Succinct and trenchant as always and, I fear, way over the heads of the sleepy little munchkins who get their news from the usual MSM suspects.
It’s so disheartening to take your important ideas to those people, who simply won’t understand that identity politics is the worst kind of social engineering.
Christian Parenti was on Katie Halper’s show recently with his take on the subject. How can a movement that calls itself ‘woke’ be so irretrievably somnolent?
Well said. I go back and forth frequently with a professional class wokester with whom it is impossible to pry loose from his conviction that the only media worth attending to, the only media that is "reputable", in his view, is liberal corporate media, NYTimes, etc. He sees "racism" lurking around every corner of independent media (and this guy is pure white), once it ventures into class analysis territory. It's his go-to putdown for anything that might reveal what a capitalist-apologist closet snob he is.
I've worked to disabuse him of his wokeness for nearly 20 years, to absolutely zero avail. Until finally throwing in the towel. I may as well have been trying to talk sense to a committed follower of the capitalism-infatuated evangelical TV preacher Joel Osteen. (Ironically, he's also an atheist, except his religion is unflinching loyalty to Democrat party orthodoxy.) I'm furious with myself for having wasted all that time on the most futile effort conceivable.
It takes thousands of years for a river to wear down the rocks its waters smooth but in the end the water wins. You didn’t waste your time even though it feels like it.
The State Department, in a classified memo to Rex Tillerson (subsequently leaked) spelled it out in black and white.
The United States cares about human rights only to the extent that they provide a stick with which to beat countries the United States doesn't like, while ignoring far worse violations by countries that we do like.
After years of my urging, a liberal friend of mine recently started reading Chris Hedges. One of her first comments was to remark on how much he hates the Democrats. My reply, “Well, they are the problem. Open enemies, like the Republicans, don’t need to be pointed out as much, because we expect them to be terrible. Democrats, on the other hand, are, as Glenn Ford said, the more effective evil. Their window dressing is mere smoke and mirrors. They never fix anything because they are the problem.”
She’s in some Biden women’s support group on Facebook, which doesn’t help. I can’t get her to break away from MSM, either. Although she is starting to see some problems with NPR. She insists that Democracy Now is biased because they don’t present “the other side” (she’s never watched it). But at least she’s reading CH now, so that’s progress!
People who rely on mainstream media are being brainwashed 24/7. They have no idea that they are being brainwashed, because they've been brainwashed all their lives into believing that the mainstream media is actually reporting news. It's like heroin addiction. The mainstream media knocks out their rationality with comfortable lies about how the United States is the City on the Hill, believes in freedom and democracy, is the light of the world, and other sickening falsehoods. I try to educate people I know who support the Democrats to see reality, but I see that "woke" fear in their eyes.
I hear that. I experience the same thing all the time. It's depressing as hell how many Amurkins still rely on and trust ONLY corporate media. Most of them have never even heard of Hedges or any other independent left outlet or reporter. They'd think they're all "biased", as if NPR, MSNBC, CNN and the networks aren't. Delusions die hard in this most heavily propagandized country in human history.
It’s funny, so many times she’ll bring up something that she thinks is new news to me. But it’s usually something that’s been going on for years that DN has covered extensively already and she’s just hearing about it.
You need to take a look at the GrayZone, Aaron Mate, Michael Tracey, Max Blumenthal, Rania Khalek, Abby Martin, Anya Parampil, even Greenwald when he isn't panting after right-wingers and MAGA sorts just because they hate Dems as much as he does.
Known Amy for awhile and still support her work and listen occassionally....Max is one of my favorite people, I brought him to OKC to speak when big things were happening here 13 yrs ago, him and Prof Chomsky were pretty much the only ones I could get to pay attention to the happenings here. Very hard to get anyone on the coasts to give a damn about Oklahoma,
I met Amy a couple of times, and Chomsky once. I know she’s become somewhat controversial on the left over the past decade, but once I found DN 21 years ago, news was never the same. I always hated the way corporate newscasters talked and their fluff pieces, but after years of DN, I can’t take that stuff for 5 mins!
Incredible! I hope your work gets traction, Superbowl Steve.
Caitlin Johnstone has pieces that would also lend well to your tic toc videos for the younger crowd. She’s on Substack, has connected podcast and YouTube. Lets anyone use her materiel.
