As I look around at our culture I see that we are in the middle of a collective nervous breakdown and many of us feel this but few of us will ever actually say so. Still, it is a good thing,
as the lyric goes "there's beauty in the breakdown." What do I mean? I see our collective issues, our desperate attempt to return to "normal" to reverse the 2016 election as mindless attempts to resist the inevitable. Donald Trump IS America! His qualities, his massive break with the values of Western Civilization our obvious. The human beings he's chosen to run our government are completely at odds with Western values of reason, science, and dialogue. Trump is a crude gangster who thumbs his nose at everyone because he has money and, now, theoretically, has at his disposal the power to throw a monkey wrench in the entire established world-system carefully crafted by fair means and foul to act as a collective structure for the emergent world culture. It appears we are going back to the mentality of the 1930s in Europe. And we Americans seem to like this. We want things to breakdown--we sense there's beauty in it but, at the same time, we have no idea what follows and we still resist change.
However, this is all completely unsustainable for our own country. The rest of the world can no more indulge the USA in its absurd fantasies that are at the heart of our national religion of "American Exceptionalism." The USA was once seen as the bastion of order and sobriety. While certain events were kind of scary things changed after the 2000 election. Brick after brick was dismantled by three Presidents until today we have a caricature of an Empire we don't even admit we have despite the fact we have troops in maybe 150+ countries and military bases in 79. In Germany, which is basically still under US occupation we have 179 bases currently an 109 in Japan. We are described in the media Narrative as a country with "interests" that span the globe but we have no pretension, they tell us, of ruling the globe. This despite the fact that ruling the globe is actually considered a "defense" of the "homeland." Without aggressive domination of the entire planet, they say in so many words, we are vulnerable to "threats" these threats are what exactly? Seldom are threats spelled out other than in vague language. But since I'm familiar with how people in the National Security State think (out of their own mouths) they say that either the US dominates the world or the Chinese do and the world is better off if we dominate. It never enters into the mind of people in the National Security State that we could live in a world where power is balanced and ruled by international law. The USA, of all the countries in the world, is the greatest scofflaw of international law. This is reality and I can point to treaties and laws that the USA has broken without apology over many decades. The US accepts the notion of international law but only if it applies to other countries who are not vassals states.
What does this have to do with a national breakdown? Our behavior towards the outside world is critical to understanding our culture. We can also look at the application of law within the USA. For many years the most obvious bit of "scofflawing" is our absurd immigration system. For decades the US has allowed "illegal" immigrants into the country in order to supply cheap labor for capitalists and oligarchs and undermine native born working class people. Both parties have been complicit in this and have been amply rewarded by the rich. The Republicans, at the end of the day, continued to not enforce immigration laws or enforce them only to the degree that immigrants would live in fear and therefore not complain when they are sexually harassed, not complain when employers short-changed them or stole their labor. At the same time, Republicans pretended to be outraged about illegal immigrants and wildly swung their arms about and did nothing. The Democrats used the issue to solidify their support among Hispanic Americans by showing they were "sensitive" and "caring" of immigrants in general including illegals. It was a lie and is a lie--Democrats didn't care and don't care now--they're only interested in the solid Hispanic vote just as Republicans are interested in the white working class vote and once they get in power they do little or nothing to change anything.
I've talked about the corruption of the System in education, the "justice system" (money=justice), the military industrial complex, health-care an so on. Each major sector is an example of rampant corruption and lies. None of these major systems has much interest (as systems) in the well-being of citizens only in the well-being of the rich. While this has been the tendency in the USA there has been a balance between the needs of the rich and powerful and the needs of the rest of us. Well, that's no longer the case. The system exists only to make sure the most powerful get the most loot and the rest of us only get enough to keep us from rebelling. This began to change in 2016 when Trump was elected instead of Bernie Sanders who would have been elected had the Democratic Party not stolen the primaries from him through, frankly, fraud, deceit and manipulating ballots and counts. To put it simply, what the state says is real, is not real. What the media Narrative is today is almost completely false and intended to be false to mislead each of us so we don't trust our lying eyes.
All this filters down to our personal lives. This is something very few people seem to understand. There is "politics" and it has no connection to culture, our own personal lives, it is just a chaotic bunch of stuff most citizens flat out refuse to think clearly about because they feel unconnected with it all. And it is for this reason we are no longer a republic but an empire. That means we have stopped being citizens and are now subjects to the state and the major corporations who are, for all intents and purposes, part of the State apparatus. We don't even recognize that our lives spent at "work" is when we are "subject" to the direct rule of oligarchs. We have few freedoms at work. If they tell us to shut up, we have to shut up. They order us to do stuff and we have no choice other than drag our feet or, as many of us do, actively sabotage the corporation we work for. Most people do not feel engaged in their job and actually believe that this is ok and "normal." It maybe normal but it is decidedly unhealthy and contributes to the epidemic of depression, anxiety and addiction which we now seem to accept as a matter of course--that too is "normal" now.
Now myth generates values and if our myths are confused and distorted and directly contradictory confusion and destructive behavior both personal and collective results. I believe the first toxic aspect of our framework is actually also our most positive. Americans tend to believe that we should always put a smile on our face and think positively no matter how dark appearances are. Yet when this is a clear value and combined with a lack of training in critical thinking, this results in a culture of denial. We pass over and don't think about matters that seem negative or out of our control. While this may have positive results in our daily life it also slowly dumbs us down. We stop catching the contradictions in what powerful people say and only hear what sounds positive. We stop looking at the consequences of our actions and expect other to do the same. We don't want to remedy injustice we just want people who suffer to shut up and are considered "cry-babies" for complaining about racism, sexual assault and so on. Yet, the data is clear--millions of women have been raped and millions of dark-skinned people have been assaulted and harmed by physically, emotionally and systematically (we only have to look at racial discrimination in loans).
