The Future Is A Mixtape

During most summers in the U.S., one can expect soundtracked montages of pure Americana: music festivals, camping trips, BBQs, an onslaught of smash'em'up Marvel movies, beach parties, and 4th of July fireworks. But this summer, the world over, regardless of nation-state hallucinations and the petty borders carved by ancient violence, Mother Earth coughs up plagues, spits out wildfires, and vomits forth hurricanes. It's been a nonstop clusterfuck of catastrophes. Doomscrolling through our social media feeds, paralyzed by anxiety, we see how millions face unemployment, healthcare loss, and eviction. The entire West Coast of North America is now threatened by the largest conflagration in modern history. We live in a time of great calamities. But those calamities have an origin story that must be identified, criticized, and undone in order to build a world of The Golden Square. The origin of these calamities lies in the toxic designs that Jesse & Matt collectively call The Poison Pyramid, a rotten triptych composed of hierarchy-producing machines: 1) Religion; 2) Capitalism; and finally, 3) Celebrity. We are living in yet another summer of this Poison Pyramid—best illustrated in a stunt orchestrated by amerikkka's greatest huckster: Donald J. Trump, a raggedy pastiche of a man who trolled his way to the presidency. On June 1st, this flabby but unflagging con-artist directed police to deploy tear gas and violent tactics of domination to cleave through the George Floyd protests along Lafayette Square, so that he could stage a photo-op in front of St. John's Church. Waving a bible haphazardly in the air, Trump became the pure apotheosis of The Poison Pyramid run amok—the toxic fumes of religion, capitalism and celebrity enmeshed in an expensive, violent, & vacuous nonevent. A fundamental matrix of domination, The Poison Pyramid circumscribes a comprehensive series of hierarchies within hierarchies—a nesting doll hiding other cold cruelties. To design a world of dignity, this gross idea-shape must be dismantled from its insides, and the sick myths of this matrix must be discarded. We must follow the abolitionist arc of emancipatory struggle to dismantle these roadblocks to human flourishing. Only socialism will do

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What would Socialism look like? All too often, when the Left tries to define "socialism," they stumble into the weeds with seven pairs of trousers tied to their ankles as they hop helplessly with socks stuffed in their mouths, attempting to hit a golf ball with their neighbor's dildo—all done in order to get that hole-in-one, even though they had already swung three times, which had lead to them to the weeds in the first place. Sounds daft & confusing? It doesn't have to be. For this episode, Jesse & Matt talk about what socialism is, what it should be, and how we might best achieve this vaunted fantasia, making it so fully felt that it sounds like your loved one's heartbeat. Socialism should be straight-forward, obvious, and undeniable. Moving toward the full decommodification of The Golden Square – the universal and unconditional rights to Food, Shelter, Healthcare and Education – is a poetic starting point. Clearly, capitalism isn't working and its core myths are failing to persuade much of anyone anymore, especially the young. Capitalist mythology wants you to believe that we live in an unrivaled utopia of boundless consumer plenty; but what it won't tell you is that capitalism is a creepy, gyrating homogenization machine that ruins the beautiful, natural diversities of Earth and humanity in a drab, boring, tedious, and repetitive circle-jerk of dangerous rituals that lead to bio-collapse. It's over-run with all kinds of sick and sweaty M&Ms: Militarized, Monopolized, Market-Worshiping Malls, Mini-Marts, Megaplexes, McMansions, and Miles & Miles of Milquetoast Suburbs, Stacked with Super-Sized SUVs. Now more than ever, it is clear that we must cancel this dick-in-the-box ideology. At this moment, we must choose between socialism or more of neoliberalism's DeathCult barbarism. The former leads to utopia, while the latter leads to certain oblivion. The choice should be so dumbfoundingly obvious that it's akin to dropping your backpack to catch a falling baby from a window above. The Golden Square offers a No-Bullshit Blueprint for a socialist tomorrow that we can begin building today. It is a clear path to a world that is inclusive, accessible, sustainable, vibrant, colorful, diverse, dynamic, enriching, expansive, exciting, innovative, joyful, fun, restful, and yes: queer as fuck. It's the launchpad to a flourishing, utopian future. Let's right the wrongs and start building socialism now.