Identity politics masks the operation of power. Dem's use it to provide cover for a pro-corporate economic agenda. Nancy Fraser coined the label: "Progressive Neoliberalism".
The concept of “identity” politics has been hijacked by liberal elites to capture its meaning and turn it against those who coined the phrase.
Black, socialist,queer women used the phrase in their Combahee River Declaration. They asked how to best begin organizing the masses? Their conclusion was that people were ripe for organizing at their greatest point of oppression.
For Blacks, this might be racism. For women it might be sexism. For queer black women it might be intersectional. But they never argued that this was anything more than an entry point for organizing. They argued against essentialism and for coalition politics. And while they supported socialism, they argued that the anti-imperialist left needed to do more work on issues of race, sex and gender.
But they never argued that these conditions replaced the centrality of class struggle.
We need to confront the liberal media on their intentional use of identity politics as a means to obscure its real meaning and instead place people into separate, silos of disconnected political experiences.
This is simply a sophisticated psyopps strategy of divide and conquer. Let’s start saying identity struggles rather than indenting politics.
Yes, "Identity Politics" is now a filthy expression, having nothing to do with class consciousness or anything progressive whatsoever. It has reduced everything to focus on the individual instead of society.
It does the opposite of focus on the individual. I focuses on the victim or oppressor tribe, and thus divides society into tribal conflict of victims and oppressors. Focusing on the individual is anti-woke. And the woke do not care about society. They are deconstructionists lusting for power and validation that they are virtuous and good... because, in general, they know that they are not.
"Tribal"?! I've seen this characterization several times recently. As if boundary obsessed primitives who love any excuse to eat each other. Who need the western white male superior mind to civilize them. Note "tribal" is sub-Saharan African, Native of the Americas, or Indigenous Australians whereas Europeans and central, south, or eastern Asians are "ethnicities."
Many of us actual tribal people don't think exclusively in the rationalist bifurcations either/or, true/false, with us/against us. For us, there are multiple viewpoints, including those of all living entities and even the land itself. A gestalt of the whole in addition to the specific and limited.
It's the western Euro and Euro-American rapacious econ system chewing up humans and ecosystems as mere resources that's the problem. Its horrific unity now gone global; economic colonialism. But, yeah, side-step that by saying "tribal."
I always without exception feel erupted in the most profound gut wrenching emotions when I read anything written by Chris Hedges. I struggle to keep hope alive as it is truly difficult with the stark and accurate description of the realities of our "democratic "world. When I think it can't get any worse, it does. Thank you for continuing to fight. I truly can't believe someone hasn't at the very least threatened your life. I am only one person and can't fix everything... but as one person, I can something.
Nancy, I completely relate to what you are saying about the gut punch I feel from his words. It's important to share Chris' work with those who still have a little bit of their minds open a crack. Spreading truth and knowledge is important.
Painfully realistic description of our current dilemma. It amazes me how few people wish to confront this reality and how easy it is to distract the masses from even the slightest effort to combat our impending demise. Sigh 😌.
The circus playing. In the movie Gladiator, republican senator Graccus who doesn't claim to be of the people but for the people criticizing the empire says "Rome is a mob. Conjure magic for them and they will be distracted. Take away their freedom and still they roar. The beating heart of Rome is not the marble of the senate, it's the sand of the colosseum."
Fantastic, yes woke ideology is being manipulated by the corporations to try to be "cool with the kids", but actually they're just covering up horrible crimes.
Of course. It's a form of cheap insurance. Toss a few crumbs, appoint a diversity committee or two, and buy protection against policies that might cost real money.
Note that elites will gladly discuss race, gender, and have wonderfully clarifying debates that are the modern day equivalent of asking how many LGTBQXYZPDQ+ can dance on the head of a pin. Those same elites are much less comfortable discussing class.
For that matter, note that none of the aforementioned struggle sessions, whether it is determined that Melvin is "literal Hitler" for saying that there are only 26 genders (plus genders not yet discovered) when everyone who is truly Woke! knows that there are at least 29 genders, none of the corporate diversity committees and pronoun preferences on corporate email signatures, none of this changes the way the economic pie is sliced.
To take the converse - if employers would stop hindering unionization, the result would be a transfer of concrete material benefits to black and brown and red and white and other working class people greater than all the wokest tweets ever featured on Twitter, greater than all the affirming messaging and virtue signaling and struggle sessions and statements about stolen land ever crafted and run by Legal.
