Memorable Stuff I Read This Week

Now, the rain, the iron rain, with its little keys
is closing all the doors . . .

and I think we’re all dead. See how the sky
sits like a tombstone on the roofs.

— Bert Meyers / “Rainy Day”

DEMOCRACY IN THE UNITED STATES faces a critical threat in the rise of fascist revolutionaries. These deadly serious right-wing extremists have found a home in MAGA and a source of cash in oligarchs hellbent on bankrolling the destruction of the American system of republican government. Antithetical in every way to conservatism, backed by deep-pocketed authoritarian elites, and allying far-right ideologues with Christian nationalists, the new fascism is a radicalized movement steeped in the rhetoric of bloodshed and upheaval, its goal to capture government and deploy the state’s monopoly on violence to remold society and crush dissent. The endgame is not only to merge the state with corporation and church—a modern redux of the classic fascist configuration of Mussolini and Franco—but the exercise of raw power, brute force, and unfettered avarice. Think of it as owning the libs with an AR-15 while bowing to Mammon and smashing what remains of the welfare state. With his second term underway, Trump is making swift progress implementing this vision of … “reactionary nihilism.”

— Christopher Ketcham, in conversation with Katherine Stewart / “Burn Down the House” / The Baffler

My poems were not major

enough to even make me

a “minor poet,”

but I did sit here

instead of getting up,

getting the gun, loading it.

— Olena Kalytiak Davis / “I Was Minor”

But now, Lyft has given a group of researchers access to detailed data from their drivers. The results confirm that minority drivers get more tickets, and they pay higher fines when they do. And the results also show that minorities aren’t in any way more likely to speed or engage in unsafe driving. Which suggests, in their words, that the problem is “animus” against minority drivers.

— John Timmer / “Study of Lyft rideshare data confirms minorities get more tickets” / Ars Technica

I have no
high stake in this world, no
children to want to leave
a better world to, nothing
but fucking & bookmaking
that is my legacy & it is as
undeniable as smoke; yet
may disappear like it too.

— Yesenia Montilla / “High Stakes”

And where was education in all this? The initial goal of the student aid program was to make it easier for straitened low- and middle-income students to afford a college degree because, as a nation, we believed that was mutually beneficial for individuals and society. This motive had been lost in a morass of cynical disputes about the federal budget and political posturing over personal responsibility. Students and the degrees they sought for themselves and the country were no longer placed at the forefront of decisions about higher education. Instead, they became figures on a ledger aimed at enriching private contractors and reducing the federal deficit.

— Ryann Libenthal / Burdened: Student Debt and the Making of an American Crisis

You’re a poet, don’t be silent, lives are lost under cover of silence.
Speak up, read a couple of lines, read us verses, keep talking to us.

— Mir Taqi Mir / The Homeland’s an Ocean

What I’m Listening To:

Greed is an unfillable hole, insatiable
Avid the fear of death
Thirsty is the fear of death, there is no way
We can’t eat our way out of it
We can’t drink our way out of it no more

— Stereolab / “Aerial Troubles”