Wonderful Election Year

The 2016 election process has been difficult to follow for many reasons. The more one pays attention, the more one thinks on it, the stranger and more bewildering the spectacle becomes.

Perhaps the historical view will make much more sense in a couple of years. But to take the immediate process, as it is in motion, one (or at least someone like myself) is struck with an overwhelming sense of dissolution of perception and anticipation. And perhaps this is the nature of participating as a politically interested observer, as a subjective entity that is affected by the object of its perception. If this truly is the process of a breaking apart, one participates in the breaking apart; one becomes it.

One can only fix into one's mind some historical analogue, and hold tight to it to anticipate events, as the two major parties dance and transform, mirroring each other in their mutual desires for status quo in the face of the impossible, both cracking under the pressure, albeit in different ways. A morbid and grotesque unity of the opposites.

If a more coherent piece comes together it would make for some interesting writing. But one vague impression that I would like to get onto paper is as follows:

Donald Trump does seem to be the embodiment of a breaking or a rending. One looks for a person in the Western sense, as an integrated aggregate of interests and desires which affects some sort of material efficacy in the physical world, which does things and causes things, but one has trouble finding it.

Trump is a whirlwind of smiles and nods, of hand waves, of carefully chosen words and not so carefully chosen words, and it all seems to be constantly shifting. There is no expertise or competence or even efficacy, in the Western sense. One gets the impression that his is an instinct of raw accumulation and preservation (it is the extreme accumulation and the preservation that accompanies the violent dissolution) and that the anxious bootlickers, friends, and family he gathers around him are nervously guiding his movements for him, riding his naked drive and navigating him like some ungainly vessel.

He is as a shifting mosaic, his fractured pieces attempting to mirror and harmonize with the tumult of the society and the earth around him. As a communicator and a doer in a complex society, he appears as an abomination, but his instincts are excellent. And perhaps that is the terrifying source of his growing power. He is at the center of a hurricane which is gaining its spin off of the ambient social dissolution.

I'm no fan of the fascists, but I think there is some truth to their insistence on instinct and the gut, especially in a time of dissolution. And where you find dissolution in a modern democracy, you find fascists wiggling their fins, slowly becoming cognizant of friendlier waters for terror.

This isn't to say Trump is an isolated incident. I too (and others with shared sentiments) am experiencing an inner dissolution of higher order desires, relations, and understandings. Instinct appears as a welcome friend. One's heart, one's gut speaks, and if one listens, one is rewarded. Especially in a milieu such as we have today.

After all, the breaking apart of higher order symbolic and social constructs necessitates a return to the instinctual base, so as to further a sound reconstruction. One doesn't have to be a fascist, or engage in the project of shoring up white supremacy and capital, in order to navigate dissolution.

As for Hillary! Yes she does appear to be the integrated Western individual. She moves through debates and cocktail parties alike, saying the right things. She exudes confidence and competence. She traverses our constructed complexities with a grin. But one brushes off the frost on the surface a bit and suddenly her efficacious self is quite disastrous and incompetent indeed, especially when integrated into the grid.

Her instincts are terrible! Hillary and all of her slick peers are very competently making a mess of things no? The higher order fabric she moves within destroys everything it touches without.

But also the nature and direction of an instinct is just as important. Hillary's instincts are terrible and she's making a mess, but Trump's instincts are pretty good and he's accelerating the same process of dissolution. Geo politically, these two figures do seem to be spatially related to each other: their differing instincts are bound together by an overriding desire to maintain the instruments of domination, if only in differing ways, making the two and their respective constituencies gradations of a spatially bound surface.

And so if Trump is the breaking and the rending, Hillary is the weakening and the corroding that prepares the surface for the breaking. The two need each other to dance.

Pick your poison!

This may seem a curious stance, but I hope I'm quite wrong. I intend to keep watching and thinking, or at least trying to anyway.

Warning Lights - Lead Edition

The disembodied gaze of the establishment media passes over the myriad brush fires which break out over the body politic. Of course the disembodied establishment media enjoys its state of disembodiment, and seeks to maintain that state by encouraging the social bodies that it is connected with to ignore the brush fires.

Some establishment media does accomplish what amounts to the raising of eyebrows, or the scratching of the chin, but otherwise it is better that the people tune in, and perhaps talk hushedly amongst themselves after the report, and then go back to work the next day.

And for now that seems to be the extent of it. The media's searchlight passes over some fresh abomination or insult, and there is a frenzy which eventually quiets down, or which is eclipsed by the news of some new scandal or catastrophe. The attention drifts, and the myriad brush fires continue to burn.

The core culture grinds onward, its repetitions wearing ever deeper grooves into the earth, and its gear teeth are slowly ground down. The gears gradually drift out of their respective orbits, and traffic increases from the core to the fringe until the two equalize, at least temporarily. Real change happens at the fringes, its delayed effects eventually reaching the core in some way.

One particularly insidious example has to do with lead, which has been spread throughout the land over the last century, pushed outwards in wide circles through greed and recklessness, and then hidden from sight through a cowardly refusal to account for its harms or even its existence.

Its delayed effects come to the surface in the course of breakdown. In the case of Flint, fresh water reserves dwindled or were deemed expensive by a contracting society, and so the city switched to a polluted water source that was cheaper to administrate, which in turn corroded lead piping which leeched into the water flows.

This incredibly callous and reckless act only accelerated a process that is in motion throughout the United States, particularly in the east. Many cities throughout the eastern US have been actively fudging their water tests in order to ignore the lead problem. There is simply no collective will to replace the labyrinthine tangle of old lead piping. No, much of the work being done in these local governments is to maintain an illusion of a collective will, while the actual work required for ameliorating the problem is not done.

The early usage of lead might not have been in bad faith (well, maybe it was), but today its dangers are well known.

