Musings of an anarchist misfit
Published at 18:08 on 19 November 2021
So, if you are white and right-wing, in today’s USA it is literally legal for you to smuggle a weapon across state lines and shoot people with it in cold blood, as long as they are Black or left-wing. Make no mistake, that is the clear message of today’s verdict.
Also make no mistake: the fascists heard that message. They heard it loud and clear. And they will soon start acting on it.
Published at 08:07 on 15 November 2021
Mind you, this is very good news. Whatever I go on to say later, it had to happen, and although it happened late, better late then never.
However, the clock is running out and time is not on the side of the pro-democracy forces. The results in Virginia and New Jersey proved that yes, there are enough stupid and apathetic people that, added to the rough third of the USA that harbors decidedly fascist sentiments, there are plenty enough votes out there to let the fascists back into power.
And once that happens, there will be decisive fascist majorities in Congress and the select committee, as weak and ineffectual as it has been, will be no more. Donald Trump will be Speaker of the House (there is no requirement that the Speaker be an actual member of the House; this is mere tradition), and soon enough, president once more.
This is, of course, not a 100% certainty. It is still theoretically possible for the Democrats to start taking this existential threat to an open society seriously, but odds strongly disfavor it. As I have written before, it is at this stage likely that the whole damn system, both the government and the political culture it exists within, must first burn to the ground before there can be any significant hope of something better emerging.
Published at 06:44 on 3 November 2021
So the Democrats not only lose Virginia, it looks like they might have lost New Jersey as well. It all goes to show just what a disaster their non-strategy of refusing to take the threat of Trumpist fascism really is. As I wrote earlier, inaction speaks louder than words.
It is probably now too late for them to change course. If, that is, they were even capable as a party of realizing a need to change course. We are talking about an organization which won’t recognize that their opponents are fascists even when they try launching a coup to make their guy führer-for-life, after all.
Let’s just say the prognoses for 2022 and 2024 are not optimistic.
Published at 20:08 on 28 October 2021
It seems there are a lot of vaccine refuseniks in the Air Force who are about to miss the deadline to get their shots.
What should happen at this stage is that it becomes time to bring down the hammer on those participating in this lack of discipline. When those service members joined, they took an oath to obey all lawful orders. They are now disobeying lawful orders. Deal with them. That means prosecution in a court-martial or a dishonorable discharge.
Not doing so basically telegraphs another sign of the weakness of the existing order: the refuseniks are doubtless for the most part Trumpy little fascists who would enthusiastically back a coup if given the chance. This is, in fact, part of the reason why they must be dealt with. Whatever the short-term cost of drumming them out, the longer-term cost of not doing so will be far greater.
Unfortunately, everything I know about the sorry state of the Republic leads me to believe that the breakdown in discipline will be for the most part ignored, thus cementing the precedent that it is OK for right-wingers in the military to ignore orders if they want.
At that point, the military has become a power unto itself, one that no longer answers fully to the civilian government. Be afraid, be very afraid.
Published at 08:02 on 25 October 2021
From this article:
That’s in large measure because Democrats are fighting apathy among their base. The party’s agenda in Washington, D.C., is stalled, Biden’s poll numbers are sagging, and Democrats are sounding the alarm.
What might have changed this, of course, would have been for the Democrats to take the threat to democracy that the Trumpified GOP poses more seriously. That’s right: the Democrats’ institutionalized Stockholm syndrome is not only bad for the country, it is bad for them politically. Truly, of all the major political parties in the world’s nations, the US Democratic Party must rank amongst the most incompetent.
If the Democrats had taken the threat of Trump seriously, it would have dovetailed with some very effective fear-based, get-out-the-vote propaganda. The GOP has long used such strategies effectively; this, coupled with the Democrats’ refusal to use such effective tactics, is part of the reason why the GOP tends to punch above its weight in the political arena.
If it is not already too late to shift to this strategy, it soon will be. Why should voters take seriously any fear-mongering when inactions are speaking louder that words?
A worry of mine in posting many of my recent articles has been that if such a narrative gets traction, it could prove counterproductive; pointing out how useless the Democratic Party has been is not the way to get people motivated to vote for its candidates. Eventually, the logic that well over 99.9% of voters don’t even know who I am, let alone read this blog, persuaded me to just speak my mind. Lack of influence is both frustrating and liberating.