Yes totally, thats a great point. The one thing they will NEVER mention is class. If you talk about the suffering of the working class, they'll say your a racist or something like that, if its white working class. We'd need a new left-wing party to actually reshape how that pie is shared out
Another way to put it - feel good shit doesn't cost anything.
Actually, why do we need another left wing party? Shouldn't we in the US (I see you're in Australia) start with one left wing party before thinking about a second one?
That's true America doesnt even have 1 legitimately left-wing party, yes its what America needs I think! I had hoped Chris and his community would start up something like that?
Can't say there's much I disagree with here. Re: the Glen Ford and Cornel West quotes. Much to our chagrin, we should remember that it was West's 1990 essay "The New Cultural Politics of Difference" that blew the doors open on diversity narratives. I'm sure the good doctor didn't intend for his insights to be grossly misconstrued like they are today, but that's how radical politics are neutralized in the corporate caliphate: they get co-opted and deployed to nefarious ends.
"Terrible predatory forces are eating away at the country." Amen. From the cost of heating fuel to Internet, cable, cell phone, food, education, and medical care the insatiable forces of financial capitalism are weakening this country, hollowing it out from the inside. Do not be fooled. Do not be misled. Do not be tricked. Name the beast: class warfare. We're losing. We don't even have the language to fight back, although Hedges has been giving it to us for nearly three decades.
Just to clarify: there were two other officers involved in the beating of Nichols for a total of seven (7) & at least one of them was white. As of yesterday, the known white cop was fired, but no charges have been filed against him. He's lawyered up & cooperating w/ the criminal investigation.
This horrendous murder gets weirder by the minute! It's sickening!
The kind of gross, cultish behavior seen in the left regarding idpol has every hallmark of manipulation - it serves only to benefit the ruling elite by further subdividing a mass of people into smaller categories with bespoke interests (as valid or historically grounded as those issues can be). These interests are reduced to nebulous ideas and elevated to primacy over common, unifying, and fundamental class grievances like poverty, lack of healthcare, and the all-consuming defense budget - all of which are precipitated and aggrevated by corporate rule. Addressing these issues means confronting those who truly hold power in this country, which is difficult for the powerless. It's easier to vent impotence and frustrations at softer targets.
This is the other, more disturbing end of it. There is an increasing weaponization of this ideology to smear and discredit individuals who do not pass the constantly evolving and arbitrary litmus test. Liberals now cling to new linguistic shibboleths to identify each other, so you better control your speech. God-forbid you didn't keep up with the latest fashion; it won't matter what you've said or demonstrated before. You'll be tarred and feathered, and ejected from the holy sphere of the "enlightened" who all stand around in a chorus shaking each other's hands and absolutely glowing with self-righteousness at removing another enemy from their ranks.
And don't bother reading history either - they were a sexist, racist, genocidal lot so their ideas aren't worth bothering with. No need to confront the past or educate yourself about it. We pull Huckleberry Finn from public libraries and schools because critical thinking is difficult, the message and intent doesn't matter, and words are too dangerous to deal with no matter their context or the kinds of discussions you can have about them. We live in a new era now with newer, better people that have nothing in common whatsoever with those bigoted degenerates of the past.
It's a shambling husk with "populism" garishly painted all over it. If you didn't look too closely, you might mistake it for the real thing
Succinct and trenchant as always and, I fear, way over the heads of the sleepy little munchkins who get their news from the usual MSM suspects.
It’s so disheartening to take your important ideas to those people, who simply won’t understand that identity politics is the worst kind of social engineering.
Christian Parenti was on Katie Halper’s show recently with his take on the subject. How can a movement that calls itself ‘woke’ be so irretrievably somnolent?
Well said. I go back and forth frequently with a professional class wokester with whom it is impossible to pry loose from his conviction that the only media worth attending to, the only media that is "reputable", in his view, is liberal corporate media, NYTimes, etc. He sees "racism" lurking around every corner of independent media (and this guy is pure white), once it ventures into class analysis territory. It's his go-to putdown for anything that might reveal what a capitalist-apologist closet snob he is.
