Beyond the Pretenses of U.S. Politics (Guest Post)

Author, performer, musician and maker of web things, solidad decosta once slept with the collected works of William Carlos Williams (Volume I) to get over her father complex. A recipient of the 2008 kari edwards scholarship at Naropa's Summer Writing Program, her work has appeared in Mirage, Shampoo, Fireweed, and the San Francisco Bay Guardian Online. When she is not writing sestinas about rioting with foam rubber bricks or writing odes to zombies, she bangs out Brechtian piano improvisations.
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While I am not ready to claim that there is no such thing in the present-day U.S. as genuine politics (as in a self-empowering of the present day polis), things do look rather bleak – and in this particular social drama, the bleakest of all situations can be found within the pretense of what gets called left and right. Consider two sides of an imaginary coin, with each side in its own respective universe – one marked conservative, the other liberal. One of the greatest farcical aspects of the right side of this coin is how much its adherents rail against a perceived socialism that mostly doesn't exist – and yet they carry on regardless, their mouths and hair full of the Ashes That Rush And Glenn Made. As for the coin's reverse: we're mostly a walking caricature at this point. While not as self-parodying as the far right, we are even less effective with our signs and slogans, our empty marches and protests, our infrequent clogging up the gears of the safely well-insured. In reality, what lies underneath and all around this simulacra is two wings of capitalism, with little if any concern for ideology beyond its own sphere: one wing globalized, centrist and authoritarian, and the other isolationist, fascistic and authoritarian. This is not to say that I have lost “faith” in the power of social action – far from it. My intention here is to demystify the false notions that drive the concepts of left and right in the U.S., while hopefully providing some insights that may help in the long process of moving away from manufactured hope/despair, and toward approaches that are fair and equitable for all.

A great deal of what drives sociopolitical life in the U.S. has more to do with core beliefs regarding humanity's nature as a whole viz. good and evil rather than the visages of left and right. On one side, there are the people who believe humanity is inherently flawed, that we all can't be trusted, that we need to be governed. (Note that this belief straddles both left and right, both historically and presently: this applies to Lenin as much as it does to Cheney.) On the other side, there are those who believe in our inherent goodness, that generosity is a prevalent attribute, that true democracy is nurtured from the ground up: the Zinns and Kuciniches (and yes, Ron Pauls, his backward views on abortion and “the border” notwithstanding) of the world. Unfortunately for the adherents of both sides of this debate, human beings appear to be capable of vast acts of kindness as well as unspeakable cruelty. As is evidenced by landmark studies such as the Milgram and Stanford Prison Experiments, cruelty is tied as much to circumstance as it is to individual beliefs or character, while more recent research indicates inherent human tendencies towards mutual support systems and cooperation ^[1].

Is it possible that “good vs. evil” when presented in an absolutist fashion is not complex enough to embody the emotional and psychological realities that we contend with daily?

Consider a frequent example used to uphold this dichotomy: the consequences of wars throughout the 20^th century, especially World War II. Axis? Evil. Allies? Good – simply because in order to defeat the ravages of unchecked malevolence, you need a benevolent force to defeat it. The consequence of casting all moments following WWII in this light is that it obscures whatever future crimes against humanity that may be occurring, including many of the ones that lie directly under our noses – Iraq, Katrina, Palestine – as well as the ones that have been with us for quite some time, but that were propelled into metastasis by Nazi Germany. (I will leave it to the reader to decypher how far this particular cancer has spread, and in what forms. Furthermore, this mapping of good vs. evil applies to canonic left/right ideology as well. For example, is individualism “good” and collectivism “evil,” or vice versa? This is an unmistakably false equation in both directions when you consider that what passes for good or evil in this instance largely depends on where you sit within the left/right divide. The left (or again, what passes for such in the U.S.) is mostly about addressing the results of unchecked individualism in service to capital, along with touting a highly vocal yet mostly dulled and outmoded sense of collective purpose (think the aforementioned protests and such here), while the right tends to consist of misguided attempts to forge collective meaning (religious, traditionalist or otherwise), without much of a concern for the consequences of an individual's actions in the “free” market. The problem with framing individualism and collectivism in this way lies in the presumption that there
is a uniform answer that is applicable to all situations and to all people. Consider power law distribution^[2], wisdom of crowds, the commons. All of these things are “collective,” but in ways that don't necessarily negate the individual. Conversely, consider that no one individual can survive without the assistance of others; ironically, this is most true of those who hold the most capital, whose grandiose hoardings of wealth depend on the subjugated labor of millions, “going Galt” notwithstanding.

Nevertheless, having a robust sense of self and one's purpose is critical. By this, I mean the kinds of self-actualization that emerge from breaking the multiple spells of work, production, schooling, family and sexual repression, not the navel-gazing menagerie of the new age movements from the 1970s onward. (If anything, much of the countercultural self-exploration in the late 20^th century west is what led to the eventual shift towards up-with-the-self conservatism – first via Thatcher, then Reagan.) What I am asserting instead is akin to situationism (the politics of everyday life), combined with a critique of the mechanisms and apparatuses that control us a la Illich – with quite possibly a bit of Wilhelm Reich in the mix. In order to break the spell, deeper waters need to be chartered, on both the personal and interpersonal levels; it is by shattering the cacophony of myths promoted by the so-called mainstream that one discovers one's true nature.

Plainly put, what the U.S. grassroots political movements lack is not resources, free speech (current setbacks notwithstanding), or even the ability to organize. What they primarily are bereft of is the articulated desire to control our daily lives in a manner that actively supersedes the dictates that are lined out for us, in a fashion that ultimately makes sense to the majority. What is needed is the will to overcome such dictates, and then the stamina to go from there. Without this, whatever passes for social change becomes a puppet show, railing against a universal Bad Father in order to Save The World. This is why the revolution we face is the one that is between our ears, and between each other; from this fundamental change in the dynamics of self vs. other follows the social revolution writ large, past failures notwithstanding. Anything else is mere set design with deck chairs, while the icy tower looms in the rapidly approaching distance.

Suggestions for further understanding and research:

The Century of the Self (documentary), Adam Curtis

The Power of Nightmares (documentary), Adam Curtis

Here Comes Everybody, Clay Shirky

La Commune (Paris, 1871) (film), Peter Watkins

Horizontalism, Marina Sitrin

Deschooling Society, Ivan Illich

Tools for Conviviality, Ivan Illich
Multitude, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri

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[1] See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_work_with_groups#Mutual_Aid.

[2] See Here Comes Everybody (Shirky 2009, Penguin Books), pgs. 122-30 for an introduction to this concept.

Categories: post-democracy, post-politics

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