One of the arguments that keeps coming up about the impeachment hearings - at least in liberal circles - is that the process of the hearings, if nothing else, will at least serve to raise important questions about our political economy and world politics. It will open up a dialogue, as they say.
But this argument, besides being naive, is a mark of profound self-absorption. It is already the case that every crushing and impossible debt, every failed institution or community in the face of extreme weather, or any other aspect of political and economic injustice is enough to raise all kinds of questions and evoke all sorts of dialogue from and between affected individuals.
But why would the impeachment hearings suddenly make a difference significant enough to address the profundity of the problems we face?
One only has to listen to the initial hour of the public impeachment hearings to grasp what has been apparent throughout the entire process: it is just another echo - albeit a highly distinguished and formalized one - of a largely self-referential and theatrical operation of a political system that has long since been decoupled from the systems it governs.
The witnesses yammer on, carefully reconstructing and airing the binary products of political manufacture, while recalling endless streams of conversation and system processes which only concern them and their class, while the listener sits, head-cocked and ears perked up, but eyes glazing, straining to comprehend in vain. There is no truth here. Nor is there dialogue, only a series of monologues bursting forth like spears from a phalanx.
This effect was built into the structure of the hearings from the very beginning, thanks to the selectiveness and constraint with which the threat of impeachment was raised. Up until now, the structure of the economy was fine, the self dealing was fine as long as it wasn't too loud or gaudy, the cascading failures to deal with numerous environmental disasters were fine, the refugee crisis and profoundly cruel way of dealing with it was fine, the financial cannibalization was fine, and so on and so forth, because it was all continuous across the functioning of both parties for decades.
But now Trump threatens Biden politically in an open and un-coded way and my my now the gloves are off! Now the cherished sensibilities of the established political class are the precious thing being sullied; nevermind the growing rivers of blood and ash sullying everyone else.
Now, it wasn't my intent to echo Republican talking points about theatrics either, which themselves are theatrical expressions embedded in the same carefully constructed political dreamworld. It is self-evident that this is all theater, but theater is not categorically bad in and of itself.
No, there is good theater and bad theater. Theater is an expression of the workings, activity, and efficaciousness of the people and institutions producing it. Good theater can change the way people think and feel about each other and their worlds. It can matter. Bad theater is boring and irrelevant, or offensive depending on who is witnessing. It is usually this way because the people producing bad theater don't care much more about anything but themselves and what rotten fiefdoms they can cobble together in the service of their own provincial interests.
This is a function of the health of the institutions they are part of, a health which acts on them and sets them into unfortunate trajectories (if the health is bad), which also act on the institutions in turn. And for this reason the avenues of right action left open to us as a society will not involve our political institutions in their currently constituted form.
