“That decadence is a cumulative thing. Certainly, it is nurtured both by dogma and nihilism. Only a sceptical meaningfulness can push forward in a creative way.”
~ Paul Adkin, Decadence & Stagnation
Many liberals in the United States have become or always were rather conservative in personality and/or ideology. This is an old complaint made by many further to the left, myself included.
Quite a few liberals maybe would have identified as conservatives at a different time or in a different society. The US political spectrum is shifted so far right that moderate conservatives appear as liberals and typically portray themselves as liberals, but even these moderate conservatives long to push society further right into neoliberal corporatism and neocon authoritarianism. That is how so much of the political left gets excluded from mainstream respectability and legitimacy for, in big biz media and plutocratic politics, even a moderate liberal gets portrayed as a radical.
But the other thing about our society is how reactionary it is, not merely right-wing in the way seen a century ago. This forces the entire political left into an oppositional position that gets defined by what it isn’t and so leftists are forced into a narrow corner of the dominant paradigm. This causes many left-wingers to be constantly on the defensive or to be overly preoccupied with the other side.
And it is so easy to become more like what is opposed. There is a surprising number of left-wingers who become right-wingers or otherwise fall into reactionary thinking, who become obsessed with fringe ideologies and movements that feed into authoritarianism or get lost in dark fantasies of dystopia and apocalypse. Many others on the political left simply lose hope, becoming cynical and apathetic.
In a society like this, it’s very difficult to remain solidly on the political left while maintaining balance. One hopes there is a sweet spot between what goes for liberalism and the far left, these two in themselves forming extremes on a spectrum.
The danger on the political right is far different. Conservative, right-wing, and reactionary have all become conflated into an ideological confusion that is held together by an authoritarian streak. This is a vague set of overlapping visons involving dominance and oppression, fear and anxiety, righteousness and resentment, nostalgia and pseudo-realism, theocracy and nationalism, crude libertarianism and fascist-like futurism.
This scattered political left and mixed-up political right is what goes for American politics.
How does an individual as a member of the public gain enough distance from the very social order that dominates the public mind and frames public debate, manages public perception and manipulates public behavior? And where does one find solid ground to make a stand?
* * *
Let me add some thoughts.
We Americans live in an authoritarian society. There is a long history of authoritarianism: genocide, slavery, land theft, population displacement, reservations, internment camps, re-enslavement through chain gangs, Jim Crow, sundown towns, race wars, redlining, eugenics, human medical testing, tough-on-crime laws, war on drugs, war on the poor, racial profiling, mass incarceration, police brutality, military-industrial complex, near continuous war-mongering, anti-democratic covert operations (foreign and domestic), intelligence-security state, plutocratic corporatism, inverted totalitarianism, etc.
In America, there were openly stated racist laws on the books for several centuries. Of course, we inherited this authoritarian tradition from Britain and Europe. They have their own long histories of imperialism, colonialism, genocide, pogroms, Holocaust, eugenics, ghettoization, exploitation, oppression, prejudice, violence, state terrorism, wars of aggression, world war, and on and on. We can’t rationalize this as being just human nature, as not all humans have acted this way. There are societies like the Piraha that wouldn’t even understand authoritarianism, much less be prone to it. But even among modern nation-states, not all of them have an extensive past of conquering and dominating other people.
Anyway, what other societies do is a moot issue, as far as dealing with one’s own society and one’s own culpability and complicity. So you say that you’re an anti-authoritarian. Well, good for you. What does that mean?
Our lives are ruled over by authoritarianism. But it’s not just something that comes from above for it is built into every aspect of our society and economy. On a daily basis, we act out scripts of authoritarianism and play by its rules. Our lives are dependent on the internalized benefits of externalized costs, the latter being mostly paid by the worst victims of authoritarianism, typically poor dark-skinned people in distant countries. The cheap gas and cheap products you consume were paid for by the blood and suffering of untold others who remain unseen and unheard.
Even to embrace anti-authoritarianism is to remain captured within the gravity of authoritarianism’s pull. The challenge is that maybe authoritarianism can’t ever be directly opposed because opposition is part of the language of authoritarianism. Opposition can always be co-opted, subverted, or redirected. There is either authoritarianism or there is not. For it to end, something entirely new would have to take its place.
This is where radical imagination comes in. We need entirely different thinking made possible through a paradigm shift, a revolution of the mind. We aren’t going to debate or analyze, petition or vote our way out of authoritarianism. That puts us in a tricky spot, for those of us dissatisfied with the options being forced upon us.
