[quetzalcoatl]

Among the hundred or so 'explanations' that have been floated for what was supposed to have been HRC's pre-ordained coronation, there is one rather shocking omission: no unifying causal mechanism. We only are presented unrelated fragments - tossed out at random, as the occasion demands.

To correct this (probably deliberate) confusion, I'd like to offer an overarching 'theory' of what happened. My aim is to describe the framework underlying the current political chaos.

As you will notice, the focus will not be on the minutiae of political maneuvering leading up to 2016. Instead I've turned my attention to the economic malaise that underlies our current political instability. This malaise is, I believe, part of a long-term trend that will continue to haunt prospects for any kind of "normal" political democracy.

[Note: this is an experimental post. The format will be unconventional. I have condensed the narrative into twitter-like structures - mostly two sentence paragraphs intended to form clear and, I hope, striking images. The intention (if I've done this correctly) is that these memes should interlock and reinforce one another, like a set of musical variations. This is a first draft of an ongoing project, so criticize away]

What ACTUALLY IN FACT REALLY Happened: A Non-Fiction Novel in Fifty-Eight Memes

1/ What 'happened' to both the Democratic and Republican Parties is that they were blindsided by a profound demographic change, happening right under their noses. This change is the rise of the "Precariat."

2/ The definition of precariat: "a social class formed by people suffering from precarity, which is a condition of existence without predictability or security, affecting material or psychological welfare."

3/ The precariat live paycheck to paycheck. They may have sufficient income to meet daily needs, but are unable to meet even minor emergencies. They literally cannot save any part of their income.

4/ They are unlikely to have health insurance. They delay doctor and dental visits unless pain is unbearable. Minor exigencies (like a car breakdown) can trigger panic mode.

5/ The precariat rents. If they've owned a home in the past, they've probably lost it (or soon will). Since they cannot save, they will not have a paid-off home nor any income besides Social Security, at retirement.

6/ The Precariat class transcends traditional demographics. You find them among the working poor in the inner city, and in rural America. Alarmingly, you find them in recent college graduates - in astounding numbers.

7/ You find the precariat among older white-collar workers who have been forced into lower paying jobs. You find them in rust belt states: the rejects of automation and outsourcing.

8/ The precariat is the fastest growing demographic in the US. It will soon be a majority. This has profound political and social implications.

9/ In terms of neoclassical economics, most Americans have zero (or negative) marginal utility. The cost of hiring and training them cannot be justified in terms of ROI.

10/ In rural America (and much of suburbia) the economy consists of school bus drivers, teachers, medical asistants, Dollar Store clerks, crafts, narcotic sellers, etc. Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid provides a minimal base for this diminished economy.

11/ The economically stronger cities aren't much better off. The existing labor ecology has an astonishing number of make-work jobs. Paper pushers, electron pushers, Uber drivers, consultants, temps, and middle managers nervously looking over their shoulders.

12/ The pressure on employment is across the board and constant. An MIT study estimates that half of all current jobs will be automated out of existence in 20 years. Professionals are at great risk.

13/ The make-work economy is tolerated by the elite only because they require some degree of demand for their products. A form of corporate sponsored welfare, in effect.

14/ But the make-work economy is disintegrating. Companies face constant pressure to cut costs from competitors and investors. The Company Man is a distant memory. We are all either gig workers, or future gig workers.

15/ The psychological consequences are profound. The US suffers a collective insecurity that borders on national PTSD. Anger, lashing out, confusion, and depression permeate the collective consciousness.

16/ Perhaps the most damaging consequence is hopelessness, which leads inevitably to apathy, and withdrawal. This hopelessness (engineered?) serves maintenance of the status quo.

17/ This brings us back to Queen Hillary. In any rational world, her plan should have worked. The GOP had by then already turned feral and atavistic. The political "middle" seemed open for another Dick Morris style triangulation.

18/ Big finance was in her pocket. Koch and the rest of the energy sector was sidling up to her. Neoconservative hardliners were lining up for cabinet posts.

19/ Magic was in the air. Pixie dust coated the streamers. The Democrats would form a center-right majority, and rule America for another generation.

20/ But there was one problem. It turned out to be a very big problem. There was no middle remaining. Nothing to triangulate to. She triangulated off the edge of a cliff.

21/ Everybody was caught with their pants down. Big data. Party insiders. The talking heads. The corporate donor class. I include myself among those who missed the obvious. Mea culpa.

22/ Consequence time. The elites of both parties made devastatingly short-sighted strategic calls, and now the piper must be paid...with interest.

