Tornado of Trauma

As Chalmers teaches, it's always the backlash. The CIA trains a killer in Afghanistan and it comes back to haunt. The US trained killers in Iraq and now we have all these damaged souls wandering our streets. Now imagine the generation of Israeli soldiers that just committed a horrific genocide ( just following orders) and the citizens who watched and enabled it. What kind of monsters will now be roaming their streets? Watch the suicide rate for clues. Caught in the vortex of violence and hate, they are sucked downward into the maw and they will have children who will carry the inherited burden of trauma and committ their own atrocities. And on it goes. Some theorize the possibility of collective trauma, manifesting at a national level, and it would be a logical answer for why American culture is all about diverting thought away from introspection. All those dead Indigenous people and all those slaves and all those workers ground up in Capital's maw. Is that how we explain neo-fascism? This familiar theme seems to re-surface whenever people feel unmoored. There is always blood and soil to fall back on. And mindless entertainment. The new National Security Strategy doc released by the Trump Administration is full of language about "civilization", a long-time meme for imperialists looking to save the white race from replacement. The document points to Europe's dissolution as the Gates of Vienna are breached by the brown, non-Christian hordes. It has always been the white man's burden to bring civilization to the inferior races but that doesn't mean they can come streaming into our countries for God's sake! They'll start changing our national culture with their wierd food and music and shit.Your daughter will start wanting to wear a burqa! The fact that it is the emissions from our industrialization which is forcing them to migrate only suggests one solution: start drone striking migrant boats, same as they are doing to the so-called drug boats in the Caribbean. Because we sure as hell aren't going to stop emissions. And everybody knows our biggest problem is overpopulation. Kind of a win- win! What the defense strategy document does is state the obvious: it's all about the money. It has always been written by and for big Capital but in the past they would try to give it some ideological/ intellectual sheen. No longer. They now concede that China has cleaned their clock in most of the globe so they will now focus on our old whipping boy, Latin America. Plenty of oil and gas and minerals to be had close to home. As for domestic policy: an AI in every pot! What can go wrong?

Teach Your Children Well

In an interview Ezra Klein did with some creep in the Israeli government, the creep said the key to peace in the region was re-education camps for Palestinian children. If only they would learn the correct facts and history (that of the victors), they would then abandon the ideology which prevents everyone from getting along. Ezra might have said something about Israeli education but didn't. Today there is an article about the 50th anniversary of the death of Generalismo Franco. In the piece, the author says "we must outline an educational curriculum to teach young people about both Franco and the terror of Francoism. It is the only way to challenge the power of deceitful social media." On a recent trip to Mexico City, our guide informed us that in his opinion, Profirio Diaz was the greatest president Mexico has ever had. He ruled as a murderous dictator for 35 years but hey, he got shit done. I was taught all kinds of bullshit in my own schooling and lots of important imformation was simply skipped over. Remember the Alamo! The Open Door policy in China. Invading the Philippines: "The American use of torture, then called the “water cure,” in the Philippines during the war of 1899–1902 shocked some Americans of the day." Naomi Klein asks: " What were all those museums and lesson plans and documentaries about the Holocaust for, if not to prevent a moment such as this? And what about all those books with checklists on how to spot your country sliding into fascism? Why did so many of the people who read them – and even some of the people who wrote them – falter when a genocide was unfolding on their screens, a genocide that has blown a hole in the moral universe and decimated the shaky edifice of international humanitarian law, making any further depravity now feel entirely possible?" My point (and hers) is that education and curriculum must be approached critically. Super critically."Teaching" is a powerful entry into young, susceptible minds and this doesn't only apply to "decieitful social media". Although the internet has exponentially increased the threat. There are no easy answers about establishing boundaries between propoganda and information, but self-reflection is a start.

