Everybody Hates

Before we encounter another situation like Charlottesville (which was exactly 3 months ago as of this weekend), I’d like to address something my fellow Leftists and Liberals seem to be overlooking. I followed the events of that day on TV and social media. Like most people, I was horrified by what happened, wondering if our country was about to be engulfed in a Second Civil War.

I registered my anger on Twitter. But I saw something else arise from the Left that day and not for the first time. Many of my compatriots’ tweets and Facebook posts were seething with a visceral hatred. They really seemed to hate the white supremacists they were watching on TV.

Now I would regard this as a healthy reaction. We saw people beating up other people apparently just because of their politics. That’s reprehensible. It’s only natural to get angry at the neo-Nazi’s and other Right-wingers who were engaging in violence, especially when the police didn’t seem to be doing anything about it.

The problem is that most people on the Left refuse to admit that they hate anyone. They insist that hatred is something felt only by racists, sexists and other deplorables. That’s an interesting position to take. I think the key is in how you define “hate.” (I’m going to take the hack approach now and cite a dictionary definition. Do not be alarmed. I am a trained professional.)

The Penguin Dictionary of Psychology defines hate as a "deep, enduring, intense emotion expressing animosity, anger, and hostility towards a person, group, or object.” (And, yes, I found that on Wikipedia.) I would add that the hostility is not based in logic. To me, hatred is irrational. It ultimately has nothing to do with whether or not the object of your hatred poses a threat to you.

I’d like you to keep that definition in mind if you choose to read “Hate is the New Sex,” a typically brilliant essay by the greatest living nonfiction writer I’ve ever come across, John Michael Greer, a.k.a. “the Archdruid.” (Don’t be embarrassed if you’ve never heard of him; he’s not particularly famous. But, seriously, check it out, because the man is a fucking GENIUS.)

His point is that hate is a natural human emotion that everyone feels sometimes, and, by denying its legitimacy, we’re doing what the Victorians did with sex: filling people with so much shame about it that it’s being repressed and twisted into dangerous behavior. We’re pathologizing it. I think Greer puts it best in this passage:

“That’s what happens whenever people decide that an ordinary human emotion is unacceptable and insist that good people don’t experience it. A culture of pretense, hypocrisy, and evasion springs up to allow them to vent the unacceptable emotion on some set of acceptable targets without admitting that they were (sic) doing so.”

Just as the Victorians ascribed sexual desire to the lower classes, we ascribe hate to the white working class, the rednecks or, as they’ve also been known, “white trash.” They are the socially, intellectually and morally inferior people who are susceptible to the temptation of hate. This has the added benefit of providing a moral justification for our classist contempt of them.

So who are the acceptable targets for our hate? Why, the haters, of course, those very rednecks we accuse of being filled with hate themselves. They are so richly deserving of our hate though, being bent on the destruction of whole races. They must be destroyed before they destroy others, right?

This is a disturbing argument that has recently come to prominence. The following comic strip appeared in a Democratic Socialists of America email right after the Charlottesville clashes. (I’m on their email list.) It claims that intolerant groups cannot be tolerated, because doing so will lead to those groups taking over.

The result of this belief is so obviously horrible that it’s no wonder it came from a philosopher. When you destroy the monster, you become the monster. Destroying one’s enemy doesn’t lead to peace and tranquility. It leads to more violence, more repression and a search for more enemies.

It’s worth remembering that we didn’t destroy all the Nazi’s in Germany after the war. We executed the leaders and left the rest of them pretty much alone (not counting a heaping helping of propaganda and military occupation). In fact, West Germany was the third-largest recipient of funds in the Marshall Plan. What finished off Nazism was the Allies’ mercy, not our might.

But, in our current worldview, hate is an absolute evil that must be amputated from the human soul. This Western habit of identifying “evil” aspects of our nature (hate, sex, left-handedness) and trying to rid ourselves of them has a terrible track record. As the Archdruid points out, the Victorian fear of sex led to the Sexual Revolution of the 60’s and 70’s. Our current psychological climate could spawn a “Revolution of Hate,” an idea that conjures images of the Holocaust and all the worst atrocities of the 20th Century.

We need to remember that we all have the potential to become monsters, but not because we all feel hate. Any impulse can be destructive when taken to extremes, even the extreme of repressing one’s instinct to hate. Rather than denying our urges and trying to destroy those urges in others, we should learn to control them. Then we needn’t fear the monster in the mirror, and we can stop projecting that monster onto others.

The Orange Stain

I got an email this week, imploring me to “Tell Congress: Don’t let Trump spy on us.” I’ve gotten other similar emails since the 45th President took office, encouraging me to strip Trump of his ability to unilaterally order a nuclear strike or oppose his pro-Big Business policies. These are all good ideas, but they were good before Trump became President.

The real question is: Should any President be able to spy on us, unilaterally order a nuclear strike or pass laws by decree (a.k.a. "executive orders")? The answer should be a resounding “no,” no matter who’s in office. I’m glad opposition to Trump has brought these issues to the fore, but we shouldn’t need such a bad President to make these powers seem like a bad idea.

This is why the Establishment is so pissed off at Trump. He’s thrown a big wrench in the imperial machinery. The Empire used to be run by dignified adults who supposedly knew what they were doing. But Trump is so crude and obviously incompetent they can no longer carry on the charade. Worst of all, he has infected the Elite’s favorite policies with his stink.

Instead of associating neoliberal economics and neoconservative foreign policy with “serious” people like Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan or Barack Obama, we’re associating them with Mr. Cheezy Poof. If you support the U.S. bombing campaign in Syria, then you’re also supporting Trump. If you support the Free Market handling healthcare, you’re supporting Trump. If you support tax cuts for the rich and corporations, you’re supporting Trump (although that should’ve been obvious already).

The thin veil of legitimacy has been ripped off, and the status quo stands naked before us, in all its crass, venal, orange-haired ugliness. Trump represents the grotesque greed and paranoid power-hunger at the heart of the Establishment, with all the polish and sophistication removed. The Elite are being forced to defend their policies on merit alone, and they can’t.

They need to get a smooth, slick puppet back in the White House, someone like Obama, but further to the Right. The problem with Hillary is we wouldn’t have followed her off a cliff, and, ultimately, that’s the kind of loyalty the President must inspire, because that’s where the Elite wants to take us.

Many people thought Trump would immediately drive us off that cliff, but that only would’ve happened had we followed the Elite conception of democracy. This holds that the public’s political activity should be limited to voting for Establishment-approved candidates. The rest of the time we’re supposed to just sit back and let them do their jobs.

Instead, people filled the streets after the election and have fought the GOP’s agenda tooth-and-nail. As a result, Obamacare has been preserved, the Muslim immigration ban has been limited and the Wall has not even been funded, much less built. The Republicans may control both houses of Congress and the White House, but they still have to answer to the People (as long as the People are willing to get off their asses).

Trump is a constant reminder that we can’t just let politicians do what they want. On a daily basis, he proves how clueless and corrupt our leaders are. This is precisely what the Establishment was afraid of. They wanted to keep us passive, sitting on our hands while politicians and moneyed interests run the country.

In an ideal democracy, we’d all be involved in government decisions. But that’s hard and time-consuming. It also seems impossible, considering the dilapidated condition of American democracy. Out of fatigue and frustration with our neglected, corrupt model, many have given up on effecting change through politics.

Their hopelessness, however, comes at the wrong time. Lots of people looked on the 2016 election as a cause for despair, but really it should be seen as a reason for hope. It showed how the forces that have controlled American politics for decades (Big Business, the Mainstream Media and the leadership of the major parties) are quickly losing power.

Trump won the Presidency despite the opposition of the entire GOP establishment and the MSM (with the predictable exception of Fox News). Bernie nearly won the Democratic nomination facing the same level of resistance from the DNC and a near-total MSM blackout. The signs should be obvious: The Elite are teetering on the brink of irrelevance.