I've worked to disabuse him of his wokeness for nearly 20 years, to absolutely zero avail. Until finally throwing in the towel. I may as well have been trying to talk sense to a committed follower of the capitalism-infatuated evangelical TV preacher Joel Osteen. (Ironically, he's also an atheist, except his religion is unflinching loyalty to Democrat party orthodoxy.) I'm furious with myself for having wasted all that time on the most futile effort conceivable.
It takes thousands of years for a river to wear down the rocks its waters smooth but in the end the water wins. You didn’t waste your time even though it feels like it.
The State Department, in a classified memo to Rex Tillerson (subsequently leaked) spelled it out in black and white.
The United States cares about human rights only to the extent that they provide a stick with which to beat countries the United States doesn't like, while ignoring far worse violations by countries that we do like.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.politico.com/amp/story/2017/12/19/tillerson-state-human-rights-304118
,including ourselves.
No argument from this cat.
After years of my urging, a liberal friend of mine recently started reading Chris Hedges. One of her first comments was to remark on how much he hates the Democrats. My reply, “Well, they are the problem. Open enemies, like the Republicans, don’t need to be pointed out as much, because we expect them to be terrible. Democrats, on the other hand, are, as Glenn Ford said, the more effective evil. Their window dressing is mere smoke and mirrors. They never fix anything because they are the problem.”
She’s in some Biden women’s support group on Facebook, which doesn’t help. I can’t get her to break away from MSM, either. Although she is starting to see some problems with NPR. She insists that Democracy Now is biased because they don’t present “the other side” (she’s never watched it). But at least she’s reading CH now, so that’s progress!
People who rely on mainstream media are being brainwashed 24/7. They have no idea that they are being brainwashed, because they've been brainwashed all their lives into believing that the mainstream media is actually reporting news. It's like heroin addiction. The mainstream media knocks out their rationality with comfortable lies about how the United States is the City on the Hill, believes in freedom and democracy, is the light of the world, and other sickening falsehoods. I try to educate people I know who support the Democrats to see reality, but I see that "woke" fear in their eyes.
I hear that. I experience the same thing all the time. It's depressing as hell how many Amurkins still rely on and trust ONLY corporate media. Most of them have never even heard of Hedges or any other independent left outlet or reporter. They'd think they're all "biased", as if NPR, MSNBC, CNN and the networks aren't. Delusions die hard in this most heavily propagandized country in human history.
"She insists that
Democracy Now is biased
because they don’t present 'the other side'... "
.
D. N. doesn't need to
wholly corporate-owned msm
doesn't present Democracy NOW!'s side either
.
but ONE wee non-Corporate News outfit
cannot compare to the Walls of Misinformation
that Americans are fed via the Feedlots of Capitalism
It’s funny, so many times she’ll bring up something that she thinks is new news to me. But it’s usually something that’s been going on for years that DN has covered extensively already and she’s just hearing about it.
gotta be sad
to be so far
Behind.
So you haven't given up on Democracy Now yet huh? I listen every now and then but it really has changed.
No, I love it. They’re coverage of Ukraine last year got a little close to propaganda, but otherwise they’re good.
You need to take a look at the GrayZone, Aaron Mate, Michael Tracey, Max Blumenthal, Rania Khalek, Abby Martin, Anya Parampil, even Greenwald when he isn't panting after right-wingers and MAGA sorts just because they hate Dems as much as he does.
Check out Caitlin Johnstone, too - excellent commentator on the US - Australian, btw.
Absolutely. I've been reading her stuff for about 6 years, almost every day. She's one of the best around. Thanks for rerminding.
I’m aware. I just don’t agree.
Known Amy for awhile and still support her work and listen occassionally....Max is one of my favorite people, I brought him to OKC to speak when big things were happening here 13 yrs ago, him and Prof Chomsky were pretty much the only ones I could get to pay attention to the happenings here. Very hard to get anyone on the coasts to give a damn about Oklahoma,
I met Amy a couple of times, and Chomsky once. I know she’s become somewhat controversial on the left over the past decade, but once I found DN 21 years ago, news was never the same. I always hated the way corporate newscasters talked and their fluff pieces, but after years of DN, I can’t take that stuff for 5 mins!
Excellent analysis
One can only hope, that the 'Woke' will wake up upon reading this.
If they read it. And that's a big "if".
