This one is a bit of a mess but here goes. Just getting back into the swing of things before I fall down dead again. Right, anyway:
There is an increasingly shocking hypocrisy in world and domestic events. Shocking in the sense that I - a rather seasoned and jaded perceiver - will glance at the headlines and have my jaw drop anew, again and again.
To see what powerful white people will get away with, for example, in plain sight, contrasts pretty starkly with what the powerless can get away with in hidden view, to compare two extreme poles, and then there is everything in between. And I suppose that is partially the point: if you situate justice within a mythology, and rationalize within that mythology, and at the same time manage those rationalizations, you can excuse terrible deeds for the most powerful, while at the same time you can punish the powerless for the most minor infractions. This is only possible if the observers you are appealing to are only able to make judgements using the symbols and logic of the mythology you are pushing.
So you look at how rich white people are treated by the law, versus poor people of color. Or you look at how different races and classes are talked about in media language. Or you look at how white terrorists are treated in America - who are much more dangerous in America - as opposed to brown terrorists. Or for that matter, to truly study ISIS and world affairs is to begin to grasp a strange saga: those speaking most feverishly about the surging tide of monsters are doing their best to create monsters.
We could call this hypocrisy, which has already been done plenty of times, but the truth of the matter is that everything is built on hypocrisy, or the more general formula: I get to do whatever I want, but that means you can't do anything that you want, because me doing anything that I want is predicated on the removal of any sort of obstacle to my full exercise of power, including the boundaries and wills of other people.
The intractable conflicts that we experience as a society today are intractable because their course of destruction is built into their very function.
The entire shape of capitalist society is predicated on this universal extension of domination, which for all intents and purposes, functions to disintegrate, as the minute someone or something is dominated, that domination is passed on, and someone or something else must be dominated, or else the dominated turns away in resent from the dominator.
This is how power is maintained. A single instance of injustice can be repaid immediately: well it is pretty apparent that you stole from me, so I'll need it back, or some equal value.
But if you graduate injustice over tiers and tiers of higher classes, whose existence is predicated on injustice and who can be convinced to fight for injustice, you can delay the repayment by hoisting the weight of an entirely unjust society on the shoulders of the oppressed. But again this is only a delay: "...the dominated turns away in resent from the dominator."
The ownership of capital is essentially an act of robbery which replicates itself, reproducing more of itself as it inspires reactions in kind. But the process has an end. There is only so much energy available to continue concentrating that domination, even if it is spread in gradients over a greater dimension.
It is as if the unfurling flower is slowly spiralling itself apart. Or the bursting firework is nearing its completion as its burning embers separate and dissipate in the atmosphere. It is the unfurling ends - and the dissipating and dispersing - that reveal a spiralling outwards that would be difficult to see otherwise. The process must burn out; it has to run out of energy and break down to reveal its finer contours, and its direction as a process.
It is all so strange and bewildering, that just attempting to write about it is a trial of its own.