Now is the time to act. We can no longer blame the Establishment for keeping us from changing things. Its shackles are melting. We must throw them off before another ruling class arises to replace them.

Uncle Sam, Lady Liberty and the Holy Ghost

In my last essay, I detailed how our political discourse focuses on style to distract us from the troubling substance of the policies underneath. This is mainly done for the benefit of the Elite, so they can continue pumping wealth from the imperial periphery, the external and internal proletariats, to the core, i.e., themselves. But there’s also a psychological benefit for the rest of us.

Politicians protect us from the truth. We want them to lie to us. Most of the time, we don’t really want to know the awful shit they’re doing on our behalf. That’s a job best left to our social betters, which is what we expect our politicians to be. Being a social better means putting on a good show, turning chicken shit into chicken salad, as it were. We may not trust the elite to do what’s best for us, but we at least trust them to be discreet.

We’ve got enough on our plates. We lack the emotional resilience and community support to deal with such a heavy psychological burden. As Shakespeare wrote in Henry IV, Part II (and, yes, I had to look it up), “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.” If most Americans knew about the horrors of the global economy that enables our lifestyle, they probably wouldn’t be able to function. They certainly wouldn’t continue going along with the program.

We also don’t wanna think about it because we either don’t know how to fix it or we don’t wanna fix it. This imperial arrangement is the source of our comforts and luxuries. Why would we wanna give that up? Even those of us who are willing to go without are at a loss for how to dismantle the Empire. That would require an organized, mass political movement, and we are far too atomized to believe in the plausibility of such an enterprise.

Soft propaganda works on the middle class. They’re already getting a decent share of the imperial tribute. It’s enough for them to know that our foreign policy and economy may not always work out for the best for everyone, but we mean well. For the poorer classes, a stronger message is required.

You may have noticed how working-class whites are renowned for their patriotism. Many of them seem to wrap themselves in the flag as protection from any unpleasant truths about America’s role in the world. People often cling to beliefs more tightly when those beliefs are losing legitimacy or being challenged. This seems to be the case with American nationalism now, as doubts grow about the righteousness of the endless War on Terror.

But what else do they have? NASCAR? Country music? Christian denominations increasingly focused on denying access to abortion and rights to LGBTQ people? Mainstream Protestant Christianity has strayed so far from the “meek shall inherit the earth” message that it now features the Prosperity Gospel, the belief that faith in Jesus can make you rich. In other words, their church is expressly telling them they’re poor because they lack faith.

Is it any wonder they’ve turned to a quasi-religious nationalism? Their communities have collapsed, their job prospects have virtually disappeared and their god has no sympathy for them. Who else can they turn to but Uncle Sam? Of course, this is Uncle Sam in his G.I. Joe incarnation, not the DMV clerk version that complicates their lives with red tape and never provides as much of the social services as he promises.

Trump has no interest in shoring up those domestic programs, but he can put the B-52’s back on 24-hour ready alert to pump some life back into American jingoism. Uncle Sam as death-bringer to the rest of the world is the modern patriot’s preferred role for the U.S. government. The wealthiest nation in the history of the world is apparently unable to provide healthcare or housing or jobs to all of its citizens, but we can blow up the world many times over.

In the face of this onslaught of warmongering and the engineered failure of domestic programs, much of the working class abandons any hope that government can be a caring nurturer, a mother figure, and embraces the military, the nation-state’s disciplinarian, law-giving father figure. The military can provide employment, housing and access to higher education, all the things the civilian government is supposed to provide, or at least help with. In addition, it provides a sense of purpose and community with fellow soldiers and their families.

Even if the military doesn’t provide a great living, and even if you’re not in the military, it’s still an effective rallying cry. The government may suck at providing for its citizens, but we can still kick every other country’s ass. If you’re not (consciously) crazy about militarism, you can tell yourself that we’re making the world safe for Democracy. The decay of American communities and families has left us with few other options for a sense of belonging.

The Empire has given us unparalleled material comfort, but it has left us emotionally and psychologically bereft. We’re the Poor Little Rich Kids, surrounded by entertainments, but unable to fill the hole in our soul. To whom can we reach out but to that big Uncle Sam in the sky? Or, if you’re in the mood for some nurturing, how about Lady Liberty?

Dirty Hands

In all the outrage over Trump’s behavior, what gets lost is far more significant. Yes, yes, Trump is a crass, boorish schmuck (and likely sexual predator). I get that. But, in substance, his administration isn’t all that different from what came before. There’s overwhelming continuity between his policies and Obama’s and, before him, Dubya’s.

Trump is continuing (and escalating) the bombing of Syria. He’s carrying on the Obama Administration’s military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia (among others) and their support for the Saudis’ war against Yemen. He has maintained Obama and Dubya’s refusal to hold Wall Street accountable for its titanic acts of fraud and malfeasance. Most important of all, despite his many campaign promises to the contrary, he has preserved his predecessors’ slavish devotion to Big Business at the expense of everyone else.

So what’s the big deal? Sure, Trump gets mixed up with unsavory characters like Roy Cohn and Billy Bush. He didn’t even bother to make sure that mic on the bus was turned off before he bragged about grabbing women “by the pussy.” His personal failings are legion and obvious. They’re not well-hidden like JFK’s infidelities, Reagan’s senility or Nixon’s paranoia.

But what does that have to do with the fate of the Free World? In a word, nothing. The discovery of Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky didn’t inspire millions more American men to cheat on their wives, nor did it lead to death and destruction (or at least nothing out of the ordinary). Trump’s personal history of sexual assault isn’t likely to trigger an increase in sexual harassment across the country. But, given the way many people react to Trump, that’s what they seem to believe.

The truth is America’s Business-As-Usual is the real problem. For all the panic over “normalizing” Trump, we forget that our national atrocities were normalized a long time ago. From the genocide of Native Americans to slavery and Jim Crow to the death of over a million people in Iraq alone, the U.S.’s criminal record is long and bloody. Our problems are much older, much more serious and run much deeper than Trump.

So why all the hand-wringing over 45? The difference between Trump and his predecessors is not that he’s a con man and a criminal. He’s a freaking politician, for god’s sake! It’s not like he was running against choirboys and -girls. The difference is Trump is a bad con man and a blatant criminal. He’s not an effective liar. His act is transparent. He offends our sense of propriety because he lacks the subtlety to give a convincing performance. At least Hillary would’ve put some effort into sounding empathetic. Maybe she even feels empathy for her victims, but she still would’ve bombed that airbase in Syria.

Trump has shown us as we truly are: an ugly, violent, rapacious empire. To trot out a tired cliché, Trump isn’t the president we want; he’s the president we deserve. An old, fat, ignorant, belligerent, bigoted, paranoid, entitled, rich, White man who was born into obscene privilege is the perfect symbol of today’s America. He’s got everything, yet he insists that he needs more money and more protection.

We prefer politicians who flatter our vanity. That’s why Obama was the perfect president for our age. He’s a handsome, charismatic, articulate orator whose very appearance (as a Black Person in the White House) confirmed our most deeply-cherished hopes about the continuing viability of the American Dream. We’d rather think of ourselves as the inheritors of MLK’s legacy, glorified by the honeyed words of Obama, borne aloft by his soaring oratory, carried to the Promised Land on rhetorical wings of poetry.

We aren’t people who use smartphones made in Chinese factories so terrible the workers routinely attempt suicide. We aren’t the people whose clothes are made in sweatshops, whose gizmos are made of rare earth minerals mined overseas, poisoning the workers and the surrounding communities with toxic runoff.

We elected a Black man president and nominated a woman for the same job! We didn’t just stand idly by as that Black president deported 3 million people, protected Wall Street from criminal prosecution and continued the wars of his predecessor. We didn’t conveniently ignore that woman’s enthusiasm for “humanitarian” intervention, her lucrative speaking tour of the country’s biggest financial corporations or her careless disregard for national security.

