Graeber’s _Bullshit Jobs_ was a best-seller, but its critique of modern work has only just begun to impact conventional leftist politics. The same goes for his major ‘theoretical’ work, _Towards an Anthropological Theory of Value_ – a more academic, but richly insightful, work. His insights should offer critical guidance to the Left, in today’s bleak political context.

Bidenfreude: relief absent the slightest joy. How better to make use of it than to consider what the fuck happened?

The most important takeaway here is that anti-Semitic thinking is not a problem of excessive radicalism, as ‘the New Anti-Semitism’ theory has it, but rather insufficient radicalism – the failure to think structurally about problems of capitalism.

To anyone who has been told that the only way you’ll be taken seriously, tolerated, allowed to do what you want, be worthy of love, is if you tone it down – look around you! The ugly, suicidal world is in desperate need, above all else, of your beauty and of care. Of aesthetics and healing. Ornament and communism.

Far more of Biden’s voters chose him on the basis of opposing the other candidate, than did Trump’s. Should the Democratic vote collapse, should turnout slide again, as seems eminently likely, particularly on the basis of this unenthusiastic foundation, it is not unlikely that a Trump-style candidate – if not Trump himself – could achieve a majority of the popular vote as well as an electoral college win. 

Everywhere we look there are plantation managers and overseers, kneeling over black bodies, shooting into crowds, ramming jeeps through protest lines, chasing joggers, calling the cops, demanding rent.