Big Other: Society and State

You have to love the names for some of these Think Tanks: “The role of pro-Russian politicians is to introduce divisive topics into society,” said Oleh Saakyan, a political analyst at the National Platform for Resilience and Social Cohesion, an independent think tank. Those in power see planetary social/political/economic relations as a card game. It is all about what cards you hold, who you can bluff, what you are willing to risk. A terrifying way to organize the globe. Everyone is now talking about Trump as the transactional president, as if this is wholly unprecedented, as if it hasn't always about what you could get. Think East India Company, United Fruit Company, C&H Sugar, Dole, Standard Oil, etc. etc.. Capitalism is a system of transactions for labor and commodities and finance. The cards you hold are power you have at your disposal. “It doesn’t mean anything about a two-state or a one-state or any other state,” he (Trump) said at a White House news conference. Nothing throws off the liberal intelligencia like post-rational performance art: Frank Bruni of NYTimes: My belief is that his shamelessness has mattered more than his personality. He has a truly unusual willingness to be as dishonest, disloyal and vulgar as necessary to get what he wants. brushing off a question about whether he still considers the Ukrainian leader a dictator. “Did I say that?” Mr. Trump asked. “I can’t believe I said that. Next question.” Mr. Trump expressed a mix of optimism and fatalism about his chances of making peace. “I think it’s going to happen, hopefully quickly,” he said. “If it doesn’t happen quickly, it may not happen at all. Trump on Kier Starmer: “He earned whatever the hell they pay him over there.” And by kissing the ring and presnting Trump with a gold embossed invitation to dinner with the King, Starmer avoided a lecture, unlike Zelenski, who insisted on arguing with The Donald on The Donald's own TV show. Ooops! We are told not to normalize Trump, like we are not supposed to normalize perversion or obscenity or pornography. We are supposed to hide and repress these things, keep them taboo or hand them off to a fetish.That way we can pretend to have Resilience and Social Cohesion! Trump actively establishes the terms of a new Big Other. He promises enjoyment while undermining the authority of knowledge. Disavowal married to conspiricy theory (denial of the real).

Reset or The God That Failed

The True Believers in Green Capitalism assured us that the wisdom of the Market would save us. As the cost/price of renewables came down, the Invisible Hand would take care of the rest. A typical headline from 2022: "A rapid transition to emissions-free ‘green’ energy could save many trillions of dollars in energy costs - and help combat climate change" We'll be rich AND green! Hell yes! Or this: “The new numbers turn the economic logic we’re used to upside down,” writes the climate activist and journalist Bill McKibben. To him, the import of this moment is clear: For the first time, McKibben argues, humanity has at our fingertips the tools needed to end humanity’s millenniums-long dependence on burning things for energy — and to save our climate in the process." These progressive cheerleaders pohpoohed the Left's doom and gloom. "Look at the IRA,the great climate legislation. Look at the rapid transition thanks to the entreprenuerial spirit!" From today's NY Times: "BP, the energy giant, said on Wednesday that it would increase spending on oil and gas while sharply paring back investments on various forms of clean energy. The move, described as a “reset,” appears to be a response to a combination of investor pressure for higher returns and a realization that the so-called energy transition to cleaner fuels is not moving as fast as once expected." Actually, what has been realized is that the increasing demand for energy, take AI and crypto data centers for example, is far outstripping the supply of renewables. And then take the fact that the profit margin for renewables steadily decreases the more you supply. Oops! Now add the drill baby drill regulatory regime and increased subsidies and tax breaks and big oops! The oil majors are just doing what they are legally obligated to do, what they are designed to do, what makes the most "common sense". The more obvious it becomes that capitalism can't fix this, the fiercer liberals cling to their faith in miracles. "I know full well but nonetheless..."