Do you think the Middle Easterners killed by Obama cared that he’s a “woke” African-American who isn’t racist, sexist or Islamophobic? Do you think they passed from this life to the next in peace, content in the knowledge that they had been executed by a sensitive, highly intelligent president? Surely, they must have, for Obama used only the most culturally-sensitive missiles on his drones, the I-Feel-Your-Pain 5000, left over from the Clinton Administration. I’m sure he was kind enough to write their names in Arabic (or Farsi or Somali or…) when he filled out his Kill List.

We all long for the Good Ol’ Days, when our leaders were far more discreet about our mass murders, so we didn’t have to think about ‘em so much. They killed people with class. They didn’t brag about it. They were very dignified. Now we have this ogre who must parade our dirty laundry around like a trophy. He’s made it very difficult to get anything done.

Did Obama ever crow over some drone strike? Certainly not! He understood the importance of maintaining a low profile for that sort of thing. No one likes to think about it, but it must be done if we’re to continue making the world safe for Democracy. It takes a real professional to handle these things with the delicacy and discretion they demand.

Trump is castigated for committing the Elite’s ultimate sin: He’s gotten his hands dirty. In order to be truly presidential, you must have others do your dirty work. Ideally, it would be a nice, clean, surgical drone strike: no muss, no fuss. Only a vulgar oaf would try to draw attention to that unpleasant business.

His personal crimes pale in comparison to any president’s professional crimes. But those crimes have the imprimatur of the state. Those are patriotic crimes done in the name of the Flag, Mom and Apple Pie. Therefore, they’re not crimes.

It’s ironic that the Elite should most loathe Trump, our shallowest president, for it was their shallowness that paved his way. They only wanted to put a happy Black face (and then a woman’s face) on the status quo. They have no interest in fundamental change. They just don’t want to be reminded of the blood on their hands – and ours.

Sports & Patriotism

In his distinctive, scorched-earth style, President Trump is resorting to theatrics to distract from the many miserable failures he’s already piled up since he took up residence in the White House. It’s a dangerous game he’s playing, because, in the process of making a fool of himself, he’s also exposing the propaganda embedded in everyday life.

In this latest controversy, the question seems to be whether professional athletes should be forced to stand during the performance of the national anthem before each game. The fact that this is a controversy at all is highly instructive. Is this not still a free country? Is the First Amendment no longer in effect?

To me, this seems like an open-and-shut case of free expression. But, obviously, to a lot of people this is not about athletes expressing their personal beliefs. Therefore, we’ll have to dig deeper to get to the roots of the issue.

First off the bat is a question I’d like answered: What exactly is the connection between sports and patriotism? As far as I know, no one in the Mainstream Media has even thought to ask. The connection is treated as a given. It seems like we’ve always performed the national anthem before games, so what’s to question?

According to WaPo, the tradition began in the 1918 World Series, a spontaneous musical selection by the military band at Comiskey Park. They were apparently trying to lift the crowd’s spirit, which was dampened by the still-raging World War I. By 1931, when “The Star-Spangled Banner” became the official national anthem, the practice had spread to other sports. Despite a few attempts to abandon it, the custom has held on and become part of the bedrock of American life.

But why? We don’t perform the national anthem before other entertainments, like concerts or plays or movies. Yet every sporting event of any consequence, NFL games, college volleyball games, high school lacrosse games, must be preceded by veneration of the Homeland.

It’s because sports aren’t like other entertainments. Primarily, they’re a celebration of the American and Capitalist value of competition. We send our best out onto what is supposed to be a “level playing field” to determine who’s really the best. It’s a pageant meant to enact the meritocracy that our country is supposed to embody. Even if the victor wins by breaking the rules, we still admire them for their craftiness and especially their monomania to be the best in their chosen field.

Not only must every athletic contest include a de facto loyalty test, but it’s a specific kind of patriotism that is being demanded of all participants and spectators. You must express your support for the police and military of the United States in particular. These are the institutions that “sanctify” the games through their participation in pregame ceremonies. What’s being sanctified is the power of the games to instill in their participants (and spectators) martial virtues, like obedience (a.k.a. “a good attitude”), sacrificing one’s personal well-being for collective glory (“teamwork”) and silent acceptance of physical and emotional pain (“toughness”).

Why only honor the forces of law enforcement at home and abroad? Why not people from the DMV or other civil servants? Because they don’t embody the elite conception of legitimate government. They represent the Dark Side of government: social services for the non-rich provided by taxes on the rich. To the elite, government is only good domestically when it’s enforcing property rights and keeping undesirables in line. Abroad, the military can do pretty much whatever it wants, whether that means killing, torturing, raping, etc.

These are the Heroes, not the weak “peacemakers,” as mentioned by Jesus in one of the wussier parts of the Gospels. And what do the police and military represent? The Power of the United States: Law and Order, strength, obedience, individuals being subsumed into the nation, the euphoria we can tap into by surrendering our personal needs and desires to the will of the national body politic.

This is the idea, as represented by the Flag, to which athletes must pledge allegiance before every game. In exchange for millions of dollars and our adoration, professional athletes must forfeit their First Amendment rights. It seems a small price to pay. After all, this is the greatest country on Earth, the Land of Opportunity. They owe their riches to America, Lady Liberty and the Stars and Stripes.

Never mind that most professional athletes had to overcome poverty, racism and other severe social obstacles to reach the pinnacle of their profession. Many of them are Black, Latino, from poor families and rough neighborhoods, the kinds of people who often can’t avoid run-ins with the Law no matter how carefully they toe the line. They may already have uncomfortably personal relationships with the officers sanctifying their games.

But in their role as athletes, they’re not individuals who overcame extreme hardship to become the best at what they do. They’re ungrateful, spoiled brats who would be nothing without the good ol’ U. S. of A.

Athletes are supposed to put blinders on and focus only on their sport. They can have outside interests as long as it doesn’t interfere with their athletic performance and as long as we don’t have to hear about it. Watching sports is supposed to be escapist entertainment. We don’t want the real world to intrude on the playing field. We have enough problems of our own to worry about. We don’t wanna be lectured about somebody else’s problems by a bunch of millionaires.

Like Roman gladiators, they must pay homage to the Empire before sacrificing themselves for fame and fortune. In the Romans’ day, the price was death and dismemberment. Now it’s concussions and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).

It’s not the protesters (or Trump) who politicized football. Sports were already political. They’ve merely made the politics in sports explicit (fittingly for Trump, since he turned politics into pure spectacle). Instead of being “presidential” and letting us have our bread and circus, Trump continues to upset the delicate balance of distraction. Who will still want to defend the Empire when there are no distractions left?

Selective Outrage

As I mentioned in my last post, I was overcome by depression on Election Night. But my despair lifted after a few days. Then I began to wonder: Why had it been so easy for me to recover from my politically-induced anxiety? I hadn’t made a reasoned argument against fearing for the future of the Republic. Was I simply enjoying my privilege as a member of one of America’s most secure demographics: white, middle-class males?

I had to do some self-analysis and political analysis. I’m not someone who can just feel good and leave it at that. I have to know if I should feel good and, if so, why. (Maybe it’s a Catholic thing.)

It took a while to remember that, to me, all our presidents have been mass murderers (mainly through war or “humanitarian intervention,” but also by way of domestic policies that coddle the rich and throw everyone else under the bus). I forgot because I’ve had to repress my belief that America is an empire to maintain my middle-class lifestyle. The spiritual dissonance of believing that the U.S. is basically a huge Machine of Death, while being a cog in that machine (i.e., working in the corporate world), was too much to bear.

