Archives for posts with tag: Donald Trump
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Is Post-Truth Fake News?

May 17, 2020 //
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I don’t remember exactly when Post-Truth became a thing. I don’t care enough to look it up. I’m fairly certain it was when Kellyanne Conway described the alternative facts on crowd sizes that people began to discuss the death of Truth. Regardless of the exact beginnings of this disregard for the sanctity of facts, it has certainly become a staple of the entire Trump presidency, and its blossoming popularity among the wannabe dictators of the world shows a global crisis of fighting facts with alternative ones.

I’ve heard blame for this pandemic of misinformation being foisted upon postmodernism: if everything is relative, then nothing is true in which case everything can be true. Except the justification for these “alternative facts” is never a glib relativism, but always fierce, vitriolic partisanship. Trump isn’t accepting alternative views: his are the only ones and all others are Democratic coups or liberal media lies. In actuality, postmodernism’s view of truth is that the powerful craft the dominant narrative which then defines what ‘truth’ is.

foucault

Pictured: Postmodernism being sexy as fuck

Remember the “Weapons of Mass Destruction” of Saddam Hussein that turned out to be a lie? How about when infamous Reagan administration official Lee Atwater let slip that social spending rhetoric was merely a cover for taking advantage of racist fears? You can no longer say n*****, n*****, n*****, you’ve got to lie. How is dog-whistle politics not post-truth? A hundred years ago, Woodrow Wilson needed to sell an unpopular world war to his country, and thus was birthed propaganda. Hell, even Plato talked about creating a myth to convince the plebs that the hierarchy he had set up in his Utopian Republic was both righteous and eternal. Those at the top, of course, were all in on the ruse. This is all prior to Trump, so there’s nothing “post” about it.

All these instances are powerful people shaping what we consider to be the “right” way of viewing the world. You know, the “truth.” Kinda sounds like the postmodernists were on to something, actually. So how have things changed since Trump was elected?

A compelling argument could be post-accountability. My own version of honesty as a virtue is that virtue requires personal sacrifice. When I have literally nothing to gain or lose by lying, like if I lie about the weather outside, then I’m considered pathological. Honesty doesn’t really fit in as a virtue in those kinds of scenarios. However, if I get drunk at a party and make out with my girlfriend’s sister, then I have a lot to lose in being honest about it. Hence, virtue requires the potential for personal sacrifice. This clearly shows that Trump is pathological, given that he, and his enabling administration, will lie about something as absurd as crowd sizes, even given photographic evidence to the contrary. However, no one holds him or the administration accountable. He was impeached, sure, but given the obstruction of justice he committed that was exposed during the Mueller probe, and the personal profit he has garnered violating the emoluments clause of the constitution, his impeachment was very lackluster. And then it was dismissed in the senate, with no lessons learned.

susan collins

Pictured: bending backwards to accommodate a previous lie into a current one whilst being sexy as fuck

Except, again, no one is ever held accountable. Remember Obama “looking forward” to avoid looking at the literal torture of the past administration? Clinton’s impeachment followed a similar trajectory to Trump’s in the senate. Or how about those who managed to get charged for the Iran-Contra scandal being pardoned by Bush Sr.? Or Richard Nixon being pardoned by his successor? It’s hard to remember any proportional political accountability since the French Revolution.

So truth in politics has never really had its day in the sun, nor has accountability for any vice, whether wrath, licentiousness, or the bearing of false witness. But, something must be different, right? This must be an aberration; Trump is different from all the rest because he’s orange and says the quiet things out loud! And there is! It’s what I would like to call: post-competency.

pots and pans

I don’t know why I thought of this image while visualizing the competency of the Trump administration, but it just feels appropriate.

 

All those other liars and crooks were good at what they did. The rhetorical twists and redefinitions of the word “is” and all other manner of sleights of hand, smoke, mirrors, and all the rest have always been a roller coaster of devilish charm and the subtlest of winks. Trump was accused of pressuring the Ukrainian president to investigate the Bidens, and when asked on camera what he was hoping to get out of his phone call with the Ukrainian president, he said that he hoped that they would investigate the Bidens. And that China should investigate too, just for good measure. He literally admitted to what he had been lying about days earlier, and then went back to lying about it days later. There will be no linguistic philosophy under the Trump administration because they’re all just such terrible liars. Our brains have become so accustomed to hearing well-crafted falsities and half-truths that when someone comes along who is just the absolute worst at telling lies, we think that the very concept of truth has been abandoned.

Accountability for this brash incompetence fails because modern politics is more about tribalism than it is about policy or even ideology. The attachment most people have to their political parties is the same that they have to their preferred sports team: it doesn’t matter who they are or what they do, we support them no matter what. Trump can talk about injecting bleach or grabbing women by the pussy, and then brazenly lie about sarcasm or locker room talk despite abundant evidence to the contrary, and his fans will not bat an eyelid for the same reason the ref always seems to be penalizing your team more than the other.