23/ In 1985, Bill Clinton and the DLC ditched the working class of the industrial midwest and rural America. The party of FDR evolved into the party of silicon valley.

24/ The Republicans doubled down on an astro-turfed Tea Party economic scheme. Shrink the government, and shrink the public sector. But the private sector was unable, or unwilling, to take up the slack in employment.

25/ The few populists on the right who grasped the necessity of fiscal stimulus (like Bannon) were banished. The GOP plan morphed into pure shock doctrine: a full-scale looting of public assets - precisely analogous to what was done to post-Soviet Russia.

26/ The GOP is backed into a corner. It has no constitutency left besides its billionaire donor class. Every succeeding iteration of healthcare or tax reform turns more draconian. Its donor class is vocally restive over its failure to liquidate the welfare state.

27/ A part of Mellon's advice to Hoover is now being carried out in the most literal way: "liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate farmers, liquidate real estate... it will purge the rottenness out of the system."

28/ Why only "a part?" The current GOP is focused like a laser beam on liquidating labor, period. Stocks, real estate, and other assets awill continue to be propped up by the FED and tax structure. Thus the rottenness grows exponentially.

29/ This process was actually kicked into high gear by Obama. The greatest financial fraud in human history received no indictments or convictions. Its perpetrators now advise both parties at the highest levels and extend their grasp on the levers of power.

30/ 2008 was the last off ramp. There will be no Grand Compromise like FDR arranged between capital and labor. FDR had the fear of God to spur capital into compromise. There is no longer any element of fear. They believe they are in command.

31/ The reason labor is powerless is structural. Labor's input into actual production is now minimal. It has no leverage, and thus the power to strike is meaningless. No vast factories with legions of workers.

32/ The proletariat no longer exists in the way Marx envisioned - at least not as a recognizable and delimitable group that can be targeted and organized. In a trivial sense, the 99% are the new proletariat, but they have few common features around which solidarity might emerge.

33/ The long-awaited historical juncture has arrived, unnoticed. Nobody is prepared for it, but you have to fight the war with the troops you have.

34/ The World System organized around neoliberalism is falling apart. Its disintegration is shockingly rapid.

35/ The US has always been the point of the spear for liberal capitalism. The spear is broken.

36/ The US two-party system lies in smoking ruins. The Democratic Party is virtually non-existent in half of US states. It has lost 1000+ seats in national and state legislatures.

37/ The majority of politically active Americans now stand in opposition to the current makeup of the two-party system. An unscientific estimate: Trump base 30%, Progressives 25%. 55% have become radicalized. Not even Che could have achieved that.

38/ The Dems, having ditched the working class, are engaged in all-out war with its left wing. For all the whining about Russians, the DNC's propaganda apparatus is remarkably similar to the Russian model. See Verrit.

39/ The objective is to break the progressive wing permanently, and either expel it or marginalize it into insignificance. Much of corporate journalism is on board with the Dem establishment in this objective.

40/ This strategy is profoundly ill-considered. The Dems, already mortally wounded, have no center to draw on in order to make up the difference. They have little, or nothing, to appeal to the reamining apathetic 45%. They are effectively consummating a mass suicide pact.

41/ The Republicans have a different problem. They have a well-organized state structure, plus a well-oiled and well-funded propaganda machine to boot. They have control, albeit precarious, of Congress.

42/ But the act is breaking down. Big League. Their attacks on middle America are now so vicious and draconian, that even conservative-leaning independents, are backing away in horror.

43/ They are fully dependent as the Democrats on their donor base. These donors are livid about Congressional inaction. They are demanding results.

44/ GOP can't back down. Each new iteration of repeal-and-replace or tax reform grows increasingly extreme. There is no parliamentary trick that won't be used. Medicare and Medicaid will be slashed by $1 1/2T, and ACA starved into submision.

45/ Either the GOP enacts these cuts, or they lose their donors. A lose/lose proposition. This is why there is panic in GOP ranks, despite their organizational prowess.

46/ Cuts demanded by donors are an automatic recession (best scenario). GOP, as you might expect, are just as clueless as Dems. Shrinking the public sector savagely, with no guarantee (and little chance) that private sector can absorb such massive job loss.

47/ Obama-era growth policies, miserly as they were, are now petering out. We have had negative job growth for the first time in 7 years.

48/ We are waiting for the next trigger. Nobody knows exactly what it will be. Student debt. An attack on North Korea. It will be soon. Impeachment won't save us.

49/ Structural problems ignored by Obama in 2008 crash will be revisited. I don't foresee Trump's crew having the competence to deal with a large scale financial holocaust.