When seen in this light, having a sexual predator in the White House isn’t a big deal. From my perspective (and the perspective of most of the world), every president has a mountain of corpses to his credit. Trump’s sexual harassment and (alleged) assaults are like a bit of rubbish sprinkled on top of his (small, but growing) corpse-mountain. It’s not a good look, but, ultimately, the difference is cosmetic.

I think the main reason for Liberals’ distress is the fact that they’ve bought into the personalization of politics. In recent decades, the Mainstream Media (or “MSM”) have taught us to believe that political candidates should primarily be judged by their personalities rather than their policies. This technique is meant to distract us from real political issues. It’s also an effective way for the MSM to tar-and-feather candidates the Establishment doesn’t like and flatter those they do.

And, boy, do they hate Trump. I doubt any politician in American history has been vilified by the press as thoroughly as he. Granted, he deserves it. He seems to be a despicable human being. But a politician’s personal morality has no bearing on their public policies. Trump can’t wipe out an Afghan wedding party with a vulgar tweet or deny millions of people health insurance by raping a woman. Only government policies can do that.

Considering the many reprehensible people who’ve served in public office throughout American history and escaped serious media scrutiny, it seems unlikely that Trump would’ve attracted this barrage of condemnation if he hadn’t threatened the Establishment through his policy positions. The truth is he actually has taken some meaningfully subversive stands, although you wouldn’t know it from the media coverage.

He repeatedly bashed the decision to invade Iraq. He even criticized Dubya for letting 9/11 happen on his watch, a perfectly reasonable critique that no one in Washington has dared to broach. These positions are so repugnant to the Mainstream that he was booed by the studio audience in televised Republican debates for advancing them. Most important of all, his opposition to “free trade” agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and NAFTA was one of the few consistent stances in his campaign.

These are ideas that threaten the Establishment’s hold on power, because they undermine the geopolitical and economic foundations of the American Empire, and they’re popular. Therefore, the MSM must ignore them and focus on his truly wacky beliefs. His 2012 presidential campaign was built on his membership in the “birther” community, a right-wing cadre of conspiracy theorists who question the validity of Obama’s U.S. citizenship. This and other absurd convictions provide plenty of fodder for mainstream mockery.

The MSM has also latched onto the Russian interference story with a death-grip. Despite a continuing paucity of evidence, each new revelation is treated as the final nail in the coffin of the Trump Administration. They would much rather blame Trump’s election on the Russkies than on the glaring unpopularity of Hillary’s record and platform. (The claim that the 2016 Democratic platform was “the most progressive platform in American history” surely set FDR’s and LBJ’s corpses spinning, never mind McGovern.) Hillary is the living embodiment of the Washington Consensus, and her loss represented a stunning rejection of their agenda.

The MSM are clearly trying to drive Trump from office. This is a noble effort on its face, but their standards for what constitutes “unpresidential” behavior seem shallow and self-serving. They want to paint Trump as a vulgar puppet in a Russian plot, thereby preserving the status quo and providing propaganda support for the continuing US/NATO military buildup along Russia’s western border.

Trump should be toppled, but the best reasons to do so are for his intensifying the policies established by his predecessors and cherished by the Establishment: killing people overseas and oppressing the most vulnerable at home. Of course, removing Trump on that basis would weaken the Powers That Be, and the MSM won’t do that. After all, if they helped overturn the status quo, who would sign their paychecks?

Behind the Curtain

Like most people on the Left, I was despondent on Election Night. Head in hands, I tried to make sense of it all, tried to convince myself that it wasn’t as bad as it seemed. I tried to believe that our country hadn’t been taken over by Fascists. It took a few days, but I eventually snapped out of it.

The weekend after the election I went on Twitter to try and help build a new Democratic Party. I replied to a few Hillary supporters (whom I will hereafter refer to as “Liberals”), saying that we needed a party that actually stood for something and wasn’t just Republican Lite. Their responses were instructive. One said I was “clearly delusional.” Another said my comment was a sign of “latent misogyny.”

So, to recap, my substantive critique of Hillary’s candidacy was brushed aside as either sexist or totally out-to-lunch. I quickly realized what should’ve been obvious beforehand: Social media platforms aren’t the ideal venue for constructive political debate. But, in defense of my opponents, they appeared to be women, and I am a white, middle-class man. They had much more to fear from a Trump presidency than I did.

Trump quickly justified their fears by adopting the misogynist policies of a typical Republican administration, limiting access to abortion at home and abroad and showing zero interest in addressing the gender wage gap. He has even outdone the GOP establishment in terms of racism and xenophobia by issuing a travel ban against seven Muslim-majority countries in the Middle East. Once again, two traditionally marginalized groups, women and people of color (POC), are being sacrificed to “make America great again.”

But the mainstream media’s (MSM) response to this has been far more hostile than their reaction to similar policies instituted by George W. Bush and Barack Obama during their presidencies. And Liberals’ immediate loathing of President Trump outstripped even their disdain of Dubya following the 2000 election debacle. There’s plenty of criticism of his policies, but this is nearly drowned out by the chorus of outrage at his behavior. What really seems to have people up in arms is Trump’s boorishness, which is considered “unbecoming of the Office of the President of the United States of America.”

For this reason, it’s been hard for me to take much of the “Resistance” seriously. The main criticism of Trump is a matter of style, not substance. Beneath the crass surface, there remains significant continuity between the Trump and Obama Administrations (just as there was significant continuity between Obama and his predecessor).

Trump has merely escalated Obama’s wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Somalia, most of which he inherited from Dubya and did little to nothing in eight years to end or diminish. Denying entry to the Homeland to dozens or hundreds of people from these countries seems like small potatoes compared to killing thousands of their countrymen and -women each year.

Trump has also continued the tradition of handing control of the economy to the Captains of Wall Street, especially those from Goldman Sachs. We can surely expect a positively Obama-like deference to the High Priests of Finance, whom the previous administration spared from prosecution for the egregious acts of fraud and malfeasance that precipitated the Great Recession.

Given her record, there was every reason to believe that Hillary would sustain these policies. At least with Trump there’s a chance (albeit tiny and shrinking by the day) he’ll chart a different course for the country. Even if you’re a woman or POC, the issues on which mainstream Democrats and Republicans actually differ (abortion, LGBTQ rights) are minor compared to those on which they agree (economics, foreign policy).

As much as the MSM would like us to believe that everything was fine until Trump came along, things haven’t changed that much since he took office. We haven’t been taken over by Fascists. Trump has spouted a lot of vile invective reminiscent of Hitler and Mussolini, but he bears a much closer resemblance to the Wizard of Oz, a seasoned showman who draws our attention away from the real action. If you pull back the curtain, you’ll find the same Wizards of Wall Street who got us into this mess in the first place.

The Superdelegate Sham

As a "Bernie Bro," I was feeling rather down-in-the-dumps after Super Tuesday, even though Bernie did much better than many polls were predicting. (A Star Tribune/Mason-Dixon poll in January had Hillary winning Minnesota by 34%. Bernie won by 23.4%. They should probably check their methodology.) Websites kept showing Hillary with over 1,000 delegates and Bernie with 400-something. I figured it was over.

Until I saw the front page of the aforementioned Star Tribune (or "Strib") later that week. They showed Hillary with fewer than 600 delegates and Bernie still with 400+. That perked me up considerably. Unlike all those other media outlets, the Strib only showed "pledged" delegates, leaving out the "superdelegates" and actually noting their absence. The websites I checked made no mention of superdelegates, just throwing them in, willy-nilly, with the pledged delegates.

Do I think their oversight was a coincidence? Not at all. The mainstream media are absurdly biased in the current Democratic presidential race, just as they are biased on most topics. Yahoo! had an informative piece this weekend entitled "Bernie Sanders' tax plan is hopeless." I didn't bother to read that, but I did check out their explanation of superdelegates.

