Benjamin Balthaser

@blbalthaser.bsky.social

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Assoc prof of multiethnic US lit; author of Anti-Imperialist Modernism & Dedication. A historically materialist girl living in a dialectic world. He/him. 🕎🌹Chicago 🐢

https://iusb.academia.edu/BenjaminBalthaser

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What does the acceleration of global warming feel like? In the 15 yrs I’ve lived in the Chicago area, 4 of the 5 tornado warnings I’ve experienced have been in the last two summers and this summer is only half over

That scene in Grapes of Wrath when Ma tells Tom the author of Hillbilly Elegy may one day be president

I just had the bone chilling thought that the anti-war/anti-genocide protests of the last several months have convinced a wide swath of the liberal elite they’d prefer fascism

I don’t believe in the pathetic fallacy, but tornado sirens screaming over south Chicago amidst hail and thunder and darkness seem if not the literal voice of History, at least a fair mimesis

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I’m an actual pacifist. I want all guns banned. I just need the left to do less “violence is bad even when it happens to Trump” and more “this is the world Trump wants the rest of us to live in.”

The more we act as tho violence is the exception to US politics the more we grant it totemistic & mystical power: while objectively true, violence is unacceptable, I feel rhetorical gestures to our normative civility only justifies what I assume will be MAGA’s violent response

For my conspiracy minded friends, some things are just so bad the only instrumental conclusion one can reach is they are exactly what they seem

TBC, DSA, if it is to be anything it is to be primarily a social movement, in solidarity w oppressed ppl around the world: that is socialism’s first and best calling. Even if this decision to not endorse AOC harms DSA it was done w the highest principles of solidarity in mind

I will offer however, DSA’s refusal to endorse AOC does mark the end of an era, in which it was believed socialists running for Congress on a DSA line wld move Congress left and help grow socialist mvt… 1/2

The refusal to endorse AOC is the culmination of a now 7 yr process to interpret & implement the BDS resolution DSA adopted in 2017. It is also, if one reads beyond headlines, an attempt to re-configure DSA’s relationship to politicians the org endorses. www.dsausa.org/statements/s...

Status of DSA National Endorsement for Rep. Ocasio-Cortez - Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)www.dsausa.org On Sunday, June 23rd, the DSA National Political Committee (NPC) voted to endorse Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) so long as she fulfills the following conditions: This initial endorsem...

I can’t say what objectively Biden’s resignation wld/wldnt accomplish at this pt. I will offer that after 9mos of protest agst Israel’s genocide, Democratic leadership not even pretending to feel enough shame to offer a new nominee is almost as shocking as the genocide itself

A friend of mine tried at great length to convince me that William Shatner is gay. It was such a beautiful, incorrect yet world-gathering theory both of Star Trek and Shatner’s personae, I have to admit I was sorry when she conceded she was wrong.

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“masking has become a symbol of solidarity between disability justice and the struggle for a free Palestine, and a commitment to ensuring that disabled and immunocompromised people are supported within left movements.” www.thenation.com/article/poli...

Masks Are a Symbol of Solidarity. Don’t Let Democrats Take Them Away.www.thenation.com Mask bans are ostensibly about public safety. The result would be disastrous for public health—but it goes beyond that, too.

Unless fascist tears are sourced from the Pas-de-Calais region of France, they’re just sparkling white fragility

It’s clear to me that Starmer’s Labour is much like Biden’s Democrats: an appeal not to social change or reform but a conservative nostalgia for normalcy that can only be validated in the Tories’ wreckage and has no vital force of its own podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t...

‎The LRB Podcast: Labour's Big Win on Apple Podcastspodcasts.apple.com ‎Show The LRB Podcast, Ep Labour's Big Win - Jul 5, 2024

American empire has always been constituted at its frontier by a twin modality of viciousness and amnesia. It was strange to see both tendencies so physically embodied in two presidents.

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike from sleeping under bridges www.nytimes.com/2024/06/28/u...

Supreme Court Upholds Ban on Sleeping Outdoors in Homelessness Casewww.nytimes.com In a case likely to have broad ramifications throughout the West, the court found an Oregon city’s penalties did not violate the Constitution’s prohibition on “cruel and unusual punishment.”

I do have to say I appreciated the dramatic irony of listening to a president who is clearly ill and mentally failing argue that America is the most powerful nation among nations, the envy of its rivals, and is trusted around the world.

This photo - of an unarmed socialist president in glasses facing down dozens of soldiers, "the power," as Dos Passos once said, "we have only words against" - summarizes the teetering and maybe faltering balance of our moment

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Denver gave people experiencing homelessness $1,000 a month. Results showed that close to half of the participants secured housing, and nearly $600K saved in public service costs due to fewer ER visits & jail stays. They also saw improved mental health.

Denver gave people experiencing homelessness $1,000 a month. A year later, nearly half of participants had housing.www.yahoo.com Participants in Denver's basic income program received up to $1,000 a month. They became more housing secure and landed full-time jobs.

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Uhh... guys...

Selling West Bank land under military occupation in a synagogue is a desecration.

I would like to start a streaming series titled “Moderately Paced and Evenly Tempered” devoted to traffic safety, the joys of mass transit, and intersubjective, reciprocal forms of conflict resolution, preferably starting Fred Armisen and Issa Rae

New IDF training manual just dropped

The best thing to happen to Jews since Al Jolson retired

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Even accomplished Israeli Holocaust scholars can get the business. Very grim, very bleak.

The University of Minnesota has paused the hiring of Israeli scholar Raz Segal to head the institution’s Holocaust and Genocide school over his principled position that Israel is perpetrating a genocide. Truly reprehensible. jewishinsider.com/2024/06/univ...

I do not like chants calling for Israelis to be thrown into the sea either. But I am also aware that the best way to end such chants would be for Israel to stop throwing Palestinians into the sea.

I had really hoped the “our Jewish fathers marched w King for Black liberation 60 years ago & therefore we support the ethnic cleansing of Palestine & the criminalization of protest” genre of essay was finally over

V saddened to learn Chomsky is unwell. He embodies decency & menschlichkeit to me, someone who believes in reason & human solidarity not as outdated liberal idealism but actual guides for human action. I dread his eventual loss like the loss of an hr of daylight, the regulating gravity of the moon

Why should Israel get all hostages back peacefully when it can get four of them and commit a massacre in the process?