ESY-031306450 - © - Antonio_Diaz

The caliber of stock photo actors on full display. Their ambivalent rage is palpable.

We shouldn’t be worried so much about the abundance of lies, even as deadly as they might be. The tobacco industry lied to congress about the addictive nature of cigarettes, and the oil industry knew about climate change in the 80s, long before Trump started peddling hydroxychloroquine. Hell, even the level of incompetency is a bit of a blessing. Can you imagine a Trump administration that had even a modicum of intellect or skill? Or, to be fair, had these things that were then not stifled by sycophancy to a president lacking in both? America would actually have a Muslim ban as well as a wall along its southern border. We’re better off that they’re idiots. We should be concerned as to why people don’t seem to care when these things are so out in the open, when pathological narcissism demands impossible to believe lies, and nothing changes. Fealty to surreality is a bizarre thing to witness, and it is no surprise that we question our collective commitment to reality because of it. However, what we need to focus on is breaking away from the devastating tribalistic partisanship that allows it to happen.

The first step towards good, wholesome anarchism is the abolition of all political parties. Let’s start our focus there.

 

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Categories Politics

Bernie Sanders and Collective Action

May 3, 2019 //
1

In a somewhat bizarre turn of events, Bernie Sanders recently went on Fox News to discuss his vision for America. I say “recently” in the sense that Blog for Chumps is updated only ever infrequently, so this is about as Breaking News as you’re going to get. I’m only going to focus on the one section that I’ve set up in the hyperlink there, when Sanders is asked, if he likes high taxes so much, why doesn’t he take the initiative and pay more? Be the Leninist vanguard of the Keynesian welfare state!

Sanders, despite the positive reaction from the crowd, actually answers this question rather poorly. He states that he pays what he is obligated to pay, and then turns to whataboutism to ask for Donald Trump to release his tax returns to see if the President is following those same obligations. Of course, the question was not about meeting obligations, but exceeding expectations in order to conform with the ideology that Sanders allegedly espouses. Namely, higher taxes on the wealthy.

There is a much better response to this question: ignore it entirely and respond to the underlying ideology that drives it instead.

Social change is not an individualistic concept. Slavery was not abolished because one slave owner decided he didn’t think it was such a great idea anymore, and then everyone else fell in line like plantation-owning dominoes. Democracy didn’t come about because some monarch took it upon himself to diffuse his absolute power. Democracy is by definition a collective concept; imagining an individual shifting the gears of government, on their own, toward a government that literally requires the will of demos, is patently nonsensical.

Voting

I live under a monarchy. I’m going to cast a ballot, and just hope that everyone else follows my shining example. NO OTHER EFFORT REQUIRED! YAY FREEDOM!

There is a prevailing myth about Rosa Parks that she was just some random woman who had had enough, and her stubbornness ultimately lead to the dissolution of the segregated seating on Montgomery transit. Yet Parks was already an active activist and member of the NAACP before her refusal, and then she engaged with the activist community in a lengthy bus boycott to overcome the racist practice. Her decision and the consequences that followed were heavily steeped in collective action.

It’s neither individuals nor their actions that change the world. It is when individuals organize into groups that they become effective. The Civil Rights movement overturned segregated buses, just as revolution brought about democracy. Bernie Sanders paying more in taxes would do absolutely nothing to implement his goals. The question is attempting to twist hypocrisy into a situation where the very premise it is pushing is meaningless. However, there is an even darker side to the way this question (and those like it) is framed.

What this question is suggesting, beyond twisted hypocrisy, is that individual action is the solution to social problems. Billionaires just need to start changing their minds about a system that privileges them indiscriminately, and income inequality will become a thing of the past. The peasants can just wait for the king to give them rights. The slaves can wait for their masters to have a change of heart.

slave master

I tire of owning people. I guess you can have your freedom…

Immanuel Kant famously wrote that ought implies can. You are only morally obligated to make change in situations where you are actually capable of doing so. If individuals can’t change the world, then it’s not their fault. Poor people certainly can’t impact policy on their own, so they just shouldn’t worry about it. The moral duty to change the world falls entirely on the corporation, I suppose, since corporations are the only entities with the means to do so.

Individually, maybe, we bear no responsibility for the world, but we are useless as individuals. Collectively, however, we are capable of much, and that is where the responsibility lies. Here’s what Sanders should have said:

“I assume you’re asking this question because you want to frame me as a hypocrite. However, you’re assuming that anything I do makes a difference. The reason I’m sitting here talking to you at all is because I’ve been lucky enough to be a part of a grassroots campaign, years in the making, that has relied almost entirely on a collection of regular people who believe this kind of policy is needed. My taking of any action on my own means nothing; it’s what we’re doing as a group that’s making a difference. In fact, in even asking this question, you’re asking the American people to look to me, or people like me, to improve their lives by, in this case, individually paying more than is legally required in taxes. Don’t do anything else, just wait for ol’ Bernie to pay more in taxes. That will start the revolution! That’s not what they should be doing, and shame on you for suggesting it! What they should be doing is joining this movement, join a union or an activist group, and push forward change that doesn’t rely on any one person to make a statement. ”

