Twenty thousand articles on "what just happened" later... let's get down to the bone, crack it open, suck a little marrow. OK. The crisis has only intensified. So naturally, folks create some new hashtags and rush out to re- ACT. Why waste time with a lot of abstract theorizing! It is enough to be in OPPOSITION (again). But jumping into the streets saying Trump is not your president is not a plan. It is more ideological rubble piled onto the smoldering heap. It clearly demonstrates your weakness and total lack of consideration. What does it even mean, "not my president"?
If you just have to DO something, why not tar and feather Bill Clinton? Or flash mob Chuck Schumer's house? If you are hunting deer, what you want to do to be successful is "pattern" your quarry. Figure out its habits and reliable movements. Well, progressive activists have been 'patterned', believe me, as Trump would say. Soon they will build an encampment and fight for campaign finance reform. Hashtag stop big money.
So what is to be done? How about if you just pose this question to everyone you meet? Do you want capitalism or do you want democracy? Ask every pundit out there currently screaming about their democracy: oh, you mean the capitalist democracy? Isn't that the mangled mess to which you so sincerely refer? Time to pick up on one and let the other one ride (JS).
Is this then the revolution? One meme? OK, if you need that fair share of abuse (JR) go ahead and chain yourself to something or whatever, I'm sure some cop would love to use his pepper spray right about now, but my point is: your sign needs to posit the contradiction. The sign needs to say: you have been bullshitted for too long, the Demos, as Wendy Brown explains it, has been undone. You've come undone. Next we explain how the Market has failed, the energy market and its externalities but the labor market as well, how the cost of social reproduction, of caring, has been ignored, like the cost to Nature. So there is that. Explanations, arguing, convincing, proposing.
And then of course, the vision thing. Oh, and if there are any lingering doubts as to whether I have my finger on the pulse of the zeitgeist, this is what I wrote in Sept.:
Hearing a lot about "the angry white male" recently, mostly with a condescending tone. These are Trump supporters and Fox News listeners and Rush's Ditto Heads and by the Jesus, they have plenty to be angry about. How would you feel if you lost your job...to your wife! And now she expects orgasms and her very own President! This is Ralph Cramden and Archie Bunker and Homer Simpson clinging desperately to the last vestiges of traditional masculinity and if that means identifying with some Alpha-wise-guy-billionaire from New York, so be it.
Breadwinner is a big deal.
Thanks Mister Trout Sky, I have a few friends who are finally saying let's try to understand the Trumpeters and Trumpettes, and who are appalled at the response of the demo HRC supporters - getting online and commenting as snidely and as vehemently as any master troll. The Bernie supporters hooting smugly from the sidelines. But very few seeming to want to dig deeper and see that this is an extension of an imperative, an arc that has been curving for quite some time.
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