Thursday, August 23, 2018

Russian Interference

What's this about Russian meddling in our elections? My God, are they saying a country would interfere in another countries internal affairs? Would try to subvert the sacred democratic process and right of self-determination? Unheard of! Outrageous! We know America would never engage in such a nefarious process because we respect sovereignty. They are saying even the damn Iranians are trying to influence us; after all we've done for them!

As for this whole business around Trump and the pay-offs, The Donald clearly miscalculated big time. Had he simply started bragging about the flings with Stormy Daniels and the Playboy bunny, his poll numbers would have skyrocketed, he could have saved some money and his lawyer wouldn't be facing jail time. Sad. He was thinking like a loser.

Speaking of Trump, though it has admittedly taken longer than I expected, I think his writers must be on strike or on Oxy or something. His antics are beginning to bore and the whole sordid Spectacle has lost its entertainment value, to a point where the mainstream commentariat is getting nervous. And it's only season 1! His producers underestimated the difficulty of keeping slapstick/ reality engaging for a more sophisticated audience. The thugs just seem like thugs, there's no pathology. At least with Nixon there was some psycho-drama.

So what's the difference between humans and lemmings? Lemmings just kill themselves; humans try to take every living thing down with them. Soon we will see Global Warming Tours; where the caring bourgeoisie can visit disappearing eco-systems, see soon to be extinct species, have pictures to show their grandkids.

Sunday, August 19, 2018

"A Shift in the Structure of Experience"

I have been intrigued for years by this opening line in a poem by Anne Winters titled The Displaced of Capital (2006) It rang true in a way I couldn't quite articulate till recently learning about the "gaming community", about live streaming your life and about Twitch, phenomena that is only new to me thanks to my almost absolute ignorance of popular culture. But awhile ago I watched my grandson sitting on the couch watching a person playing a video game on-line and I was fascinated by his total involvement in this once-removed, virtual experience. At the time I thought it was just incidental, an oddity. Now I am seeing it is the future. I'm just not sure how terrified I should be.


"Unnoticed, the narrative has altered...down to the very molecules in my brain, as I think I'm thinking..." Winters captures the sense of remove, the "shift" which is changing everything, though not in the way Naomi Klein imagined. How then does this new structure, this voyeuristic anti-experience propel new capital accumulation? Apparently video gaming is now a multi-billion industry not just through direct sales but through gaming competition, Leagues, play-offs, superstars with coaches and promoters and lucrative sponsorships, in other words the whole "sports" apparatus now applied to shooter games. In a bizarre twist, as these gaming celebrities are being watched their fans can "chat" on forums like Twitch so that they can feel part of an "inter-active" experience and community. They subscribe and send other financial support and I'm sure they are advertised to. So plenty of exchange.

Then there are the IRL (in real life) professional streamers who have an army of obsessed fans watching them perform life. Their existence, however banal or contrived, is the entertainment for which their fans pay. These fans also have a chat community so that they might be indirectly involved in this reality as such.

Obviously we are dealing with a complex socio-political phenomena, but I start with two questions; Is Capital actually overcoming a barrier through this strange form of production? And who are these people with enough time on their hands to do the observing? The barrier I feel Capital is attempting to push through is the anomie, disaffection and alienation, the estrangement and ennui inherent in modern life. "Drama equals views equals money" is the livestream mantra and the "patch", however temporary, for what Marshall Berman termed the "perpetual disintegration...ambiguity and anguish" felt by so many. This modern milieu is transferred into what Berardi characterized as a "psycho-pathologic economy of ironic detachment", hence the vicious online trolling, the "terrifying digital mobs", a Purple Army of lonely chatroom geeks haunting the Web day and night. A new "spectre" poised on the razor's edge of this new "structure of experience".

Monday, August 6, 2018

Today's Capitalism

In an Op Ed titled "What Are Capitalists Thinking?" Michael Tomasky demonstrates his own lack of thinking. Or maybe he is paid to produce these kinds of apologetics? A good centrist liberal, he appears worried that
"today's" capitalist class is getting greedy and will spoil it for everyone. He is nostalgic for yesterday's kinder, gentler capitalism: "Back in the days when our economy just grew and grew, we had a government and a capitalist class that invested in our people and their future..."he tells us in a fuzzy bedtime story.

Tomasky gets this kind of trite jingoistic drivel published in the NY Times because it is how centrist hegemony is preserved and the Times is invested in exactly this project. Because just think back; you remember the awesome capitalism of the post-war years- don't you?( you're white, straight, male, middle-class aren't you?)

But now a handful of bad apples is going to spoil it for everyone. Tomasky recites the usual litany of abuses; the inequality, the mean-spirited gouging,the reckless gambling, as he puts it; "the kind of capitalism we have today" is driving all these young folks toward SOCIALISM! and as a good liberal it is his duty to send out a warning.

Funny thing; when mentioning the ills of "today's capitalism" he fails to mention global warming. But I'm sure his greener "capitalism with a human face" would have a solution.