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The best we can do right now with re­spect to Syr­ia and vari­ous oth­er world-his­tor­ic­al phe­nom­ena is pre­dict likely out­comes, since we have no abil­ity to mean­ing­fully al­ter the course of events. Ex­cept, of course, if we’re pre­pared to fig­ure out what it would take to as­sert and ex­er­cise real agency in his­tory, something which is much harder than just shout­ing an­ti­war or hu­man­it­ari­an in­ter­ven­tion­ist plat­it­udes. It in­volves identi­fy­ing the forces with­in so­ci­ety that could bend the blind hap­pen­stance of the mar­ket and the clumsy in­trigues of state powers to its will. Po­s­i­tion-tak­ing and slo­gan­eer­ing are mean­ing­less and vain in the ab­sence of ef­fect­ive re­volu­tion­ary prac­tice.

For the time be­ing, however, it has very been en­ter­tain­ing to see Richard Spen­cer and his “Alt-Right” al­lies lose their col­lect­ive shit over Trump’s sud­den 180° with re­spect to Syr­ia. Al­most on cue and all at once, 4chan’s /pol/ seemed to suf­fer an an­eurysm. Some of its mem­bers com­plained that this would mean more Muslim im­mig­rants the West. Oth­ers called upon the an­onym­ous hordes to form a bloc with Putin and wage holy war against the Jews. Mean­while, Steve Ban­non has fallen out of fa­vor in the White House, cucked by the “glob­al­ist” New Jer­sey Demo­crat Jared Kush­ner. With this de­vel­op­ment, lib­er­als might have fi­nally got­ten their wish. Be­cause if Ivanka is now the one really pulling the strings, to stick with the pup­pet-mas­ter meta­phor, then it’s as if Hil­lary Clin­ton got elec­ted after all.

Lib­er­als’ main ob­jec­tion to Trump has al­ways been aes­thet­ic, rather than prin­cipled or sub­stant­ive. They miss the smooth, well-spoken, at times in­spir­a­tion­al rhet­or­ic of someone like Obama to the bizarre toi­let bowl of free as­so­ci­ation that comes out of Trump’s mouth. At the level of policy the two could be com­pletely identic­al, but no one would care so long as everything was de­livered with the right pres­id­en­tial pack­aging. Com­rade Em­met Pen­ney con­veys this grim truth rather well:

So after run­ning a can­did­ate down­loaded from the un­canny val­ley — who didn’t be­lieve in or stand for any­thing, really — and money­balling their way to de­feat against a gold-plated, syph­il­it­ic so­ciopath, I’m see­ing all these mem­bers of the Demo­crat­ic “#Res­ist­ance” come out in full sup­port of the Syr­ia strikes like the bat­talion of over­paid cow­ards they’ve al­ways been.

It’ll be tite af when they re­in­sti­tute con­scrip­tion and make you use an app struc­tured like Obama­care where you pick from com­pet­ing pro­viders to get body ar­mor and bul­lets be­fore ship­ping out to go die alone scream­ing for your fam­ily while their lob­by­ist mil­it­ary con­tract­or bud­dies stuff their pock­ets by the fist­ful. The fu­ture the Demo­crats want is just a gami­fied ver­sion of with the Re­pub­lic­ans want, with maybe Beyoncé play­ing in the back­ground and a sub­scrip­tion to The New York­er.

Nev­er­the­less, it could well be that Trump’s sheer un­pre­dict­ab­il­ity ac­tu­ally re­duces the chances of WW3. Putin was will­ing to play chick­en over Syr­ia with Obama, be­cause he knew Obama is a ra­tion­al guy who knows when to hit the brakes. He’s not go­ing to play that game with someone who would just as soon set him­self on fire or drive the car off a bridge for rat­ings.

All the same, with mo­bil­iz­a­tion against US mil­it­ary in­ter­ven­tion in­to Syr­ia ramp­ing up, it’s more im­port­ant than ever that com­mun­ists be able to stake out a po­s­i­tion that op­poses in­ter­ven­tion­ist wars while also re­fus­ing any sup­port for bour­geois na­tion­al­ists and tin-pot dic­tat­ors like As­sad. Over the past fifty years, anti-im­per­i­al­ists have op­por­tun­ist­ic­ally made com­mon cause with any­one and every­one who de­clare them­selves to be “anti-Amer­ic­an.” This has dis­cred­ited le­git­im­ate ef­forts to op­pose for­eign wars. Marx­ists should re­ject such co­ali­tions and or­gan­ize on an in­de­pend­ent and in­ter­na­tion­al­ist basis, ex­clud­ing na­tion­al­ists of all stripes. But I’m not hold­ing my breath.

