Quentin's Weeknotes 3/23/19-3/29/19

This Week:

• We drove down to visit one of my oldest friends, the Minister of Intrigue and his family. It was far too short of a trip, but we had a great old time visiting Longwood Gardens, playing Funemployed, watching Impratical Jokers, and just generally catching up.
• I was reminded to always call your congress-person. Always. Because that’s the only way they’ll learn you exist in the numbers that you do. And they are not going to change of their own volition.
• I read Matt Taibbi’s excoriation of the national media’s feverish coverage of the Russia investigation in the wake of the relase of the Mueller Report. I have always been suspicious and dismissive of the idea that Trump was working for the Russian government, not because I didn’t think that he was, but because there are a lot more interesting and important factors that led to his winning the 2016 election. Grabbing onto the idea that he was a Russian puppet felt like an easy way to avoid more difficult questions about American political identity. I’m glad that this thing is over with, and I wish it had been over with sooner.
• I listened to Chris Hayes interview Jonathan Metzl about his new book Dying of Whiteness. Metzl is a clinical psychologist and critical sociologist, and his new book documents how allegiance to White identity politics has negatively impacted the health of White Americans–reduced gun access restrictions leading to more suicides, and rejection of the Affordible Care Act’s medicaid expansion leading to higher healthcare costs and worse health outcomes all around, as two examples. There’s a line of argument in liberal and progressive circles that rural Americans routinely vote against their own (economic) interests, due to conservatives weaponizing cultural politics–this is the argument (which at the time I found very appealing) of Thomas Frank’s “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” Metzl has turned this argument on its head, and asked what “culture” rural Americans are voting for, and the answer is a culture of White grievance and supremacy. In other words, they are voting for policies that are harming them because they see themselves as historical actors defending a racial/national identity. For Metzl (and I buy this too), it’s an affirmative choice, not a form of false consciousness.
• I finished reading “The Obama Inheritance”, a ripping anthology of contemporary noir, crime, sci-fi, and  thriller writers who use right-wing conspiracies about Obama as source material. It was a wild ride, and a lot of fun, in a “the only way out is through” sort of way.