Too Much, Too Many, Too Fast

Remember the term "sensory overload"? Being bombarded with information and events and opinion is not what most human brains are developed for. There is such a thing as too much coming at us with too little time for processing. The MAGAs have adopted this as a strategy, simply flood the field and watch as people's filters become overwhelmed and breakdown, causing a profound spike in anxiety, fear and basic incoherence. One such event is global migration and ecological breakdown. A notable reaction to this disorder is the turn to a Malthusian critique, grasping at a simple mathematical explantion and saying there's simply too many people. Check any comments section of any article on any aspect of the polycrisis and you will see the calls for fewer humans. Not explicit advice on how to reduce the population...that gets a bit dicey. This goes hand in hand with a generalized nostalgia for what never was. Of course conditions were less dire back when there were fewer people but let's not confuse correlation with causation. Lots of things are different now. But the tendency is scary, because if you believe there are too many (black, brown Others) you will have little motivation to protect them when they are threatened. As many are and many more will soon be. Then there is too fast. The AI guys are telling us to be ready for a speed up, emblamatic of the way every technology affects our lives. Back to information, which is coming at us constantly and at warp speed. Cultural shifts are coming at us every few years, rather than generationally, leaving no time to process. Think of challenges to patriarchy and white supremacy and Geo-politics, with the rapidly changing maps as we break into smaller tribes. Emblamatic of all this exponential change is Sand Hill road in Palo Alto. As a teenager, I used to drive up that windy road into the foothills to drink cheap wine and smoke Mexican pot when I was cutting class with friends. This is late sixties, early seventies before Silicon Valley kicked into high gear. Steve Jobs and Wozniak were one year behind me at my high school in Cupertino. Palo Alto was still a lot of grassland, orchards and open space, although the bulldozers were running all day to flatten it out and mow it all down. Now Sand Hill Rd is home to the most powerful venture capital firms in the world. These people exist to convert the too much too many too fast into profit and their version of progress and super-modernity. So it goes.

Shooting CEOs

As a famous author and pundit of The Left, I'm required to weigh in on the murder/ heroic act of retribution of the Insurance exec last week. Depending on if you are a morally outraged believer in law and order or a wanna be revolutionary, you can see the shooting as an act of dangerous anarchy or liberatory revenge. The basic justice warrior take is that CEOs who profit from immiseration and death and make immoral choices,and, well, what comes around goes around. At my book group last night the point was made that having these CEO's watching their backs wasn't a bad thing. Fine. But it isn't the revolution. Until there is a mass movement, any type of radical flank, much less lone wolf action will go nowhere and have no effect. If one goes down, a new CEO is waiting in the wings. The same argument can be made about the Palestinian attack of Oct.7. Hard to justify on moral or tactical grounds. Things haven't exactally improved for the Palestinian people or the movement for liberation. There is a long history of this kind of political murder but it is telling that the suspect was reading old Ted Kaczynski. Look at the revolution he fomented. Don't like your healthcare? You can always rage against the machine! You can denounce the system! Then order something on Amazon. Or go get a Starbucks coffee. But until you can define "the machine" or "the system" you are fighting a ghost, an abstraction and emotion. Until you see how the CEO you hate is related to Capital, your hate will remain displaced. And you can't shoot Capital.

Promise Me Anything

The NY Times did an opinion poll with fourteen "working class" Trump voters and it shows total incoherence, as you might expect. They look to him for "common sense", "patriotism" and "change". Probably hope as well. "He runs the country like a business" , one blue-collar guy said. No one admires the boss more than the worker. This is what the liberal press will never understand. They still think you have to make sense, be reasonable, conform to the old "reality". Take this perfect example: "But as he prepares to move back into the White House, his penchant for extravagant ungrounded claims will challenge his ability to translate bravado into reality." Reality? Really? When did reality have anything to do with it? Despite all we've witnessed, they still think "the public" will notice this "challenge". It's a bias and blindness that can never be cured, because in a liberal capitalist "democracy", power must reside in "the people". And "the people" are the ones with common sense. Unfortunately, as the same paper reports, "American workers lack basic skills such as reading a thermometer." Or finding Syria on a map. Or Argentina. Speaking of, look at Milie's approval rating in Argentina as he slashes social spending. There the working class is bullish on austerity. They too love their "wild man". That's the new "common sense", or, as the Talking Heads advised, Stop Making Sense. Abandon the old failed logics and embrace the simulation. AI can solve all the problems. Billionaires have your best interests at heart. The future looks bright. It's reality if you believe it.

Global Black Friday

It's a green light sale and everyone is rushing the mall for deals. With Trump promising to "drill baby drill" we can expect the good times to start really rolling. Lowered taxes and de-regulation of everything means it's time to pop the corks and start the party! This was supposed to be the decade of change, the final chance to cut emissions and slow global warming. Forget that noise. It is now an all out race to the cliff with the American consumer leading the charge. You can't blame those on the global development periphery from wanting more energy/goods. They've been screwed since colonial and now neocolonial forever. But don't expect the global "middle class" to cut back in any way just to stay within some kind of "carbon budget". Ain't gonna happen. They're gonna be first in line at the "door bustin" grab fest. As for the rich, those we are now calling "elites", they will have to invent new luxuries just to be able to unload their income fast enough. Remember how "Occupy Wall Street" was a supposed wake-up call around inequality? Yet another sad joke. The combined personal wealth of Trump's cabinet picks is over 13 billion. And don't expect them to pay taxes. The Donald himself is worth 6.4 bil and then we add in his friends and advisors from Silicon Valley; Musk, Thiel, Andreeson and the rest. The new revolutionaries. Trump's voters were tired of being pushed around by "elites" and so they "voted for change". Plus, "they are eating the cats, they're eating the dogs." At the end of the day, all that is left is the Chesire cat's smile and a parched landscape. But it was sure fun while it lasted!

