[EDITOR’S NOTE, 01/25/2025:
FUCK ELON MUSK]
there is no reward in being “first” or early; if there is, you have won the lottery: ELON MUSK. But some who are often “first” are heretics: KANYE. i love them both and i wish i was ELON but i’m definitely KANYE.
on this platform i’m going to share my most unacceptable ideas. in a colloquial style, which is my “real” style.
when i say “unacceptable”— let me give you an example. in the early 2000s i began to understand the limits of IDENTITY POLITICS. beginning in my teens i had been more a subscriber to identity politics, although, full disclosure, consensus would tell you that i am a “straight white cis man”. (i object to all of this of course but that’s another post, maybe called “ESSENTIALISM”.)
anyway, yes probably in part because of my exclusion from projects and political organizations, it occurred to me that SEPARATISM was going to be the ultimate conclusion of identity politics; indeed separatist movements seemed to be on the rise. at the time i was worried about “women only” spaces and black amerikkkans giving up on whites and re-segregating voluntarily. naively, the problem of THE WHITES had not troubled me yet. selfishly, i thought “what about me” LOL [the “what about my legs” meme]
when i started talking about the idea that identity politics was a dead end, i met A LOT of resistance.
one question someone asked me was
“if we don’t organize on the basis of identity, then on what basis is there to organize?”
this question sent me on a journey because yes, so much HARM is done to people on the basis of identity or perceived identity. this person’s question brought up many issues.
finally what occurred to me as a replacement for identity politics was:
POLITICS OF DESIRE
as in, our desire to see an end to white supemacist hegemony leads us to act, regardless of our own “identities”. people of all colors can and must study “BLACK HISTORY” in order to obviate that category; not “blackness” but the idea that there is “BLACK HISTORY”, any more than there can be written a discrete history of whites. HISTORY BELONGS TO ALL OF US, like ideas.
this turned into a big digression from what this post is about, which is WHAT ARE THESE POSTS ABOUT?
and the bottom line is: some of the ideas i share here will be pretty unacceptable. i would ask you to trust me but why would you trust me?
TIME WILL TELL 👁
“This book belongs to the most rare of people. Perhaps not one of them is yet alive….
“The conditions under which any one understands me, and necessarily understands me, I know them all too well. Even to endure my seriousness, my passion, she must carry intellectual integrity to the verge of hardness. She must be accustomed to living on mountain tops— and to looking upon the wretched gabble of politics and nationalism as beneath her. She must have become indifferent; she must never ask of the truth whether it brings profit to her or a fatality to her…. She must have an inclination, born of strength, for questions that no one has the courage for; the courage for the forbidden; predestination for the labyrinth. The experience of seven solitudes. New ears for new music. New eyes for what is most distant. A new conscience for truths that have hitherto remained unheard. And the will to economize in the grand manner— to hold together her strength, her enthusiasm…. Reverence for self; love of self; absolute freedom of self….
“Very well, then! of that sort only are my readers, my true readers, my readers foreordained: of what account are the rest? The rest are merely humanity. One must make one’s self superior to humanity, in power, in loftiness of soul— in contempt.”
— NIETZSCHE “THE ANTICHRIST”