It was part of Katie Couric's "Now I Get It" series, which sounds about as enlightening as a G.I. Joe PSA. This installment justified my contempt. The author, whose name (Kaye Foley) induced me to read the article, writes that superdelegates are Democratic "elected officials, like members of Congress, notable members of the party, like President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, and members of the Democratic National Committee."

Foley goes on to explain the origin of superdelegates: "The system was developed in the early 1980s as a way for party leaders to provide some guidance to voters when it came to nominating candidates who could hold their own against Republicans in the general election." Well, that's awfully nice of them! I'm glad there are people in charge of the party who know better than us plebeians.

With a bit more research on Wikipedia (which should also be taken with a grain of salt), I discovered the Democrats created superdelegates in the 80's after the party rank-and-file disobeyed orders in the 70's, nominating George McGovern and Jimmy Carter (twice!). Superdelegates are the prevailing cooler heads who make sure we don't go Fruit Loops again and nominate any more cuckoo-for-Cocoa-Puffs candidates.

Now, this may seem like a silly question, but have superdelegates ever overturned the will of the Democratic voters?  Apparently not: "...since superdelegates were created, the votes they cast have never actually changed the course of a presidential race." Well, that's a relief! It's good to know they're there, just in case, but I'd hate to think we all caucused and primaried for nothing!

If I may snap back out of character now, I'd like to politely disagree with my fellow Foley. Judging by my reaction to those unlabeled delegate counts, it's a safe bet that the superdelegates have influenced the Democratic presidential race many times. Maybe they haven't directly determined who the nominee will be, but their mere presence in the delegate tallies (especially when unnoted) has an effect on how people think about the race. If I were a "Bernie Bro" in a state with an upcoming primary, I might assume his campaign is doomed and stay home.

It seems a bit ironic that the Democrats have the less democratic nominating process. Shouldn't we be more democratic than the Republicans instead of less? Granted, the GOP may not be around much longer, but this is one area in which they have us beaten.

Ascetic Aesthetics

As I gazed upon Bernie Sanders’ rumpled visage at Roy Wilkins Auditorium, I was struck by something: his utter average-ness. He didn’t look like he’d been chosen by God to lead us to the Promised Land. There was no heavenly corona surrounding a beatific head, no transcendent beauty to mark him as one of God’s elect, no soaring oratory that would lead one to believe he was channeling a higher power. At best, he looked like he might have “bingo.”

He’s no JFK or Reagan or Obama, i.e., a slick, handsome marionette to distract us while the Establishment foists its agenda upon us. He just seemed like a regular guy who happened to be in the right place at the right time. Apparently, Fate has chosen this Average Joe to take his turn across the stage of History. (Not Fate, really, just kitchen-sink dramas, the frustrations of the working class and the petty bourgeoisie.)

Bernie is an apt representative of the ascetic aesthetics of the Left. If you’ve ever attended a Leftist demonstration, you know what I’m talking about: the repetitive chants, the draining anger or sadness, the thrift-store decorations. It’s as if your loyalty to the cause is being tested instead of reinforced. Are you committed enough to stick around through all this anti-entertainment?

Noam Chomsky openly rejects any attempt to polish his coma-inducing delivery. He has said that he doesn’t want to convince people with rhetoric and theatrics, only the facts. We’re not supposed to be swayed by flashy gimmicks; the truth of the message should shine through.

I’ve often (inwardly) bemoaned this resistance to refinement. But it may have finally come into vogue. We may be witnessing the triumph of substance over style. Of course, this victory is limited in scope and likely to be brief, but we shouldn’t let that discourage us. En masse, people seem to be turning away from the slick, polished mainstream candidates and turning toward the straight-shootin’, rough-around-the-edges “outsiders.”

Bernie’s average-looking-ness defies the strictly stage-managed, unattainably attractive world of television. He sticks out like a sore thumb amidst all that spray-tanned, muscle-toned, teeth-bleached sound stage fauna. His unkempt, white hair and inability to transport his audience via transcendent public speaking skills (a la Obama) brand him a “radical” as much as his platform (which most Americans support, actually). 

In fact, he puts in stark relief TV’s growing obsession with physical beauty. Maybe I’m just getting older and more insecure about my looks and socioeconomic status, but the people on TV news seem to be getting prettier and prettier. Apparently, among women, only those who look like they’ve stepped out of the pages of Maxim can grasp the complexities of meteorology. (Luckily for us men, the physical/intellectual requirements aren’t as demanding.)

This may have something to do with the expanding gulf between reality and the version TV presents. As the medium becomes more vapid and detached from the everyday experience of the masses, the façade becomes flashier to keep people glued to their sets in lieu of relevant information. Increasingly, the talking heads’ appearance reflects the content of their shows: vacuous, artificial, deceptive.

Of course, one could argue that TV has always been shallow and populated with gorgeously shallow people. Why have we chosen now to become disenchanted with these “pretty little liars?” I believe it’s because the number of formerly middle-class Americans in dire economic straits has reached critical mass. The flickering cube is no longer enough to distract us from our worsening plight. 

Perhaps the aspirational period of American politics has ended, and we’re entering a more grim, sober and, frankly, resentful period. We’re no longer dreaming of “movin’ on up” to the penthouse; we’re just hoping not to slide into the gutter. If so, I welcome the embrace of substance over style. But I worry about how ugly things could get.

Feeling the Bern

As part of my continuing support for Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign, I attended his rally at RiverCentre in downtown St. Paul last night. I drove there, which was not really in keeping with the environmental theme of the movement, but I had many accomplices in that heresy.

There were lines snaking through the skyway into RiverCentre. I parked several blocks away and walked to the eastern end of the center, next to the Ordway on Rice Park. The queue at that end wound around the corner and stretched west for about two blocks. 

In classic Minnesota style, I thought about asking if this was the Bernie line but didn’t. I just went to the end of the line and picked up from the conversations that it was, in fact, the Bernie line. Breaking out of my Minnesota habits, I spoke up when a girl behind me said she hoped Trump’s candidacy was just a media stunt. I said that was probably “wishful thinking,” although it did feel like a “terrible dream.”

The line lurched forward a few times, but, like the girl said, we didn’t know if anyone was in charge or if they would tell us whether the place was full and they had stopped letting people in. The girl was a college girl studying singing at McNally Smith. I answered her questions about how caucuses work, based solely on the Bernie campaign training session I’d attended a month before.

We eventually filtered in through the doors and headed for The Legendary Roy Wilkins Auditorium. People were streaming in to the main floor or climbing stairs to the balcony. A young woman in a lanyard and Bernie t-shirt briefly shouted instructions for us, which was the extent of the crowd control I saw. This was a very well-behaved Minnesota crowd though, so no draconian tactics were called for.

I went to the main floor and found, luckily, a lot of room to move around. There were tons of people sitting in the balcony. Somebody said this was the overflow room, which was pretty impressive. I’m horrible at guesstimating, but they said it was 5,000 in Roy Wilkins and 10,000 in the main hall. I can buy that.

It was already 7:45 by then, but before the stroke of 8 Bernie showed up in the Roy unexpectedly. A rock concert-like scream rose up from the mostly college-aged crowd, alerting us to his arrival. Keith Ellison took the stage, followed by Bernie and his wife. “This is the overflow?” Bernie asked incredulously to a roar of approval. He favored us with a few remarks before moving on to the main hall.

The official program started with a five-minute speech from a Somali-American college girl wearing a hijab. Then came a brief intro by Keith Ellison before we got to the main course.

There was nothing incendiary in Bernie’s speech (unless you belong to the Mainstream Media, or “MSM,” as I like to write). There was no palpable anger in the crowd, aside from the occasional, emphatic exhortation from a lone person punctuating some of Bernie’s more “radical” opinions. There were many smiles on the faces of the people there and laughter originating thence. 

