So You Want To Get Elected?

In the latest issue of Democratic Left (DSA newsletter), we socialists are told that "the media makes politics confusing on purpose, but really it's simple: through politics we can weigh in on how to manage our resources." Kind of like how Joe Manchin is "weighing in" on fossil fuels or AIPAC is "weighing in" on funding Israel's military. Simple. The DSA wants "more ordinary people like me or you to get involved in politics." This is what they taught us in "government" class in sixth grade, how the government is a marvelous and unique democracy "of ,by and for the people". Simple. "The world of politics" only "APPEARS daunting, confusing or downright ugly." But if you ask Bernie or AOC you will see it's actually cool. Sure, you'll have to join the Democratic Party in order to get funding, and sure, they have a few rules you'll want to follow. You may meet a lobbyist or two who will have some suggestions on how you should vote. And a few rich people will have some advice. In a democracy there is no taxation without representation and since capital pays a lot of taxes they get a lot of reps. Also, since there are lots and lots of stupid people, they deserve lots of representation as well. All those bigots and gun'loving patriots get to be represented. Welcome to simple politics. Vote for me. My Senator, John Tester, has figured out the best way to keep the job is to represent soldiers and veterans. Just stay vaguely neutral on everything else.

Crisis of Legitimation

Yurgen Habermas wrote a book called The Crisis of Legitimation which answered a lot of questions about liberal governmentality. I found my copy left in a motel room in Jackson Montana. The thesis of the book is that liberal capitalist "democracy" is fragile and rests on a thin veneer of legitimacy. Much like the stock market, the whole ediface requires consumer confidence. To maintain legitimacy with the public, the system must appear to uphold certain norms, certain traditions should be maintained, certain expectaitions met. Hegemony (the abscence of overt coercion) rests on this constructed consensus; shelves must remain stocked, the trains should run on time. In the liberal order citizens expect to exercise certain rights and above all private proprety rights must be sacred. But of course, as times change, norms shift. To the degree that consent is manufactured, that factory has to put in increasing amounts of overtime as the intersecting crises deepen. And while I still believe a point exists at which legitimacy would be thoroughly undermined, I am less and less sure it necessarily leads to revolt. It might just be that the population collectively disassociates from reality and accepts the simulation in the place of the real thing. Or it might be that all resistance is channeled into harmless protest and eventual cynicism. Drinking is a popular option. Beyond maintaining train schedules and protecting property, a legitimate government must protect certain interests,what the constitution refers to as the "general welfare", and safeguard enough "liberty" that enough of the population will grant it the exclusive right to use force. There must be a degree of equality and safety and a political sphere in which decision making takes place in some transperant fashion. The increasingly urgent question is: how far can these norms break down before the legitimacy of power is questioned? We know people have an amazing capacity for prefering illusion over reality. The Left has a relationship to psychoanalysis ,not shared by the Right, because "rational actor" theory fails to explain so much of everyday experience, including a willingness to legitimize irrational systems and oppresive institutions. What we see on the surface is again, a tremendous ability to adapt, to revise norms and consnt to madness.

Surly Slave Master

Well it looks like the gloves are coming off and I am hearing a lot of people say they are pissed. Now. Really pissed. Yeah. For instance, Roe v Wade got folks ( mostly gestators) really pissed. Really. Yes, capitalist "democracy" has been devolving into a dysfunctional, homicidal farce for some time now but hey, at least we still had some "rights". Right? The invasions and inequality and ecological destruction shit was bad but women could get abortions, the slave master at least was kind enough to let people experience a certain degree of autonomy over their body. More or less depending on your resources. And for a long time politicians and courts maintained the illusion of propriety and rational deliberation. It served everyones interests to let us feel like we had a government "of, for and by the people" with all the fancy constitutional decorum, the well-staged theatrical movements and drama. But maintaining the illusion has obviously become more trouble that it was worth and now we can just watch the sausage being made and if we don't like it, too fucking bad. My liberal friends are up in arms of course, ready to go out and turn that anger into action. To vote harder, knock on doors, sign petitions, long for the day Hillary or Mayor Pete can take over and steer the ship of state back to that comforting illusion of rationality and reason. Give us back our rights, please, Master, we'll promise to behave. To work harder. To keep buying. To shut up about fossil fuels. To send weapons wherever they are needed (schools, churches, Ukraine, etc..) Whatever it takes. Just as conservatives long for that mythical time when things made sense, liberals long for the time when black robes made jurors "supreme" and beyond politics.

The EPA

Thom Hartman is terrified the conservative Supreme Court is preparing to overturn environmental law as we know it. I say, good riddance. He writes: "they want to turn regulatory agency rule-making upside down" and then proceeds to explain how good capitalist state regulation is SUPPOSED to work. The true believers in a kinder, more sustainable capitalism (the kind slave master) never lose their faith, even when the EPA and all the regulations and all the well-meaning bureaucrats have not prevented environmental breakdown on a planet-threatening level. If the SCOTUS wants to puncture the illusion, like Trump punctured the illusion of "democracy", Please, let them lift the veil. Here isThom describing the great way things currently work: "The experts’ suggestions are then run past a panel of rule-making bureaucrats and hired-gun rule-making experts for the EPA to decide what the standards should be. They take into consideration the current abilities of industry and the costs versus the benefits of various rules, among other things." In each part of that description you can see exactly why we still have lead pipes for drinking water, still have pesticides and hebicides, are rapidly approaching 425 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere. What could possibly go wrong as we weigh "costs and benefits"? Costs as seen through the lens of the capitalist market. Costs externalized away. Thom has never recognized this? He goes on to say: "Congress passes laws that empower regulatory agencies to solve problems, the agencies figure out how and put the rules into place, and the solutions get enforced by the agencies." Just like the Magnificent Framers of the Constitution imagined it! It must be nice to live in such a fantasy world. I recall being taught all this pablum in civics class in jr.High, the reverence in the teachers voice for the Divinely inspired wisdom of OUR Fathers. This is a painful period for liberals, learning how the Supremes are actually just a bunch of ideological hacks, how politicians don't actually do politics, how capitalist democracy is just one big "cost- benefit analysis." And the EPA doesn't actually protect the environment. Bummer.