SANDERS

No idea if I’ve captured his cadence or speaking style, but who gives a shit. I think I just want Bernie Sanders to refer to himself as “Ol’ Bernie”

 

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Categories Politics

The Dissolving Farce of American Interventionism

Feb 14, 2019 //
1

The American invasion of Iraq in 2003 seems like old news, despite the fact that its consequences are a series of ongoing tragedies across the globe. However, the Iraq war is important because it represents the quintessential farce of American intervention abroad. Not because of the false pretenses that began the invasion, not because of the war profiteering of private mercenary companies and arms manufacturers, not because of oil market manipulation, not because of America’s previous support for the dictator, nor any other controversy that makes the doves among us shake our heads in disbelief. The farcical nature of the Iraq war is embodied in the trial of Saddam Hussein.

Maximilien Robespierre was a vocal member of the Jacobin Club during the French Revolution that overthrew King Louis the XVI, and boy, did he have opinions about overthrowing tyrants! In one instance, there was a movement to provide ol’ Louis with a trial. Robespierre had this to say:

When a nation has been forced to the right of insurrection, it returns to the state of nature in relation to the tyrant. How can the tyrant invoke the social pact? He has annihilated it. The nation can still keep it, if it thinks fit, for everything concerning relations between citizens; but the effect of tyranny and insurrection is to break it entirely where the tyrant is concerned; it places them reciprocally in a state of war. Courts and legal proceedings are only for members of the same side.

If government is the structure which defines the laws, and a government which is popularly considered illegitimate is put on trial under the basis of its own laws, a contradiction appears. Now, Robespierre is discussing the revolution within his own country, and America intervened in Iraq, which means that the laws to which the Iraqi government were held to account were not its own. A civilizing mission to instill sovereign democracy is founded upon an act that essentially removes Iraqi sovereignty by imposing foreign determination. Now, Saddam was tried by a tribunal of five Iraqi judges, but their biases make it unclear as to the extent of American persuasion. If there is none, the problem reverts to its original form. The idea of a lawful resolution in an act that is by definition unlawful is nonsensical, doubly-so when those intervening are associated with neither. Which brings us to point number two.

Peoples do not judge in the same way as courts of law; they do not hand down sentences, they throw thunderbolts; they do not condemn kings, they drop them back into the void; and this justice is worth just as much as that of the courts. If it is for their salvation that they take arms against their oppressors, how can they be made to adopt a way of punishing them that would pose a new danger to themselves?

The very nature of a trial implies a possibility of innocence. If King Louis, and Saddam Hussein for that matter, could be innocent, then what of the revolution that deposed them? How many families incurred death and dismemberment for the innocence of their respective despot? The dyad of a revolution and a trial is paradoxical because one type of judgement cannot exist side by side next to the other. If the police needed to kill thousands of people (with varying degrees of culpability) in order to arrest one man, putting that man on trial would delegitimize the entire institution of policing. How could Iraq possibly be invaded if Saddam Hussein was presumed innocent, a necessity in any fair trial? In one stroke, a trial abolishes all validity of the revolution and essentially resurrects the rights of the tyrant.

But of course, the American invasion of Iraq wasn’t a revolution. It was a civilizing mission to bring democracy and human rights to a beleaguered people. Trials are civilized. If Saddam Hussein had simply been executed, it would have been nothing more than a coup. The story matters in order for the appearance of legitimacy to be maintained, even if the actions taken necessarily contradict that legitimacy. The War on Terror (with its apparent function of producing more terrorists) can continue under the guise of America’s benevolence, if a bit bungling at times. That is the story of America.

The interesting thing about Donald Trump and his administration is that the dog-whistle that has been an intricate part of American politics for so long has finally been abandoned. No longer are immigrants taking our jobs, they are wild bands of invading criminals, rapists, and animals. No longer do we need to frame Muslims as a binary between moderates and extremists, they are all extremists. No longer are countries invaded “for their own good,” but now it seems like Donald Trump is going to invade Venezuela just because he wants to.

Previously, Trump has stated explicitly that countries that receive the beneficence of American intervention should recuperate the country with oil. Perhaps now that he is president his rhetoric might have changed, but no. His pick for National Security Advisor, John Bolton, has gone on record saying that the goal in Venezuela is to get American oil companies investing in and producing Venezuelan oil. John Bolton, notably, replaced H.R. McMaster who was against military intervention in the region. I don’t want to say that the Iraqi invasion was solely about oil because I’m certainly no scholar on the subject and have seen conflicting accounts, but the invasion of Venezuela will be because those directing it have said it will. No more false pretenses, I suppose.

The veneer has finally been scratched away. The farce has reverted back to the tragedy. Given Trump’s propensity to say and do openly what was merely under the surface for so long, I’m curious if and when Venezuela is invaded, whether or not Maduro will get a trial.

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Categories Politics, Social Criticism
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