Environment & Energy

Religious private school must have been hard. Was it also a girl’s school?

Via Current Affairs and Yasha Levine, I got exposed to some literature I had not heard of before:
Abby Hoffman’s “Steal this Book” and even more usefully “The Society of the Spectacle”.

I have generally found it hard to locate the rare Indian female lefties I would group with. Unless someone cares about the environment seriously I don’t really feel any connection and there isn’t even the sense that okay at least one is learning about a new culture.
It is sort of more “okay I get this general collection of human contradictions and insecurities without even a background dissimilar from mine. What else is there?”

My niece is over there now and she and I clicked as soon as we first met. She is definitely left of centre, but meeting her healed a lot of the damage to my self image from my last job in the US where I was left feeling like an overly militant and belligerent feminist who is also somehow a sleazy, conniving manipulative girlboss. Yeah that was fun.

When I met my niece a few years ago, she reminded me so much of myself at that age that I started feeling less shitty about myself-she is already a catlady, loves books and is responsive to seeds I plant a..

It reminded me of a line from Call Me by Your Name about how book readers like to hide.

It seemed confusing that except people who work in espionage or are kinda sleazy, only the paranoid can find scrutiny painful.

I was very friendly with her recognizing a kindred spirit but I could tell she was immediately on guard. Who was this strange friendly aunt? But overtime she has started trusting me and is confiding.

She would probably like DU, but by tacit consent we no longer discuss politics. I would rather her future employers and the state do not know we are related.

She is also a chip of the old block and has inherited the familial curmudgeon gene and was a bit short about her Indian classmates who talk about cultural appropriation.

She is well to the left, but she has little nonsense about her and said “what are these people always going on about their culture for? There is a country of a billion people right there in the south where their culture is there.”

Definitely not easy finding likeminded people. I have seen Hemant Kappana and Tejas Thackeray aside from the vegan lady I mentioned who seem cool. And as if they care about stuff that actually matters much like Madhav Gadgil.

Definitely I feel drowned out by the types of superficial politics that are popular. It sells I suppose.

Nandita Bajaj is the first Indian woman I came across whom I personally found relatable and not as if she were churned out from a Chomsky spouting Yimby factory at the Jacobin or Vox.

And I liked Oindrila Mukherjee. That aside it is the same old same old:
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Clear-Orf-Political-Correctness/articleshow/1717438.cms

Whether it is blm or anti-war, when you take politics or anything seriously you have to put thought into the learning and make sure it is never flimsy bumper stickers. It is not the Panopticon or lie detectors. Those things are garbage. Other humans who are honest with and about themselves can pick up a bullshitter or asshole from miles away.

Is every left leaning white guy from the Deep South, Joe Bageant? Or Joel Achenbach? No.
Humans are complicated.
Thanks for the Rogerian Therapy Rhiannon. I feel frustrated a lot.

I am a foul weather friend so we all have to stick together when sane these days. But it ain’t ever easy.
You were the first person I started chatting with when I returned in 2020 and DU has helped me.