The Times They Are A Changin

We now live in the era of distressed jeans. People save their money to buy clothes that come with the holes already in them. They buy "organic" food that costs three times as much, "craft beer" the same. In an article about how the Israeli military used AI to generate targets which were then considered "legitimate", such disavowal is explained thus: "There is also the active suppression of their own thinking." The trust in technology allowed them to avoid their own conscience and "pull the wool over their own eyes". Now we simply have to extrapolate and imagine this process happening on a meta scale. Speaking of Israeli military, soldiers in the West Bank were caught on video murdering two Palestinians who were attempting to surrender. As they have been doing for years. Israel promises to look into it. At a protest at a NY city synagogue, a group promoting settlement in the West Bank was met with chants of "death to the IDF". Everyone was outraged! Such language! Jews were afraid and Mamdani was forced to condemn the chants. Zionism is where fearful Jews take precedence over dead Palestinians. Who really wants to know what they are thinking? Hillary Clinton was asked in an interview why young people were turning against Israel and she said the Chinese control the algorithms on the social media they watch. What she sees is real, what you see is fake. The dead babies are manufactured. She is intelligent enough to recognize the absurdity of such a statement but prefers not to examine it, prefers to suppress her own thinking. This is the ludicrous, Kafkaesque, bureaucratic horror of Catch 22 taken to the next level. Thanks in part to the new technology mediating our direct experience, or as the poet Anne Winters put it so long ago: "a sift in the structure of experience." Young people prefer chatting with their AI companion to real humans.Some fall in love with their machines. But don't worry, soon we will have nuclear fission and free energy, genetic engineering and immortality and sentient AI to fuse with us. What me worry?

More Working Man's Blues

Now Argentinian libertarian Milei has an electoral mandate to impose yet more "free market" austerity on that fragile country. And he got the votes from the working classes living in the favelas of the large cities. Milei enjoys his popularity due to being Trump adjacent and he shares in some of Trumps entertainment qualities. This new form of anti-politics/ entertainer politician appeals to working people in many places now - for instant the entertainer Farage in Great Britian is leading in the poles. It is dubbed 'far right" in the mainstream media because of the anti-immigrant nationalist chauvinism these movements espouse. Left wingers are quick to see these folks as proto or neo-fascist with their mass appeal and authoritarian leaders and these same leftists seem to think good old redistributive policies are the way to organize these same masses in a progressive movement. What would Jane McAlevey do? In a piece in today's NYTimes the grifter running for governor of New Jersey puts it like this: “I can say, ‘I’m going to lower taxes,’ and I get a nice round of applause,” said Mr. Ciattarelli, the Republican candidate for governor of New Jersey. “But I say, ‘I’m bringing back the plastic bags,’ and it brings down the house, every time.” Everyday people just want to use plastic, they love plastic and will die for the freedom to use plastic. Sure, a guy like Mamdani can get people in a place like New York City to believe the place can become "affordable", whatever that means, and maybe they will figure out a way to get rich folk to pay for it. In NY City. Or San Francisco. Not in Montana. Here the people want to be able to afford a giant truck with wheels that stick way out. A black truck that is way off the ground. And they will vote for anybody who promises to lower rich people's taxes. To pay for the trucks they will support fossil fuels in any form because that is where the money is. Hence, the plastic bags. The 2.99 price of gasoline. This will be the campaign slogan for Democrats in 2026 : Fine. You Can Keep Your Plastic Bags! But once in power they run up against the same old problem, one that is much bigger than bags degrading in the biosphere. They will have to keep the workers in treats. And that gets more and more challenging as the chits get called in, all the claims on future growth get cashed and the only (non)solution is for everybody to put in longer hours producing less and less. While the bags degrade.

Bursting Bubbles

Everywhere there is increasing nervousness about this growing AI/ data center bubble. According to much of what I am reading, the insane investment in this one dubious sector is the only thing propping up a hollow global economy. If you think there is rebellion now, if /when that bubble bursts it will be ugly. I guess that's why so many are hedging with gold, but it seems unlikely a safe full of gold will save you when there are soup lines stretching around the block. The other problem with having your entire economy depend on one technology is that somebody who doesn't like you might have control over a critical component of said technology. If you forgot about the whole "supply chain" thing, because you were busy deporting workers or firing workers, you could be screwed. The other bubble that could burst is the idea that so-called "democracies" are governed by and for the people. As Trump threatens to crash Argentina (again) unless they vote in his boy, the people get a glimpse of who is in charge. Sort of like the Brits did when the markets forced Liz Truss to resign. Mamdani is touting the past success of "sewer socialism" as he campaigns, but if this program was so successful, wouldn't we all be social democrats by now, if not actual socialists? Unfortunately, the opposite is true, that is, it is the forces of reaction which now dominate. Shouldn't we be asking why "sewer socialism" failed? Dozens of major cities were governed by socialist mayors in the last century and brought lots of services and benefits to working class people. What happened to all that? I would suggest a couple of things. First, those benefits proved to a lot of people that you could have a kinder, gentler capitalism that shares some of the surplus. The other thing that happened was when the balance of power began to shift a bit too far towards labor, Capital went on strike. As it always will. A couple more bubbles bursting: The Children's Trust lawsuits against the Trump administration's lack of climate action and The No Kings protests. This is the most resistance liberals can imagine: going to court or standing on the sidewalk counting honks. Neither gets you where you need to go, in fact it could be argued ( I do) that these actions are counter-productive, that they just set you spinning in an endless loop. They are designed for the old media/ political landscape that no longer exists. We now live in the liminal space predicted by Baudrillard- the Spectacle of DeBord. That means any reistance has to adapt.

