From Charlie Syke's Morning Shots--
Jack Smith and other prosecutors have flooded the zone with Trump’s criminality. The rapidly filling legal calendar means that 2024 will be dominated by:
Trump the fraudster
Trump the rapist
Trump’s hush money payments to a porn star
Trump’s violation of the Espionage Act
and
Trump, the conspiracist, who tried to overthrow the government
“Each of these conspiracies — which built on the widespread mistrust the defendant was creating through pervasive and destabilizing lies about election fraud — targeted a bedrock function of the United States federal government: the nation’s process of collecting, counting and certifying the results of the presidential election.”
If only Republicans had been warned. But they bought this ticket; and this is the ride they are about to take.
I've been avoiding talking about politics on the ground if I don't have anything to say that isn't being said over and over and that doesn't fit into already established ideological bins, there's no point in writing about it. But his indictment yesterday on charges that relate to his failed coup attempt on J6 demand some acknowledgement.
I accept that American society is broken, and that it's main fissure line is defined by whether you voted for Trump even once. If you are a principled Conservative, the only option for you was to have become a Never Trumper. That so few Conservatives made that choice spoke, and continues to speak, to the deep trouble that we are in. Too many Americans see Trump as a legitimaage politician, and in doing so have defined down legitimacy and shattered any ideas of norm-al politics for years to come. Chaos 'R Us and will continue to be until there's a shift in the zeitgeist. Trump's indictments will not decrease the chaos; rather they are a harbinger of a more intense experience of chaos to come next year.
Those of us who were appalled by Trump, who thought he was a grifter, a bull-shitting fabulist, and a demagogue, also thought that a sensible majority of Americans, both Liberal and Conservative, would see through his con. We were like Lincoln and many of the otherwise astute Northerners in 1860 who thought that saner minds would prevail and that the South would never provoke a Civil War. They were wrong then, and we were wrong in 2016. Chaos ensued, and it's not over for us yet in this recent iteration of this old American story. It's an open question as to how violent things will get. No reason for optimism because, 'Violence 'R Us'.
A major theme in this blog since its inception provoked by the fabulism among Neoliberal elites that led to our invading Iraq in 2003 has been why are Americans are so prone to delusional thinking that seeks a violent outlet? The short answer is that without a vertical pole in our metaphysical imaginary, American society spins but without a center, and the consequent erratic,meaningless spinning leads to mass ontological dizziness. The consequences of the amputation of vertical pole began to be felt acutely by the Western cultural elite around 1850, and since then we've experienced a gradual development toward a broadening intensification of the experience of ontological dizziness. What affected mostly educated elites in the 20th century is affecting everyvbody now.
It was aggravated by Neoliberal ideology and policies that became normative for elites since 1980 and who in their callow hubris after the collapse of the USSR thought that they should impose it on the world. And even now, despite its magnificent failures, the only class of people--mostly educated elites--who are not feeling particularly dizzy are those whose identities are in some degree still enmeshed in Neoliberal ideology and its nihilism. Why? Because of all the ways they benefit from it. (But how are their hyper-anxieety-prone children doing?)
But Neoliberalism and the cultural 'whateverism' it promotes is unsustainable for any society, and a society suffering from ontological dizziness will find a center one way or the other. And the question is whether or not it will find a true center--or whether it will just invent one around a cult of personality or some of other form of delusional thinking.
And so as we "look forward" to what will be certainly one of the most chaotic and unpredictable election years in American history. As I've written in a series of posts earlier this year, while a Trump nomination by the Republicans looks extremely likely, it's unlikely that he will be elected in the general. Nevertheless, it's scary because, who knows--he could be elected. Those of us who thought it was impossible in '16 could very well be wrong again because we underestimate the degree to which American society suffers from ontological dizziness. Nevertheless, I am inclined to agree with those who think that the combined effect of Trump running for President while under indictment or while appealing his convictions--there is no way he'll be running from jail-- is very bad politics, and not a good thing for the Republican Party up and down the ballot. And whatever is bad for Republicans is good for America, at least in the short term.
So better Trump than a Republican who has a better chance of winning. The MAGA wing of the GOP must be completely an utterly discredited, and the best chance of that is letting them run and watching them lose. The best possible outcome for America as 2024 will come to a close will be for Democrats to win resoundingly everywhere. Why? Not because Democrats offer any real solutions but because Democrats are the true conservatives now. Whatever you might think about their views on cultural issues, they are the political force that stands for conserving norms and traditions in the political sphere. Republicans just don't care about them anymore, and no decent Republicans can get elected if they don't not cater to their ontologically dizzy base that wants to tear the whole system down.
But if Democrats prevail in '24, as we should all hope they will, that is at best a short-term fix unless important voices from within the American soul emerge who articulate what ontological dizziness is and why it is such a profoundly destabilizing force in American--or any-- society. And then they must also develop an imagination of an American future where there is a cure for it. If this could happen in America, it would be truly a light shining on a hill. But maybe it will happen first elsewhere. It doesn't matter so long as it happens and it is broadly recognized as the next step forward.
As I've been writing here for years, cultural problems and conflicts cannot be resolved in the political sphere. The American Civil War is a classic example: The North won in the power politics sphere, but not in the cultural sphere. Forcing people to change their values hardly ever works. The resentments fester and swell, and it's only a matter of time before they burst out in ways that debilitate the entire system. But because almost all politics lies downstream from culture, cultural warfare in the political sphere is extraordinarily hard to avoid.
So if the real problem is ontological dizziness, what's the cure? As I argued last month, I don't think there is one until we experience a profound shift in the zeitgeist. Until then we're all like the ancient Hebrews wandering in the wilderness. There are those among us--mostly on the religious right--who long to return to the fleshpots of Egypt (aka the 1950s--and for some the 1850s). But there are also many Americans of goodwill, whether they lean conservative or liberal, who in their quiet, everyday lives provide ballast for the larger society. They put one foot in front of the other, do what must be done as conscience indicates, and they live lives of quiet integrity and hope. They do not suffer from ontological dizziness, and hopefully from out of their ranks a thoughtful, new leadership will emerge in the cultural sphere, and so consequently in the political sphere. Such leadership will succeed to the degree that it inspires most Americans to move toward a saner, ontologically less vertiginous place by the end of the century.
There can be no endlessly muddling through. Dome significant shift needs to happen. Better that it not be effected by the forces of darkness on whose behalf a guy like Trump works.