Treats

The fashion critic for the Times tries to square the circle of pathological consumerism: "To be sure, there is nothing wrong with shopping, nothing wrong with the concept of treats and extras. There is a human desire for beauty and its delight and self-expression. People should have access to that pleasure, at whatever price point they can manage. There is something comforting and reassuring about abundance, especially at a time when there seems to be a free-floating sense of malaise in the air." She knows how pathetic this sounds, having access to pleasure at the right price point, and she spends much of her piece contradicting her own thesis by describing societies ills: "There’s a tendency to be preachy about the sustainability of all this. And there’s no question it is an issue:" Yes it is an "issue". One for which she has no answer. “Win the culture, win the country,” Mr. Kirk said. Charlie is the dog who has caught the car. Now what? Fun winning the contest but now all the wicked problems are yours. Failed nation states increasing expotentially, a militant disgruntled population with very high expectations, insurance companies folding, Freddie Mac and Fannie May deep in risky mortgages, etc. etc.... Richard Seymour: "Capitalist democracy is an inherently contradictory and unstable formation, in which each half of the chimera operates on entirely different principles." It works to the degree it has created those consumerist subjects, homo economicus, who can overlook injustice and repression and exploitation if given enough treats. But at some point the treats run out. Abundance is exposed as generational theft. The whole con is exposed and people get pissed.

Uneven Development and COP

The poor countries are a bit verklempt because the wealthy countries are being stingy with their climate finance. I guess there was some expectation they would be willing to share in the name of fairness and equity? Really? I might be missing something but this seems like a profound misreading of global capitalism and its imperatives. Another COP concludes with the so-called "developed" countries putting forth yet another last second proposal, so as to avoid what the media would call a failure. It's a "promise" of some paltry sum of public money which they have no intention of paying ( especially the U.S.) combined with a bunch of loans and some fantasy of private capital filling the gap. The whole premise of the COP negotiations is that "we are all in this together" but nothing could be further from the truth. Some have a great deal of wealth and power and some have shit. Winners and losers. This is not a bug in the system, this is a feature, how it is designed. Will the rich throw out a few crumbs to keep the teeming masses strong enough to labor and allow themselves to feel noble? Sure. But they ain't about to share. Those calling for a "new global finance architecture" believe the rich will be incentivised to pay now because of the threat of paying much more later. In other words, a rational approach. Please. That has never happened before and is unlikely to happen now. As Bruno Latour put it, the rich have no interest in saving anyone other than themselves. Sitting on the top deck of the Titanic, they have reserved all the lifeboats for themselves. The champaign is flowing, the band plays on, Elon is filling spaceships with caviar. I would argue that even those in the bottom berths or working down in the hull reject any notion of "equity". In their understanding it's a competitive world and the rich outcompeted the poor. The natural order, like Darwin and Ayn Rand. The poor countries should take their 300 billion with a smile and a curtsy. Thankyou for your generous largess master. We will try not to squander it, so sorry to trouble you. Eighty years of "developmentalist" programs have led to extreme inequality and massive debt around the so-called "third world". Think World Bank loans, IMF, structural adjustment, neoliberalism. But let's not forget the obscenely rich within those countries. You can ask but I suspect it will take them looking at the barrel of a gun before they cough up any dough.

Something Somehow Must Be Done

I'm trying hard to sympathize with the well-meaning progressive reformers I have tried so hard to find common ground with, it aint easy. To build alliances with these local folks I have purposely kept the anti-capitalist rhetoric to a minimum. I have listened politely to their plans for "campaigns" toward building "local solutions". I have gone out of my way not to dampen their enthusiasm for the Inflation Reduction Act or COP agreements or the price of renewables coming down. But at some point you have to wonder if they can ever be shaken from their liberal theory of change. How many times does Lucy have to pull the ball up at the last second before Charlie Brown understands the program? They now tell us to "go ahead and feel sad" but then keep organizing- using the same strategy that has failed for 80 years. Vote harder. Send out better petitions. Come up with fresh chants.The 350.org website is a perfect example. "Join our campaign to demand climate ambition". Yes indeed, demand our leaders get more ambitious around Nationally Determined Contributions! How? "Sign our open letter!" Send us money. Get more involved. It's a form of pathology to suddenly expect different results from a tactic you have tried and failed at thousands of times. Look at Jon Stewart, at Oprah, at Rachael Maddow, all the liberal opinion makers grasping at excuses. The big problem is that liberal incrementalism started late and ran out of time. This was predictable but ignored by those who lack the capacity to envision actual justice at scale. The ticking clock has always meant delay increases cost. So now we reach tipping points and daily cyclone bombs and atmospheric rivers ( Oblivion's Cross, anyone?) and on and on and.... Wait a minute, I know what we can do! What if all the celebrity muscicians got together for a big fundraising concert? "We are the world..."