It is in this dis­pir­it­ing mood that I’m shar­ing a re­flec­tion sub­mit­ted by Com­rade Hegel Damascene, re­mem­ber­ing the quiet dig­nity of liber­tari­an can­did­ate Gary John­son. John­son remains a beacon of bygone normie-dom in a bat­shit age.

[wpvideo cDBR9jTM] [wpvideo M6i2XwPN]Gary Johnson
Normie prophet in an apocalyptic age

Hegel Damascene
Interstate 95
April 8, 2017
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The tra­di­tion of all dead gen­er­a­tions weighs like a night­mare on the brains of the liv­ing.

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Sit­ting on an over­pass over I-95, watch­ing cars come onto and off of the George Wash­ing­ton Bridge, I was over­come with the feel­ing of be­ing trapped in the belly of a hor­rible ma­chine. And the ma­chine is bleed­ing to death. I al­ways used to stare at the over­passes near the Garden State Mall, the ar­ti­fi­cial mar­ket­place where high­ways meet, and think about what a Great Civil­iz­a­tion (both words cap­it­al­ized) Amer­ica was. But I saw the cracks back then, too, I just didn’t think they would open up so quickly.

Sit­ting on that un­der­pass, I half ex­pec­ted the of­fices of Kim & Bae, PC to grow legs and start lob­bing mis­siles at Bashar As­sad’s palace. Maybe the Port Au­thor­ity Po­lice build­ing was a fact­ory pro­du­cing mech­an­ic­al cops, who would march out to re­store or­der in the new Salafist prin­cip­al­ity — and de­tain any big beau­ti­ful ba­bies who wanted to leave their young uto­pia for Amer­ica, where they could be a se­cur­ity risk.

Syr­ia is both a source and mi­cro­cosm of the slow col­lapse.

The in­ter­na­tion­al in­cid­ents and refugees it pro­duces are slowly gunk­ing up the gears, but also each fac­tion sym­bol­izes a lar­ger flaw in the world sys­tem. The un­rav­el­ing of the Syr­i­an state is a fast-for­wards ver­sion of the re­cent his­tory of the “West,” with its rur­al-urb­an polit­ic­al di­vide, and a liz­ard caste will­ing to kill its own host so­ci­ety in or­der to pre­serve its power over the rubble. The dif­fer­ence is that every myth is closer to the source. The re-or­gan­iz­a­tion of so­ci­ety along sec­tari­an lines is at least a re­treat in­to iden­tit­ies with real his­tor­ic­al and theo­lo­gic­al back­ing, not a car­bon-copy flag-and-an­them myth­o­logy that’s 100 years young.

Right now I’m in a lib­rary, where I came from a party to write this, be­cause it feels like my head is ex­plod­ing. Be­neath the lay­ers of sweat and un­der­grad misery — es­pe­cially pathet­ic on a Fri­day night — it’s a temple to the myths the WASP civil­iz­a­tion has built for it­self. Hid­den be­hind the piles of Chinese and In­di­an new money, there are mur­als of early mod­ern transat­lantic ex­plorers and Greek gods per­form­ing deeds out of the fever dreams of some in­bred ar­is­to­crat from the late 19th cen­tury. All the while, the ac­tu­al des­cend­ants of Greeks are sit­ting in de­part­ments for the sub­al­terns the WASPs feel guilty stamp­ing out.

Any­one who reads between the lines of an old Greek text, rather than us­ing it as a status sym­bol, sees much more Kanda­har than Columbia, more Has­sakah than Har­vard. After all, the former is named for Al­ex­an­der.

To be fair, every myth­o­logy and iden­tity is made-up when you go far back enough.