Yet still, as Bernie launched into his spiel, I had a sense of foreboding, as if I were attending just another political rally, just another group session of yearning for someone to save us from ourselves. I couldn’t help but think: “This isn’t how it’s supposed to be. This isn’t how democracy works. We’re not supposed to wait for a savior to bring a preordained platform down from Sinai for us to rubber-stamp. He’s just a politician; he’s not an avatar of our hopes and dreams whose soaring oratory can lift us above this mortal coil to an astral plane.”

It also kinda felt like a late-era Roman emperor promising to keep the barbarian hordes at bay for a little while longer. We’ve listened as the Republicans’ rhetoric has become monstrous in its ignorance, violence and hatred. Perhaps we’re finally reaping the harvest grown from the seeds of death and destruction we’ve sown around the world. How much longer can we hold back the blood-dimmed tide?

My anxiety was eventually eased by Bernie’s repeated calls for a mass movement to enact his platform. As he kept saying, millions of us will have to “stand up” and “come together” to implement the social democratic (not technically “socialist”) policies he’s proposed. The Washington Consensus, funded by the wealthy and constantly reinforced by the MSM, considers these ideas radical and even dangerous, and the Establishment will fight tooth and nail to keep them off the table.

There was a big sign waving in front of the stage that had a painting of Bernie with fire for hair. It was a fitting tribute to this man whose hair often seems to be on fire. I'm sure that's central to his appeal in these days of fear, anger and economic insecurity. 

The crowd cheered and booed at the appropriate times, although we sometimes cheered for lines that sounded like boo lines, which I found a bit confusing. I clapped, “whoo”-ed and booed a fair amount; he was, after all, saying things I agree with. He went on for about an hour and managed to keep it pretty interesting without coming off like an “angry old man.” 

After it was over, we exited to the strains of David Bowie’s “Starman,” an apropos tribute to the recently deceased musician. It reinforced my perception of this as a typical political rally, but I was too encouraged by the happy college kids surrounding me and my fondness for the song to worry anymore. 

On the walk back to my car, I overheard a woman saying that she felt an opportunity to really engage people that night had been lost. I had to agree with her as 15,000 like-minded people returned to our daily routines. If we want this night to mean anything, we’d better take Bernie’s message to heart and stop treating politics like a spectator sport.

My Job Made Me Racist

There's a common assumption in our culture that immigration is always good. It is usually cast in a flattering light in the mainstream media and generally regarded as a boon to the economy as well as the culture. While I'd say the cultural effects of immigration are largely beneficial, the economic effects are often damaging. The problem is, in order to address these issues, one must first confront taboos central to our society.

In its currently popular neo-liberal Capitalist conception, the economy is believed to have the potential for infinite growth. The only obstacle to economic expansion is government regulation, according to this view. Ergo, immigration should have no effect on employment or wages, since the economy can always expand to provide everyone with good-paying jobs. Unfortunately, this belief no longer conforms with reality.

In reality, the U.S. economy has been shrinking for about a decade, and the discretionary income of most Americans has been in decline for four decades. Since the 70's, economic growth has been slowing. But government regulation has been almost completely captured by Big Business. The reason for our economic malaise is the depletion of natural resources, fossil fuels foremost among them.

This is an extremely difficult idea for most Westerners to wrap their head around. We've been trained to believe that Science and Technology can overcome any physical limits. But this is a fossil-fueled delusion. Coal, oil and natural gas provided us with a bonanza of energy that allowed us to think we had conquered Nature.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the U.S. economy grew by leaps and bounds, providing enough labor and wealth to keep Americans and the millions of immigrants pouring into the country each year employed and well-paid. This spectacular growth was subsidized by our prodigious deposits of hydrocarbons. Our technologies merely harnessed this one-time jackpot.

But, as fossil fuel reserves have dwindled, the price of those fuels has skyrocketed, and the pace of economic growth has slowed and, now, reversed. As a result, population growth and immigration are dividing a shrinking pie into smaller and smaller pieces. We of the middle and working classes are left to fight over scraps while the rich (thanks to government bailouts) get richer.

This has led many Americans to lash out against immigrants, demonizing the ethnic groups most closely associated with immigration. I fell victim to this impulse at my last corporate job. My employer brought in dozens (maybe hundreds) of people from India to work at their headquarters in downtown Minneapolis. I even shared a cubicle with an Indian guy. He was really nice, which was a good thing, because if he hadn't been I might've borne a monstrous grudge against him.

Even with our congenial daily interactions, I often resented the Indians' presence. The jobs they were doing were jobs that millions of unemployed Americans could've easily and happily done.

So why did the company contract with a foreign (presumably, Indian) company to bring in people from halfway across the world to perform tasks that hundreds, if not thousands of people in the Twin Cities could've done just as well? Because the employer can pay the Indians much less than they could pay Americans and treat them a lot worse. The Indians looked so happy to be there that I'm sure they would've put up with almost anything to keep those jobs and stay in the U.S.

Early on, my Indian cube-mate was regularly berated by his American boss. It wasn't vicious, but it's not something that the American employees would've tolerated. In fact, the two Americans in the cube across the aisle from us were bothered by his treatment. They mentioned bringing it up with their boss, and they may have, because his supervisor lightened up thereafter.

My cube-mate told me that he lived with the other Indian workers in a complex of apartment buildings in a nearby suburb. The accommodations sounded somewhat austere, but that's just conjecture (like most of this essay). His wife, child and mother eventually joined him, and his wife gave birth to a second child. He seemed quite happy, but even the life of an overworked, underpaid corporate drone in the U.S. must've been a big improvement over his life back home.

He was seeking U.S. citizenship, and I didn't begrudge him that, but I still resent the company's decision to bring in workers from abroad to do jobs for which there are, literally, millions of qualified, unemployed Americans. That's just greed, pure and simple, and it's not benefiting anyone but the company's executives (and, apparently, the Indians). The Americans who, in a previous era, would've done those jobs are either unemployed or working worse jobs for less money.

Sadly, raising any objections to immigration is a sure way to invite opprobrium from academia and the mainstream. South Park has featured stereotypically stupid redneck characters who insist with vehemence that immigrants are "takin' our jobs," their charge becoming angrier, louder and less coherent with each repetition. This is the main counter-argument, that any opposition to immigration must arise from xenophobia, racism and bigotry.

That's a difficult stumbling-block to overcome. It effectively ends any attempt at debate. Accusing Americans of racism is a sure way to piss us off. The discussions that follow such an accusation rarely rise above the level of name-calling.

The truth is that, so far, it's been easy for the middle class to dismiss the working class's objections to immigration on the grounds that "they're takin' our jobs." That's because the immigrants were only taking blue-collar jobs before. Now they're taking white-collar jobs, and I doubt the middle class will find as much humor in the rednecks' status anxiety as South Park did.

So what's the answer? Send all the immigrants home? No, but I would eliminate the economic policies that make job-offshoring and worker-importation attractive to American companies. How about withholding public subsidies for corporations that engage in these practices? We could actively penalize those firms, but, given our likely resource-constrained future, I favor a conservative approach.

There are many trade policies that could be altered or repealed to level the labor playing field. For instance, we could demand that corporations importing products to the U.S. meet the same labor and environmental standards to which we hold corporations operating within our borders. That would repatriate millions of jobs overnight.

These are the same policies that have impoverished the Third World, shipping their wealth to the First World for our enjoyment. It's only now that many of us formerly affluent Westerners are being adversely affected by those policies. By hiding the rationale behind "free trade" deals, the elite has mostly succeeded in pitting workers from different countries against each other.

But we workers are all on the same team. To paraphrase Marx, we need to unite and reform the system that has indentured us. I say "reform" in the hope that there's still time to save the system. Things may seem bad now, but a true revolution usually makes things much worse.* For historical examples, see the French and Russian Revolutions.

(*I don't consider the American Revolution a true revolution. I'd call it an evolution.)

