This piece is going to be a bit rocky. I'm still adjusting to farm life and intense physical labor, but the writing should smooth out once again once I hit a certain stride. Nevertheless there are some developments here worth exploring further.
With the excitement and outrage surrounding Trump slowly dying out, we begin to see what it was that he might have represented, and as a consequence we can grasp the way in which his changes were affected. The forces he brought into public office with him, and the political character that he represented was already quite alarming, but as pure action, he lagged behind his own images.
Trump represented through his speech and his alliances a new breed of fascist sentiment, slowly stirring in its cocoon, but through his action, he was a mere banal agent of the neoliberal paradigm, or at least a crumbling agent, that is. It is worth pointing out that he is one of the most unhinged, incompetent, and chaotic of that paradigm's agents, and so we can catch a glimpse of a transition stage.
The transition is unfolding in numerous ways, and one of those ways is that of an inversion, which is worth touching on. I recall the sensation of emotional bipolarity and paranoia, in various states of flux. There was much going on in the world that was certainly something to be alarmed about, but the political consciousness of the nation had not yet caught up with the underlying realities. Emotional bipolarity in one's self emerged as a response to the sensitivity to suffering, which appeared as a personal and isolated mental state, a "pathology" as the "professionals" say, which is to be corrected and suppressed by an organized power efficacious enough to contain it.
Now that inner bipolarity has become turned inside out. One looks out at the world and remarks, ah yes, what was in me is now out there, by virtue of a slow psychic illumination following revelations of Trump America. One no longer struggles as much with the inner fear of madness, and turns instead to an exhaustion and emotional revulsion at the state which one perceives as being "out there, " which has become objectified by virtue of a critical mass being achieved.
Yes the country was full of crooks and liars from the start, and since the 60s and 70s the driving economic force has been the machinations and encroachments of rentiers, looters, and conmen. However now the embodiment of those corrosive forces has materialized in the presidency, the core political representation of a society, and suddenly it is as if the underlying reality of our political economy has crystallized.
The phantoms that the most sensitive among us have feared, and have complained about - sometimes loudly - are now solidified, in the open for all to see.
Through an inversion, like a flower unfolding out of its bud, this instability has emerged fully formed and personified. The clever ones know it is not just Trump. He is the catalyst that is calling forth the worst elements of the capitalist world, and those elements are feeding back into Trump in turn.
The national security state moves to assert control. Liberals and conservatives alike cheer authoritarianism and militarism. The mainstream media networks obsess over every bit of
Trump minutae, while ignoring many of the most pressing developments, all the while calling themselves the warriors of truth and light. And scores of readers have been all too happy to indulge in this nonsense - though there has been a welcome bit of pushback certainly.
Through mimetic action, the conmen glimpse new avenues of possibility. The Republican party is coalescing around this new depraved political character. Here in Montana, Gianforte, the rich landgrabber has won office spouting free market and anti-tax nonsense, even after strangling a reporter no less!
The conmen, the looters, and the landgrabbers accompany the fascists waiting at the fringes. These unhinged and absurd billionaires and millionaires are the transition point on the spectrum, where the capitalist meets the fascist. How long will it take? What will the new stage look like? Some things to keep watch for.