Comprehensive Show Notes Can Be Found at thefutureisamixtape.com

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In the most famous scene from the legendary film, Network (1976), populist news anchor, Howard Beale, creates a viral sensation before the internet became a thing: he tells his viewers, "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not gonna take this anymore!" And thousands of people across the country yell from their windows and rooftops repeating the mantra, "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not gonna take this anymore!" More than 40 years on, in our neoliberal wasteland, we have every right to be mad as hell as we huddle in our unpaid Covid-abodes with no more Bernie Bucks or stimulus, while microbes attack us relentlessly. With the Siberian forests on fire, the Great Barrier Reef deforming into black bones & ash and the oceans gasping for oxygen while record temperatures make Death Valley feel like Venus, we must become mad – with a rage that runs on love for what's been lost and for what we might still win. This week, Jesse & Matt celebrate the multi-authored manifesto, A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal, published in 2019 by Verso Books. Our co-hosts will talk about the vitality and importance of this book and how the beating heart of any radical Green New Deal must include The Golden Square: the decommodification and universal provision of Food, Shelter, Healthcare and Education for All. We live in the worst version of a Cyberpunk world that doesn't even offer up androids or flying cars, while we gloat over our miniature technology & its secret surveillance as politicians offer up empty platitudes and technocratic masturbations. As the Social Ecologist, Murray Bookchin, once told us, the enemy isn't us; the enemy is the fossil fuel industry; the enemy lives inside McMansions and billionaire castles made by myths of perpetual market growth, peddled by the celebrity worshiping pyramid scheme of an influencer class clawing onto the old carcass of illegitimate hierarchies. We are in revolutionary times and collective actions require collective designs; so we must continue to draw the contours of what lies just beyond the horizon. We have a planet to win.

Comprehensive Show Notes Can Be Found at thefutureisamixtape.com

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For this episode, Matt & Jesse build upon their prior discussion (Episode 026) of Erik Olin Wright's posthumous book, How to Be an Anticapitalist in the 21st Century, by mapping out how we might best choreograph the dance steps in making revolution fully realized. Wright's historically magnificent project of delineating the internal contradictions of class in America (and the world over) made him the most important Marxist in Sociology post-WWII. After his mapping project of class was completed, the intellectual turned his attention in the latter half of his career to seeing how we might build real utopias in the here and now – after both the failure of statist "proletarian" parties and the success of neoliberalism's onslaught of rapacious transnational capital, where everything could be outsourced or automated, and where labor was left emaciated, fragmented, and unconscious of its own exploitation. While Wright's final work provided an excellent diagramming of the strategic logic of Eroding Capitalism, he never outlined how we might orchestrate these various movements on the playing field of global capital in order to build a symphony of revolution. Increasingly, the triumphant narrative that markets "heal the boo-boos" seems ever-less persuasive as capitalism reveals itself to be a harm-grinder against humanity and our desiccated biosphere. Matt will discuss what he argues is our most powerful anticapitalist wedge issue - money in politics, and Jesse will offer his Theory of Emancipatory Struggle along with the strategic directions of The Anticapitalist Compass. In closing, Jesse & Matt will examine how converging emancipatory movements joining in a chorus of revolution can build toward the first glimmers of The Utopian Sphere. The time has come to not only announce that "a better world is possible," but to detail the choreography of transcending capitalism once and for all. We must make the future ourselves, collectively, and not let the future be made by an oligarchy that seeds DeathCults in its wake.