Published at 20:22 on 23 October 2021
The political culture of today’s Democratic Party seems an awful lot like a teenager or young adult who grew up in privileged, sheltered conditions. They just think they are special (their parents continually tell them so, after all), and that the normal rules which apply to other people, do not apply to them. Or, in this case, the normal political rules of motion which apply to other nations, do not apply to the USA.
Therefore, many of them really do think that there is not much need for accountability for the crimes of January 6th. Coups d’etat happen to other, less fortunate nations. The USA is special, and it cannot happen here. No unpleasant work needed. That sort of thing is for other, lesser nations that are not special.
Come to think of it, this probably affects many Republicans as well. They just can’t believe that backing Trump could be as risky as some people say, because fascism is something that can only happen to other, lesser nations.
Just like the 19-year-old awakening in the drunk tank with a DUI charge to his name, the Democrats in particular are about to suffer a rude awakening.
Published at 09:21 on 22 October 2021
I just listened to the first episode of this podcast, and it begs a question: why did the Left not respond in kind when the Right went heavy into talk radio and it started bearing fruit? Was it simple incompetence? Was it being too chickenshit to fight with brass knuckles when the other side does? Or, more seriously, was it an issue of the capitalists that owned radio stations refusing to air Left content?
The answer is critical to addressing the root cause of the problem, yet it is not explored. Instead, it is celebrated when the Federal government resolves the problem by dusting off the long-disused Fairness Doctrine and putting it to work. That creates a problem, because if your politics requires the support and largesse of government intervention to prevail over natural public sentiment, your politics (or at least your political strategy) is intrinsically weak, and is basically doomed to inevitable decline.
A follow-up question: why this reluctance (both then and now) to delve into root causes? Is it the simple need to tell yourself good things about your side (“we are not the ones with serious flaws that beg self-criticism; they are”)? Or, more seriously, is your whole movement a pro-Establishment scam, and are you unwilling to chase things down to root causes because you fear it will delegitimize the very system whose opposition you desire to contain, manage, minimize, and ultimately render impotent?
The hero in the episode, of course, is the beloved Fairness Doctrine, of which liberals are still mourning the demise of, despite it now being cold and dead since 1987.
First, note that year. Reagan became president in 1981; 1987 was towards the end of his eight-year term. The Fairness Doctrine thus did nothing to prevent the political success of the Reagan revolution.
Second is the political context of the Fairness Doctrine. A radio spectrum dominated almost exclusively by capitalists operating on a for-profit basis was not inevitable; in fact, it was deliberately created under the early years of the Roosevelt administration, as detailed in the book Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio. Mind you, capitalists played an important role in running radio stations before then, they simply did not play the clearly dominant one they did afterwards.
The motive behind the Democrats’ corporatization of the media was simple: FDR understood the power of radio, wanted his voice to be carried nationwide, and also wanted to limit how much the fundamental principles of capitalism were questioned. A quid pro quo in which the power of NBC and RCA was magnified by government intervention, and these newly-empowered corporations both refrained from open opposition to the New Deal while carrying presidential speeches nationwide as newsworthy events, was in the interests of both parties.
The Fairness Doctrine then came later when liberals tried to patch up the natural consequences and dangers of the very media monoculture their earlier policies helped nurture. It was, in other words, hardly the principled anti-corporate thing it at first appeared to be. The Reagan Administration’s rhetoric merely portrayed it that way, in the name of scrapping it, and why would the Democrats challenge them? Understand that challenging it meant acknowledging by implication how their own politics had served as a something of a pro-Establishment fraud.
It is as of this stage mostly water under the bridge, anyhow. Broadcast radio is no longer the political force it once was; the Internet and social media are now the real forces to be reckoned with, and a new Fairness Doctrine would accomplish very little overall.
I just wish they had gone at least a little bit into some of these other questions I just raised above. Nothing claimed in that episode was outright wrong, but it was overall missing some important context.
Published at 11:41 on 20 October 2021
The evil of the right, coupled with the general incompetence of the left, all conspires to leave me politically homeless, at least here in the USA, where I am typing this at the moment and of which for now I am a citizen. (Canadian citizenship is a years-long process, and while I am starting that process, at this stage I am only just starting it, and who is to say for sure it will ever complete.)
Actually, it matters regardless, no matter where in the world one is (the USA is both a military and an economic superpower), and particularly if you are a nation sharing the world’s longest land border with the USA.
