RECOVERING HUMAN AGENCY: SELF-RESPONSIBILITY, SOCIAL AWARENESS AND POLITICAL ACTION

Understanding this global phenomenon, call it the “viral effect,” is not about some sort of self-evident factualities versus conspiracy theory, as if these are the only two possible perspectives of thought.  The former reifies “factuality” and becomes a mythic “factualism.”  The later reifies the source of action, control and intent and imagines some “big brother” in cyberspace or nefarious bad-guy Illuminati in smoke-filled back rooms planning to orchestrate world change.  Get real.  The ‘viral effect’ is a mass mediated idea that is historically catalyzing global trends of divergence away from the Universalism or globalism, empire building, civilizational homogenization, totalitarian one-dimensionality, etc., etc.  No medical facts will clarify what is happening at this historical turning point.  We must rethink the whole of contemporary life and the parts of that whole in particular.  We all can play a part in this or turn it over to the self-appointed emperors of existence.  It’s time to re-appropriate one’s self in the deepest and broadest existential and spiritual sense.  It’s the opportunity for every individual to become a player and not a pawn.  One can be at play passionately in the fields of the Lord; or a minion worker bee passively responding to the “expert authorities” when they tell you to “believe,” “feel,” “act” as they see fit.  The ‘viral effect’ is the opportunity to fully become a human being in thought, feeling and spirit and re-appropriate the living Self whose experience creates the real, constitutes the real and decides upon the reality to be created.

One aspect of this possibly emerging ‘new normal’ is the recognition of the institutional force or ideological force of official, ‘mass mediated’ authority/expertise/specialization.  The medical aspect of the ‘viral effect’ is what we see in a few official experts such as Fauci, Birx and Gates commandeering the reality of what is going on and attempting to force or suggest universal political solutions: masking, social isolation, socio-economic shutdown.  These actions are the result of a Liberal/Enlightenment psychology (become ideology) that imagines a universal solution to a health problem.  Bill Gates states this most ludicrously when he claims that nothing can return to normal until there is universal global vaccination.  This is the delusion of all delusions.  This is a rich boy playing with his money and consequent power trying to make his vacuous existence meaningful and undoubtedly also enrich his bank account beyond all dreams. 

But in keeping with the medical issue, what is at stake here in the face of the official authority/experts influencing health policy and socio-political action is the question of the locus of control of one’s health and the locus of control of one’s identity and self-understanding even and especially at the personal, subjective and spiritual level.  In short the authentic ownership of one’s own body, mind and soul is at stake. 

If for example, I make any comment on Facebook regarding the medical knowledge around the ‘viral effect’ someone will inevitably respond with a comment like “what medical school did you go to?”  The challenge here is to prove my “expertise” in terms of institutional norms, traditions and practices.  So I’m not allowed an informed opinion unless I am an “expert” whose authority comes from a recognized institution.  Even though I have a Ph.D. in philosophy, have taught for 30 plus years at a college level, read constantly, think and write about politics, spirituality, culture, etc., my opinion means literally nothing unless I have been sanctified by the powers that be. This attitude and article of faith would mean the end of public discourse, critical thinking and democratic association.  It means the end of any belief that public education prepares one and authorizes one to effectively and competently participate in public, political discourse.  This worship of the “expert authorities” de-subjectivizes the individual, expropriates one’s mind and displaces one’s capacity for self-determination to the one’s “supposed to know,” the one’s who are allowed to claim to “know,” the Fauci’s, Birx’s, Gate’s, or, God forbid the Kanye West’s or Kim Kardashians!  Knowledge and truth becomes specialized, institutionalized, compartmentalized.  The “expert authorities” will tell you what is believable, what you can or should think, want and do; even what you should feel and therefore whether you are healthy or not. 

 

THE SUM OF ALL IRRATIONALITY

 

TOWARD A POPULIST RESET OF AMERICAN CONSTITUTIONALISM

 

The Liberal elite don't fear terrorism despite all such protestations on liberal mouthpieces such as CNN and MSNBC. They fear revolution. They are so afraid of you, the People, they will fabricate "terrorists" among us to foment the kind of conflict they want. Then they can call out the National Guard to suppress protest; call on their mass media propagandists to construe free speech as insurrection; and democratic discourse as conspiracy theory; and alternative narratives and theories as "misinformation." ....... 

 

Meanwhile they have created something for you, the People, to fear: THE VIRUS. They have all too many of us convinced that their death is imminent despite all evidence and theory to the contrary. And their ploy is working well. They carry out the destruction of sociality in order to suppress democracy; shut down education in order to dominate knowledge; promote mass digital culture to annhilate community, tradition and religion. ......... 

