Not Deplorables, Fascists

When, due to the words and actions of a certain segment of the population, Hillary Clinton called them "deplorables", she was roundly criticised. For the Right, it was typical elite disdain for common folk. For the left, it was a terrible political miscalculation, alienating potential voters.Maybe costing her the election, oh my. All these years later, it is fine to call these same citizens bigoted, transphobic fascists. No one bats an eye. We owe Hillary an apology. They are absolutely deplorable and extremely proud of it. Of course Hillary is deplorable in her own right and I'm glad she lost her race. Deplorables have rallied around Trump because he is the King Daddy of Deplorable, he elevates it to an art form, and in a Democracy you get to be represented. it says so in the Constitution. Because I live in a place swarming with deplorables, I always found it humorous that pundits believed they might possibly have voted for Hillary had she not insulted them. These people would sooner run her over in their monster trucks than vote for her. When they chanted "lock her up!" they were gleefully imagining her being brutalized in prison. I love that the thing Republicans were risking default over was the ability of the IRS to tax the very wealthy. This was something they just couldn't abide. Deplorables have a confusing love/hate relationship with the very wealthy. Because they are a confused bunch. So confused they think someday they might be very wealthy and they don't want to be taxed.

The Latest Failed State

The periphery is in deep trouble. As the largst economies accumulate wealth and power they like to keep small nations weak without having them fail. This strategy itself is failing badly. from Pakistan to Tunesia, Ukrain to Guatemala, governments can't provide basic services. In the giant cities like Johanesberg or Jakarta, systems can no longer handle the massive influx. Even the core countries are being exposed as hollowed out shells, zombies stumbling from crisis to crisis, enacting a mhad burlesque for the entertainment of no one. There is no plan. As for politics and politicians, they no longer try to pretend to be legitimate 'leaders": “Sometimes, when he speaks, you just get the feeling he is speaking down to you,” said Mr. Foulds, an accountant. “At least with Boris you felt that he was talking to you — even though he might have been talking drivel, and maybe lying through his back teeth as well.” Look hard at any photo of Mc Carthy with Republicans behind him as he explains the negotiations over the debt ceiling. They all have that baffled, struggling to appear seriously listening look. Look at Diane Feinstein or Biden. All shitty actors who have forgotten their lines. Janet Yellen has been frantically calling "business leaders", asking them to talk some sense into those same Republican legislators. We see how well that plan worked out. When every politician is talking drivel and lying through their back teeth, even "business leaders" find their urgent pleas meet blank, empty gazes. How does anyone take this poorly written and directed B movie seriously anymore?

Deaths of Despair

More ranting about pain; physical and psychic. A comrade mentioned something he had read about Chinese youth committing suicide by jumping off a cliff. He thouhgt it said something about Chinese society and rising ennui, malaise, Weltschmertz. But it occurs to me this is a global phenomenon here in late-stage capitalism and while I'm not qualified or prepared to do a global study, I think a look at American youth is suggestive. Dissolution, despair, exhaustion; whatever we want to call it is manifesting in epidemic proportions. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "three out of five teenage girls felt 'persistent sadness or hopelessness' in 2021. One in three considered attempting suicide and one in ten did attempt it. The rate for boys is worse. 2,800 teenagers committed suicide in 2021. Like gun deaths and homeless deaths this is carnage society accepts as the cost of doing business. Avert your gaze. Grotesques like Joe Manchin or Matt Gaetz don't kill themselves, just innocent kids. Not that you can blame them. They may not fully understand the collapse but they can feel it, sense it, understand the broad outlines of the insane mess they will inherit. Their despair is earned. Even if they don't live in dysfunctional situations or experience trauma, it haunts the collective imaginary, the zeitgeist. My future is more of this, only worse?

Headed For A Fall

I know this is not the first existential crisis and that the end of capitalism is forever being predicted, but c'mon, how long can this corpse stay on its feet? The Spectacle of grifters and con men posing as Leaders is reaching such a level of absurdity that only the most deluded can maintain the pretense of "politics". Every pundit trying to square the circle runs into the Chomsky contradiction: either there is a "democracy deficit" ( leaders and policy don't represent the will of the people) or there is Manufactured Consent (The will of the people is manipulated by outside forces) You can't have it both ways. The pundits can't admit the fact that consent is neither required of nor missed by anybody. Daily impotent outrage is enough. Capitalist "democracy" is a system of anti-politics. People prefer the placebo and it is enough to be entertained, knowing full well "government of the people" is a charade, an intricate Kubuki theatre enacted for our perverse enjoyment. Technologists tell us if we just keep making smaller microchips, eveything will be solved in time. Trust us. How about millions of citizens in every major city living in tents, dying on the street, begging for change? Oh, that must be the "housing" problem. How about daily mass shootings by raging, dissaffected loners? Oh that's the "gun" problem. How about climate change, mass extinction, extreme weather events? That, of course, is the "environment" problem. Using unemployment to combat the rising price of everything? Oh yeah, that's the "economy" problem. The list is endless: pandemics, international conflict, pollution, rise of fascism, suicides, drug overdoses, failing schools, yada yada. All stuck in the appropriate, isolated "problem" box. Rich people get to worry about these problems, poor people live them But to convince yourself you are living in any kind of rational system you really have to be adept at avoiding reality, at clinging to old narratives, at believing the straw you are grasping at is a sturdy lifeboat. It aint. I just read about the epidemic of pain: "each successive generation among less-educated Americans has reported more pain at any given age." Pain makes you do bad things