There is a flash of insight: the material foundations are breaking down. And this is followed by yet another flash: those with the power and the privilege position themselves upon the corpses of the vulnerable, so as to delay the consequences of the breakdown for themselves. Resent is spread in turn, and trust is steadily destroyed through the repeated revelation of lying authorities, which occurs on top of the material destruction with consequences of its own.

Lead poisoning leads to body aches, anxiety, and depression, all of which sap the psyche. It also leads to profound long term health effects, especially in the young. The damages to individual health, social trust and regard, and real wealth is incalculable.

Imagine these effects interacting with a global destruction of trust and respect in social institutions. It is appropriate to mention once again the fractal quality of this breakdown, which is even difficult to put into words due to its breadth and complexity. Within every sector of society, and on multiple levels of interaction, a breakdown proceeds, which affects a sustained attack on the integrity of global functions such as collective trust.

Wrap-Up of Travels Cont'd

• There is now a preponderance of dollar stores throughout the US. Dollar Tree on the West Coast, Dollar General in the South, and Dollar Family in the Southwest, from what I've seen. These places are basically usurious: the same shit products you can find in the grocery store are here, just with reduced portions to justify the low prices, and maybe even more so. Wares are terrible quality and disintegrate within weeks, perhaps spewing poisons and adding negative value, along with the shit food. The poor then are continuously buying and renting and never achieving true ownership. Plus the health problems. But every business has to make a profit no?
• In New Mexico and Arizona, blue and red lights have been added to worker and maintenance vehicles curiously enough, perhaps to command the fear and discretion that police and other emergency vehicles enjoy. A quick search says yes. Once again, there has been a profound loss of public purpose. You see people speeding through construction zones all of the time, endangering workers. A little fear seems to get em back in line, at least artificially and temporarily. But then that has costs...
• Are we on our way to greener transportation? Anyone? Well we'd like to say yes, though electric cars aren't a serious solution. And wherever one passes through suburbs, one finds universally the sinking of limited budgets into freeway widening. Alas, suburb design requires cars. Capitalism requires constant growth, and cultivates the taste for suburban living and personal autos in the process. Freeways must be widened then. 
• In New Mexico, this issue is a bit more low-key, but as soon as one enters Arizona, the inner and outer exploitation of Native American groups becomes part of the ad landscape. They're not even Indians, but anyway come in and buy some Indian jewelry. Kitsch tepees and cave drawings litter the landscape. Purveyors of genocide are appropriating cultural artifacts and selling them. Well, some indigenous people need to make a living. But here's a granular account of the implications of that.
• Re indigenous groups: how about reparations and land grants for starters? 
• Re cultural appropriation: the West needs to uptake foreign vital culture into its abyssal maw and assimilate it into the tempest of late Capitalism to keep mainstream culture juiced. 
• Everywhere sudden dead ends into private property. Paranoid signs and foreboding in the countryside. More on this later. 

Wrap-Up of Travels

Either I'm writing up a storm during travels, or I'm too busy or fatigued to write, saving up observations for later pieces. This is one of those trips where the latter comes into play.

Here is a brief summary of observations, soon to be followed with some pieces taken from experiences and world events.

• There was a palpable sense of paranoia in Montana, which felt strange considering the expansiveness and generosity of the landscape. A future piece will address this. 
• In South Dakota, there was a notable change in traffic dynamics on the Interstate. A great proportion of the drivers would pull over into the slow lane, even if they were moving fast. A perpetual repetition of polite behaviors en masse had established an unspoken code, which had generated impolite outcomes of its own, such as the phenomenon of a speeding vehicle bearing down on you in the slow lane. 
• Downtown Detroit was coming back, but the city felt empty, even on the weekend. So it goes: some natural disaster, violence cycle, or slow motion deindustrialization process leaves the locals to languish. Radicals move in seeking low prices and political flexibility. Hipsters follow shortly, and money comes in. Gentrification continues. 
• Truckers were more aggressive than usual in Kentucky. Scenes of speeding gasoline tankers passing sports cars in the fast lane. 
• There were buildings in Mississippi that were so long that they appeared as lakes from the highway. Completely opaque and closed, exhaust fans on the sides. Possibly an industrial farming operation. 
• Business is doing alright in the Downtown area and the French Quarter of New Orleans. The weather stained houses with stripped roofs sit quietly in the distance. 
• On the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, Louisiana homes sit poised on stilts. The wealthy can afford beautiful homes suspended a good 7 to 10 feet off of the ground. Supposedly this is good for storage and parking. However the poor live in trailers, basically raised on cement blocks. Is it enough? 
• The character of a region cannot be ascertained from the Interstate. One has to go deeper into the countryside. Where there is a great flow of volume, there is homogenization. Within the mainline, one sees strip malls, gas stations, posh downtowns, concrete and asphalt, etc. A great city may display a character, but with the waning vitality of a creative culture, one sees only a monotonous business layer set over aging curiosities. Why? Plenty to account for. And is there value in a creative expansion that destroys everything around it, before turning on itself?
• Lead worries persist throughout the land, especially on the East coast, and there is good reason for that. A piece to follow on this. 
• Towering thunderstorms and huge downpours in Texas. It is an old story now: it grows hotter and the storms grow larger. 
• A preponderance of toll roads in Texas. Behold the glories of private enterprise. 
• Also a preponderance of comic irony in Texas. A curious state. On the southeast side, one is greeted by a billboard (and behind it rises the towers of oil refineries) that reads, "Drive Friendly, It's the Texas Way." The Texas way? Some of the most aggressive drivers I've seen. 
• In the South, proud displays of the Confederate flag, and in Texas, proud displays of the Lone Star flag. One wonders how the successionist movements are faring post Brexit. 

More travels to come, and more pieces to follow.