Weak Coup

It wasn't that long ago my inbox was filled with dire warnings of a Trump coup, perhaps an armed uprising and even civil war. I was advised to form a resistance committee prepared for street fighting. These romantic imaginings had the forces for Good standing firm against the Brownshirt hordes. Besides the obvious question of fight for what? Defend capitalist "democracy" and "the rule of law"? Defend the Democratic Party victor Joe Biden with my life? (Don't think so) we have to ask: doesn't this fear of a fascist takeover spring from the same irrational place as Q Anon? Is the divorce from reality now universal? Those wild speculations were built on imagining Trump forces as an exponentially magnified version of the guys with flak vests and "assualt-style" weapons that showed up to "protect" rallies in various towns around the country. Some were "mobilized" here in Montana, where they managed to get their pictures on the front page of newspapers and local tv blurbs. No doubt they were pumped up about the opportunity to display their toys and virility and to be part of a patriotic brotherhood of sorts. To have a mission, to find some meaning in a chaotic world. But as Trump threw his tantrum these guys went with the vote count. I imagine their militia networks were saying "stand by", waiting for exactly the kind of provocation certain Lefties were hoping to organize (but thankfully failed). So instead of potentially violent confrontation, we saw Trump lawyers jump into action and the whole "uprising" fizzle spectacularly. Of course. I suspect those who identify as Antifa are bummed, but it was so predictable that I am now wondering: are the folks who sent the emails evaluating and analyzing their action?

The Structure of Experience

Poet Anne Winters describes "a change in the structure of experience", a phrase which I believe helps us think about the rise in various populisms, now morphing into ever more radicalized political expressions. Liberals naturally bemoan the trend. And they are correct in pointing out the danger to their precious stability. But these new radicals are the direct result of liberalism's ill-considered embrace of accelerated techno-capitalism. There has been a qualitative shift, a jarring speed-up in the "structure of experience" and that blind, euphoric optimism that social affects could be managed through science and expertise has proven disastrous. It is an ancient story, the socerer's apprentice, Pandora's Box, Faustus, Fankenstein or Icarus. Drunk on confidence that the way forward is clear, just mix modern finance with technological wizardry and everyone will enjoy the fruits of our special genius. What could possibly go wrong? But the cry of our age is Slow The Fuck Down! All authentic politics, left or right stems from this one desperate plea. When the inner workings, the algorithims and physics and economic formulas are beyond our comprehension, multiplying at rates impossible, to absorb, rational response will slip over to the irrational, the illiberal, the fantastical and finally violent reaction. So when we hear these warnings from the status quo about the threats to law and order we can ony shake our heads in wonder. You are just now realizing the danger? Really? It's not just the whining of us old idiots. We joke that young people can help us program our devises, help us install the latest software, de-code the crazy jargon, but they are suffering their own special hell. Immersed in instant media and the frantic flux of cyber life, they are the guinea pigs for this profit driven experiment. The crisis of meaning has been delayed by expanded credit and mountains of things, stuff, fluff, noise and games. But as it unravels expect wierd. And pain.

Why Not Tents?

The picture in the Missoula Current of volunteers erecting a new camp for the houseless is both/at once terrifying and heartening. Such is the state of humanity in late capitalism. A combination of outrage and empathy pressures the system to find a "solution", however temporary, to The Problem ( public relations disaster, property values, public health, define it according to your ideology) Marshalling effort, technology and readily available materials, an instant, efficient camp is erected. This scene is enacted across the globe as humanitarian agencies erect massive refugee camps for the displaced and dispossessed. "We know it's not the answer" say the "celebrating housing advocates. "The camp wouldn't be necessary in a perfect world" writes the well-meaning liberal reporter. Migrants press at the edge of camps that become permanent. or catch on fire. Or get raided by fascists. Because a "perfect world", where everyone is housed, is so unreasonable, so utopian and idealistic. How could it possibly be? The Poor Will Always Be With Us is the Christian mantra. A world divided into winners and losers goes the neoliberal capitalist mantra. "The answer" is too far out of bounds to contemplate so we "celebrate" the tents and porta potties. Donate items. Pitch in to help. Because you can't have frozen people dying in the streets of the wealthiest nation in the history of the planet. That too would be unacceptable. People would start to question "the system", adding to that growing list of "systemic" problems (racism, inequality, hunger, etc) What the starry eyed call injustice. And so we call on charity, that tiny kernel of selflessness, altruism, sympathy or philanthropy (possible tax exemptions?), latent in the late-capitalist heart, to relieve misery in the present moment. Not to be confused with "mutual aid", the material exchange being one-sided. But truly heartfelt. And terrifying. Drop a coin in the Salvation Army bucket. Meet the eyes of the freezing bell ringer. It's not going to get better.

Now What?

