My favorite thing about being an "extremist" is that I find myself agreeing more often with people who are actually, legitimately and wholly opposed to me and my beliefs than I do with the people who think they can tolerate me in their "open society." Jeho knows what's up. Good god, the reactionaries understand that the relationship between people and the institutions and cultures they create goes both ways. It makes sense. The primary contention of centrists - conservatives
and liberals - is that there are no systems and cultures, no unspoken rules, that our political lives exist
prima facie exactly as they appear on surface level inspection, essentially, that there is no "man behind the curtain" and the present political system is essentially fair and honest. I think we could debate the degree of fairness. Maybe, briefly, there have been times and places where by happy accident capitalism has created sufficient conditions for the flourishing of art, the exchange of cultures, all that good [CENSORED]. That's true of any sociopolitical system. It was true of the Muslim caliphates and the Stalinist and Maoist dictatorships and it's true of the rise of groups like ISIS. Yeah, of course people who benefit from systemic oppression
like the system that creates it, they're its inheritors. But this is where nationalism and race theory begin to fall apart in their ability to analyze the complexity of the new political and cultural realities we live in
now, which are
not honest.
Like any good Marxist my guiding principle here is that, regardless of how you feel about it, ultimately all people are defined more by their socioeconomic class more than any other aspect of their being. They may feel differently. Many people, especially White people in the English-speaking world, are basically
allowed to think that other aspects of their identity - their race, their religion, their family background - are more important than the contents of their bank account and their credit rating, but when quality of life begins to really break down - as it already has in many places in this country - they'll begin to understand that this just isn't true in the grander scheme of history. The Don's - because admittedly, he's a crime boss, not a proper fuhrer - rise to power is absolutely, undeniably tied to the decay of ordinary people's lives in the United States. So is the candidacy of Bernie Sanders. But it be this way that one of the pillars of American nationalism and national identity is the hollowing out of a special place - you might even say a nationwide
"SAFE SPACE"
- for White, English-speaking people in the economic space of our lives. Very clearly, for most of Donald Trump's supporters, the price of admission to even the outermost fringes of this special place is
cultural assimilation. Membership in the special community of good and acceptable individuals can also be revoked, evincing the fact that people truly do exist in constant relationship to all parts of their identity, cuz who knows when suddenly liking a frog meme will make you a racist. Or when reactionary closet fascists will come for your civil rights, or public education because of your gender identity, sexual orientation, or just cuz you can be priced out without affecting the bottom line
Really, so much for your theory that there are people who aren't oppressed by capitalism. This process of "cultural assimilation" that reactionaries in the United States want people to undergo will ultimately have to cave before what people like Jehoshua rightly see as a kind of secular "new world order," the imposition of the global financial class - the "super wealthy," the international "1%" - on everyone, everywhere, forever. It will be the annihilation of culture. It is already becoming the annihilation of community. In the United States, the movement of millions of people in the space of decades was made possible by capitalist, industrial expansion. Today the actual physical movement of people is being made irrelevant by the infamous "Kali-Yuga" of interconnected, increasingly intelligent machines that our conversation is being made possible by. No matter how you come at it,
the complete annihilation of cultural, community-based borders is what is getting people so upset.
What's really frightening about this admission for liberals is that it acknowledges the "legitimate grievances" of American reactionaries, that there is indeed a toll being exacted by the American ruling class on White people, particularly on the "rural poor." These people, as much as anyone else, are losing and have lost control over their own communities. Young people are leaving small towns in the United States just like they are in China, and those who can't succumb in impressive numbers to pretty gnarly substance addictions. People from those communities who find something to like in the American settler-colonial culture of
huntin', muddin', drinkin' an' wearing the uniform of our defeated enemy at sports games, rightly see their culture as mocked and derided by a cosmopolitan community they have no access to - that they are priced out of - that preens as more enlightened and morally superior. Many of them also rightly see this culture as more interested in wealth and the fashion, the courtly extravagance, of "toleration," than legitimate acceptance and equality for all people. In leftist communities, this is called "liberal representation," the idea that you can just affirmative action a few members of marginalized communities into important positions in the power structure, rather than legitimately address that community's issues or consult it in the process of governing.
Maybe there are a few people who truly benefit from international capitalism. Like, legitimately ~1% of the world's population. In the short term, the upswing and downswing of international markets - which yeah, wow, are also negotiated between states as a part of bids for geopolitical power of which control of markets is a part - will benefit some communities and damage others. But in the long term, the global financial class is literally destroying all community and atomizing individuals before financial and social institutions which are increasingly automated, operate independent of human need or want, and exist to serve the good of abstract economic concepts. It is the creation of a global machine that will serve the interests of an incredibly small group of individuals - basically a cabal - and order the lives of all humanity according to them. It will destroy "leftist," "progressive" communities just as it will destroy "traditional" ones. You,
@Thlayli and others may in your professional lives see yourselves as important to this process of accumulation as technocrats, people with professional and technical skills like medicine, engineering, or bureaucrats or whatever else that international capitalism needs right now, but ultimately you or your children or your grandchildren will be discarded because they are redundant, just as entire cultures have been made "redundant" and subject to the imperial powers in times past.
The future's so bright I need a drink
(Or resignation now, I guess.)
fair enough since the discussion has gone way beyond what I intended when I acknowledged LOE referencing me in that other thread...