Unlearning

I think my true education began when my formal education ended. Ever since then it seems like I've been unlearning, peeling off the layers of prejudice, conventional wisdom and preconceptions draped over me by my upbringing, school and the mass media that fill the void where our culture used to be. I often feel I would've been better off left to my own devices and the common sense God (or the Universe) gave me.

I can't escape the feeling of having been duped. I jumped through all the academic hoops and was slotted into a corporate dead end. Success in school is predicated on uncritically accepting the views of your teachers. I integrated their opinions into my paradigm with little revision or examination. I usually took their words at face value. Their beliefs and the curriculum were nearly gospel to me. I'd been raised, consciously or not, to believe in the infallibility of the public school curriculum.

Questions didn't arise until I had my bachelor's degree, and, after 5 years of working as a corporate clerk, I still couldn't get the rewarding job I'd been led to believe was waiting at the end of the academic rainbow.

So much education is directed toward overturning common sense in the interest of the oligarchy. As our common culture has faded, this propaganda has become more effective. The middle class is thoroughly brainwashed, having forgotten our working-class roots and the struggle against the elite that was required for us to become bourgeois.

Life as a Statistic

I've always thought of myself as a very smart, capable person with all the advantages that growing up upper-middle-class confers. The idea that I could fall through the cracks and become an economic statistic was anathema. I was the master of my fate, the captain of my soul and all that. Those of lesser abilities and means might become casualties of the economy, but not I.

When I graduated from college and found only clerical temp jobs to pay the bills, I blamed myself. The pain of that failure was so strong that I repressed it. This delayed my recognition of the external forces that contributed greatly to my situation. Instead of dealing with the pain, I kept blaming myself, consciously and unconsciously, and ignoring the economic and social factors involved.

It may seem easy to blame the System for one's failures, but I actually found it quite difficult to lay my failures at its feet. Blaming my parents and other individuals was easy; I could easily link them to their actions. The Establishment, however, is a specter lurking in the shadows. It guides the actions of billions with invisible strings.

There's also the problem of free will and the significant amount of freedom we still enjoy in these United States. No one held a gun to my head and forced me to go to an expensive liberal-arts college, major in English and work in the corporate world. But I was funneled into that path, and choosing a different path would've required a rare combination of intelligence, confidence and independence.

When I graduated from high school, there was nothing stopping me from moving to a commune and living in harmony with all God's creatures... except nearly all the messages I'd imbibed from television, movies and other media for hours a day since I was little, not to mention the far-more-tangible reinforcement of those messages by my family, peers, teachers, neighbors and society in general.

I could've chosen the road less traveled, but such a choice requires nearly superhuman will and self-reliance. We downplay our reliance on community, but we remain at least as reliant on it as our ancestors. The idea of relocating to a commune in the country is still pretty terrifying for me, and I think I know why: Because it's basically the opposite of the life I've been programmed for.

I was raised to "follow my dreams," specifically, the American Dream of material wealth and a sedentary job that would allow me to realize my "full potential," i.e. working as a high-level bureaucrat. Manual labor should be reserved for physical fitness, home improvement or yardwork; as a career, it's a dead end. Expensive possessions are markers of professional success, and, as everyone knows, professional success equals happiness.

Only now, as I try to break out of that rut, do I recognize the power of its spell. I came to rely on the American Dream emotionally the way I used to rely on my parents, until the adolescent trauma of middle school broke our bond. With our relationship on the mend, the demons that haunted my fantasies of escape from the mainstream are fading. I no longer need to stay in the mainstream to maintain my sense of self-worth.

It took me a long time to come to terms with my vulnerability to social and economic forces.  That's a depressing thought and not at all flattering. We middle-class Americans like to think of ourselves as rugged individualists, islands that may be buffeted by hurricanes but will never be moved or altered by them.

We live in the post-historical period, according to Francis Fukuyama, when the individual, esp. the American or First-Worlder, has been liberated from the shackles of external forces like tradition, economic restrictions or social taboos. Technology has freed us from the vicissitudes of history, the plagues, famines and droughts that complicated our ancestors' lives. Communism has been vanquished, and there remain only Terrorists, barbaric dead-enders whose inhumanity frees us from the laws of conventional warfare.

But, really, we're more vulnerable to external forces than ever before. Capitalism has dissolved many of the social bonds that gave us the resilience to resist (mainly, economic) pressures originating outside our families, neighborhoods, cities, regions or even countries. Families, unions, churches, fraternal organizations and other local institutions had the power to shield us from the worst predations of the Market and Government.

Faith in the power of the individual has encouraged us to go it alone and abandon any group that doesn't meet our exacting standards of wish-fulfillment. Individuals like Rosa Parks are rightly exalted for their courage, but the groups that gave them the strength to stand up to the System are left out of the history books. Every successful social justice movement has required massive organization, cooperation and coordination.

Society tells us that, if we're strong, self-reliant individuals, we don't need other people. We can make our dreams come true all by ourselves. Other people may be statistics, subject to forces beyond their control, but I'm too smart and strong to use those excuses.

The truth is nobody makes it alone, and we need other people to give our dreams meaning. What would be the point of making it on your own? With whom would you share your success? What joy would your success bring you if you had no one to share it with?

Rather than buy the Capitalist propaganda about the supremacy of the individual, we need to see how this spiel has been used to weaken community and leave us vulnerable to the machinations of the elite. Only re-knitting community will give us the strength to preserve our value as human beings.

Duel of the Death Cults

(Author’s Note: I’m trying to integrate more of my sense of humor into the blog, so this essay may sound more like James Howard Kunstler than John Michael Greer.)

ISIS (or “ISIL” or “The So-Called Islamic State” or “The Pseudo-Islamic Terrorist Jamboree”) is the answer to the Military-Industrial Complex’s prayers. They even come with their own scary name that makes them sound like an evil organization bent on world domination in the James Bond-iverse. (Maybe they got the idea from Archer.) 

How could anyone be opposed to bombing a group that beheads aid workers and indiscriminately slaughters women and children? They’re clearly beyond reason. Diplomacy loses the little viability the U.S. government is still willing to give it, leaving the military option as the only one left on the table. When you have the world’s biggest hammer, how could you pass up a nail as big and juicy as this one?

By now, it should come as no surprise that each new U.S. military intervention in the Middle East spawns an even more diabolical, fiendish, Hitler-y group than the last. Since at least World War 2, we’ve provided extremely generous support for their cartoonishly evil dictators and, when those get overthrown or disobedient, military interventions that have an irritating habit of killing millions of the people we’re supposed to be liberating. When the only options you give Arabs are tyranny or death, is it any wonder they keep producing death cults? 

And it’s not like we’ve been setting a great example for these “barbaric,” “backwards” people who are supposed to be stuck in the 12^th century. Our foreign policy has hardly been a paragon of virtue where they’re concerned. Despite our best intentions, we keep killing a lot of the people we’re trying to save. Of course, we’re using military means to achieve peace and justice, an approach with a terrible track record. You’d think that, if we really wanted to bestow our gifts of Democracy and Capitalism on this poor, benighted region, we’d try something else.

It’s almost like we don’t care about these people. It’s almost like we just wanna get their oil and use it to keep ruling the world. But that can’t be true! We’ve all heard our leaders explain their desire for freedom for all of God’s creatures. Maybe a few million people have gotten hurt by our attempts to help them, but that’s to be expected when our enemies are cowardly enough to disguise themselves as civilians. When the other side won’t fight fair, what choice do we have? 

If our leaders bothered to crack a history book from outside the approved canon, they might discover that American violence has the same properties as most other brands of violence. That is, it has the tendency to beget more violence. The military is only suited to reproduce itself, like some geopolitical Easter Bunny, sowing the seeds of terrorism with each bomb, airstrike and boot on the ground. They crave enemies and need to keep creating progressively more monstrous “terrorists” to justify their titanic (connotation intended) budget and the continuing support of the American public.