50/ The long-delayed deflationary collapse can't be averted this time. I would say Great Depression, but that's too modest. Greatest Depression Ever?

51/ If Trump can't rescue Puerto Rico, what will he do with an entire nation?

52/ Along with the Depression, you will have a non-functional political party system. Unlike 1929, when most Americans lived on farms and could feed themselves, most of the population is urban or suburban.

53/ With a majority of Americans already disaffected, how will they react to a real crisis? A profound political realignment is inevitable. But what will it look like?

54/ The right holds the cards now. They hold influential positions within the military, police, legislatures, judiciary, and media.

55/ If people react in untoward ways, there is the example of Catalonia to remind us of what state power is capable. If you don't want they're offering, some level of sacrifice may be required.

56/ The people have only numbers. Internet and cellphone service will be interrupted if these become means of organization against state power. Don't count on digitally mediated solidarity.

57/ It may come down to you, and people you know, acting in concert. If any of this strikes you as plausible, you must organize and develop a plan of action now.

58/ Needless to say, if it hits the fan in the US, it's going to hit the fan everywhere. Even China is not immune to an economic breakdown in the US. Be prepared.

[Wellsy]

32/ The proletariat no longer exists in the way Marx envisioned - at least not as a recognizable and delimitable group that can be targeted and organized. In a trivial sense, the 99% are the new proletariat, but they have few common features around which solidarity might emerge.

That seems to be the task in the modern situation of how to bring the single issue identarian type into a larger political project in seeing the rationally shared interest.
http://ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/SP-talk.pdf

But secondly, while proletarian class consciousness is very fragmented and weak, capitalism has become absolutely ubiquitous, it covers the entire globe and penetrates even the most private and the most communal of relations. As a result, the potential for an anti-capitalist formation, based on the social conditions of all of us suffering under capitalism, is really there. But when I say ‘formation’ I mean that it cannot be a ‘movement’ like the social movements of the past. I’m sorry, but I think the social conditions for such movements, which gave the communists the opportunity to contest for leadership of the people, have gone.

This is not a bad thing. It just means that the social conditions for socialist revolution and for socialism itself are coming about in a somewhat different way than we envisaged. The Manifesto envisaged:

“In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.” [Communist Manifesto, Chapter 2]

The communist ideal has always been connected with the modern wage labourer insofar as he or she thinks in and for his or her class. The task of Marxists today is to figure out how to translate that vision into forms of social consciousness which make sense in today’s world, in a form which embraces the irreducible diversity of modern society. The writings of Karl Marx and the experience of millions who have fought the good fight over the past 150 years remain a priceless resource, ... so long as we are prepared to find new solutions to new problems.

It makes me think that this is the importance of studying one's circumstances intimately in order to discuss and clarify and if one does well, to make darn sure one isn't misinforming.

Rhetoric appeals are nice for feelings but they must not be used to mystify the real relations.
http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/10867/1/VWills_ETD_2011.pdf

Spoiler: show

A particularly important piece of evidence in their case against Kriege is Kriege's enthusiastic promotion of self-sacrifice as a value for communists (“Circular Against Kriege”, MECW 6:45). Instead of arguing for the coincidence of every person's self-interest with the interest of humanity, Kriege posits a moral sacrifice of setting one's own interests aside for the good of “others” who will benefit from a transition to socialism. This notion of sacrifice, of setting one's own interests aside, is totally at odds with Marxism, which argues that all human beings have an objective interest in the realization of a communist society. Kriege argues for communism not as an answer to the problems that are facing human beings, but rather as a moral imperative to be realized out of a sense of one's duty to humanity. It does precisely what, as we saw in the previous chapter, critics such as Max Stirner accused communism of doing—it posits “the common good,” or “humanity” as an abstraction that demands sacrifices from real, concrete, human individuals, and thereby only replicates alienation in a different form, rather than abolishing it.

The argument becomes yet clearer when Marx and Engels strike their final blow against the “sacrificing” Kriege (“Circular Against Kriege”, MECW 6:49). Marx criticizes Kriege because he expects to be praised for sacrificing himself for the good of others, instead of seeing revolutionary activity as something that he carries out for his own benefit as well as that of others. As Kriege writes to the reader of Der Volks-Tribun, “We have other things to do than worry about our miserable selves, we belong to mankind.” Marx replies:

"With this shameful and nauseating grovelling before a “mankind” that is separate and distinct from the “self “ and which is therefore a metaphysical and in his case even a religious fiction, with what is indeed the most utterly “miserable” slavish self-abasement, this religion ends up like any other. Such a doctrine, preaching the voluptuous pleasure of cringing and self-contempt, is entirely suited to valiant — monks, but never to men of action, least of all in a time of struggle. It only remains for these valiant monks to castrate their “miserable selves” and thereby provide sufficient proof of their confidence in the ability of “mankind” to reproduce itself! — If Kriege has nothing better to offer than these sentimentalities in pitiful style, it would indeed be wiser for him to translate his “Père Lamennais” again and again in each issue of the Volks-Tribun. (“Circular Against Kriege”, MECW 6:49)"

Marx and Engels accuse Kriege of misrepresenting communism as “a religion of love” (“Circular Against Kriege”, MECW 6:46), rather than presenting it as a science of human progress and development, because to follow Kriege's reasoning would be essentially to take up a religious attitude towards humanity as a new god rendered into pseudo-materialist terms. We do not “belong to mankind,” to which we must constantly sacrifice our individual self-interest. One should be “worried about oneself”--it is in fact this concern with oneself and one's own circumstances that can be linked together with an argument for rational social control over society's resources. There is no need for a moral leap across some perceived gap between one's self-interest and the general interest of society.

Marx and Engels are quite clear in separating their own theory from Kriege's moralistic grandstanding. The point of communism is not for people to stop “worrying about themselves.” Although Marx does not refer to “alienation” here, his comments here on sacrifice relate directly to the problem of alienation. To sacrifice oneself, after all, is to alienate oneself from oneself, to give oneself over to a being that is separate, for the satisfaction of aims that are considered more important than one's own. Marx does not think human progress can be aided by human beings denying themselves, but rather, by human beings seeking their satisfaction and fulfillment. So what Kriege presents is not communist practice, but rather, as Marx and Engels call it, “a religion of love,” an irrational and emotionalist call to self-alienation. Without a material link between self-interest and the general interest, Kriege retreats to an irrational appeal to emotion to make individuals do what is necessary for “society,” an entity whose interests are imagined to be opposed to their own.

Being able to articulate clearly where that shared interest seems to me to be important, done so rationally, to know ones stuff so well through both theory and action that one can expess explicitly where the shared interest is. But the task needs to be unified more than short term interest, need to really integrate the different perspectives into a whole political project.

Spoiler: show

http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/seminars/hegel-critique.htm

Alliance politics is the flavour of our decade. What I mean is that the predominant terrain on which politics, radical politics at least, is carried out is that of alliances: where various groups of people, each motivated by quite different ideals, join together for a specific project which serves their common ends. What is blindingly obvious about this kind of politics is that all the participants of an alliance do not share the same vision, but only a very limited short-term goal. Consequently, none of them can gain from the exercise, or even a long series of such projects, anything more than a very limited contribution towards their ideal. On the other hand, the forces of conservatism, the mainstream if you like, rests in the firm knowledge that everything in the world is organised more or less satisfactorily around their own ideal, be it power, money, security, status or whatever.
...
Alliance politics arises in the condition of post-modernity, when almost every individual person participating in an alliance adds a new and unique idea, perhaps I could even omit the word “almost”. And this, the condition of post-modernity, is the underlying ground of alliance politics. It is really inconceivable that a new social movement could emerge here of anything like the kind of social movements which have formed our times.
...
The socialist movement, the national liberation movements, the great bourgeois revolutions of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, all these movement were constituted by ideals which were also universal regulative ideals representing a whole life-world, a whole, free notion. Where they were successfully objectified, it meant the overthrow of the state and the restructuring of the entire life-world in the nation in question.

The great social movements of the post-war period: the Civil Rights Movement and the Women’s Liberation Movement above all, were organised around clear visions of a different world, but their objectification could only take the form of a modification of our life-world which leaves the central principle intact.
...
So for example, the invention of the internet is an objectification of the human capacity for communication which has certainly transformed our world, but it cannot be said to have overthrown it. Every new notion to some extent transforms our life-world as it is absorbed into it.
...
The question for us is this: what kind of Notion could issue from the terrain of alliance politics, a terrain which whose peculiar character is the independent existence of a multitude of distinct and different, even opposed and contradictory notions or ideals? Well, I think the answer is in the question. I think that the Notion towards which decent people are striving at the moment is to do with how human beings should deal with each other under the presupposition that each person hold dear to themselves different values (regulative ideas), organises their life according to different theories (constitutive ideas), but since we have to work together, collaborate to the extent that our lives intersect and we have common objectives, to the extent that we are doing things together, we have to define together what that common objective is and the specific role that each of us, not just our own selves, must play in order to work towards the common objective, while still respecting and recognising the others’ difference.
...
Let us suppose that we have an abstract Notion: collaborate while respecting the different norms and values of the others; arrive at joint decisions through consensus decision-making and keep our promises. I sum up this relation with the maxim: “What we do is decided by you and me.”