Comprehensive Show Notes Can Be Found at thefutureisamixtape.com

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On this episode, Jesse & Matt spin the radical salad by saying the quiet parts out-loud about how we go from the first manifestations of a rebellion—with the Floyd Uprisings—toward the massive euphoric heave of a revolution that must be made at a time when the Covid-Collapse is occurring in fast-break waves upon our no-job, no-rent lives. As organizers rattled through megaphones across America in July: "This is not a MOMENT; this is a MOVEMENT," any successful revolution is one made up of a cross-stitching of other liberation movements: as seen in the work of Covid mutual aid units collaborating with BLM activists, while youth-led climate groups like Sunrise Movement have now hurled banners across freeways—not only to demand a #GreenNewDeal, but to #DefundThePolice and #CancelRent. Already, tens of millions of Americans have hit the streets to defend Black lives, while also identifying how the blood stains of police brutality connect to the patriarchal, colonial violence beating the drum of Capitalism's deathwish. We are in the midst of a generation-defining, global, mass-death catastrophe, and so Kali Akuno's call to "Unite and Fight, Build the General Strike" will need to have multiple connecting demands to Defund the Police; Care for the People; Cancel the Rent; Forgive the Debt and Build the Green New Deal. Anything less than this will mean the end of mass civilization, its past achievements becoming newspaper kindle to the fires of the post-apocalypse. Toni Morrison once said, "All paradises, all utopias are defined by who is not there, by the people not allowed in." In fact, it's the poisonous ideas and myths that exist inside them and us that should not be let in. So let's start a very different kind of fire then.

Comprehensive Show Notes Can Be Found at thefutureisamixtape.com

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On March 30th, 2020—as COVID-19 locked millions of panicked Americans in their homes—the homeless in Las Vegas were forced to sleep in white-chalked parking lots as the city's gleaming and empty casino-castles loomed above them and whose closed windows hid empty beds that could have provided warmth and safety. On April 11th, ten thousand cars lined up for a San Antonio Food Bank—the aerial photos of which became viral online, spreading to each digital device as rapidly as the virus had taken over our lives. We need a new human rights more than ever. For this episode, Matt & Jesse discuss the COVID-19 Pandemic and the collapse of our Old Bad World as the New Badder, Sadder World floods its diseased blood into our digital igloos. The co-hosts will talk about how the COVID-19 chaos not only deepens the contradictions of capitalism but also makes the rights to a dignified life all the more urgent, as people struggle with food insecurity (or abject hunger), unpaid rent and mortgages, the mass loss of healthcare access due to millions of Americans joining the outcaste status of the unemployed, and the incalculable cruelty of student debt piling up, impossible to pay. While these attacks on human dignity have been increasing under the Age of Bio-death that is Neoliberalism, COVID-19 makes clear a momentous tactical urgency to demand The Golden Square: the full emancipation from want by creating a global guarantee for the universal rights to food, shelter, healthcare and education. Jesse & Matt will briefly chart the carcass of Covid Capitalism while spending more time mapping the way from the storm to reach the shoreline of a dignified world: one we can still achieve through bold tactics, strategies and collective will.

Comprehensive Show Notes Can Be Found at thefutureisamixtape.com

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On this episode, Jesse and Matt dive into Erik Olin Wright's posthumous work on imagining practical utopias, entitled How to Be an Anticapitalist in the Twenty-First Century, which was published in the fall of 2019—just six months after the author's untimely death from cancer. Our co-hosts will talk about Erik Olin Wright's place in keeping the candle of socialism burning during its most bleak period: from Ronald Reagan's Mourning in AmeriKKKa—at the onset of the 1980s—to the dawn of the new millennium, when the "Battle in Seattle" signified the reformation of the Left, creating the contours for the wild new imaginings of Occupy Wall Street and the liberation struggles of a new century. Matt & Jesse will also converse briefly about Wright's highly collaborative Real Utopias Project (published by Verso Books) and his magnum opus, Envisioning Real Utopias (2010), the massive and daunting size of which moved the Marxist Sociologist to create a tighter, leaner version that would be of practical use to activists and organizers the world over. Questions to be formed and answered during the conversation: What are the merits of the author's claims? What are the weaknesses of this very important book? And finally, what are the truly transcendent aspects of Wright's ideas that deserve placement as key tracks for our mixtape of the future? As Antonio Gramsci famously said, dreamers and fighters for a better world must carry forth with a "pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will." Less well known is Wright's gentle retort that to survive the 21st century, we will also need "a bit more optimism of the intellect" too.