They also need this domestic support for intervention because their Middle Eastern clients aren’t as enthused about U.S. “assistance” as they used to be. The Gulf States’ wealth has freed them from American dependence, and now they’ve taken the wheel. But, instead of abandoning the U.S.-approved path of oppression, they’ve put the pedal to the metal and are taking that road all the way to medieval times (and I’m not talkin’ about the theme restaurant!). The “Arab street” isn’t that crazy about returning to the 12^th century, but the elite seem to have a fetish for it.

There’s an abundance of like-minded rulers in the region for the Pentagon to work with, plenty o’ potentates who can’t wait to unleash holy hell on the other side’s devils. Ironically, the mounting failures of our campaign in the Middle East are encouraging the continuation of this moronic, militaristic policy. It makes me wonder how many Americans remember what happened yesterday, much less anything from those heady early days of The Global War on Terror, lo, these 13 years ago. 

As long as we remain in a state of geopolitical amnesia, the Powers That Be in the USA will keep dragging us back into the Middle East’s Vortex of Death. The fact that they’ve done the most to create it has been downplayed by the MSM (Mainstream Media). But now the status and composition of our alliances can only be determined through the interpretation of tea leaves. The absurdity of our foreign policy is becoming undeniable, even in the credulous corridors of corporate news. 

We may be approaching a moment when sunshine will burst through the fog of propaganda and reveal even more truth than that which flooded the streets of New Orleans and Ferguson. Of course, the elite will work quickly to cobble the façade of normalcy back together. But, with preparation and organization, we could squeeze some significant changes into the status quo before they slap it back together.

"The Archdruid Report" Study Group

I set up a group on Meetup for people in the Twin Cities metro area. The first meeting is this Easter Sunday, April 5th at 3pm in Bob's Java Hut, which is located in Uptown Minneapolis at 2651 Lyndale Ave S. Hope to see ya there!

Twin Cities Archdruid Report Study Group

If anyone in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul is interested, I'd like to start a weekly "Archdruid Report" study group. I've been reading the blog religiously for years, so I figure I might as well get together with some like-minded folks and talk about it. Having JMG respond to my comments every now and then is all well and good, but it'd be nice to discuss the themes face-to-face in real time with people on the physical plane of existence.

I frequent the coffee shops of Uptown, so that would be my first choice of meeting location. Sunday afternoon is my preferred meeting time, but that's also flexible. If yer keen, comment on this post.

Thanx,
Mick

The Dustbin of History

"History is more or less bunk. It's tradition. We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present, and the only history that is worth a tinker's damn is the history that we make today." –Henry Ford, 1916 

Aldous Huxley mocked the quote above in Brave New World, and it has come in for a fair amount of ridicule in many quarters. But, in the century since Ford made his pronouncement, our culture has largely agreed with him. We think our situation is unprecedented and that the future will be even more unprecedented. According to the myth of Progress, Technology has freed us from the earthly concerns that complicated and, usually, immiserated our ancestors’ lives. We have, in effect, slipped the surly bonds of History and are on our way to touch the face of God. 

This may be why history is possibly the most neglected subject in our schools, which is saying something, given their overall piss-poor state. But this historical blindness also serves the interests of Empire. We don’t want our children to know how we really came by all this wealth and power. In most cases, we don’t even want to know ourselves. Such inconsequential matters are best left in the Dustbin of History. We’d rather believe that our good fortune is the result of our predecessors’ heroism.

But, as the Empire declines, the level of self-delusion and ignorance required to preserve this fiction grows. For instance, during the Cold War, the U.S. was able to control the Middle East’s oil through client regimes: the Shah in Iran, Egypt’s military dictatorship and the Saudi royal family. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, we’ve needed direct military intervention to keep a firm grip on the region, with rapidly diminishing returns and growing blowback. It’s more difficult to maintain the facade of imperial benevolence at home when Americans are killing and dying abroad in conflicts that have an increasingly tenuous connection to national security.

Another factor is the continuing impoverishment of the American middle and working classes. Our loyalty to the imperial project has essentially been bought with its proceeds, but now more of that wealth is being diverted to the rich. As our share in the imperial bonanza shrinks, we’re less willing to go along with the program and more willing to see the evil in it. We, the “internal proletariat,” see our own circumstances reflected in the plight of the “external proletariat,” those who have been exploited for our enrichment. Throughout history, these groups have made common cause to topple empires and will likely do so again to bring down the U.S. version. 

But good luck finding anyone in power aware of this probability. The Memory Hole is now so big in elite American circles that it threatens to swallow our past whole. Each day’s newspaper is printed on a blank canvas, nearly free of context, as if the world were born yesterday. The media strip our world of its historical baggage, erasing imperial crimes and restoring the Empire to a state of Edenic grace. There is some history, but it has been refreshed, revised and edited to fit the current imperial agenda. The fall of the Soviet Union may have saved us from the overt social control of Orwell’s 1984, but it didn’t kill the propaganda machine that still shapes our reality and, thus, our behavior. 

The interests of Empire and Progress thereby dovetail. They both need us to ignore the past. “Don’t look over your shoulder,” they warn. “Something may be gaining on you.” For Progress, the shadows stalking our steps are Death, Decay and Decline. Progress tries to ease our fear of mortality by promising that our legacies will be carried on forever through the immortality of our society. History is the enemy of this faith, littered as it is with the ruins of civilizations that asserted their own invincibility with similarly unshakable certainty.

For Empire, the chimera nipping at our heels is the ghost of our victims: the Native Americans we steamrolled in fulfilling our Manifest Destiny, the Southeast Asians we carpet-bombed to defeat the Domino Theory, the Middle Easterners we assassinate via drone in the oxymoronic (and officially abandoned) Global War on Terror. Our imperial guilt must be continually repressed by assurances of our good intentions. This requires a thorough whitewashing of history, a process that is renewed each day in the mainstream media and chased with a flood of mind-numbing entertainment to drown any lingering doubts.

The Empire’s days are already numbered when it’s forced to shift from diplomacy to military action as its primary means of retaining power. This renders its propaganda transparent, inducing a crisis of faith among the imperial citizens and convincing many of them to withdraw their moral support from the imperial project. Very few will remove their material support, due to their dependence on the imperial system, but their moral objections are enough to create a “brain drain.” Having become disillusioned with the Empire, many of its most gifted citizens will therefore avoid careers in politics or civil service, leaving the ship of state to be steered by people whose loyalty outstrips their intellect. (Insert your own George W. Bush joke here.)

Luckily, the elite are chockfull of people with little interest in or knowledge of History. It’s a subject that seems to have no effect on their lives. Like the Too-Big-To-Fail banks, they’ve been protected from the consequences of their actions by the transfer of those costs onto the rest of society. They prefer the official imperial history, the sanitized version that glorifies their greed and flatters their vanity. The truth is considered rude conversation in polite society and is gratefully forgotten or swept under the rug.

Thus the Empire descends into anti-intellectualism. Leadership becomes a matter of following your “gut instincts” and ignoring the cowardly, four-eyed naysayers. The mainstream no longer has anything but contempt for “eggheads” who question the wisdom of its leaders with facts. Special scorn is reserved for those who suggest that the Empire is treading a well-worn path of self-destruction. History, showing as it does the folly of the elite, must be wrong. At this point, only the obedient and dim-witted are allowed into the inner sanctum to sing the Empire’s praises.

By losing any patience with dissent, the Empire and Progress seal their fate. To understand how the process plays out with Progress, all that is needed is to change “political elite” to “scientific elite” and change “four-eyed” and “egghead” to “wild-eyed” and “loose cannon.” The open debate that once ensured a rigorous formulation of policy (or theory) is replaced with an echo chamber in which the mistakes of the past are repeated and reinforced in a positive feedback loop. Proving George Santayana right yet again, the elite are doomed by their ignorance of History to take their place in its Dustbin.