I'm hardly a Trumpist, but do you really and truly believe that Jan 6th and Balkan genocide (or even lesser evils, like the collapse of American democracy, such as it is...) belong together on the same page, let alone the same breath? A throng of disaffected rubes parading through the capitol, putting their feet on the desks of profoundly corrupt insiders, and filing out in time for dinner hardly makes for a putsch; the paucity of charges leveled against even the most provocative of them reflects that reality, does it not? For that matter, am I truly meant to be disturbed by the results of that Washington Post poll, disseminated to us so helpfully, in lockstep, by all the major propagandists in all our finest papers, just in time for this anniversary? What am I to make of a question which asks "Do you think it is ever justified for citizens to take violent action against the government, or is it never justified?" Ought I answer with anything less than the affirmative? Ought you? Says who? This nation was founded, after all, on acts of sedition and violence against what was the "lawful" government of the era. And was it not a bomb plot that aimed to grant us an early end to WW2? I consider you to be a thoughtful man (and, frankly, a moral one, though I believe you'd prefer ethical as a descriptor), but I'll confess there's little in this entry that resonates with me. And this is something of a tangent, but I'm surprised to see Solzhenitsyn being cited on the matter of morality; the guy was a fascist (consider his views on Franco's Spain, or Russian ethnonationalism).
Thank you for your interest. I did not mean to imply an equivalence between events transpiring currently on the American scene and the Balkan genocide. Such would be assuredly a false equivalence and intellectually irresponsible.
I was trying to make a deeper underlying point concerning he human potnetial for violence, hatred and cruelty and the restraints of civilization. I I am very disquieted by the surge of hatred and violence which has emerged on the American scene. Clearly, there has always been violence. But what is new, I believe, is the legitimacy given to it by the former occupant of the White House and his Republican followers, especially in high office. The emergence of autocracy in America I believe is plausible. There is a breakthrough of violence and hatred that ruptures the veneer of civility. While certainly not genocide, I am asserting that there is a continuum and I see the current violence as being on that continuum. I suspect we see a different landscape.
Solzhenitsyn is not a hero mine. I am aware of his authoritarianism. However I am at the point in my intellectual development wherein I am willing to accept the truth from those with whom I stand in opposition if I consider those truths to be apposite and worthy. Jefferson was at best ambivalent about slavery, but he also gave the world perhaps its most liberatory insight. I am not prepared to dismiss the latter because I condemn the former.
I share your concern about the fragility of our democracy, and I think it's likely that our government will undergo radical change of some sort, at some point in my life. But I doubt that posterity will consider Trump's half-cocked stunt to be the watershed moment (it might rate as a footnote: a bugbear, employed by a government losing legitimacy, to expand its own police and surveillance powers).
We're living in an era where both parties have conspired, flagrantly and shamelessly, to butcher close to a million Americans (give them time, and they'll surpass even that milestone...), strictly at the bidding of the donor class. Though our various camps are all too happy to concoct myths and narratives about the downstream effects (I'm certainly caught up in it all), I don't think anyone is all that confused about the root cause: our democracy has been thoroughly captured by an elevated few, and no longer serves the average voter (whether it ever did is of course another matter). Consider the presumptions behind slogans like "drain the swamp", or "Black lives matter", or any number of similar phrases: the state is hopelessly corrupt, innately hostile to us (however one may define that term), and furthermore, it cannot be restored through the ballot box alone.
Is that state of affairs informed by the Trump admin? Sure, but schemes like, say, the destruction of the middle class commenced well before he even dreamed of running, and I think they're much, much more consequential in the long view. A lens which centers "cruelty", as stoked by our former president, fails to account for trends such as his electoral gains among Hispanic, Black & Asian American voters: what reason might they, this amalgam of minorities and immigrants, have to lean in aggregate toward someone who is a hate-monger and nothing more? Is there simply a contingent of ballot box brutes out there, who appreciate power for its own sake? Alright, but if so, then why has it grown among the apparent victim-group?
If we excise historical and material reality from the discussion (and I'll note the Balkan example did just that, though I neither condone nor excuse the actions of the Serbs) then we're left with mystery alone: we wind up with causes which are, as you said, "enigmas", ones we ultimately "cannot understand". The thesis that follows correctly identifies authoritarianism and tribalism as factors positively associated with the collapse of democracy, but it cedes the initiative to those very same forces. Why focus on countering them as they inevitably grow, instead of dismantling the conditions which animate and empower them? How far can pledges, and decency, and kindness get us when the new guy, our decorum candidate, is telling the nation to turn to google in the face of a plague?
I heard an anecdote from a trusted source the other day: we've got schools in NYC this week where ~20% of the teachers are out sick with covid, and where over 40% of the students are just not showing up (and those kids are utterly lost, since by mandate they're denied the option of remote learning). Is there any less hideous cruelty in that position than in any of the myriad that Trump had taken? Of course not; it just enjoys the benefit of massage and finessing by way of focus group testing, and a media apparatus complicit in its promulgation.