Comprehensive Show Notes Can Be Found at thefutureisamixtape.com

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To build a better mixtape for the future, Matt & Jesse transition from diagramming how the George Floyd uprisings can move beyond defunding the police (and abolishing it entirely), and instead look at how this movement could lead to larger more long-term transformations. The demand first met must include a long-sought Truth & Reckoning Commission, which has not only happened in South Africa (and more recently Canada), but has occurred in 41 other nations and counting—all of which shows how this is not a dancing unicorn demand in a nation that largely ignores demands from below; there is a vital and visceral need for this commission to surface in the here and now. Our co-hosts will then talk about how this Commission can ramp up to justly deserved reparations for America's Twin Sins: the enslavement and genocide of Native & Black folks during the era of settler-colonialism, the lawfare and warfare of Jim Crow and the continued racist sadism of the State as COVID-19 ravages Black & Native communities across a country. While many Americans are faced with celebrating this 4th of July without fireworks or freedom, Jesse & Matt acknowledge how white folks' entrapment in their homes has built a secret solidarity with the lives of African Americans, who have been geographically and economically trapped by centuries of racial capitalism, and who have neither felt freedom nor fireworks in a nation-state that denies their right to breathe or exist. And lastly, money—our shared, mass hallucination—will be questioned and reimagined in order to create a new understanding of what "value" must include, so that we can firmly seed a future of what's so rightly deserved. To stand up, we must fight back; as the Black Communist & poet, Claude McKay, once wrote: "If we must die, let it not be like hogs / Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot [. . .] we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack, / Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!"

Comprehensive show notes can be found at thefutureisamixtape.com

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On this third episode exploring the Misfit Twelve, Jesse & Matt will assess Alex S. Vitale's book The End of Policing, which is equal parts a love letter to liberals—pleading for them to end their thumb-from-mouth habit with reformist politics, while also opening up a doorway to abolitionist thought. Published in 2017 by Verso Books to small fanfare, this book-length plea has rapidly flickered in-and-out of print since the George Floyd Uprisings of 2020; and so pressing is the topic and demand to #DefundThePolice that The End of Policing has been downloaded over 200,000 times from Verso's website. Our co-hosts weigh the pros and cons of the book's argument, audience-angle and whether it offers a bonafide vision of a world without police, or consider if it's just another leftward book diagramming the corpse of liberalism instead. Our co-hosts will then use the book as a launch-pad to other notions not discussed, but which circulate unseen, above or below the subtext of The Carceral State while imagining other ways of being free from the policeman inside our heads.

Comprehensive show notes can be found at thefutureisamixtape.com

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On this episode of The Future Is A Mixtape, Matt & Jesse deepen their discussion on the bad, bad behavior of The Misfit 12 by branching beyond myth-busting to diagram how we might abolish the police in strategically smart and tactical ways. The central core myths of what have kept them in power so long, as well as the brutal costs they create in their wake, go far beyond the victims, family members and the beloved community at large; even when we don't see the sun from seashore, The Carceral State's cloud-eyes peak over the financial aid packages of college students, monitor truancies of 12-year old Black children from their buses to their schools, strip-search working-class girls and check the inside of our souls without our consent. So to seize the means to abolish the police, how do we "defund, disarm, dismantle?" Where do we start? In what order? Or is it better for us to think about leverage-points than simple-step chronology? Our co-hosts will talk about the "low hanging fruit" of getting cop-killers and cop-gropers out of our K-12 system, freezing—then melting—police budgets and pouring that money into The Golden Square: Food, Shelter, Healthcare & Education. Jesse & Matt will also talk about how this realization of abolishing the police—amid the societal collapse of COVID-19—allows for new terrain struggles for Universal Basic Income & Medicare for All to make it into the Mixtape of the Now. And finally, they will suggest why this might be the right type of righteous storm to blow down the trap-house of capitalism, cleansing the Earth of its Visigoths and Goldman-Sachs ghouls, so we can return to our mother, Freedom—the same mother George cried out for. Only when we strip property definitions from our bodies, can we begin to decommodify the Earth's ecology and get on that Rainbow Light of the Utopian Sphere.

Comprehensive Show Notes Can Be Found at thefutureisamixtape.com

Feel Free to Contact Jesse & Matt on the Following Spaces & Places:

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