Election 2024
Where can we go from here?
I remember the 2000 US election pretty vividly. I had to study the debates for a first year political science class. I was twenty one. Twenty one with all the answers. I was surprised I even went to university, considering I knew everything already. All those books were written, I guess for other peasants who did not have my vast knowledge acquired by hours of watching television and self-exploration….twenty one. Damn….Anway, several back spasms later, let’s get back to this newsletter, that I am writing after getting over gout, at 45. Where was I? Right…. I had to do a presentation on the effectiveness of the debates between then Vice-President Al Gore and Texas Governor George W. Bush. It was the first term of my second year and things were not going so well. I was struggling to attend class, get work done on time, my brain was a broken jar of skittles. That said I do remember this election. I was at my most anti-Republican at the time, anti-capitalist, anti-corporation, anti-establishment across the board1. I did not think George W. Bush had a chance. Will Ferrell was playing him on SNL, and the impression was so spot on, I thought there is no way the American public would vote for such an ill informed, failed businessman. I mean he sunk an oil company. How do you fail at oil, in Texas, in ‘Merica? Your dad was a former VP, Potus and the head of the CIA. The race was so close in Florida, that it went to the Supreme Court and ultimately the election was decided on, for the Republican Party. Gore conceded but I had always thought it was a fishy election. Quite the conspiracy but it actually just made sense. The governor of Florida was George Bush’s little brother, Jeb Bush. We already know how powerful his father was; a former Vice President and President and former director of the CIA. It would be bad family business, for George Sr. not to expect his youngest son to simply help his big brother as best he could. The ultimate nepo baby. I mean, how awkward a Thanksgiving dinner would that be if Jeb didn’t do everything within his power to help his own brother?
“help your damn brother Jebsy” “sorry daddy, sorry Georgie, I gotta stick to my guns and uphold the integrity of this great nation, a nation that our four fathers……”. “if you don’t help Georgie, you’ll be making mai thais as the assistant to the foreign secretary of Guam by the morning”I mean, that’s not a conspiracy. Can you imagine being in a close race against a rival school, and there seems to be a photo finish but it is inconclusive, and the administrator of the race is your brother, and your father is the former boss of all the administrators of all races, who also used to run the most covert organization of the free world. Why be the former director of the CIA, Vice President and President if you cannot convince your son to help his big brother win the state of Florida?
So Bush won. And the rest is history. Him and his Neo-conservatives, led by Dick Cheney, who happens to support Kamala Harris….what’s even happening, destroyed Iraq and splintered the Middle East, to the chaotic mess it is today. And I believe, some 25 years later, the United States has been threatened more than ever. The republic that it is, has been attacked from without and within. This newsletter is not to address the election or make a case for either candidate. I am more concerned with the division of the United States and wonder what will happen going forward, regardless of who wins. I have very bad visions of riots and guns and mass exoduses to Canada.
As a young student, I was content with the US unravelling, perhaps the world did not need some global superpower policing the world. I had always been against large corporations dictating how we were to perceive climate change, labour regulations, data collection, the future of technology. But now I look at the US a little differently. In principle I see this western experiment, as flawed as it is, as the only real place that allows for such a wide breadth of self-expression. It is built on the philosophies of Plato, Aristotle, Locke, Rousseau, Mill. Rooted in the Reason of the Enlightenment, this Republic is a place where the greatest minds could gather to push the limits of human exploration and to create a society that functions under a just judicial system that treats its citizenry with dignity and affords them the opportunity to create a prosperous future for themselves and their family…now even as I write this, I cannot sit here and believe this is the reality before us. We know the transgressions of the United States, both domestic and abroad, existing since its inception until today. What core values, however, can we take with us that are within the ideals that the United States republic was built upon? Is that even possible? Are we content to say that the vacuum left behind without strong western values, will be filled by other nations, who are currently doing a better job? I believe that within the framework of the current republic, there is an opportunity to continue to evolve and incorporate different perceptions and experiences that can grow from those historically subjugated and oppressed, while maintaining the integrity of the constitution. The United States is worth fighting for and necessary, and in dire need of some bridge building within.