I usually put this stuff to a taco bell Xbox ad or something hip and cool on tik tok so they will listen to it
like this..we shall see https://www.tiktok.com/@superbowlsteve/video/7195079845909433643
Incredible! I hope your work gets traction, Superbowl Steve.
Caitlin Johnstone has pieces that would also lend well to your tic toc videos for the younger crowd. She’s on Substack, has connected podcast and YouTube. Lets anyone use her materiel.
thank you I will have a look.
Identity politics masks the operation of power. Dem's use it to provide cover for a pro-corporate economic agenda. Nancy Fraser coined the label: "Progressive Neoliberalism".
We demand more diverse oppressors!
The concept of “identity” politics has been hijacked by liberal elites to capture its meaning and turn it against those who coined the phrase.
Black, socialist,queer women used the phrase in their Combahee River Declaration. They asked how to best begin organizing the masses? Their conclusion was that people were ripe for organizing at their greatest point of oppression.
For Blacks, this might be racism. For women it might be sexism. For queer black women it might be intersectional. But they never argued that this was anything more than an entry point for organizing. They argued against essentialism and for coalition politics. And while they supported socialism, they argued that the anti-imperialist left needed to do more work on issues of race, sex and gender.
But they never argued that these conditions replaced the centrality of class struggle.
We need to confront the liberal media on their intentional use of identity politics as a means to obscure its real meaning and instead place people into separate, silos of disconnected political experiences.
This is simply a sophisticated psyopps strategy of divide and conquer. Let’s start saying identity struggles rather than indenting politics.
Yes, "Identity Politics" is now a filthy expression, having nothing to do with class consciousness or anything progressive whatsoever. It has reduced everything to focus on the individual instead of society.
It does the opposite of focus on the individual. I focuses on the victim or oppressor tribe, and thus divides society into tribal conflict of victims and oppressors. Focusing on the individual is anti-woke. And the woke do not care about society. They are deconstructionists lusting for power and validation that they are virtuous and good... because, in general, they know that they are not.
"Tribal"?! I've seen this characterization several times recently. As if boundary obsessed primitives who love any excuse to eat each other. Who need the western white male superior mind to civilize them. Note "tribal" is sub-Saharan African, Native of the Americas, or Indigenous Australians whereas Europeans and central, south, or eastern Asians are "ethnicities."
Many of us actual tribal people don't think exclusively in the rationalist bifurcations either/or, true/false, with us/against us. For us, there are multiple viewpoints, including those of all living entities and even the land itself. A gestalt of the whole in addition to the specific and limited.
It's the western Euro and Euro-American rapacious econ system chewing up humans and ecosystems as mere resources that's the problem. Its horrific unity now gone global; economic colonialism. But, yeah, side-step that by saying "tribal."
I always without exception feel erupted in the most profound gut wrenching emotions when I read anything written by Chris Hedges. I struggle to keep hope alive as it is truly difficult with the stark and accurate description of the realities of our "democratic "world. When I think it can't get any worse, it does. Thank you for continuing to fight. I truly can't believe someone hasn't at the very least threatened your life. I am only one person and can't fix everything... but as one person, I can something.
Hedges has gotten a hefty share of death threats
Nancy, I completely relate to what you are saying about the gut punch I feel from his words. It's important to share Chris' work with those who still have a little bit of their minds open a crack. Spreading truth and knowledge is important.
footprints in the sand feelings here
Painfully realistic description of our current dilemma. It amazes me how few people wish to confront this reality and how easy it is to distract the masses from even the slightest effort to combat our impending demise. Sigh 😌.
The circus playing. In the movie Gladiator, republican senator Graccus who doesn't claim to be of the people but for the people criticizing the empire says "Rome is a mob. Conjure magic for them and they will be distracted. Take away their freedom and still they roar. The beating heart of Rome is not the marble of the senate, it's the sand of the colosseum."
Fantastic, yes woke ideology is being manipulated by the corporations to try to be "cool with the kids", but actually they're just covering up horrible crimes.
Of course. It's a form of cheap insurance. Toss a few crumbs, appoint a diversity committee or two, and buy protection against policies that might cost real money.
wokewashing
hahaha that's a perfect way of putting it, they're wokewashing their corporate crimes, just like greenwashing
Thats a really good way of putting it, its insurance against an actual popular revolt/movement by appearing to care when they actually dont
Note that elites will gladly discuss race, gender, and have wonderfully clarifying debates that are the modern day equivalent of asking how many LGTBQXYZPDQ+ can dance on the head of a pin. Those same elites are much less comfortable discussing class.