Tragedy AND Farce

Both at the same time! Does the new face of disavowal mean the end of ideology or just add to the rubble? In a brilliant intervention, Alenka Zupancic dives deep into the symptoms now manifesting as the Age of Anxiety rapidly metastisizes. Her book Disavowal argues that the psychoanalytic concept of disavowal best renders the structure underlying our contemporary social response to traumatic and disturbing events, from climate change to unsettling tectonic shifts in our social tissue. This subconscious defensive mechanism is meant to protect through the repression of knowledge. Its most famous formulation goes like this: I know fully well (the traumatic lack) but nonetheless continue to act all the same. And one important, contemporary aspect of the fetish is that I insist that you know that I know. It is both a coping mechanism for keeping the repressed at bay and the source of perverse enjoyment. It is also the only way we can function in a system as obscene as "democratic" capitalism. Take the new administrations vow to "drill baby drill" which we all understand as "burn baby burn". “You can purge a website of the words climate change, but that doesn’t mean climate change goes away,” Mr. Lehner said. But in the pathological sense it does "go away"from our disavowed reality. In other words, I know (rational knowledge) that it doesn't go away, but nonetheless... the prevailing structure of disavowal today, the mere act of declaring that we know becomes itself an object-fetish by which we intercept the reality of that very knowledge. This perverse deployment of knowledge deprives it of any reality. In this sense, Trump is the perfect avatar for our age, because he actively establishes the terms of a new Big Other. This newly emergent Big Other doesn't understand what we are whinging about! He promises us that we will have fun and could care less about transgression. The Emperor flaunts his nakedness, all with a wink and a grin. He understands instinctually that people need to "believe" conspiracy theories in order to exist in the maelstrom. "I am being decieved, therefore I am." It protects them from the knowledge of their invisibility, their lack of agency, their total inconsequencialness. The more the doomloop grows, the more anxiety there is, the harder it is to disavow the castration, the more people need the phallic Trump to promise an orgy of fun. He promises that no matter what else it is, it will "Not be boring!"

What Is To Be Done (take 6)

Time for a little re-calibration perhaps? "All that is solid melts into air" has a new resonance and yet the point is not just to interprate the world but to change it, right? I have longed for disruption so now I have to figure out how to make lemonaid out of lemons.So let's see... In his book Against the Crisis, Stale Holgersen makes a compelling case that "crises are not opportunities- they are the enemy" because of the tendency for Capital to exploit and benefit. Even that Capital requires crisis (creative destruction) to survive. As I've argued here, ecological crisis could be categorically different, but let's just substitute the word crises- even polycrises- with rupture and see what happens. A somewhat different beast, a tear, a rent, a violent opening that occurs suddenly. This is what Mao was hoping for when he (perhaps) said "Everything under Heaven is in utter chaos- the situation is excellent." That chaos/crisis opens up a space so wide, creates a vacuum so deep, that the condition of possibilities is wide open. That space was on the horizon in 1914, in 1968, and, it could be argued, in 2008. How pregnant is the current conjecture? Not just for the Left, but for any radical formation? What nudge might be needed to blow that space up so that the current ruling order is so de-legitimized that something new can fill the void? I would argue that the effects of global heating and ecological breakdown, if exploited with skill and discipline, could do the trick. And thanks to physics, is more likely than any other force. This brings up the much-maligned concept of "heightening the contradictions". It is in this sense that I hope and pray for a series of Cat.5 hurricanes to strike the Gulf Coast at the same time the stock market crashes after some bubble bursts and just to top things off the National Guard massacres a bunch of Black protestors. That ought to do it! Of course along with this alignment of luck, there would have to be some conscious agency,ie.. good organizing, a charismatic leader perhaps, a plan for how to fill the vacuum. Ideas, yes, but ideas alone won't do it. Sad to say, at this point, you need the help of fate. I know. How cruel of me, what about the innocent victims? What about the Working Class? What about MAGA Trumpism? To which I answer: how brutal is business as usual? Victims? My God. And at the point of rupture I can see much of the working class forming the ecological class because choices will be constrained. The folks that really have to make a choice are the liberals clinging to "green capitalism". As for Trump, there is a sense in which he is doing much of the preliminary work for us. The point here is that the sooner this rupture happens the better, in terms od species loss, in terms of what is left to possibly salvage. The longer we sink into this slow attrition, watching the things we value slowly dissolve, the harder it will be to re-build.

Perhaps a Bit Jealous?