The Party of Family Values Wants to Kill Their Children

The Conservatives espouse something called "family values", which must be some traditional Christian nuclear arrangement which involves protecting children from the scourges of secular modernity. I guess those would be "woke" values or some equally idiotic bullshit. Yet they see no problem with not only pillaging the earth of the few remaining resources, but insisting on burning unlimited fossil fuels so as to condemn their children to climate hell. They also have no problem breaking up Black and Brown families. The Jehovas Wtinesses showed up im driveway with their latest pamohlet titled "Exercise Patience". It might seem like a riff on Buddhism but they really want us to be patient with God, who is supposed to deliver us from this hellscape but is dawdling (for his own inscrutable reasons). Just hang in there, the end is near! The main article inside is titled "Is a Fair Economic System Possible?" Possible DSA recruits? Not really. Like Trumpists, another example of the working class having the right question and coming to an insane answer. A symptom of the Age of Oblivion. Speaking of our new Bronze God, following his town hall, liberals are apoplectic that Trump is doubling down on destroying "core American values" and the "post WWII national security order." Yeah, that actually works for me. I also share his "disrespect for our institutions of government that are critical to our democracy". Capitalist "democracy" is a sham and Trumpists understand that at a subliminal level, though they could never articulate it or propose solutions. All they hope for is a good laugh at liberals expense, a shallow victory but something. At least they understand that something is terribly wrong.

Go Ahead and Default

Headlines are awash with the dire threat of "debt cieling default" oh my! The US could run out of money to pay off the interest on its 31 trillion dollar debt and The Market is not at all pleased. The Market will just crash everything if it is not satisfied with the outcome of negotiations. The Market will send us all into bread lines. It will kick us out of our homes and make us fight one another for scraps. But still we worship The Market. Sure, it is a harsh mistress, but we love our subservience, the joissance of grovelling before a punishing dominatrix. This is the capitalist subject in a nutshell. All this handwringing over global economic collapse, oh my! This is heretical ultra-left talk I know, but I say bring it on. Heighten the contradictions. What is there really left to lose? Capital is on an ecocidal mission to bring about system collapse as soon as possible. Why not help it expedite the process while there is still something left to salvage? Oil companies would stop drilling, the thing everybody wants. Capitalist institutions would lose legitimacy, the thing everybody wants. Everybody wants A revolution but everyone fears THE revolution. One option being floated is for the US treasury to mint a 1 trillion dollar coin and deposit it with the Fed. That's how insane capitalism is. That's the system everyone swears undying fealty to. Could we end up with something worse? Perhaps. But it could never be less rational. Global debt, post COVID, has reached 300 trillion. We're talking serious cash! Let's see Republican debt hawks wrap their heads around that number. We're taling 349% leverage on GDP, about $37,500 per human. Just servicing the debt rose 3 trill in 2022. Who gets all that interest? Where is all that dough? Anybody?

There's Something Goin On But You Don't Know What It Is

Do I Mr. Jones? (From an old Bob Dylan tune). This describes the American Right perfectly. Certainly there is pathology and plenty of racist, sexist and xenophobic resentment. But basiclly they are totally disoriented. Because they can't understand the forces at work, macro forces directing their lives, they use their political muscle to attack something called "cultural Marxism", also known as wokeness. They hope that by banning books and stopping drag shows and letting parents set curriculim for schools and stopping transgender care, they can slow the onslaught of all the things they don't, can't, begin to understand. And just as it is for most of us, that list is long. Richard King describes it as the "black box" tension; we know things work (our cell phones, computers, AI, biogenetics, etc...) but we don't know how. We sort of trust somebody knows, but it is a loss of agency. "Somebody" might not have our best interests at heart. They might even be Marxist! People "know" the national debt is 31 trillion dollars, but they can't comprehend such a number. To help balance the budget they will cut thew Green New Deal though they can't comprehend the threats to the earth system. They want the old un-woke culture with more police, with boys and girls bathrooms, with big cars and mom in the kitchen because that was a culture they understood. Before everything got so complex and wacky and weird. It is unfortunate that these people can't get past their Christian nationalist chauvinism and use an anti-capitalist framework to understand not just political -economy but culture as well. But Marx and the Evil Empire and the road to serfdom have left a lasting impression.