For that matter, note that none of the aforementioned struggle sessions, whether it is determined that Melvin is "literal Hitler" for saying that there are only 26 genders (plus genders not yet discovered) when everyone who is truly Woke! knows that there are at least 29 genders, none of the corporate diversity committees and pronoun preferences on corporate email signatures, none of this changes the way the economic pie is sliced.
To take the converse - if employers would stop hindering unionization, the result would be a transfer of concrete material benefits to black and brown and red and white and other working class people greater than all the wokest tweets ever featured on Twitter, greater than all the affirming messaging and virtue signaling and struggle sessions and statements about stolen land ever crafted and run by Legal.
Which is precisely why they won't do it.
Yes totally, thats a great point. The one thing they will NEVER mention is class. If you talk about the suffering of the working class, they'll say your a racist or something like that, if its white working class. We'd need a new left-wing party to actually reshape how that pie is shared out
Another way to put it - feel good shit doesn't cost anything.
Actually, why do we need another left wing party? Shouldn't we in the US (I see you're in Australia) start with one left wing party before thinking about a second one?
That's true America doesnt even have 1 legitimately left-wing party, yes its what America needs I think! I had hoped Chris and his community would start up something like that?
Can't say there's much I disagree with here. Re: the Glen Ford and Cornel West quotes. Much to our chagrin, we should remember that it was West's 1990 essay "The New Cultural Politics of Difference" that blew the doors open on diversity narratives. I'm sure the good doctor didn't intend for his insights to be grossly misconstrued like they are today, but that's how radical politics are neutralized in the corporate caliphate: they get co-opted and deployed to nefarious ends.
"Terrible predatory forces are eating away at the country." Amen. From the cost of heating fuel to Internet, cable, cell phone, food, education, and medical care the insatiable forces of financial capitalism are weakening this country, hollowing it out from the inside. Do not be fooled. Do not be misled. Do not be tricked. Name the beast: class warfare. We're losing. We don't even have the language to fight back, although Hedges has been giving it to us for nearly three decades.
Brilliant!
Hedges crushing it as usual!
Just to clarify: there were two other officers involved in the beating of Nichols for a total of seven (7) & at least one of them was white. As of yesterday, the known white cop was fired, but no charges have been filed against him. He's lawyered up & cooperating w/ the criminal investigation.
This horrendous murder gets weirder by the minute! It's sickening!
You hit a home run Chris. This scathing and indicting polemic is absolutely required and to be on perpetual instant replay!
The kind of gross, cultish behavior seen in the left regarding idpol has every hallmark of manipulation - it serves only to benefit the ruling elite by further subdividing a mass of people into smaller categories with bespoke interests (as valid or historically grounded as those issues can be). These interests are reduced to nebulous ideas and elevated to primacy over common, unifying, and fundamental class grievances like poverty, lack of healthcare, and the all-consuming defense budget - all of which are precipitated and aggrevated by corporate rule. Addressing these issues means confronting those who truly hold power in this country, which is difficult for the powerless. It's easier to vent impotence and frustrations at softer targets.
This is the other, more disturbing end of it. There is an increasing weaponization of this ideology to smear and discredit individuals who do not pass the constantly evolving and arbitrary litmus test. Liberals now cling to new linguistic shibboleths to identify each other, so you better control your speech. God-forbid you didn't keep up with the latest fashion; it won't matter what you've said or demonstrated before. You'll be tarred and feathered, and ejected from the holy sphere of the "enlightened" who all stand around in a chorus shaking each other's hands and absolutely glowing with self-righteousness at removing another enemy from their ranks.
And don't bother reading history either - they were a sexist, racist, genocidal lot so their ideas aren't worth bothering with. No need to confront the past or educate yourself about it. We pull Huckleberry Finn from public libraries and schools because critical thinking is difficult, the message and intent doesn't matter, and words are too dangerous to deal with no matter their context or the kinds of discussions you can have about them. We live in a new era now with newer, better people that have nothing in common whatsoever with those bigoted degenerates of the past.
It's a shambling husk with "populism" garishly painted all over it. If you didn't look too closely, you might mistake it for the real thing