More This Changes Nothing

COP 25 is behind us and the only positive outcome was Greta got lots of sailing experience. Which may come in handy. The Student Strikes, the Extinction Rebellions, the rallies and protests all run aground on nationalist self-interest. No nation-state is willing to threaten its economic stability, and hence elite supremacy, by slowing GDP growth. All the negotiations and vague commitments are theatre, a show that didn’t compete with The Impeachment, much less the NFL, in terms of ratings.
Remember how the big hope was an amorphous resistance known as “Blockadia”? This movement “from below” was to be led by indigenous and other “front line” peoples, but since the movement limped away from Standing Rock, a vague miasma has replaced militancy. Perhaps young students can save us while we stay busy at work. Extinction Rebellion inspired some disobedience but floundered on the shoals of Brexit. A court case? A green new deal? Bernie?
The DSA left puts its hope in “the working classes” but this nebulous bloc can’t wrap its collective head around the rupture which would be required to save us. It is a hyper-object, too far outside our everyday experience to even imagine. Even Jeremy Corbyn’s talk of a mild disruption was too much mix up. Told they can have free education, the proles protest, demanding to pay something. They hate the rich but they all want to be rich. Instead of taking advantage of crisis, workers want to play it safe, stall for time. They understand intuitively as they drive the freeways and see the tent camps and the shopping cart people that bad as it is, it can get way worse. Just as a surplus of unemployed teaches workers to accept the shit wage and lack of benefits, a surplus army of humans huddled beneath the underpass teaches them to stay quiet, do some oxy, wear a MAGA hat. To appreciate their “little pink house”.
The dominant message is that we must come together as a Nation, set aside our internal differences and unite against the Other. Protect our National Interests. Energy independence. Circle the wagons on our island, enjoy the Super Bowl and let them fight it out for the scraps. But the morning after, we wake to find the Rupture is still there, the spectre, the ticking clock. You want to believe Bill McKibben when he says 2020 is the year things change, you try to believe the candidates, let their optimism wash over you. But you have been paying too much attention.
Dan La Botz writes that we must:
“recognize that the working class is not yet prepared to act on its own. We will continue organizing and fighting for our politics in the labor and social movements, while waiting for the event that will trigger the eruption of the mass movement without which our politics have no vehicle.”
He gets the concept of rupture but places to much emphasis on a class which has no sense of belonging, is not a class “for itself”. These everyday folks intuit that there will be no “just transition” without bloodshed and they aren’t quite ready to give up the few small comforts they have finally earned just to grab a pitchfork and get their head’s bashed. Not yet, anyway.