Scaling Down

Every politician, no matter the ideology, promises jobs and economic growth to the disaffected voter. This is the very essence of what the pundits are calling "populism" but it's basically just tried and trued,vote-buying pandering, as old as capitalist "politics" itself. The disavowed reality, that is, at some level most people FEEL this to be true, is that those jobs are never coming back. For a variety of reasons. But this account from the blog of Paul Abair is compelling:

"As there are growing signs that we might be in a crisis of complexity caused by rising biophysical constraints and characterised by diminishing returns of investments in societal complexity, we are entering an era when circumstances will trump personalities and institutions. What we now need, hence, is not so much to find new political ‘leaders’ capable of designing and enacting grand plans to lead us further up the complexity pathway, but to ensure that we can make collective choices that are fit and appropriate for an age of scaling-down expectations. There is no sign that this could happen anytime soon, or even that it might be possible. It is therefore entirely reasonable to expect that our economic, technical, political and social systems might continue to become increasingly dysfunctional and drift towards breakup point. The journey to that point will probably continue to leave most of us puzzled, and will most likely be filled with the disturbing clamour of populist caudillos."

Jurgen Habermas also speaks to this 'crisis of complexity" in an interview with Eurozine:"Our societies (the West) must come to terms with this global decline together with the technology-induced explosive growth in the complexity of everyday life...' I have argued that complexity, as a feature of modernity,doesn't just leave us "puzzled". It is a major cause of deep existential anxiety, that an alienated "helplessness" is manifested as xenophobic nationalism combined with a malevolent shaedenfrued ( "I may be fucked, but at least I don't live in Yemen!") over-expressed as exceptionalism. But the current crisis of capitalist "democracy" calls even that into question; a strange lingering feeling that it is all kubuki theatre ( elaborately costumed performers use stylized movements to enact tragedies and comedies), that our reality is mediated as popular entertainment, that we all are acting in a Truman show within a Truman show. The Big Other is that bored.

This is something Thomas Mann wrote as he bore witness to Hitler's rise:(hat tip to Lichanos)
(We )"realize that despite all the psychoanalysis, all the progress we have made in learning how the human being’s mind works, there is still absolutely no limit to the extent the unconscious can go in effective projection of itself upon reality.

We see this truth illustrated by the state of Europe today; the reduction to the primitive to which she has consciously and deliberately submitted herself. Indeed, the conscious and willing surrender, the treachery to the spirit and to the upper levels at which it had arrived, are themselves the severest possible indictment of the prevailing primitivism. For this primitivism is shameless. It is a wanton self-glorification, in the face of the developed civilization of our age. It is shameless as a philosophy, however much condoned as a reaction against arid intellectualism. It is, in the Old Testament phrase, a folly and an abomination. Even the artist, despite his position as ironic partisan of life, must turn away in disgust from the spectacle of such an utter collapse and betrayal."

The paradox is that in order to defeat the forces of civilizational collapse and primitivism, humanity will need to think and act to scale, to a global scale in fact. And yet to survive beyond the crisis, we will have to understand entropy and limits and learn to live lower on the "complexity pathway".

So there you have it: Our New Leader

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.

Our Proud Tradition

Everywhere folks want to harken back to a once proud tradition of some sort. Trumpeters want to bring back the "great" America they vaguely remember. Tea Party folks were heavily invested in patriotic symbols from a righteous past. Many who identify as the new "alt-right" consider globalization a modern, anti-tradition trend, ironically allying themselves with Battle For Seattle lefties, while white power nationalists have organized around the Traditional Workers Party. Obviously a placeholder for Ozzie and Harriet 1950's purity. (Dating myself. Look it up)

This conservative desire to return, to face backwards, is not limited to those who consider themselves conservatives. The recent fascination with indigenous resistance is at least in part fueled by the primordial imaginary, a yearning for a simpler(Matriarchal) relationship to Nature and Being. The theme runs through New Age mysticism and the old socialist hope for the industrial working class. I loved seeing Jesse Jackson astride a white horse at Standing Rock, wearing a cowboy hat and boots. A strange Lone Ranger amidst the Tontos.

I have written a great deal about this nostalgia for what never was as a reaction to modernity, to the incessant Promethean drive and capitalism's relentless push to revolutionize our daily lives. Goethe expressed it as well as anyone and we who clearly see the need for radical change due to the climate crisis should try to understand this sentiment. It is a deep mourning for innocence lost (however mythological in actuality) and the trauma presents in both the conscious protest and unconscious slip of the tongue.

The Old Man, never at a loss for words, perhaps put it best: "the tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living." Not that some things aren't worth keeping. Just knowing how to sort....

Solidarity

The climate movement has now focused its energies around this NO DAPL campaign, calling for nationwide gatherings in solidarity with the folks in Standing Rock. For us here in Missoula that means standing on a bridge together holding signs. Folks driving by can then "honk" in solidarity or give puzzled looks or perhaps flip us off.