 

So the revolution will begin in the bars, restaurants, churches and spontaneous gatherings. Thus the general Shutdown, a shutdown totally unjustified on any objective epidemiological basis. Just as the nation was "declared," so also our revolution should be declared. We need not know exactly how escorting Liberalism to its grave will occur, anymore than Washington knew how he could defeat the British. Once declared, however, then the people will come to consciousness and ideas, organization, will and purpose can follow.

 

The Liberal Elite make a mockery of the People, education, community, religion, tradition, medicine, science, government.  Unable now to restore the American idea to its original path, the Great Reset, planned for a long time, finds its moment of opportunity in the "plan-demic," and legitimizes the corruption of the elite by incorporating and totalizing a New World Order in the name of humanitarianism and health safety and security. Though as laughable as this is, those of the electorate who want their democracy managed by authority figures have fallen for the ruse and support repressive measures such as masking, distancing and shutdown despite the unconscionable immorality it represents and the blatant assault on the constitution that it betrays. This same electorate chose Biden, not surprisingly, as their next 'father figure' who will make it all right again. 

 

We, The People, have no choice but to declare revolutionary action. The alternative is a potential final destitution of social being, a masking and finally gagging of the voice of individuality and a government that represents and serves oligarchs, corporations and criminals. 

 

The People, vilified as "deplorables," conspiracy theorists and now terrorists, can only choose to move beyond mass politics toward a populism of a "thousand points of shining light" in the name of the Constitution, a true federalism, re-constitution of traditional but multi-cultural, multi-religious communities, restoration of the expressive subjectivity and voice of democratic citizens and the de-construction of an entrenched, servile bureaucracy and professional class cow-towing to the behest of their Masters, the new aristocrats of the imagined New World Order.

 

Now is the time not for a Great Reset but for a Great Conservative Restoration of the populist, communitarian core of the American Constitution.

THE CENTER OF DEMOCRACY: Can It Hold?

 If there is a center to democracy, so to speak, where or what is it?  One candidate would be the 'will' to democracy.  There has been in America a strong will to democracy.  This exists in individuals as well as institutions and characterizes our history. However it would be a mistake to not acknowledge that there is a strong will which either opposes or diminishes the role or value of democracy.  One might conclude that the will to democracy so exceeds that of its antagonists, that the center is holding and is not threatened.  In fact its opponents, if not enemies, may well strengthen the democracy in being a corrective of sorts.  Surely, democracy needs its correctives in that it is quite capable of lapsing into the tyranny of the crowd, the mistreatment of minorities and neglect of principle.

But can this democracy hold given the existing state of our will, the institutional structures and the practices which sustain it?  Not to mention its opponents who do seem to be gaining ground in our recent political history.  A troubling feature of existing practice is the method of choosing candidates for office.  Harvard professor, Lawrence Lessig, maintains that financial control of the selection processes has devolved into a pre-selective process which limits and determines the outcome of the range and type of candidates.  Moreover, he claims, that elected representatives then suffer under the clamor for funding thus becoming the mouthpiece of those who can afford to fund their campaigns.  In short the campaign process is corrupted.

Let's just say that regarding the strength of the institutional framework, it is holding given that it was tested severely during the Trump administration.  This is not to say that there are not problems with the structure given the ideological pressure from both major parties.

The Constitution itself would seem to hold except for the fact that    the massive centralization and bureaucratization of power over against local autonomy and responsibility flies in the face of the federalist intent within this founding document.  This leads to my last point regarding shoring up framework.  Namely the role of the people and the "structure" that sustains their foundational primacy to democracy philosophically and historically.

It seems that the framework of the people's democracy can't be centered on 'Washington', that is, on political parties and salvational leaders.  If 'all politics is local politics,' then all democracy is likewise local democracy.  This means that power must be disseminated not by a third or fourth party but by the re-democratization and communalization of communities.  There must be a thousand points of light blending into an energizing of democracy as one "light" of the people.  More than power, however, there must be a re-absorption of wealth into the communities through the radical reduction of federal/centralist taxation.  This money is the money of the people.  The central funding of a military for defense and a minimalist central government to mediate disputes between communities and regions is obviously necessary and desireable.  But the bureaucracy, the state, the military empire around the world and the practice of "socialism" for the rich must stop and must be deconstructed or, in other words, reduced on the basis of qualitative need and not arbitrary numbers of tax dollars.

The operative principle for communalizing, democratizing and empowering communities and thus enhancing democracy is that of "subsidiarity."  This means that what can be done at home for survival and self-fufillment must be done at home.  The centralist, wrongly named "Federal," government must be assigned its proper regulative as opposed to constitutive role.  The American Constitution intends to constitute a federalism of the people, of communities, regions, localities.  And though "republican," it did not intend to disempower politically, expropriate wealth or determine cultural life.

