronavirus coverage, is now free. Please subscribe to support our writers and staff, and stay healthy.
P hoenix. M ay D ay—The days are screaming at the tops of their lungs, coming from the center of somewhere far away and deep inside. Something Is Happening Here is a collaboration between The Nation and Kopkind, a living memorial to radical journalist Andrew Kopkind, who from 1982–94 was the magazine’s chief political writer and analyst.
I have been trying to write this letter to you.
Dear Landlord,
Due to Covid-19, our anxieties are constellating into clusters of moonlit shock and bracing splendor. Outside, a pair of shiny elevator doors hangs from a white crane, an abandoned pendulum in the sky. Under the swaying, many of us are able only to hallucinate the act of sending you a check on the 1st. I think of dates and time as the evening’s mountains in silhouette, a consecutive line. I imagine scaling the dips and peaks into a Morse-coded message but, today, the hiking trails are packed with people who all had the same idea, and every body becomes a hatch mark in a throbbing line graph. As a precaution to prevent further spread, and to cling to as much of our current health as we can, many of us have chosen to stay, as we have been strongly advised to, or been sent home. Are you at home with your pets, with your family? I’m rationing my brothers’ faces indefinitely because they’re not on Facebook or a Wi-Fi plan, and the US-Mexican border, like many others, is closed to nonessential travel: a desperate expression of divine entry, an imagined, immunological edge, but border cities are not clean-cut. Many of us have made a commute across that frontier—now a metal carcass with restless K9s and masked agents. Here, instead of ordering N95 masks, we are trying to ensure a roof over our heads. We have come together so we may represent our interests as people who give you money to claim a place to sleep. Something Is Happening Here Untethered, or The Year of Living Virtually Patricia J. Williams The Art of the Meal Mary Lewis Maybe We Shouldn’t Go Back to Normal Bri M.
We are writing to request three things:
That you refuse to evict tenants from any of your properties. That you suspend rent in full for any tenants who are unable to pay. That you turn toward a humming red regard for other human beings by denying a life contorted into stacks of possessions on your shelves.
On March 30, the State of Arizona issued a shelter-in-place order: an official, on-record gasp stamped with a golden seal and signed by a nervous politician. In an unprecedented statement, the same governor who had previously tried to cement a ban on sanctuary cites that help protect undocumented immigrants from being torn from their communities said this: “Nobody should be forced out of their home because of Covid-19.” A recent news article read, “The Discomfort You’re Feeling Is Grief.” Many of us are scared for our health, let alone our means of living. We hope you will do what is right, and this hope is a hope that does not rely on a virus to wake people up. No virus can sustain a revolution in anything other than a human body. We are prepared to know your true name, to stand six feet apart in solidarity, to stream together like an outburst of laughter in a new world’s throat.
Signed,
Anna Flores
Something Is Happening Here is a collaboration between The Nation and Kopkind, offering scenes from a pandemic—a series of dispatches from Kopkind’s far-flung network of participants, advisers, guests, and friends. Edited by Nation contributor and Kopkind program director JoAnn Wypijewski, it will appear weekly on thenation.com and kopkind.org.