I have long argued that this movement needs to be escalating in terms of critique and resistance in order to become a system challenging force, to become revolutionary beyond the Bernie sense. A movement that lurches from action camp to action camp, reacting to each new fossil fuel proposal, is not building momentum. It is becoming a cliche, like Burning Man. And it unwittingly reproduces the social relations and division of labor that keep capitalism humming along. The leaders (in this case Native Americans), the dangerous bulldozer confronting activists, the sign wavers, the academic intellectuals and theorists, the progressive "indie media" etc.

I thought the Break Free action last spring was a step in the right direction, with a concerted effort to replicate tactics and critique and messaging world-wide. Though the key tactical component of mass civil disobedience failed to materialize, at least it was an escalation and well coordinated. I fear NO DAPL is a step backwards towards localized NIMBY actions with mixed messaging and no mention of systemic change. Instead we get liberal pablum like this watered down "manifesto" from Oil Change International:

"Like the cod fishery in Newfoundland, what’s needed for the fossil fuel industry is a managed decline and just transition for those currently dependent on the industry. Instead of politicians giving stump speeches about bringing back jobs they can’t possibly deliver on, they should be offering plans to diversify the economy, fund training programs, and provide support to communities currently dependent on dead-end industries".

Trying so desperately to save capitalism from itself, they offer nothing but endless dreck.

All Things For All People

Montana's Governor Steve Bullock has put together a document titled Montana Energy Future. Designed primarily to ensure his re-election this fall, it promises all things to everybody, all win, no lose. When it says: "valuing our traditions" it means maintaining fossil fuel energy development with its historical boom/bust cycle. We have actually come to embrace it as something sacred, like chicken fried steak or Bud light. His main idea is to follow the bullshit blueprint of his predecessor (also a Democrat) and push "clean coal" in the form of carbon capture and sequestration. While waiting for this technology to become real, he has joined the lawsuit against the Federal Clean Power Plan.

Bullock assures us clean coal is on the horizon because he toured a facility in Saskatchewan that separates the sulfur and CO2 from coal plant emissions and sells both byproducts to pay for the expensive retrofit. This is how it works on paper. In reality it has been a series of delays and breakdowns and lawsuits over design and cost over-runs. Which I might be fine with because remember, I don't believe "cost" is real when it comes to climate chaos. The problem, the real problem, is this: they sell the CO2 to fracking companies so they can extract more oil, a process known as "enhanced oil recovery". More oil means more combustion which means more greenhouse gas. So that's a no go.

But say you didn't need the money, say you just wanted to capture the CO2 and then sequester it deep within the bowels of the earth. Are we sure this is safe? No unintended consequences? Because we have already committed to lots of expense( price of electricity, diverted investment) and lots of risk just to have this base-load energy and these jobs that go with it. What if 20 million tons of CO2 escaped at once? That would be a major fuck-o-dear.

Geography Lessons

Americans learn about geography through the daily bombing news. You get a big wall map of THe World and plot the location of each day's bombing or attack. So let's see...where is Dhaka? Or Ankara? Of course by now we all know where Baghdad is. Who can find San Bernadino? Here's Orlando, way down here!

What's Goin on? Latest Update

So...where to begin? First, after all these months I have finally figured out who Trump is; the reincarnation of Rodney Dangerfield! Right? At his golf course in Scotland, it's a scene right out of Caddy Shack. And who wouldn't want Rodney for President? And now we have the soon-to-be Prime Minister of Greatest Britain Boris Johnson, a brash New Yorker with crazy blonde hair and absurd politics, so that if they were to do a routine together it would be INCREDIBLE. And then there is the whole Brexit shock; talk about your "ideological rubble"! There is so much incoherent or banal analysis on both the left and right that I am about to concede to those who want to proclaim a "post-ideological age", not in the sense of techno-managerial but in the sense of Caddy Shack. Marx speculated on the conditions which might bring about "...the common ruin of the contending classes..". Mao celebrated destabilization: "Everything under Heaven is chaos, the situation is excellent." I have my doubts about the excellence of the current situation because climate chaos can't seem to compete in the realm of Spectacular Chaos. The hope to resurrect social democratic parties in the form of Bernie or Podemos in Spain or Labour in UK or Syriza in Greece has fizzled because these efforts avoid the difficult question. Basically; what kind of work are all these people supposed to do? (Africa, Asia, Middle East, Latin America)

But the crisis of capitalist democracy is now in high gear. climate migration, technology, nationalism/populism, stagnation, terrorism, market volatility; "the center cannot hold". Some try to narrow it down to "neoliberalism", others to "industrial civilization", others just blame "greed" or "evil". If I were some autocrat running a small country I would be nervous right now- this is when the Empire likes to send its Christian Soldiers out to snuff some Noriega or Saddam Husein, or Grenada. Nothing inspires and unites like a good ass kicking.

There are numerous attempts to stitch together a left opposition but nothing seems to stick. The People's Summit I mentioned in my last post drew 3000 but they all that came out of it was a manifesto to focus on ten different things. So 3000 divided by 10. Should work out great.