So in brief I have been talking about an enervation of democracy through, firstly, the deconstruction of the bureaucratic-technocratic centralist regime in Washington; secondly, the re-constitution of communities on the basis of the principles of subsidiarity and federalism. But lastly, the question of the individual arises in carrying out the democratic tasks.  

It seems, then, that as long as public school system and the community college systems hold, then these are the places that education of individuals for democracy must take place.  Instruction in Government, Civic participation, history of democracy and social being must be re-energized and in some cases brought back from the dead as in the case of Civics.  So we are talking about an educational re-constitution of individuality as a fundamentally social and political individuality.  This is the last plank of the three which could disseminatively "re-center" democracy as a people's democracy and as a genuine federalist democracy.

Lastly, let's note that one obstacle in this slow populist revolution toward a deeper democratization is dealing with the multiplication of cultures, languages, religions and ideologies in America.  This multi-culturalism, once identified as a melting pot in America, is a great ideal presumably being realized.  This is, to some extent, true but far from a difficulty solved.  If a multi-culturalism is to be fully realized this too cannot be the job of government let alone the "culture" industry.  Multi-culturalism can only be solved and treated as the opportunity that it is for deeper socialization and communalization at the community level.  It will also be the place of a re-valuation of "national" values and the space of value creation in the communities.

There is obviously other central issues to be discussed such as the place of Law and its relation to the ethics of communities and the ethos of cultures.  Also the role of parties is highly problematic and their "governance" by the billionaire class that preponderates toward the center and the top of society. But enough for now as to whether the center holds.  It does.  For now. At least as an idea and ideal if not a realized desire fulfilling its highest intended purpose. 

It's future depends upon its re-configuration on a populist as opposed to centralist, globalist, bureaucratic or technocratic basis. 

If there is a will to democracy, then it is a generalized will, one centered in the self-understanding of the interests of the people. Not the people as a class, a party, a culture or movement but the People as a principle and idea of freedom, sovereignty and self-determination.

THE COMPLIANTS AND CONSCIOUS ONES

The "Compliants," those 'people' whose awareness and capacity to think has been absorbed into the Official Story of "Pandemic/Shutdown/Vaccine Salvation" are the fertile soil of the dystopian New Normal. The Compliants defend the Administrators of Official Reality and vilify those who continue to think for themselves and the good of free communities, the Conscious Ones.

Those who propagate Official Life on much of mass media wish to homogenize social existence and create a one-dimensional experience of the real. They wish to de-subjectivize the individual, eliminate thinking, discredit our inherent God-given feeling of well-being and the immanent relation of each individual to his truly conscious, felt sense of Self.

The Official Reality Commissars want to dictate experience and generate a passive, reactive Compliant Class, a kind of consumerist-replicant species who make politics obsolete and freedom a fantasy lived out through the authority and blessing of the Officials. The Officials will attempt to eliminate community and re-create social space within the confines of corporate/institutional space.

It's the Matrix of cinema fame materialized in this historico-political moment of action and decision. The future of freedom is at stake.

TURNING THE HISTORICAL CORNER TOWARD A NEW TOMORROW

Understanding this global phenomenon, call it the “viral effect,” is not about some sort of self-evident factualities versus conspiracy theory, as if these are the only two possible perspectives of thought.  The former reifies “factuality” and becomes a mythic “factualism.”  The later reifies the source of action, control and intent and imagines some “big brother” in cyberspace or nefarious bad-guy Illuminati in smoke-filled back rooms planning to orchestrate world change.  Get real.  The ‘viral effect’ is a mass mediated idea that is historically catalyzing global trends of divergence away from the Universalism or globalism, empire building, civilizational homogenization, totalitarian one-dimensionality, etc., etc.  No medical facts will clarify what is happening at this historical turning point.  We must rethink the whole of contemporary life and the parts of that whole in particular.  We all can play a part in this or turn it over to the self-appointed emperors of existence.  It’s time to re-appropriate one’s self in the deepest and broadest existential and spiritual sense.  It’s the opportunity for every individual to become a player and not a pawn.  One can be at play passionately in the fields of the Lord; or a minion worker bee passively responding to the “expert authorities” when they tell you to “believe,” “feel,” “act” as they see fit.  The ‘viral effect’ is the opportunity to fully become a human being in thought, feeling and spirit and re-appropriate the living Self whose experience creates the real, constitutes the real and decides upon the reality to be created.

One aspect of this possibly emerging ‘new normal’ is the recognition of the institutional force or ideological force of official, ‘mass mediated’ authority/expertise/specialization.  The medical aspect of the ‘viral effect’ is what we see in a few official experts such as Fauci, Birx and Gates commandeering the reality of what is going on and attempting to force or suggest universal political solutions: masking, social isolation, socio-economic shutdown.  These actions are the result of a Liberal/Enlightenment psychology (become ideology) that imagines a universal solution to a health problem.  Bill Gates states this most ludicrously when he claims that nothing can return to normal until there is universal global vaccination.  This is the delusion of all delusions.  This is a rich boy playing with his money and consequent power trying to make his vacuous existence meaningful and undoubtedly also enrich his bank account beyond all dreams. 