And it's falling flat: Biden's approval among 18-29's is around 25%, and it's not much higher among Millennials. Why are these cohorts, the ones so fastidiously and performatively anti-racist, not getting with the program? Are they, for reasons unknown, ceding ground to the very worst things they claim to imagine? I'd argue that they're correctly sensing that an establishment which cynically peddles civility (and I'm not counting you among this cohort, which it occurs to me can be taken as either an insult or a token of respect; I'm aiming for the latter) in truth offers the same kind of cruelty displayed more openly by the last guy.
Under these conditions, do the masses really need the sanction of some dilettante playing demagogue? I think not. I think the daily and growing violence of life in a slowly-fraying empire, lurching ever closer toward cannibalism, is much more consequential than the theatrics of Jan 6th, or any of the short-sighted power plays that the opportunists in either party might indulge in.
This is quite a lot. A agree that there has been a multitude of underlying dynamics that have brought us to this point. I am an anti-reductionist and think that social and political phenomena have multiple causes. I suspect that we view politics from significantly different perspectives and hold to differing ideologies, but concur that the middle class is badly hemorrhaging as a consequence of multiple dynamics, globalization among them. Leftist that I am I see Reagan as a major actor in valorizing the business culture, introducing top-down economics which has generated an obscene wealth gap. In turn, this has helped to stall the American dream, augment despair turning people inward and fomenting tribalism and division.
This a very astute and sullen analysis of the worst angels of our nature. I would include one other factor at play today that was not available before 1990's. Tribalism was kept alive and the dehumanization of the "other" happened in small groups and face to face rallies and meeting. Times have changed and it is the "google gabfest". I call it Technological Tribalism. Today any belief does not live in isolation as there are people one can connect with on line that hold to some of the most horrendous ideology and social sicknesses. The flat earth society has grown through the internet and you can find an anti-anything anytime. This is partly why Trumpsters were able to connect and spread vitriolic hatred and do the things as reprehensible as Jan. 6. They rallied on the internet. Trump did nothing to stop it in fact turned a blind eye that made many stumble. Social media needs some more intelligent-moral-civil control to stop this passing of hate to others looking for other haters and people to hate.
I agree. Social media have enabled the formation of groups, ideological tribes in an exponentially greater way than technology allowed before their advent. The problem is complex if we are going to uphold First Amendment freedoms, but intelligent regulation is mandated.
Well said, Joe. In these special times we must work to counter cruelty and violence.
I'm hardly a Trumpist, but do you really and truly believe that Jan 6th and Balkan genocide (or even lesser evils, like the collapse of American democracy, such as it is...) belong together on the same page, let alone the same breath? A throng of disaffected rubes parading through the capitol, putting their feet on the desks of profoundly corrupt insiders, and filing out in time for dinner hardly makes for a putsch; the paucity of charges leveled against even the most provocative of them reflects that reality, does it not? For that matter, am I truly meant to be disturbed by the results of that Washington Post poll, disseminated to us so helpfully, in lockstep, by all the major propagandists in all our finest papers, just in time for this anniversary? What am I to make of a question which asks "Do you think it is ever justified for citizens to take violent action against the government, or is it never justified?" Ought I answer with anything less than the affirmative? Ought you? Says who? This nation was founded, after all, on acts of sedition and violence against what was the "lawful" government of the era. And was it not a bomb plot that aimed to grant us an early end to WW2? I consider you to be a thoughtful man (and, frankly, a moral one, though I believe you'd prefer ethical as a descriptor), but I'll confess there's little in this entry that resonates with me. And this is something of a tangent, but I'm surprised to see Solzhenitsyn being cited on the matter of morality; the guy was a fascist (consider his views on Franco's Spain, or Russian ethnonationalism).
Thank you for your interest. I did not mean to imply an equivalence between events transpiring currently on the American scene and the Balkan genocide. Such would be assuredly a false equivalence and intellectually irresponsible.
I was trying to make a deeper underlying point concerning he human potnetial for violence, hatred and cruelty and the restraints of civilization. I I am very disquieted by the surge of hatred and violence which has emerged on the American scene. Clearly, there has always been violence. But what is new, I believe, is the legitimacy given to it by the former occupant of the White House and his Republican followers, especially in high office. The emergence of autocracy in America I believe is plausible. There is a breakthrough of violence and hatred that ruptures the veneer of civility. While certainly not genocide, I am asserting that there is a continuum and I see the current violence as being on that continuum. I suspect we see a different landscape.
Solzhenitsyn is not a hero mine. I am aware of his authoritarianism. However I am at the point in my intellectual development wherein I am willing to accept the truth from those with whom I stand in opposition if I consider those truths to be apposite and worthy. Jefferson was at best ambivalent about slavery, but he also gave the world perhaps its most liberatory insight. I am not prepared to dismiss the latter because I condemn the former.