Liberals/ leftists are terrified the established order is being dismantled before their eyes, but might there also lurk a bit of jealousy? Progressives plod along decade after decade, incrementally passing their precious policies through the regular channels. They slog through the sacred institutions only to see it all undone in an instant backlash. Along comes this wacky MAGA revolution where all the deliberate processes of legislation and consultation and bi-partiship get tossed overboard like so much compost. Think of how awesome the MAGAs must feel seeing shit get done instantly, the very shit that was promised! That never happens! Your guys march around the globe throwing their weight around as the mainstream media goes beserk. What could be more fun. Your leader sits at his desk issueing order after order with child-like glee, re-ordering the world like you always dreamed of doing yourself. What could be cooler. Meanwhile the liberals turn to think tanks and drinking. Leftists turn to theorizing. Or re-theorizing; is this neofascism? Neofeudalism? Perhaps Techno-feudalism? One clear goal is profit: Gaza real estate, Ukranian and Greenland minerals, What Trump and the MAGGATs understand and the liberal never will is that the Game is called capitalist "democracy, emphasis on the C word. The D word is for chumps. This works great when your constituency is homo economicus, those looking for cheap eggs. Those who want to see shit git done and don't care if you have to break a few of those eggs to make an omelet. Liberals instantly become conservatives, insisting (as the world burns) on preserving the status quo and proceeding cautiously, incrementally, tiny reform after tiny reform. Maybe an Infrastructure or Inflation Reduction bill. Wow, huge deal, so impressive. Until you see Trump turn the global order upside down in two weeks.

Dumb or Not Dumb?

So are The People stupid or not? When they support MAGA are they hoodwinked simpletons or simply reacting rationally to objective conditions? Liberals and leftists struggle with this question, much as they do with the question of "deplorables". It's a little hard to quantify empirically but there are lots of opinions on the subject. Masha Gessen from the NY Times has an opinion: "and has had such a dumbing-down effect on public conversation...But a lot of people, as it turns out, are a lot like Donald Trump. They think they’re much smarter than they are." Democrat Ruben Gallego has an opinion: "Every Latino man wants a big-ass truck, which, nothing wrong with that. “And you’re gonna go start your own job, and you’re gonna become rich, right?” These are the conversations that we should be having. Because people that are working class, poor, don’t necessarily look at the ultrarich as their competitors. They want to be rich someday. And so they don’t necessarily fault the rich for being rich." Now we are back to class analysis: everybody hates rich people but they all want to be one. As for gaining their vote, it's easy. Give people treats. Votes for treats. Simple enough, right? Liberals are kvetching that Trump is "transactional" but c'mon; the capitalist world goes around on contracts. At issue is what I call the Chomsky contradiction: is there a "democracy deficit", in which the popular will is ignored by the "ruling class", or do they "manufacture consent"? If there is a deficit, people are smart and understand their interests but are dismissed by the powers that be. If their consent can be manufactured by media, popular culture, etc..if they are easily manipulated, then they are not so intelligent. If you crave a "big-ass truck" and don't recognize your own exploitation, sorry, you're dumb. I can buy your vote but the next guy who comes along and offers more will turn you. Welcome to "non-ideological capitalist "democracy".

Live by the Vote - Die by the Vote

I haven't seen liberals this freaked out since the last time Trump won. Now they are searching for a new "Resistance" and honing their messaging and raising money for the next election cycle. Next time they will vote harder and try to re-establish the Old Order. The one of common sense and upholding of norms, even ( having learned their lesson) gender norms. In the meantime they will whine and moan about oligarchs suddenly running things. Yeah. The interests of the wealthy were never considered by the Democrats, but of course the real concern is the fact that it is now so blatant. Our culture has for decades drilled home the idea that rich successful businessmen make the best leaders ( the innovators) so it should hardly come as a surprise when people elect them. Are they fascists or ubermensh? I'd say they are CEO's doing what CEO's do. The question here is how much of the liberal capitalist state do you want to preserve? What part of the government was going to prevent overshoot? Sure, it's a wacky dumpster fire with ideological rubble piled higher than Gaza, but no government has any plan for managing collapse. Can't afford eggs or home insurance? Just put it on your credit card. Too much stress? Go shopping. Buy some memecoins. Fuck if I know. It appears my Ukrain prediction was correct. A million Ukranian dead (according to the NY Times), at least that many Russian "working class" men. Not sure what class the Israeli soldiers come from. Or Hamas. Or Modi's Hindus. I guess we'll see U.S. mining conglomerates in joint ventures with the Russians. This new virtual economy needs a lot of metals.