But in keeping with the medical issue, what is at stake here in the face of the official authority/experts influencing health policy and socio-political action is the question of the locus of control of one’s health and the locus of control of one’s identity and self-understanding even and especially at the personal, subjective and spiritual level.  In short the authentic ownership of one’s own body, mind and soul is at stake. 

If for example, I make any comment on Facebook regarding the medical knowledge around the ‘viral effect’ someone will inevitably respond with a comment like “what medical school did you go to?”  The challenge here is to prove my “expertise” in terms of institutional norms, traditions and practices.  So I’m not allowed an informed opinion unless I am an “expert” whose authority comes from a recognized institution.  Even though I have a Ph.D. in philosophy, have taught for 30 plus years at a college level, read constantly, think and write about politics, spirituality, culture, etc., my opinion means literally nothing unless I have been sanctified by the powers that be. This attitude and article of faith would mean the end of public discourse, critical thinking and democratic association.  It means the end of any belief that public education prepares one and authorizes one to effectively and competently participate in public, political discourse.  This worship of the “expert authorities” de-subjectivizes the individual, expropriates one’s mind and displaces one’s capacity for self-determination to the one’s “supposed to know,” the one’s who are allowed to claim to “know,” the Fauci’s, Birx’s, Gate’s, or, God forbid the Kanye West’s or Kim Kardashians!  Knowledge and truth becomes specialized, institutionalized, compartmentalized.  The “expert authorities” will tell you what is believable, what you can or should think, want and do; even what you should feel and therefore whether you are healthy or not. 

But who is it that has achieved the “authority,” “expertise,” or “specialization” that legitimately allows one to think or re-think the “real,” the global situation politically and economically, the nature of goodness, health or well-being.  Are there any “expert authorities” of life?  Who is the “expert authority” who has the right or knowledge to tell you how you feel or what you should feel; how you should think or what you should think?   These questions are nothing new.  In fact these are the questions Socrates was asking some 2500 years ago, when he pondered the nature of the “Greatest Good.”  What does it mean to be a “good person.”  Not just morally good but spiritually good, healthy, happy, robustly passionately living life to the fullest.  That is, what now does it mean to be a human being, to be an individual, to be oneself, psychologically, socially, politically and spiritually.

Within the context of the “viral effect,” one has the opportunity to ask the big question, “Who am I?” in all of this.  Am I healthy?  How do I feel?  Am I really thinking about this global phenomenon or am I just mouthing opinions or preferences because I don’t know how to think about this?  Or am I too afraid to think about how I really feel regarding my health, my life, my purpose. 

Is my identity as a human being, personally, socially and existentially been expropriated by external forces of authority, power, influence, expertise, specializations?  Or am I in charge of determining my identity, coherently and convincingly within myself, personally communally, spiritually, globally.  Am I being controlled by fear or love, in the extreme?  Am I thinking or merely opining thoughtlessly.  Am I feeling or collapsing into the control of externally generated emotionality, subject to fears and hysterias that guarantee my de-centering, my loss of personal control and felt sense of self?

What exactly is it that’s going “viral?”  Is it a thing called a virus which in this case has never been empirically located as a singular entity with powers to cause a specific identifiably discrete disease?  Or is it the breakdown of the “idea” of “one world,” a one-dimensional world controlled from above, from without, from some predetermined standpoint of unknown origins?  Does the fear of the “invisible power” called the virus allow us to raise the existential question about fear itself, about control of my life, destiny, personal power, confidence and competence.  Is some invisible force going to determine the feeling and force of my life, energy and will to be.  Is the will to truth going to be expropriated by the imagined authorities, experts, specialists, professionals, gurus and priests who presume to know what only you can know?  Jesus says, “Physician heal thyself.”  The Buddha says, “Be a light unto one’s self.”

Should we myopically focus on the proposed or imagined “evil force” of the “virus,” which in fact may not exist as such according to all scientific evidence?  Should we focus on the the Fauci types espousing pseudo-scientific claims that are in fact now scientifically grounded or even provable such as the “virus” is going to be with us for 4-5 years or maybe “forever!”  Maybe “the virus” will be a way of life and vaccines the only solution.  Your officially determined and certified health will thereby and accordingly decide upon your right to education, to travel, to social participation, your right to your civil rights. 