I share your concern about the fragility of our democracy, and I think it's likely that our government will undergo radical change of some sort, at some point in my life. But I doubt that posterity will consider Trump's half-cocked stunt to be the watershed moment (it might rate as a footnote: a bugbear, employed by a government losing legitimacy, to expand its own police and surveillance powers).
We're living in an era where both parties have conspired, flagrantly and shamelessly, to butcher close to a million Americans (give them time, and they'll surpass even that milestone...), strictly at the bidding of the donor class. Though our various camps are all too happy to concoct myths and narratives about the downstream effects (I'm certainly caught up in it all), I don't think anyone is all that confused about the root cause: our democracy has been thoroughly captured by an elevated few, and no longer serves the average voter (whether it ever did is of course another matter). Consider the presumptions behind slogans like "drain the swamp", or "Black lives matter", or any number of similar phrases: the state is hopelessly corrupt, innately hostile to us (however one may define that term), and furthermore, it cannot be restored through the ballot box alone.
Is that state of affairs informed by the Trump admin? Sure, but schemes like, say, the destruction of the middle class commenced well before he even dreamed of running, and I think they're much, much more consequential in the long view. A lens which centers "cruelty", as stoked by our former president, fails to account for trends such as his electoral gains among Hispanic, Black & Asian American voters: what reason might they, this amalgam of minorities and immigrants, have to lean in aggregate toward someone who is a hate-monger and nothing more? Is there simply a contingent of ballot box brutes out there, who appreciate power for its own sake? Alright, but if so, then why has it grown among the apparent victim-group?
If we excise historical and material reality from the discussion (and I'll note the Balkan example did just that, though I neither condone nor excuse the actions of the Serbs) then we're left with mystery alone: we wind up with causes which are, as you said, "enigmas", ones we ultimately "cannot understand". The thesis that follows correctly identifies authoritarianism and tribalism as factors positively associated with the collapse of democracy, but it cedes the initiative to those very same forces. Why focus on countering them as they inevitably grow, instead of dismantling the conditions which animate and empower them? How far can pledges, and decency, and kindness get us when the new guy, our decorum candidate, is telling the nation to turn to google in the face of a plague?
I heard an anecdote from a trusted source the other day: we've got schools in NYC this week where ~20% of the teachers are out sick with covid, and where over 40% of the students are just not showing up (and those kids are utterly lost, since by mandate they're denied the option of remote learning). Is there any less hideous cruelty in that position than in any of the myriad that Trump had taken? Of course not; it just enjoys the benefit of massage and finessing by way of focus group testing, and a media apparatus complicit in its promulgation.
And it's falling flat: Biden's approval among 18-29's is around 25%, and it's not much higher among Millennials. Why are these cohorts, the ones so fastidiously and performatively anti-racist, not getting with the program? Are they, for reasons unknown, ceding ground to the very worst things they claim to imagine? I'd argue that they're correctly sensing that an establishment which cynically peddles civility (and I'm not counting you among this cohort, which it occurs to me can be taken as either an insult or a token of respect; I'm aiming for the latter) in truth offers the same kind of cruelty displayed more openly by the last guy.
Under these conditions, do the masses really need the sanction of some dilettante playing demagogue? I think not. I think the daily and growing violence of life in a slowly-fraying empire, lurching ever closer toward cannibalism, is much more consequential than the theatrics of Jan 6th, or any of the short-sighted power plays that the opportunists in either party might indulge in.
This is quite a lot. A agree that there has been a multitude of underlying dynamics that have brought us to this point. I am an anti-reductionist and think that social and political phenomena have multiple causes. I suspect that we view politics from significantly different perspectives and hold to differing ideologies, but concur that the middle class is badly hemorrhaging as a consequence of multiple dynamics, globalization among them. Leftist that I am I see Reagan as a major actor in valorizing the business culture, introducing top-down economics which has generated an obscene wealth gap. In turn, this has helped to stall the American dream, augment despair turning people inward and fomenting tribalism and division.
This a very astute and sullen analysis of the worst angels of our nature. I would include one other factor at play today that was not available before 1990's. Tribalism was kept alive and the dehumanization of the "other" happened in small groups and face to face rallies and meeting. Times have changed and it is the "google gabfest". I call it Technological Tribalism. Today any belief does not live in isolation as there are people one can connect with on line that hold to some of the most horrendous ideology and social sicknesses. The flat earth society has grown through the internet and you can find an anti-anything anytime. This is partly why Trumpsters were able to connect and spread vitriolic hatred and do the things as reprehensible as Jan. 6. They rallied on the internet. Trump did nothing to stop it in fact turned a blind eye that made many stumble. Social media needs some more intelligent-moral-civil control to stop this passing of hate to others looking for other haters and people to hate.
I agree. Social media have enabled the formation of groups, ideological tribes in an exponentially greater way than technology allowed before their advent. The problem is complex if we are going to uphold First Amendment freedoms, but intelligent regulation is mandated.