We are told by the new New Left (DSA, Jacobin, etc) that power runs through the State. In her piece in The Baffler titled Seize and Resist, Thea Riofrancos writes: "the state has the capacities to reorient economic activity in the here and now. Public investment, democratized finance, stringent regulations, public and worker ownership, and trade and industrial policy all have a role to play in building a democratic, low-carbon future. In the hands of social movements, labor unions, and allied state actors, these tools can fashion a new world out of the dying old one." The age old question is to what degree is the State constrained by Capital? In the liberal view, it is contested territory, subject to the will of the people. You know, democracy. Government, courts, that sort of thing. It is to this end that leftists like Riofrancos are being mobilized to push for progressive policy and personel in the next administration. This "through the State" theory of change was ratified when this same Left went all in for Bernie running on the Democratic Party ticket. Now, even though their guy lost, they are married to it and must follow the logic to its end. Build a bloc, a popular front, mobilize "the masses" and the "working class", lobby your "representatives", shift the Party, awaken the populous. This all assumes a certain concept of the democratic citizen in a stable yet flexible civic order. Or of a capitalist class in panic mode, willing to temporarily concede a bit of power to salvage the system. And yes, in a rational world they would be plenty panicked. But we just had four years of Donald Trump. You don't get to jump back and forth Through the Looking Glass at will. Biden and his administration and the NY Times and Jacobin all want us to have faith in the illusion, in 1776, in the New Deal, in the Great Society. It is a huge leap of faith.

Deep Green

I spent an afteroon with Derek Jensen, Lierre Keith, Max Wilbert and some of the other DGR crew ( an internet fundraiser) and left with the same ambivalence I always experience hearing their philosophy. They spend a lot of time critiquing "bright greens", which seems to include anyone who believes technology can play a role in confronting the destruction of the biosphere. Like the filmaker Gibbs, they deride "renewables" as a false god because they use resources and energy in their production. They point to capitalism as a cause of the dstruction but then equate that with civilization. As for solutions, they gleefully and patiently wait for civilization to collapse, while in the meantime they attempt to protect wild places. They may be right. They are serious people who have been at this a long time. But I feel there is almost a millenialist fervor replacing rigor when it comes to their analysis, a premise that humans are a virus; for instance, they dismiss agriculture out of hand. All agriculture. Along with my comrade Sandy Krolick, they see the development of agriculture as the fork in the road which led to our current convergence of crises. Again, no doubt that was a historical fork, but what is the point of tracing one's doom back to point A or B? I had this nagging suspicion that none of the people who spoke so hopefully about civilizational collapse had children. I'm all about resistance but I don't see how a dark vs bright Green antagonism helps clarify the task or point a way forward.

The Cure

The dominant capitalist meme against Covid lockdowns is that "the cure" is worse than the disease. In this telling, the economic slowdown caused by lockdown is worse than having people die. This has always been and continues to be the dominant logic of capitalism, but it has rarely been expressed so succinctly. This exact same logic is applied to the climate emergency: yes, millions will die, but this is preferable to an economic slowdown. Where the comparison fails is with the fact that the pandemic is not an existential crisis, as is global heating. Still, we need an explanation for those who refuse the mask and the science behind both Covid and climate change. Tad Delay uses a left- Lacanian framework to approach the problem of obstinate reaction: "...we are subjects who desire, not subjects who desire to know … and only occasionally does that desire attach to a desire for knowledge’. Nor of course is it heroism or rigour that distinguishes a clearer from a less clear thinker about evidence: it is often a ‘crisis’ that ‘creates the certain mental conditions by which they [people] can transition into a different way of thinking about something’." A crisis. A rupture that upends the desire to fit in, to be pleased with oneself, to say the right thing, to follow the cult.

The Libidinal Economy of Trumpism

The left populists such as Thomas Frank have decided that trumpism's appeal is strictly materialistic, that he basically capitalized on the precariousness of the white male worker abandoned by Democratic policy. And I'm sure there is plenty of regional truth to this narrative. But it is hardly the whole story. Yes, certain US workers have been left behind by neoliberalism and the global economy. Wages have been stagnant forever and inequality has hit absurd levels. There is no doubt resentment with "coastal, liberal elites" and other economic forces are in play. But what I see missing from this narrative is the psychosexual aspect of Trump worship, that force operating at the sub or unconscious level of desire. To ignore the autoerotic and aesthetic elements at play in the conservative psyche is to miss a critical aspect of budding neofascism. Many others have noted how fascism operates in the symbolic register and I am suggesting Trump plays a twisted Father role for those fascinated by sexual domination and cruelty. Violence and its fantasy lurk an instant away in every gesture of the Dear Leader, in the mocking smile and sarcastic tone. As Horkheimer observed, what activates the masses is "not to eat but to obey". One sees in the tightly gathered rallies a breathless titillation, an orgiastic release of the repressed that every authoritarian demagogue has triggered in his rapt audience.