Or shall we not take “science” back from the “official guardians” of knowledge, truth, experience and feeling?  “Science” means the ‘practice and experience of “knowing.”  “Science” as it has been expropriated, distorted and mis-used in the modern era at the hands of capital, business, advertising, manufacturing is now itself a deleterious virus which must be re-appropriated by the people, by individuals with the courage to think, feel, let go of beliefs generated out of fear, hysteria, laziness, addiction to pleasure, conformism, cynicism, indifference, regression to animal-existence, matrix-like movements in pre-determined paths of consumption and ritualized, compulsive and obsessive action or habituality. 

THINKING OUTSIDE INSTITUTIONAL BOXES

Extreme Conformism in the Media: An Interview with Norbert Bolz

By Telos Press  ·  Monday, July 20, 2020

The following interview was conducted by Alexander Wendt on July 5, 2020, and originally appeared in German on Tichys Einblick on July 13, 2020. Translated by Russell A. Berman.

Alexander Wendt: Professor Bolz, the costs of the coronavirus pandemic are still unknown, but they will surely leave deep scars for years to come. Will our society return from post-materialism to a society with hard materialist concerns with numbers and balance sheets?
Norbert Bolz: Even before the coronavirus crisis, I had doubts as to whether the notion of a post-material society made much sense. To my mind, the “post-material” term only makes real sense as a description of digitalization and the rise of information technology. But the superstructure that is usually meant by “post-material” seems to me to be mainly a substitute for religion, and it never had the real significance for society that many ascribe to it.
Q: So the crisis won’t change much?
Bolz: It will have a salutary impact to the extent that it will lead many people to focus on fundamental concerns: health, safety, and the basic functions of the state that guarantees these matters. We are returning to a Hobbesian understanding of the state. During the recent wonderful decades, we did not have to worry much about the need to protect our security. That has changed.
Q: What does it mean for public communication if we start talking more about Gross Domestic Product and less about gender identities?
Bolz: We may soon be facing materialist distribution struggles, with open conflict between utopianists and realists, as has been the case in the United States for several years. Up to now, public discourse in Germany has been dominated nearly exclusively by a milieu distorted by affluence. In the post-coronavirus era, we may find that that rhetoric will be ratcheted down. There are two different cultures in Germany: idealists from the ivory tower and others who have to earn money. Up to now, the idealists have been in charge of the public debate. A paradigmatic example of this kind of windbag is the acting chair of the Social Democrats, Kevin Kühnert. He studied nothing, completed nothing, and has no real knowledge of anything—but he speaks well and knows how to present himself. On the other side, there are engineers, natural scientists, and entrepreneurs who do not speak in public because they never learned how, and public speaking is not part of their self-understanding. Until now they have more or less accepted the fact that they barely play a role in the public debate. But I think it is quite likely that they will develop a greater interest, now that it has become a matter of the real economic consequences of the crisis, at least to participate in the social debate and not to leave the field to the big talkers.
Q: What do you see happening in the United States?
Bolz: It is remarkable that in the United States, political correctness is even crazier than here, but there is also a free opposition camp. Talk radio reaches a large public there and gives many a chance to participate in public discussion. Twitter plays a larger role as well.
Q: Canadian author Jordan B. Peterson has evoked the so-called “intellectual dark web.” That is his ironic designation for a platform where he can talk with the neurologist Sam Harris and entrepreneurs like Eric Weinstein without the limitations of political correctness. Is something like that possible in Germany too?
Bolz: A while ago I made reference in a tweet to the intellectual dark web, where interesting discussions really do take place. In Germany, too, there are plenty of interesting, nonconformist minds. So far what is missing is money, the economic support that is needed to establish a sustainable public platform.
Q: Actually the classical media ought to provide a platform like that for open debates, if only out of self-interest. Why doesn’t that happen?
Bolz: This ought to be their job. I can only explain the extreme conformism in the editorial offices of most media through the very similar socialization of all journalists. There is no longer much difference between the private and the state-financed media in the discussion of most political topics. This sort of conformism is fatal, especially in this period in which all the political parties pretty much say the same thing, with the exception of the AfD [Alternative for Germany].
Q: What do you read?
Bolz: I used to appreciate Die Welt a lot. It bothers me that there too one now finds the hymns of praise for Angela Merkel’s great political leadership. If I want to read about German domestic politics, then I feel best turning to the Neuen Zürcher Zeitung. It offers a perspective that is distinctly different.
Q: The private media are calling for state subventions—above and beyond the sixty million euros already committed to support newspapers. Are we facing a statist structural transformation of the public sphere?
Bolz: I can’t say much to that. I can only pray that it doesn’t happen. When it is a matter of the existence of one’s own place of work, some media companies are evidently willing to sell their souls. I can even understand that. But the results would be terrible.
Q: In the context of the pandemic, scientists have had a clearly stronger influence in politics and media. Some virologists suddenly appear to be more important than members of the cabinet or leading editors. What does this mean for public debate?
Bolz: I am not able to judge the competency of the virologists who now appear widely in the media. During the pandemic, in general I appreciate the scientists and politicians who honestly concede that they still do not know enough. But as for wide swaths of the humanities: many are sinning against Max Weber’s exhortation against using the lecture as an opportunity to sermonize.
Q: Who is doing that?
Bolz: For example, Ottmar Edenhofer from the Potsdam Institute for Research on Climate Change. He is very proud to be the actual author of the papal encyclical Laudato si’ on climate questions as well as the key advisor for the climate policies of the German government. There are plenty of representatives of sociology, political science, psychology, as well as law who would love to appear in media debates as leading advisors. A real casting takes place: your chances to appear are best if you provide exactly what the editorial boards want on a specific topic. The fact that these academic opportunists appear more and more has become a big problem for academia.
Q: Do you see a chance that a new generation of scholars might break through this conformism?
Bolz: I am not particularly optimistic that a future generation of humanists and social scientists can break through the strictures of paternalism and conformism. People worry about their careers, and state control is becoming ever stricter. The result is opportunism scholarship. That’s why I place my bet more on thinking outside of the institutions.
Q: You recently left this academic world through retirement. Was that a painful departure?
Bolz: I am enjoying my freedom, which includes, among other things, the fact that no one can threaten me with disciplinary action. I can send out my missives on Twitter and place them in other select media channels. Otherwise I am experiencing what Goethe once described as the privilege of age: the gradual withdrawal from public visibility.

