Great Awakening

The Group just listened to Michelle Alexander talk about mass incarceration and the new Jim Crow where at the end she hopes that American's can experience a "Great Awakening". I'm always a little skeptical at these vague, religious prescriptions for social change (there was an Enlightenment but that's a different story). Then I was reading a piece in the Atlantic on Q anon and the author was saying The Great Awakening is a big meme in that miliue as well. Then I started thinking: what if Michelle Alexander is Q ? Yes, there are events when great intellectural and cultural shifts occur, disruptions, ruptures, etc. often preceded by technological innovation. But given the ecological timeline and the new media landscape of memes and influencers, an Idea isn't going to sweep humnity to a new understanding- in time. And it certainly isn't going to convince the power elite to surrender their wealth and status and property.

Always Wrong

The thing that distiguishes the political majority here in my little community is that they are always wrong about everything. And the fact this does nothing to temper their trust in their opinions. If you just go back as far as the Sagebrush Rebellion days and Montana Militia, they were wrong about the cause of the demise of the local timber industry and about taxes and the Constitution. If you jump ahead to wolf and bear re-introduction, they were wrong about wolves coming into town to snatch children. During the invasion of Iraq they believed it was connected to 9/11 and that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. They were wrong about Sharia Law being imposed on our community by immigrants. They have been wrong about climate change and Obama's birth certificate and now they are wrong about the Covid virus. But always being wrong never deters them in the slightest from forming strong opinions and trusting them. Yesterday I did a little early grocery shopping and was glad to see the large notices on the window asking people to wear masks. But I was dismayed to watch the Proudly Ignorant climb out of their giant pick-up trucks, adjust their camo hats and then smirk as they saw the signs and those of us obeying the ask. Because these obese, slack jawed rubes know the pandemic is a hoax. As with all the issues I have listed, these local "patriots" have inside knowlege, a knowlege far superior to the kind you get from scientists or "experts". They have common sense. Common to their type, that is. In the other examples of "wrongness", these flag-waving morons are exasperating. But in the case of Covid and masks, they are threatening my life and the lives of my loved ones. If it is true that this is a type unable to ever learn anything, incapable of self-reflection and perfectly willing to risk my life to promote their ridiculous ideology, then we now have a REAL antagonism. And we can now easily identify the enemy.

Enough Rope

This post was going to be about the inevitibility of Trump hanging himself, given enough rope. And bringing the Grand Old Party down with him. But after hearing the report on NPR about the looting in Chicago, I think we can expand the syndrome beyond knucklehead "conservatives" and include the Black Lives protesters. According to the journalist, a group gathered after a police shooting of an armed black man ( a few of those in Chicago)inspired a night of looting. The Group, organized by Black Lives Matter Chicago, carried a banner which read: "Our Futures Have Been Looted From Us; Loot Back". The leader was interviewed and opined: "I don't care if somebody decides to loot...that's reparations." Now, maybe NPR got it all wrong. But if this is how it went down all I can do is shake my head and spit. Here, have some rope. I am not saying I have any moral objections to looting. But it is one shit tactic if you are trying to build a movement for social change. It's the lifestyle anarchist credo in all its absurd form. Hey, anybody can do what they want, like, diversity of tactics, man, like, whose streets? Our streets! Whose stuff on the store shelves? Our stuff! This slogan is really going to go over big out here in the Rocky Mountain west. Either these people lack the capacity to come up with a strategy AND ENFORCE IT or they just don't give a fuck. Looting is not the Revolution, it is not "reparations", it isn't "justice". It's idiotic. And sets the cause back who knows how far. Abolish The Police So We Can Grab Shit! Send IN the Social Workers when a black guy shoots a cop! They are as incoherent as the Trumpists, just not as dangerous. Let's see what poor Kamala Harris says.

Me

While bicycling yesterday, I saw a big sign in a yard that said "Only My Life Matters". On one level you have to admire the brutal honesty. Most people who have so completely assimilated and internalized capitalism's "Prime Directive" make some attempt to couch it in irony. Of course the person could be racist (like all of us, according to White Fragility) or he could just be a serious libertarian, we have both in our quiet community. The real question is, with gun sales going through the roof, which side will the person be on? This is when the "Friend/ Enemy" difference gets real.