What do we do about the fact that millions of people do not share the common objective and some people, the most powerful, actively oppose the shared objective? The millions of people who are not political radicals, not professional agitators with strange pre-occupations remote from everyday life?

The point is, that this problem of the ethic of collaboration, which arises in concrete form in alliance politics, is universalisable to society at large.

Alliance politics today consists of a whole diversity of social movements and political parties. One can theoretically argue in each case that the specific ideal in question is capable of re-organising the world according to its own regulative ideal. It is a fact that the millions of individuals participate in the world market and organise their lives through a multiplicity of such ideals. And there is nothing wrong with this, provided only that people do not impose their ideal upon others who do not share it, or use their ideal in order to oppress or dominate others.

The movement can only grow and can only transform the world if it works in accordance with its own Notion. This means that people have to take what they learn engaging in alliance politics into everyday life; they have to challenge people in their everyday interactions with the same standards of mutual respect and collaboration that they expect from others engaged in political action. At the same time, those shared values which may begin to emerge from the activity of alliance politics have to become the focus of activity to the extent that people are able to actualise them in their own activity.

49/ Structural problems ignored by Obama in 2008 crash will be revisited. I don't foresee Trump's crew having the competence to deal with a large scale financial holocaust.

Something that comes to my mind is when I learnt about the Russian and French revolutions back in school, how things seemed as if they could've been diverted by effective leadership but leadership keep making errors, too stuck in their ways that only intensified the problems.
Makes me think that Trumpet could just well be the type of fool to be in power at the exactly wrong time, much like the King and Tsar were. Too many personal defects to be effective leaders.

56/ The people have only numbers. Internet and cellphone service will be interrupted if these become means of organization against state power. Don't count on digitally mediated solidarity.

https://www.guernicamag.com/john_berger_7_15_11/

Spoiler: show

The fact that the world’s tyrants are ex-territorial explains the extent of their overseeing power, yet it also indicates a coming weakness. They operate in cyberspace and they lodge in guarded condominiums. They have no knowledge of the surrounding earth. Furthermore, they dismiss such knowledge as superficial, not profound. Only extracted resources count. They cannot listen to the earth. On the ground they are blind. In the local they are lost.

For fellow prisoners the opposite is true. Cells have walls that touch across the world. Effective acts of sustained resistance will be embedded in the local, near and far. Outback resistance, listening to the earth.

Liberty is slowly being found not outside but in the depths of the prison.
...
For example, the amount of circumstantial freedom existing in a certain situation, its extent and its strict limits. Prisoners become experts at this. They develop a particular sensitivity toward liberty, not as a principle, but as a granular substance. They spot fragments of liberty almost immediately whenever they occur.
...
Twenty years ago, Nella Bielski and I wrote A Question of Geography, a play about the Gulag. In act two, a zek (a political prisoner) talks to a boy who has just arrived about choice, about the limits of what can be chosen in a labor camp: when you drag yourself back after a day’s work in the taiga, when you are marched back, half dead with fatigue and hunger, you are given your ration of soup and bread. About the soup you have no choice—it has to be eaten whilst it’s hot, or whilst it’s at least warm. About the four hundred grams of bread you have choice. For instance, you can cut it into three little bits: one to eat now with the soup, one to suck in the mouth before going to sleep in your bunk, and the third to keep until next morning at ten, when you’re working in the taiga and the emptiness in your stomach feels like a stone.

You empty a wheelbarrow full of rock. About pushing the barrow to the dump you have no choice. Now it’s empty you have a choice. You can walk your barrow back just like you came, or—if you’re clever, and survival makes you clever—you push it back like this, almost upright. If you choose the second way you give your shoulders a rest. If you are a zek and you become a team leader, you have the choice of playing at being a screw, or of never forgetting that you are a zek.

The Gulag no longer exists. Millions work, however, under conditions that are not very different. What has changed is the forensic logic applied to workers and criminals.

During the Gulag, political prisoners, categorized as criminals, were reduced to slave laborers. Today millions of brutally exploited workers are being reduced to the status of criminals.

The Gulag equation “criminal = slave laborer” has been rewritten by neoliberalism to become “worker = hidden criminal.” The whole drama of global migration is expressed in this new formula; those who work are latent criminals. When accused, they are found guilty of trying at all costs to survive.

This of course don't give answers but direction and suggestion I guess.