RETIREMENT

That word can sound kind of ominous now that I think of it.  I prefer, "riding off into the sunset."  But, when I made my decision to retire from teaching philosophy after 30 years I felt a freedom from the world like I have not felt in a long time.

My sense of spiritual freedom has not wavered and has allowed me to feel the pain of moving on from my life of 30 years of teaching.

It is wonderful scary, like being born again into a new life in the world.

See you all on the other side of the sunset.

THE HOPE OF THE PEOPLE

THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE is techno-bureaucratic centralism. It has yielded a Ruling Class empowered by incalculable financial wealth. This social class in turn exploits the force of technology, bureaucratic yes-men and a virtually hermetically sealed, bought and paid for, pseudo-Federalist government.  It’s mechanisms of threat and control of the People-- that is, those who are the locus of the living social force of love, truth and justice-- are courts of law and expensive lawyers; the unconscionable prisons; the intelligence agencies; the military; police forces; and training/propaganda institutions called ‘schools.’ 

George Orwell represented this centralism in the symbolism of “Big Brother.”  But it is realized today in a de-subjectivized mass of alienated individuals who in moments of doubt, decision and especially crisis turn toward the “leader,” the professionals, the experts, the specialists, the loudest and richest voice in the ethos. 

Long since have we lost the “sensus communis,” the felt sense of the greatest good and purpose of the whole, the community, the ethos.  Long since have we lost the intellectual capacity and honesty of the Socratic spirit.  We turn to the authority, often authoritarian, demagogic, amoral, indifferent, narcissistic, but presenting a face of comfort, trustworthiness and strength.

The ethos, consequently, devolves into one of fear, that is, of paranoia, hysteria and perversion of all sorts.  The illusion of knowing is propagated from all corners of media, institutions, religions; yet the vehicle of truth in the ongoing process of inquiry, of question and answer, comment and response, listening and speaking, studying and reflecting is lost.  It is not annihilated but distorted, deflected, disseminated, distracted in the spectacular side-show of entertainment, addictive consumption and conformity that passes as sociality.

As President George H.W. Bush so aptly put it, ‘there are a thousand points of light’ always.  Yet it cannot go unnoticed that the social body can so easily be coalesced around a central focus that is universalized and becomes the only game in town, according to the official story.  We see this in the “shutdowns” of many countries.  We see it in American history when hundreds of thousands of young people are dragged cluelessly into meaningless and hopeless wars such as Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.  We see it in the ideology and successful mass propagandizing of vaccination, a harmful and mostly ineffective practice that has taken on religious proportions.  Yet those who are truly religious cannot use their religious beliefs to oppose being forcibly vaxxed. 

The true “virus” is ignorance, anger, self-righteousness and paralyzing fear—maladies that we have all fallen prey to.  The true “virus” is our own foregoing of authentic courage in the face of doubt, decision, crisis and violent force.  The true “virus” is allowing our minds and creativity, our autonomy and ethical responsibility to be expropriated and co-opted by forces tantamount to evil.

The cure is the natural immunity of health, love, joyfulness, peace, play and happiness without reason.  Have fun, work hard and support one another.  I hope I can listen to myself.