Bring It

Another one of history's favorite themes: democracy vs totalitarianism. This one has lain dormant for a while; capitalism defeated communism and history ended, or so the story went. But with Bernie and others talking socialism, the new Cold Warriors have sprung into action, throwing down McCarthyite threats and invoking all the patriotic symbols at their disposal. What has been called the "culture wars" has now morphed into a deeper, hardened conflict best symbolized by the Virus Mask. If you read the subtext in Pompeo's latest speech or Trumps ratcheting rhetoric over China and de-regulation, if you understand the signalling the anti-maskers are doing over liberty and the "deep state", if you feel the tension around confederate monuments being torn down and "law and order" under fire and whiteness and all the rest, you understand very real battle lines are being drawn. Add to this tension a pandemic and economic crash and ecosystems coming apart at the seams...

I find it refreshing that Capital is displaying its profound unease after decades of triumphalist bravado. Because this multiple and ever-expanding crisis has finally forced the much needed confrontation between openly antagonistic forces and the battle is joined. Just as the Empire loves weak states but fears failed states, it also loves weak citizens but fears failed citizens; those unable to form coherent positions, unable to distinguish adversary from enemy, unable to articulate grievances or establish representation.

None of this appeared overnight. The liberal order has been eroding for some time, but at a pace that was made it more difficult to define or describe. Now everything is acclerated, mimicking the climte effects as they begin to cascade. "The worst are filled with passionate intensity..." but they have no plan. The Center cannot hold and "the situation is excellent".

Narrow Tactical Field

In Portland and other cities where BLM protests have continued and escalated, a debate has ensued over the age old, and frankly boring, "diversity of tactics". The "peaceful" protestors just want to demonstrate, ie.. march carrying signs, shouting tired slogans, giving tired speeches etc... The street fighting militants want to smash things, hurl things at police, be all badass in their black hoodies and gas masks. Each faction endlessly performs their role, assumes their identity, believes in their righteousness and correctness. And neither faction has accomplished much of anything.

Would anyone stop to evaluate their progress? Fuck that- grab a sign or grab a brick. These are the limits of the movement imagination, such as it is. "This is what democracy looks like", first as tragedy, then as farce.

The head of the NAACP whines that the radicals are trying to turn "his" protest around policing into an "anti-capitalist" agenda. Being a lover of Capital, he sees no connection. Antifa and Boogaloo Boys and Proud Boys and Black Bloc all dart through the streets smashing windows and setting fires because they hate all authority. Except their own.

The ideological rubble buries everyone involved and no one seems to consider disciplined mass civil disobedience, the one tactic that has actually accomplished a small degree of social change.

Brownshirts

History may not repeat itself but it definitely has some favorite themes it re-visits from time to time. A big favorite is a nation's cleansing of "the enemy within". At his patriotic 4th of July Spectacle, complete with displays of air power, Trump and Co. turned the dial way up on the culture war, but very specifically targeted "the Left". In his version, it is we who are totalitarian and we who wish to revise history. Of course, the whole "cancel culture" absurdity is true, is reactionary, and plays right into the hands of the neo-fascists Trump is dog whistling to. And yes, we would like to revise history curriculum as it is taught in schools so that it more closely reflected empirical research. Let's talk about Andrew Jackson!

But that was all bluster TV shit. The scary, barely veiled threat was actually to Bernie socialists and the movements that are talking about real structural change. History has plenty of examples of this bloody tactic enabling demagogues to hold onto power. And he probably could rouse a little militia of patriot brownshirts to start patrolling the campuses and progressive enclaves. No shortage of deplorables out there. Even the good white citizens of South Dakota who cheered at his race and red baiting had their deplorable on. It is not hard to imagine (read a little Hannah Arendt) these folks scratching their heads a few years from now and asking: How could such horrors have taken place? What the heck got into us?

The signalling Trump (and S.Dakota's perky little governor- keep your eye on that one) did round "desecrating monuments" was particularly pernicious- he is obviously getting desperate and his instinct has always been to go low. But I suspect he is digging a hole he won't get out of. The covid and police shooting took all the wind from his sails. History is also moving in some other directions and rousting the Klan or holding hearings of the House Committee on Un-American Activities is not really a plan.