"No Kings" Misses The Point

Liberals, progressives and Democrats eagerly await the No Kings protest set for next week. But the problem is not Kings. Western society already had those bourgeois revolutions long ago; the English revolution in 1688, the French Revolution in 1799, the American revolution ending in 1783. We don't want or need those revolutions repeated now, we need to confront the contradiction of so-called liberal "democratic" capitalism, which is the real ruler over us all. This upset over authoritarians misses the point; leaders like Trump are symptoms of a much more insidious disease. Getting rid of him or MAGA or Project 2025 doesn't get rid of the problem, at best it only kicks the can down the road, giving us a kinder, gentler capitalism for a little while. But it is the entire system which is in crisis. Perfect example: they just awarded the Nobel in economics to promoters of Green Tech Capitalism. They claim there is no limit to economic growth as long as we embrace technological innovation. A self-reinforcing feedback loop of capitalist promotion, cranking out a whole new generation of innovators and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who turn a blind eye to energy and ecological limits. It is a religion, a cult of true believers all wanting to get in on the ground floor of the next big thing. While ignoring the social and biological collapse happening in real time. Another bourgeois democratic revolution with another constitution cannot slow this collapse. That's a liberal fantasy that is totally discredited yet remains dominant. That was then, this is now. Meanwhile, all across the globe, angry young people are getting rid of corrupt leaders while they remain stuck in an unsustainable system. The new leaders will face the same pressures as the old ones; having to attract investment, having to exploit resources and workers, having to embrace austerity to deal with debt. That doesn't change. They can write a wonderful constitution and they can have free and fair elections and have a free press yada yada. But they will still be taking orders from their central banks who will be taking orders from other central banks. That's the King you need to get rid of.

Much Later

106 years ago Emma Goldman wrote : "Sooner or later the American people are going to wake up." Open ended predictions such as this are never "wrong", but I think it is fair to say that by the time the American people "wake up", it will hardly matter. In the current conjuncture, being awake is taboo. People now strive to be extremely asleep, which somehow correlates with being "politcally uncorrect". If this seems incoherent, it's because it is. Such are the times we are living through. It is increasingly difficult to imagine the event or scenario that might precipitate Emma's awakening. It is not that people have unformed or ill-informed opinions or ideas. They now find it easier to let others have their opinions and ideas for them. Let others fuck with all that! Let the AI fuck with that. So far the strategy is working fabulously. Our country has the most bombs, the most famous celebrities, the Superbowl champions. We have the funniest President and the biggest cars and trucks. Why would you want to wake up from that? A lot of leftists worry that identity politics have superceded class politics. That happened about sixty years ago. It is now identity all the way down. Still the pundits worry about our "fragile democracy" and pine for the days of old. You know, FDR and the New Deal. Here is how capitalist "democracy" actually works.From the Washington Post: "The treasury secretary said he also has heard from “numerous US companies who intend to make substantial foreign direct investments in Argentina” if Milei’s coalition wins next month, which could boost reserves." Our elected reppresentatives get to make a few token decisions but the veto power rests with "foreign direct investments", another word for Capital. A word you won't hear Ezra Klien use as he considers ways for Democrats (the left?) to regain power ( basically conceding on culture). As to Argentina, they just made a deal to sell China the soybeans American farmers no longer can, due to tariffs and export controls. Farmers are angry but they also hate tansgender commies so they will take a payout and grouse and vote "conservative". And a lot of farmers are Christians and who is more Christ-like than Trump? Now we have to pretend to be interested in yet another "government shutdown" and yet another madman shooting up a church or shooting a celebrity or whatever. Sooner or later Americans will wake up.