NEITHER FOR NOT AGAINST THE PROTESTS

There is a third way in understanding the recent protests against police brutality in general and the killing of George Floyd in particular.  One way is to be for the protest; and, for various reasons, the second way is to oppose the protests.  The latter reasoning is taking the form of protesting the protests anti-American or anarchistic flavor; also, there are those who see the back protesters as belly-achers who ought to "go get a job" rather that complain or simply have no reason to complain.  Such protests seem to claim that the police are just doing their job, a job that most of us wouldn't do. But this second form of opposition to the protest  undoubtedly haas racist overtones.

Of course, the killing of George Floyd was wrong in so many ways.  Even if it were the only killing of a black man in America it would be egregiously unjustified and, to say the least, reprehensible.  So this was clearly barbaric brutality.

Moreover we should be concerned about this obviously.  But to be concerned with the trees and lose sight of the forest would be an equally tragic error.  The 'trees' in this analogy is the recurrence of police brutality against blacks on the streets of America and sometimes in the homes of America.   But the forest is neither the quantity of brutality nor the racist implications nor the beatings themselves.  

The 'forest' being missed is the invisible context of distraction, distraction from the strategy of the ruling class to divide and conquer the people.  The People all have more in common with one another, even in the context of mutual distrust and/or hatred, than we have with the 1%er's the likes of Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Secretary of the Treasury Steve Minuchin, or any of the other billionaires in the U.S. Senate and in the Presidential Cabinet, etc,etc.  

The innumerable abstract divisions that the Ruling Class pit against one another are unnecessary and self-defeating.  But the divisions are many: black vs white; male vs female; straight vs gay; religious vs non-religious; all the religions against one another; educated vs uneducated; workers vs professionals; city vs country; heartland vs the coastal regions;  young vs old; republican vs democrat; conservative vs liberal; capitalist vs anti-capitalist; blue state vs red state; patriots vs traitors, workers vs welfare cheats, rich vs poor, socialist vs capitalist, etc., etc. But most recently the division is between those favoring the "Shutdown" and those favoring opening up the society to work and play and socializing.  Between those who presumably have compassion for those dying from "the Virus" and those callous son-of-a-bitches who don't care about other people.  Nevertheless another false distinction, abstract, misleading and further stoking the heat and passion of our false conflicts and dividing the People from the themselves, only to miss who the Real Opposition is and who the real conflict is really with.  These false oppositions are, in short, illusions.  They are not real.  They are apparitions of control, domination, disinformation, ideology and dependency.

These supposed oppositions do not thrive necessarily on their own.  They are exacerbated by the elitist and liberal press and often by the conservative media like Fox News.  The passions are heated; the pseudo-conflicts sharpened and the urgency to oppose the Other and identify with "one's own" is hastened.  Thus we arrive at a time such as now when we supposedly have devolved into a "tribalist" society.  This, however, is a plainly false and opportunistic diagnosis, sociologically shallow, serving only the purposes of spectacle, catchy tag lines for the press and magazine writers and all too facile 'theory' for the amateur sociologists.

The big context, the big picture, the "forest" beyond the trees is the difference between, the conflict between and the irresolvable antagonism between the miniscule but infinitely powerful Ruling Class and the People, the people divided, atomized, alienated; the people turned into a mass, a crowd, the great uneducated and unwashed who must be controlled, (mis)-led, propagandized and not educated, used and if "required" intimidated and abused just to keep them in line. 

The People against the Ruling Class: this is the primary, fundamental and finally determinative framework that shapes all conflicts, difficulties and dilemmas in America.  But we don't fight this fight.  We, the People, who simply want life, liberty and happiness, are manipuated into fighting one another in endless, unresolvable, skirmishes of ultimate futility, frustration and finally cynicism and indifference. We resign ourselves to being led, "taken care of," and exploited, but in the end only to the benefit and interest of the Ruling Class.

The people are being, on a daily basis, lulled and wooed into myopically focusing on the outrage of the day; obsessing on the immediate spectacle in front of their face; succumbing to the shallow but provocative News reports, streaming constantly without proper context, without any meaningful analysis and without any foresight with respect to strategic solutions to the decadent and dystopian backslide of our "culture."  We the People are being entertained, incited to purposeless passions and finally addicted to beliefs and prejudices that allows to believe that our ignorance, illusions and self-righteousness are really knowledge, truth and righteousness.  We lose sight of our history; we lose the capacity to think historically, thus we keep repeating it.

Consequently, the organic, harmonious and human possiblities of community, autonomy and responsibility are lost.  True social individuality is destroyed and the abilities of "sensus communis," of having a felt sense of the good of the whole that enables us to think, speak and act with a vision and compassion for the good of the "whole." 

Consequently, that is, as a consequence of not seeing the true big picture of the conflict, the war, between the Ruling Class and the People, we lose the ability, will and desire to truly think.  That is, we lose the capacity for truth, for the guidance of the purposefulness that truth guides us toward and aligns us with. "You shall know the truth and the truth will set you free."  The Ruling Class wants us to believe that we are all right.  They nurture, promote and elevate the virtue of relativistic annhilation of truth a truth that we all share, the People with themselves and Humanity with a future possiblity of peace, freedom and mutual prosperity.