Basically, everything I have seen up to this point indicates that:
Note that this is not to say that both sides are equally culpable; clearly, the right is more culpable. Actively engaging in evil is a worse sin than is failing to oppose evil strongly enough.
Anyhow, with regards to US politics, the only kind I can formally participate in as a citizen, I am at this stage politically homeless. It is probably another reason for my strange affinity with the never-Trump conservatives, who are also politically homeless at the moment, who also recognize the parallels of the current moment with historical pre-fascist situations in other nations, and who are (as I am) horrified by it.
Published at 16:07 on 12 October 2021
Simply put, it is a subculture, not a movement.
Going to any radical left site is a bit like watching Groundhog Day. Nothing ever really changes; it is the same pet issues over and over (and over) again.
It’s not so much that I disagree with the standard issues or stances so much as the inability to process new information. Go to an anarchist site like It’s Going Down or a communist site like WSWS and it might as well be the year 2014 or the year 2008. You’re just not going to see much (if anything) about how weak the current bourgeois democratic order is, how unwilling it is to defend itself against a clear mortal threat from the right.
Yes, yes, I know: bourgeois “democracy” is basically a sack of shit. I actually agree! But, better a sack of shit than a barrel of high-level radioactive waste that will kill anyone in its proximity. It really does matter that we are able to struggle against an order that at least has some concept of civil rights for those who dissent. Doing so is a much more favorable circumstance than being compelled to engage in struggle against a fascist state.
The most simple explanation I can think of for this state of affairs is that the radical Left has become, over the years, ever more inward-looking. We have become ever more concerned with the pursuit of in-group status, and less and less concerned with the issues of the external world.
If you’re already busy arguing about pet issues and pet terminologies, well, you’re busy. You just don’t have time for any pesky new data coming in about democratic decline (and it’s all just bourgeois democracy anyhow, and you can best advance your in-group status by proclaiming that to be meaningless).
In the 1930’s, in both Spain and Germany, most on the Left actually knew the Right posed a profound threat, but were unable to unify against that threat. But at least they acknowledged the threat. Today, we can’t even seem to get to the acknowledgement stage.
Published at 07:20 on 11 October 2021
Two days ago, I wrote:
Trump is a noxious individual with loathsome goals, but the one thing he understands in spades is the total rottenness to the core of the whole system [emphasis added], and how utterly and thoroughly ripe it is for authoritarian takeover.
I think I need to clarify that, since I chose some poor terminology when I wrote system. What is rotten is our entire political culture, across the board, whether in government or out of it: the system itself is antiquated and undemocratic, yes, but that wouldn’t matter so much if the actors within it were more virtuous.
Canada, for example, has a horribly antiquated Senate, of the sort the USA reformed and modernized way back in 1913. That Senate could easily help engineer some pretty awful and undemocratic outcomes, but it doesn’t, because the healthier political culture there causes the Canadian Senate to restrain itself.
Or wind the clock back about fifty years in the USA. Nixon, like Trump, was corrupt to the core, yet when Nixon’s corruption finally caught up with him, he was basically shamed out of office. His own party abandoned him, not because the law required it, but because of the political culture of the time. The system was far from perfect back in 1974, but it was capable of preserving a basically democratic order and open, free society.
In today’s USA, the Right is beyond shame, the Democrats have institutionalized Stockholm syndrome, and the radical left is an inward-looking political cult.
It is all made far worse by the disgusting tradition of there being no accountability for the wealthy or powerful. When Trump quipped “when you’re a star, they let you do it,” he was on to something. He’s not very smart; he’s not a political chessmaster. He’s barely able to play a mediocre game of checkers. The trouble is, his opponents have yet to master political tiddly-winks.
I really do not believe this is fixable in any immediate or incremental sense. I had hoped the Democrats might finally start taking things seriously after January 6th.
But, alas. The rot is simply too all-pervasive. It’s like a building whose framing is thoroughly infested with insects and fungi, a building with an overtaxed electrical system whose fuse box has pennies in the fuse sockets, a building whose owners adamantly refuse to consider maintaining. It is going to take a cleansing fire to purge the rot and vermin, and a fire is basically inevitable. Then, and only then, something new and better can be erected.
The “fire” in this case will take the form of an authoritarian takeover that liquidates the Democrats and the Left. It will then be a question of how long it takes for something better to evolve and challenge the fascist regime. In Spain and Portugal, it took fifty years or more.