Reblogged this on pauladkin and commented:
Bejamin David Steele’s lucid call for a paradigm shift and a revolution of the mind. Compulsory reading …
Excellent. Exactly what we need.
The thoughts in this post go along with questions of what ‘moderation’ and ‘centrism’ can mean in the situation in which we find ourselves. Moderating what? And toward the center of what?
I always wonder about this when I meet self-righteous people proclaiming to be moderates and centrists, as if that morally puts them above it all. So, where the heck can one find a genuine balance point that isn’t as bad as the extremes?
It’s all being framed by the same social order with its carefully orchestrated public debate.
There may be a reason why the liberals class is “out of touch”.
Look at this image:
You can probably see why the top 10% think there was a recovery and are at a loss why the rest of us are so ticked off.
I’ve noticed that my rental cost goes up more every year than does cost-of-living increases in my paycheck. Like many cities, I’m living in a place that is being gentrified. It sure makes it hard for the average person to get by. And I make a decent living compared to many Americans. Those worse off than me are living in trailer parks outside of town and in rural areas, which forces them to commute long distances to work if they are lucky enough to have a job.
It explains though perfectly why they could not understand why Sanders had so much appeal. If all is well for the rich, why vote for change? To them, everything must seem find and dandy. Ditto for the top 10% who are doing very well. Note how for the top 3%, things are going super well.
Yeah I see Iowa City has issues:
http://www.thegazette.com/subject/news/business/iowa-city-has-higher-share-of-renters-paying-30-percent-or-more-of-income-to-housing-than-other-metros-20160501
30% of income on rent is what is known as “cost burdened”
That is unsurprising. That wouldn’t have been true when I was a kid living here in the 1980s. Iowa City was once more of a working class town with an industrial sector and factories. But over time, the university has come to almost entirely dominate the local economy and workforce. The working class has mostly left the town to live elsewhere, even when they still have jobs in or around the downtown of Iowa City. I pay more than I should for rent, but I’m able to get away with it because living so close to work allows me to not own a car.
It all goes back to this article:
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/11/clinton-election-polls-white-workers-firewall/
I guess for those in the top 10%, they knew what they were voting for – to screw the rest of us over.
They are getting rich off the profits of this too:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/08/18/life-under-capitalism-early-deaths-a-silver-lining-for-corporations/
I think the internet ate my comment.
Remember this?
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/11/clinton-election-polls-white-workers-firewall/
The top 10% knew what they were voting for. To screw the rest of us over.
They make money off the profits of this:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/08/18/life-under-capitalism-early-deaths-a-silver-lining-for-corporations/
Most Americans don’t hold stock. Only the rich hold most of it.
I found the other comment in the trash. It seems strange that any comment would be automatically put into trash. I’ll try to check spam and trash on a regular basis.
The Democrats didn’t exactly fail. The Clinton New Democrats are still in control. And it isn’t as if the plutocracy is under any serious threat at the moment.
It’s a highly successful model and, more important, highly profitable. It’s largely irrelevant which arm of the two-party system happens to win any given election.
The Democrats do seem to struggle to get money:
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/10/the-democratic-partys-looming-fundraising-crisis-215474
But yes, the top 10% are rich … at our expense.
I have doubts that it is actually a crisis. Both parties still have more access to wealth than seen in any political system on earth. Money still buys access and influence. It’s merely where the money is going at any given moment. Instead of campaigns, maybe money is being directed into political foundations, think tanks, astroturf, propaganda, lobbying, etc. There are many ways for the plutocracy to use their wealth to control the government and influence the public.
Apparently we are reduced to using Twitter to tell the dirty not-so-secret:
I like that clear and simple way of explaining it, although I don’t much like the reality it describes.
Apparently there is a study saying that Clinton being so pro-war may have cost her the election:
https://theintercept.com/2017/07/10/study-finds-relationship-between-high-military-casualties-and-votes-for-trump-over-clinton/
As for Clinton, remember her reaction to Libya:
Here’s the original from CBS:
I’ve never forgotten her reaction to Libya. I wrote an entire post about her bizarre tendency to laugh and smile at inappropriate moments. It forces any sane person to question her capacity for empathy and morality, especially when put into the context of her public statements and political record.
It’s why Lady Macbeth comments are appropriate.
Meanwhile, the DNC has gone crazy:
So much seems crazy. That is the new normal.
Sadly, this is how the money is spent:
Sigh … this is messed up.
People have been talking about this for a while. I remember this being discussed during the campaign season. Clinton and her DNC cronies was redirecting the funding away from the state level.
Maybe we should get on with splitting the Democrats into two:
http://rall.com/2017/03/14/democrats-will-split-party-progressives
That would be fine with me.