But this truth of peace and prosperity for all will not arise in the consciousness of the People by itself.  It must be fought for intellectually but also practically in organizing for autonomy and responsiblity at the local a regional level.  The principle of subsidiarity must prevail: that is, what can be done at home should be done at home.  Regional communities must be rebuilt relatively independently of the state and "federal governments.  All politics is local politics and democracy is to be one also at home.  How we want to live our lives must be established and realized at home.  Our values are not to be determined by corporations, centralized state governments, mass media, artificial culture created by "youth cultures," professionalization of sports and entertainment.  

We the People must awaken to the truth of life here, now in the community.  But this new community, new social individuality and de-consructed state is one that thinks globally but acts and organizes organically at the local level.  The new regionalism and central-servant state is not isolationist but open to others as immigrants, cultures, ideas and commerce.  The new populist communites and regions must grow toward a new multi-cultural melding of the gifts and flavorings of the differences among us in order at some level and in some way to make them our own.

We can have unity and harmony through difference, differences that are not trivial, abstract and meaningless.  We need not be homogenized into a manipulable mass nor atomized and alienated into a herd of wage slaves selfishly looking out for "our own interests" as if this will actually work out.  We can have 'difference' without fear, hatred, rage and prejudice. We can have differences to learn from grow from, be nurtured by.  In fact it is only through difference, friendly opposition and the experience of the other that life lives and prospers, learns, laughs and ultimately loves.

TOWARD NEO-POPULIST REVOLUTION

TOWARD A NEO-POPULIST FEDERALIST REVOLUTION

It's inadvertently good politically that Trump is turning control of the re-opening of the economy over to the states. It throws some light on the capacity of the states to take control of their own destiny and work with other states to re-empower local regions, communities and economies.

It serves the Neo-populist Federalist task of deconstructing the bureaucratic-technocratic managerial elite in Washington and in the two parties-- the New Class of managerial liberals. It's task is thereby to destroy Centralist elitist control of our democratic culture. Such de-constructive, de-centralization is the task of the revolution of the localities, regions and states, that is, the vision of the revolution of "neo-populist federalism." This revolution is based on the principle of subsidiarity, in short, meaning "what can be done at home, should be done at home." By logical extension, what an individual can do for him- or herself should be done by the same, not by the State, the 'Feds,' the specialists, experts and professionals. The re-constitution of individuality is the third task of this vision of revolution.

Neo-populism is conservative and progressive but not "left-wing" or "right-wing" in terms of the conventional usage of these relatively meaningless terms, meaningless in the sense of their uselessness in understanding and mediating progressive change.
Neo-populist Federalism is a genuine re-democratization of communities; it is thereby also the subjective re-empowerment of political ingenuity down to the level of the individual.
So, in summary, this new revolution involves three simultaneous projects: First, the de-constructive de-centralization of the Bureaucratic-Technocratic Managerial New Class elite in Washington and thereby in the two party-system. Secondly, the re-constitution of democratic control by re-appropriating state, regional and local community autonomy and self-responsibility. Thirdly it means reconstituting being a democratic citizen grounded in the primacy of local culture and community. All three of these projects are a function of the principle of subsidiarity. Democracy, autonomy, moral responsibility grows from the ground up, from local multi-cultural democratic communities.

This revolution flies in the face of mass mediated, big money dominated pseudo-democracy. It flies in the face of a two party system controlling candidate selection and platform determination. Such a system is a cancerous tumor lodged in Washington, seeded throughout the country through the blood and lymph of Republicanism and Democratism, enervating the voice, the will and the democratic confidence of the people.

Populism in its authenticity is neither left-wing socialist/communist revolutionism nor right-wing alt-right reaction. A true Populism is an organic vision of faith in the people. It aims to move beyond the wish and hope for a benign Big Brother. It gives up the hope for some Big-Other-technocratic messiah to do the work of the people from above, from outside their own local sovereignties. It seeks to transcend and thereby to enervate and destroy the hegemony of the New Class Puppet-masters pulling the strings of finance, profit, mass media ideology/ propaganda and tax parasitism, militarism and the bio-political invasion of bodily sovereignty and choice.
Neo-populist Federalism aims to de-colonize communities, the practice of democracy, the education of the people and the subjective power of individuals to create values worth living for, and a culture beyond commercialism, the mass aesthetics of Hollywood/TV/Internet, capitalist possessive individualism and a de-spiritualized relation to nature.

This revolutionary program is obviously a work in progress. But as Nietzsche insisted, we need to step outside the "city" to see how bad it is and what needs to be done. This project, vision and program intends such a comprehensive critical perspective on politics, revolution, democracy and the people.