I see the core idea of the US, the principles that have made it a beacon of the west, being eaten away from the edges of extremism, slowly chipping away until those extremes get closer to each other, until they inevitably clash in war. It’s as if these values of the US were at one time arms extending outward, shielding and protecting, and preventing extremists from fighting one another; a cohesive middleman breaking up a fight with two hot headed morons who lead with anger, that just need some time to call it off and maybe a chance to reflect on the similarities they have with one another. The flag was supposed to unite those with differences, uniting them in something larger than themselves. But now those extended arms are unable to bear the growing force closing in.2
On the right we have groups that harken back to an idealized version of the United States, that comes without the responsibility of its beginnings. It seeks to sanitize the past and restore a value system that makes them feel safe and in control. From the most extreme version, it is fuelled by supremacy and xenophobia and a fierce nationalism that others anyone that do not share their code. As we move away from white supremacists and friendly Christian militias, we have people who are less intense in their views. Perhaps more libertarian, and tribal and against any government intervention. As technology takes agency from people, as corporations and corrupt politicians export jobs, and rob farmers and small businesses of dignity and the freedom to live by their own means, anger builds and anger often seeks a target. It perhaps, directs it on those who seem to benefit from what has been taken from them, chipping away at their sense of meaning and existence. What they fight for and believe in, however, becomes a mirage, and they dig their heels in to preserve a memory of a time that does not threaten them. They defend principles such as freedom of speech, without focussing on the character that the four fathers undoubtedly envisioned when imbuing this powerful idea. When we idealize, we fail to see the underbelly of it, how it can be wielded for harm, even under the auspices of good intentions; like a new technology, that we embrace with open arms, blind to our hubris. I think of Ascancio Sobrero and Alfred Nobel3. One man stumbles upon the creation of nitroglycerin, but realizes its dangers and pulls back. He has foresight and sees the duplicity of humans. The other convinced he can tame the beast a la Dr. Frankenstein, stabilizes it and makes dynamite, and spends the rest of his life in regret, and invents the Nobel Prize. Retroactive compassion. A tale as old as time.
As we get closer to the middle still, we see people stuck, who can see the cracks in the judgments of those on that fringe, and can see their anger and inability to compromise, and they are revulsed in that shortsightedness, but they cannot fathom a world where those values, they claim to champion, are evaporated. They can see the chinks in the armour of an idealized past, but still see the translucent virtues beneath, yet understand why the sins of yesterday cannot be swept under the rug; they exist in the light and can never be hidden under no amount of rhetoric. And here we meet those contemporaries from the other side…….but first…
On the extremism of the left are those who have been so disenfranchised and hurt and maligned and abused and traumatized from their past, the collective past, that they are unable to step foot in that reality. It must be razed to the ground and begun anew from a utopian perspective, that seeks to eradicate any semblance of an antiquated power structure. Reality itself is questionable. Reality itself is a construct from yesteryear, rooted in supremacy, that represents the perceived stem of their pain. If what is wrong in the world, has carried through time, then those in power are the cause. They are the context, the common denominator, that has endured. The only solution is to pull away from anything and everything that resembles the old. Stomp it out. It seeks to welcome new ideas and subjective realities, because they were subjugated by the social conventions of a tyrannical past. The solution must be the antithesis of this reality. Instead of idealization of principles such as the right’s freedom speech, the left makes the same misstep with ideals of equality. Clearly equality can only be a good thing? But how does one police equality? How does one equalize a society that is not equal, by benevolent means? Equality presumes that all hierarchies are not natural but socially constructed means of oppression. And who is the authority on how to equalize, to level the playing field? Who pulls those up and tears others down? Could equality be cloaking a vengeful wolf, seeking to change the power dynamic. How much blood, and who’s blood are we willing to sacrifice in this new revolution?….
As one moves inward from there, there is empathy for those seeking refuge in the novelty of an inclusive paradise. To distance oneself from that edge, is to suggest that there is a lack of grounding there. That reality is an ethereal sheet that is not substantive. Although it is not the immovable rock of what once was, which never changed, it is so thin, that nothing can really hold value. The answers are always out of reach, down the road, where the next intersection intersects the next intersection. Perhaps we are always chasing for something that is actually buried beneath us. To move inward is to find the pillars of truth under the rubble. But that requires a trust long broken. That requires a pain too large to bear, to seek refuge in that which reminds us of what pierced our hearts. Moving away still from that impetus to tear and start new, are those pulling back on the reigns who still understand we are all complicated humans together. They will not admonish the past, but cannot destroy it, for there are the answers. The solutions lie in the collateral damage, sloughed away by a reductive world, that overlooked the intricate, necessary parts of nature, that bound us all. There is a moving away from the hubris of chasing the unknown. And there lies a middle ground. Contemporaries of both sides, who are reasoned and empathic to the the pain of the other. They can see the fragility of those in pain, who seek control to escape from their own traumas.
But those who hold to a central truce, are now being silenced and threatened. From the left, they are seen as sympathizers and apologists, supporting their oppressors, clinging to their own delusional complicity. On the right they are traitors of '“truth”, betrayers of their family, their brood, those seeking to destroy what was, to placate their own whims. To criticize one extreme, gains approval of the other. Better to pick a side or keep quiet. I can feel this tension….I can feel the uncertainty, the oscillation of being someone trying to hold the tensions. I can empathize with idealism and those holding on too tight, to something that only exists in a dream, and I understand those who move away from their respective, valid traumas, seeking a new world.
How do we co-exist? How do we value someone who sees through the facade of old institutions and seek to tear them down and start anew, and how do we value someone who sets down their torch and seeks to rebuild those old institutions with a new understanding, with a fuller gestalt of what it could be? Can we see the past as anything other than a pejorative?