"A People"

Are the Balkans an extreme expression of "identity politics"? Should we be trying to foster "class belonging " among the Serbs, Bosniaks, Croats, transcending their identification as an ethnicity, a religious sect, a nation or a people? Good luck with that project. That was Tito's communist Yugoslavia, a time and space no one seems to want to revitalize. Now we have Bosnians, Russians, the Republic Sripska, Americans, Ukranians all with their insane myths and flags and greivances. The workers in these nations do not feel exploited by their bosses, they feel threatened by The Other. The other worker who is their ancient enemy. Or who is trying to cross THEIR border to take THEIR job. We The People.

Bad Moon Rising

The combination of looming recession, international conflict and a hollowed out politics does not bode well for positive climate action. Instead of consensus around a radical re-ordering of energy and investment in new infrastructure, we will see the forces of reaction cling ever more desperately to an imaginary "way of life" and chauvinist economic nationalism. Post-modernism and socialism will be the perfect scapegoats, thinly veiled references to "the Jew". The combination of inflation and cuts to social services will throw increasing numbers out on to the already teeming streets, make-shift camps and over-whelmed shelters. Still they will wave their flags, support the police, fear the government, flock to churches. The reverbations from the war in Ukraine will multiply. The infatuation with Zelinski and his tight t shirts will wear off as bread lines grow and yet another US failure will embolden China to push buttons. The US electoral freak show will give us the same worn out slogans and rent will consume more and more of the average paycheck. Still the free market will retain its sacred status for the average worker, even as the fires rage and hurricanes swamp cities. As the repo man comes for that brand new eightcylindar pickup truck, you can wave your Gadsen flag. Stop the steal. Harvard trained economists will recognize all this misery as the "business cycle", the thing capitalism does every so often to self correct. These people in their tents are "creative destruction", the necessary destruction of over-capacity, those being foreclosed and evicted are the re-set, and government can't interfere in the perfect mechanism of The Market. So sorry. This too shall pass. The ruling elite know this destruction only lasts so long and so they will hunker down, hang on to their portfolio, maybe buy the dip and come out better than before. History tells us so. Except for this one annoying little glitch around climate pricing. For some wacky reason the perfect market isn't factoring in the ecological destruction of the very basis for all the value, all the surplus, all the wealth waiting at the end of the rainbow. That's a qualitatively different kind of bubble.

Because Capital Doesn't Care

The June 14 NY Times is awash in information about climate chaos but they make the assumption that those with power actually care how many people die. Columnist Paul Krugman took a break from telling us inflation is no biggie, to start worrying about the lack of response to climate chaos. He cites the drying up of Salt Lake and wonders why no one is doing anything about it. Listen Paul: Capital doesn't care. While individual and mostly local capitalists are nervous about the impacts of poisonous dust clouds, decimated bird populations, diminished snowpack etc.., they also realize that putting more water in the lake hurts development and economic growth, that is, affects the essential circuits of Capital. A wicked problem indeed. A little late to feign surprise Paul. Krugman points to the Aral Sea as an example of what is to be avoided but why stop there? There are millions of examples of purposefully destroyed ecosystems and they all have the same root cause. Paul thinks it is up to "policy makers to act." Where is rationality, he wonders? Then there is the report from Southeast Asia on the "fresh urgency" of climate change "worries", that is, farmers dying of heat stroke or committing suicide over personal economic ruin. They all need to understand, Capital doesn't care if they all die. Readers of the Times will care, will fret, will "worry", but will do nothing to stop emissions. Like the Salt Lake "policy makers", they all know the reality. “This is everyday climate change at work: a slow-onset shift in environmental conditions that is destroying lives and livelihoods before our eyes,” write the activists about conditions in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Nepal. In his novel Ministry of the Future, author Kim Stanley Robinson imagines a day when wet-bulb temperatures kill tens of millions and THEN "policy makers" snap to attention. A day, an Event, a rupture. Anything but The Long Now we currently endure. Then the Times has pictures of roads in Yellowstone Park washed out by flooding and a piece wondering if "carbon capture can be part of the climate solution". Some gal from the "office of fossil energy and carbon management" says yes. Office of Carbon Management? Really? Do they know that Capital doesn't care? They will do something, "Yes, but not now, not yet" to quote Stuart Hall. We live in what he called "The Great Moving Nowhere Show" because it is all frantic enrgy but never actual movement. Not the Long Arc of History bending toward Justice or anything else. Just "The Long Slow Cancellation of the Future" as Mark Fisher (RIP) put it.