It doesn’t mat­ter how ar­ti­fi­cial myths are, though, with a ma­ter­i­al basis. After all, al-Ma’mun got away with see­ing Ar­is­totle in a dream. The sur­face level un­rav­el­ing is the con­sequence of sys­tem­ic shocks: cli­mate change, di­min­ish­ing rate of profit, en­ergy in­stabil­ity, mod­ern hordes of Sea People jump­ing from con­flict to con­flict be­cause Saudi Ar­a­bia couldn’t think of a bet­ter meth­od of get­ting rid of its hot­headed youth than send­ing them as for­eign fight­ers. Cap­it­al­ism and the mar­ket are geni­us sys­tems of or­gan­iz­a­tion, soften­ing the blows by turn­ing these in­to chron­ic rather than acute prob­lems, but some­times it leaks through in sud­den break­downs.

The con­front­a­tion between Rus­sia and the United States in Homs, a res­ult of long­stand­ing liz­ard caste policies mag­ni­fied by Trump’s man-baby ego, is one such break­down. It was a long time in the mak­ing, but it was sup­posed to be gradu­al and con­trolled.

An­oth­er break happened last sum­mer, when the Rus­si­an am­bas­sad­or to Tur­key was as­sas­sin­ated by a rogue spe­cial forces cop in a min­im­al­ist art gal­lery. Des­pite the com­par­is­ons to Sa­ra­jevo 1914, the in­ter­na­tion­al in­cid­ent was not al­lowed to fester, be­cause it didn’t serve the goals of any power. But it make for a good spec­tacle, be­cause of how cine­mat­ic the whole thing went down. (Mor­bidly, it was al­most in­stant turned in­to an In­ter­net meme.) And so the fas­cist who shot the liz­ard was suc­cess­ful in his stated goal: ”do not for­get Aleppo!”

Gary John­son could not be reached for com­ment.

Really, though, John­son’s in­fam­ous “Aleppo mo­ment” was a dis­curs­ive slip. No one in Amer­ica out­side the liz­ard caste knew where Aleppo was, either. Hell, a large sec­tion of the liz­ards prob­ably didn’t know them­selves. But no politi­cian is al­lowed to ad­mit the lim­its of their know­ledge and power. The liz­ard caste is sup­posed to main­tain the fic­tion of om­ni­po­tence, even at the cost of self-de­struc­tion. John­son’s lam­bast­ing by the me­dia was a mo­ment for the liz­ards to dis­tract them­selves from the gan­gren­ous limb called Trump by furi­ously rub­bing dis­in­fect­ant on a pa­per-cut.

Let me save you some time by sum­mar­iz­ing liber­tari­an Aus­tri­an eco­nom­ics: none of the oth­er liz­ards know as much as they claim to — it’s ac­tu­ally im­possible — let’s take our chances with the mech­an­ist­ic sys­tems of the mar­ket rather than a ruler who might de­cide to gen­o­cide you be­cause she’s​ hav­ing a toothache, or a liz­ard who would do the same to pad his re­sume.

At his next cam­paign rally, which I was at, John­son demon­strated that he un­der­stood Syr­ia as a whole even if he got the de­tails wrong. The rally was a shit­show in many oth­er ways, but he was right about that. Many “nor­mal” people don’t know the spe­cif­ics, but they can see the gen­er­al trends. Prob­ably bet­ter then the liz­ard-caste ex­perts, in most cases. A vast ma­jor­ity are too blinkered by vari­ous parts of their daily lives, however. But they can still see the cracks widen­ing, the seams rip­ping, the em­pire eat­ing it­self alive.

And so people re­act to this im­pend­ing #doom in dif­fer­ent ways. Some join apo­ca­lyptic cults, like IS­IS or vi­ol­ent prim­it­iv­ist cells. Oth­ers put their faith in snake-oil sales­men, from Trump to Bob Avaki­an. The smarter ones try to #hustle enough to crawl to the highest point on the sink­ing ship, in hopes of jump­ing onto a life­boat. Of course, the ones in a po­s­i­tion to see the pat­terns most clearly are too damn busy try­ing to sur­vive to do any­thing else.

I’m a bit more for­tu­nate, be­cause my fam­ily ac­cu­mu­lated enough through hard work and luck that I don’t have to sup­port any­one else yet as a young adult. Of course, plenty of smart young people with the chance to get an edu­ca­tion end up climb­ing in­to the liz­ard caste. That’s where I’m really lucky; I in­her­ited enough of my my grand­par­ents’ im­mig­rant anxi­ety to see that the liz­ard caste is doomed. You need a skill that’ll keep you on the life­boat, not phys­ic­al cap­it­al you’ll have to jet­tis­on any­ways.

We need a fuck­ing ark.