The past mistakes were at once solutions for a better future.
To rebuild an old institution is to fill the brick and mortar without the haste and hubris it was built in the first place. When it was built, it was the novel, it was the answer. And in its propulsion into the future, it lost sight of the underlying nature, it sought to move away from. Each progression from before, attempted to take us one step away from the causality of Earth’s nature and its pre-determined dangers, spontaneity and uncertainty, unconcerned with our welfare. These old Gods, must be replaced with new human gods. Our fates no longer dictated by the cycle of nature, but of our own device. In doing so, we’ve commodified this planet and now live by the nature of large self-interested conglomerates who seek to dominate and control the variables, including our human consciousness.
Whether our enemy is the past, nature herself, or our own tortured self that sought refuge in its own subjectivity, perhaps there is a balance. Perhaps we can see that we are all stuck in a time and a direction that, when is observed from above, is not sustainable. We cannot freeze the past, anymore than we can we build on a floating foundation. We must instead scrape away, piece by piece with patience. To heal not only requires foresight but an archaeological insight and a radical acceptance that we are not only who we are now, but also who we were then and who came before, so on and so on. There is a grave price in thinking we can eradicate our ancestral survival instincts and natural tendencies through control and indoctrination. We are all still animals bound by emotions and survival.
I do not see a future for America, unless we can reconcile the skeletons in our closet, without burning the whole house down.
Let’s visualize two people. One representing the right and one representing the left. They are both standing back to back, their vision fixed on their respective orientation, meaning they cannot see each other’s faces. In fact they are only two blind assholes staring at each other.
If we abstract the world into polarities and straight lines, they will stay on this road forever, choosing their path, which is always one step further away than where they started. One seeks refuge in an ideation of yesterday and another moving away, towards a new, “better” future. But what if we change their path, to one that resembles the actual planet. Perhaps their path curves towards a point of a meeting place. Each one walking toward a place where they must face each other. Now here they are confronted with their counterpart, both perhaps with clenched fists, awaiting battle. Their path does not go eternally away from the other, but inevitably brings them face to face with this other possible world. Perhaps they fight here, or turn away, but what if there was another solution. Now instead of staying there, they hold that tension and continuing on the path, each walking where the other one had, each one going into the future and the past of the other, until they can experience the other’s; seeing and feeling and touching and hearing from their perspective. They see that path through their own eyes. Now when they meet again, where once their backs were turned, will their hands be clenched? Are they the same person? Do we have the patience and courage for this? Can we work through our differences and drown out the senseless screaming rhetoric that hijacks our thoughts and media?
We are so divisive today, that I do not know exactly how this tension, how this energy will be expelled. But it will be expelled one way or the other. I can only hope that we are able to see that our answers lie in each other, not in another time. The tensions will not go away regardless of who wins tomorrow. I fear that our short sightedness and repressed anger will weaken a once respected nation of ideas, to a fractured commodity, that will be left vulnerable to new superpowers, who do not value a plurality of opinions, nor the freedoms outlined in the constitution. I believe in the words spoken by a historically problematic President “there is nothing wrong in America that cannot be cured by what is right in America”4
Women’s rights, civil rights, labour rights, environmental rights, religious freedoms were fought for by Americans for Americans and perhaps we have forgotten and taken for granted how fierce those struggles were, and taken for granted the fruits that they have bore out of the storms of the past, all while never forgetting what necessitated those struggles to begin with.
Humanity is complex, intricate and often unable to confront its deep wounds. It seeks to protect itself from never being wounded again. Perhaps that is what evil is. A festering, shameful wound, sensitive to the touch, so sensitive one must shield it from the outside world, until nothing can come close to it again…until the whole world is destroyed, leaving nothing but an empty space and some floating starships looking for a new home to start fresh, with new ideals, and so much history to learn from, but noone to share it with.
My anti-US sentiment peaked in 2004, when my and my friend Nick went down to New York to protest the Republican convention. With a stack of Adbusters magazines and Che biographies, we almost got thrown in a cop bus, defended health care to New Yorkers, got free drinks from Republicans at a Coyote Ugly bar, met Tom Morello and Serj Tankian at a dive bar, and passed out on a park bench in Queens…all with a broken foot.
It would be naive to make a case for the US republic, without focussing on the heist job of multi-national corporations who move around with impunity, with the power of small countries all existing to make as much money as possible, at the expense of anything that resists it’s mission statement. But today I want to focus on the character of the constituents.
Alfred Nobel was often referred to as the “merchant of death”. When we get a bright idea, we are so caught up in the potential, it is as if our egos do not allow us to entertain the shadow parts of ourselves and humanity. Luckily the internet and AI, are being handled with a lot more cautious hands.
I remember this quote, from then unblemished Bill Clinton. It’s one of those “even a broken clock is right twice a day” type scenarios.