Blackcap Blog

Published at 09:21 on 22 October 2021

The Flamethrowers

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 Fairness Doctrine

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.

Conclusion

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:

• Virtually the entire US political culture, both the left and the right of it, are irreparably rotten, and must first burn to the ground in order to make way for something better,
• It will be the right that first burns the left to the ground, and
• Then the right will burn, either due to its own rot, or due to a new, effective opposition (or both).

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.

Published at 08:35 on 10 October 2021

Now, as we have seen, there is an organized conspiracy in Congress, by members of both parties, to ensure there is no accountability for the top putschists responsible for the events of January 6th. This assertion is likely to provoke rejection amongst a significant portion of my readers: The Democrats are as bad as the fascist Republicans? Give me a break!

As such, I feel an elaboration into the nature of it is required. It’s not that there is a positive desire for fascism amongst most congressional Democrats; far from it. There is simply a very strong desire for politics as usual, for a return to the old status quo.

Acknowledging the nature and strength of the domestic fascist movement would mean by implication acknowledging that the old politics as usual is simply not possible anymore. That is an unpleasant thing to acknowledge, because it means losing one’s long-held world-view and giving up on a cherished goal.

It is a proverbial elephant-in-the-living-room situation. The living room’s inhabitants really don’t want to admit there is an elephant there, so they go around pretending that the elephant does not exist.

Ultimately, however, that distinction does not much matter. Behavior that helps fascism advance is behavior that helps fascism advance, whatever the motives for the behavior. The most likely end result, an authoritarian transition to a fascist state much like Franco’s Spain or Salazar’s Portugal, remains the same.

As Hannah Arendt showed, the roots of great evil are often surprisingly banal. Simply wanting to get along and be liked by the other party, wanting to get back to the old normal, is, in the present political context, an objectively pro-fascist stance.

Published at 13:42 on 9 October 2021

The committee knew.

They knew their deadline would come on the eve of a holiday weekend. They knew their subpoenas’ recipients would probably ignore the documents. They never planned to enforce the “subpoenas” in the first place (it’s time for quote marks here, since a “subpoena” that is never intended to be enforced is a “subpoena” in name only).

I mean, really now: it is not unusual for me to slip up and forget about this or that schedule conflict, but I am just one individual, and someone for whom time management is not his strong suit as that. Am I to expect that every committee member is as pathetically disorganized as I am? Am I to expect that even if they are, no committee member (it would take just one) would notice the deadline falls right before a long weekend? And that’s just the committee members, then there’s all the staffers! Am I to expect that none of them would notice this, and flag it for attention?

No, it is pretty obvious: they knew. They knew, and they planned it this way. It is no coincidence they had no plans in place to enforce those “subpoenas,” because they were never intended to be enforced in the first place.

It was all a show. The Committee is nothing but a ruse (and a piss poor one at that) to pretend that the system cares about accountability.

Well, it doesn’t. If there’s one thing that’s clear about my fifty-eight years spent in the USA, is that this country has two sets of rules: one for the powerful, and one for everyone else, and that it is damn rare for any sufficiently powerful person to be held accountable for anything.

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, and how utterly and thoroughly ripe it is for authoritarian takeover.

I am now more certain than just about anything that we will see just how ripe it indeed was in the coming years. The Republic is dead, and the corpse will soon enough start stinking to the point that even the dullest amongst us can no longer ignore this fact.

Oh, and one more thing: the Committee knew that, by the time the long weekend was over, the lapsed “subpoena” “deadlines” would mostly be forgotten by their constituents and by the media. Just wait and watch. You will see.

Published at 17:30 on 8 October 2021

In the synchronicity department, the day it became obvious beyond any reasonable doubt that the Republic is dead (and that it is merely a matter of time before the stench of the corpse becomes more than can be ignored), is also the day that my provincial nomination went through.

Canadian provinces have more power than US States do. For openers, they can definitely secede if they want to. None have so far, but Quebec has floated the issue a couple times, and there is widespread consensus that if the Quebecers ever do cast a majority vote to leave, Quebec gets to leave.

Another, less dramatic, aspect is immigration policy. In the USA, it is strictly a Federal issue. In Canada, it is divided between the Federal and the provincial governments. A provincial nomination is an official statement from a province that said province really wants a person to immigrate there, and would the Federal government please give that person’s request special priority and consideration. (There is even a special allotment of immigration slots reserved for provincial nominees.) In other words, I’m basically in.

Not formally in, not quite yet, however. The ultimate permission is still given by the Canadian federal government. I will be applying for that once I get one final bit of paperwork from my new employer.

The job is in Vancouver, by the way. So it’s a little bit of an odd situation: I’m only moving about fifty miles. It really underscores the arbitrariness of borders: I could move thousands of miles east or south, and I would not have to contend with the slightest bit of immigration red tape.

Published at 13:37 on 8 October 2021

There was a well-known and important deadline yesterday. It was a deadline that anyone with an IQ above room temperature expected to be ignored. As such, and given its importance to the Republic, plans for it to be ignored had to be made.

Instead, the deadline passed with the normal, nearly-silent “whoosh” that any garden-variety lapsed deadline makes. Nothing else happened.

The Committee’s members have left town to enjoy some vacation time. So not only has nothing happened, it is pretty damn clear that nothing substantive will happen.

At this point, there are basically two plausible conjectures:

1. The members of the Committee were so intellectually damaged by decades of exposure to inside-the-Beltway Establishment politics that they lacked the common sense of a bucket of warm piss and actually believed their deadline would be taken seriously. Alternatively, they expected their subpoenas to be ignored but, being morons, didn’t think they were all that important.
2. The members of the Committee are so chickenshit that they are afraid to enforce their subpoena’s deadline.

It is a committee of either idiots or cowards. Neither is the sort of committee capable of defending the Republic.

Trump was right. The Republic is so rotten to the core that it is incapable of defending itself against an authoritarian takeover. As such, Donald J. Trump will now go down as the most consequential president in the history of the American Republic.

Published at 13:51 on 7 October 2021

It is now put up or shut up time. Your subpoenas are going to be ignored.

It was always obvious that they would be ignored, because you have a long, sad history of caving. You have a long, sad history of standing firm for precisely nothing except craven capitulation. So of course your subpoenas will be resisted. Any subpoenaed Trumper would have to be a rank idiot to do otherwise, because the only rational expectation is that you will be too chickenshit to enforce those subpoenas. But I digress.

Democrats, it is now your job to prove them — and me — wrong. Enforce the subpoenas, and enforce them mercilessly. Ignoring them should result in arrests and jail time, just like ignoring any other more mundane subpoena does.

Anything less means capitulation to fascism. Enforce the subpoenas or else go down as co-responsible for the natural consequences of failing to enforce them.

Published at 14:57 on 6 October 2021

I have no disagreement with the contention that today’s social media monopilies represent a menace to society. Indeed they do.

Rather, I wish to make a word of caution about the response to this menace. If Congress is not careful, it might well do something that makes it easier for the Federal government to micromanage pretty much any firm (or individual) with an Internet presence. Pair that with the likelihood of a second Trump term, and you have a disaster in the making: a fascist government being handed a new tool for repression of political speech.

Whatever is done about the likes of Facebook and Twitter needs to be done in a way that keeps the government out of the job of deciding what sort of speech gets allowed online.