The one thing that happens to arouse me from my depressive writing slumber is the political catastrophe of the 2016 election. I feel as some ancient creature, weakly rising up off of its belly, scattering dust, looking faintly into a horizon troubled by a distant storm.
At one time I had gazed over my earlier writings on Trump with a blush on my face, concerned that my manic hyperbole was ultimately misplaced. But now, I do feel that some of my observations were correct, or at least congruous to the strange chaotic reality before us, and that the weather systems I was trying to understand are still going in the general direction I believe them to be.
Not that I need to be validated by these things, nor do I even want to be. It would be far better to write myself off as misguided and watch the world piece itself together in spite of the difficulties ahead of it.
But that's enough about me.
There is still plenty of time before Trump takes office, and the brittle US political system is certainly not going to handle the kind of transfer of power we're accustomed to without some kind of shower of sparks or grinding of gears. The 2000 election was tumultuous enough after all. And the global economy is so tightly integrated, we'll most likely see some pretty dramatic effects in the form of sympathetic reactions, whose effects will feed back into the US political system in short order.
It may be worthwhile to try to wrap one's head around what has actually happened, however much nausea it causes as one reminisces on the campaign trail, and apprehends the fact that Trump as a phenomenon really does exist, and he is poised to wrap his fingers around the levers of the most powerful empire in the world. This is even taking into account the waning power and influence of the US empire, which is arguably a much more dangerous force, with its insecure rebuffs against power-sharing and increasing alienation and humiliation.
The election cycle, which is to peaceably transfer power to the leader of another faction, has run into a snag: there is nothing there to transfer power to! In the conventional sense anyway.
No doubt, Trump is there to receive the power with open arms and a broad smile upon his face. But what is Trump? What does he embody? What does he represent? Trump is not a politician with whom you entrust power to maintain a system; you entrust him to smash it. Or in other words, this is not the beginning of a new political order, but the collapse of an old one.
The catapult of his person to the presidency can only be construed as some vast, national cry of despair. Those that actually believe in the candidate are doing so with bellies poisoned by decades of swallowing contradictory and preposterous business propaganda, and who are otherwise willing participants in the long historical process of dispossession and imperial growth.
Those that voted Trump as a protest, casting their vote with a cynical confidence in him as a weapon, like tossing a brick through an establishment window, or into the face of an establishment politician for that matter, draw from that same well of despair. More constructive things have happened with the tossing of actual bricks through actual windows.
This is a people who have indeed suffered, and continue to suffer, but who have chosen greater suffering as a solution. Not that this sudden, grim outpouring emerged from a vacuum either. No, we have had a long historical procession of foreclosed redemptions and denials of justice, culminating with the DNC's stonewalling of the one sensible candidate in the whole campaign, which makes it all the more tragic.
And we have to look on in horror at the plight of the American public, which has suddenly become alarmed that the weight it has thrown around the globe to enrich itself has become tangled around its own neck, dragging it down. With Trump the answer is to untangle the instruments of domination, and make them point outward once again, as opposed to retiring them completely. Historically, this is a project that makes the predicament much worse of course, to the point of vast destruction and suffering.
Indeed, we find this moment's analogue in Brexit, where to every pollster's surprise, a people chose to accelerate disintegration. A few months in and they continue to squabble over rejoining the connections they've severed, slowly bleeding out in the process.
Whatever process of disintegration we have to watch may very well tear open some new power vacuum, by virtue of clearing out the corrupt and convoluted tangle that the neoliberal empire resembles. Within such a vacuum is possibility, but at the same time there exists the site of a bitter struggle between all of the shearing forces that have been unleashed.
Cold comfort in a dark time, without a doubt. But that promise of possibility begat countless vital movements throughout history, and countless horrors too, let's not forget. The best that can be done is to struggle in the direction of what one believes to be good. Weak tea perhaps, but I can't help but draw from the well of despair myself. It seems to be all they are serving.