The second toxic aspect of our lives is that we are focused on "success" and so anything about us that does not appear "successful" (whether it does or not)--being a "loser" is the worst possible insult in the USA. Lack of material success is considered a sign of immorality. People who have endured horrendous conditions are expected to "win" despite their horror. When one out of thousand seems to do well that is pointed to as proof that those who did not "make it" just didn't work "hard" enough. If a person who was born a millionaire makes a few million more by receiving the best food, education, and access to capital they are still praised for being "successful." There is almost no sense of collective success. You see this in sports. While team sports like basketball are clearly dependent on good teamwork the media lauds, mainly, individual success, lionizing "stars" in any league while underplaying their weaknesses. We have a star-system in movies, music, and all the arts. It's the same star system in corporations. While many professionals receive good salaries for being good at following orders and solving problems it is the CEO who makes the big bucks--on average about 350 times the salary of the average employee and that does not include perks and stock options so the number is much higher. This multiple times more than what other countries have as a normal practice. Success of an enterprise is seen as a collective effort.
The third toxic aspect is the aversion for community and refusal to consider actually reforming our system of government. The reaction to our increasingly corrupt government is not to try and fix it but to not only increase the corruption but limit its scope in favor of allowing private corporations to take over regulating themselves. The reasoning is always that the motivation of making money is the only valid motivation. Though social science and even neuro-science shows that we are deeply cooperative beings and money is only a prime motivator in periods of great scarcity the American cultural elite and, therefore, the average person refuses to believe it.
Finally, the fourth and perhaps most important toxic aspect of our culture is what has now become a militant anti-reason, anti-science, anti-intellectual and, even more dramatically, an anti-compassionate culture that has become tribal. This includes people on the left, right and center--in fact those classifications don't even make any sense as currently constructed yet they endure because we are confused and refuse to use the tools at our disposal to clarify our confusion. Even the sophisticated tools we have developed based, fundamentally, on advances made 50-80 years ago are not being used to solve our collective problems and, instead, are mainly used to increase the wealth of a couple of million people. In social situations bringing up ideas about life, meaning, philosophy the implications of events and discoveries and, above all, politics and religion, is considered rude. At times, men are tempted to start these conversations and you see women, who still see themselves as guardians of social mores, start darting their eyes about and try to signal to the guys to shut the fuck up. Women tend to do this, not because they are any more anti-intellectual (in fact the opposite if often the case) but because they know feelings will be hurt and they are right. Why? Because our social ability to engage in civilized (non-hostile) discussions has rapidly degenerated over the years whether people are college educated or not.
How do we remedy our situation? By waking up in every way that you know how to do and watch carefully what is actually going on that you fear looking at--and by following the song lyrics partially presented (by Frou-Frou):
"Let Go"
as the lyric goes "there's beauty in the breakdown." What do I mean? I see our collective issues, our desperate attempt to return to "normal" to reverse the 2016 election as mindless attempts to resist the inevitable. Donald Trump IS America! His qualities, his massive break with the values of Western Civilization our obvious. The human beings he's chosen to run our government are completely at odds with Western values of reason, science, and dialogue. Trump is a crude gangster who thumbs his nose at everyone because he has money and, now, theoretically, has at his disposal the power to throw a monkey wrench in the entire established world-system carefully crafted by fair means and foul to act as a collective structure for the emergent world culture. It appears we are going back to the mentality of the 1930s in Europe. And we Americans seem to like this. We want things to breakdown--we sense there's beauty in it but, at the same time, we have no idea what follows and we still resist change.
However, this is all completely unsustainable for our own country. The rest of the world can no more indulge the USA in its absurd fantasies that are at the heart of our national religion of "American Exceptionalism." The USA was once seen as the bastion of order and sobriety. While certain events were kind of scary things changed after the 2000 election. Brick after brick was dismantled by three Presidents until today we have a caricature of an Empire we don't even admit we have despite the fact we have troops in maybe 150+ countries and military bases in 79. In Germany, which is basically still under US occupation we have 179 bases currently an 109 in Japan. We are described in the media Narrative as a country with "interests" that span the globe but we have no pretension, they tell us, of ruling the globe. This despite the fact that ruling the globe is actually considered a "defense" of the "homeland." Without aggressive domination of the entire planet, they say in so many words, we are vulnerable to "threats" these threats are what exactly? Seldom are threats spelled out other than in vague language. But since I'm familiar with how people in the National Security State think (out of their own mouths) they say that either the US dominates the world or the Chinese do and the world is better off if we dominate. It never enters into the mind of people in the National Security State that we could live in a world where power is balanced and ruled by international law. The USA, of all the countries in the world, is the greatest scofflaw of international law. This is reality and I can point to treaties and laws that the USA has broken without apology over many decades. The US accepts the notion of international law but only if it applies to other countries who are not vassals states.
What does this have to do with a national breakdown? Our behavior towards the outside world is critical to understanding our culture. We can also look at the application of law within the USA. For many years the most obvious bit of "scofflawing" is our absurd immigration system. For decades the US has allowed "illegal" immigrants into the country in order to supply cheap labor for capitalists and oligarchs and undermine native born working class people. Both parties have been complicit in this and have been amply rewarded by the rich. The Republicans, at the end of the day, continued to not enforce immigration laws or enforce them only to the degree that immigrants would live in fear and therefore not complain when they are sexually harassed, not complain when employers short-changed them or stole their labor. At the same time, Republicans pretended to be outraged about illegal immigrants and wildly swung their arms about and did nothing. The Democrats used the issue to solidify their support among Hispanic Americans by showing they were "sensitive" and "caring" of immigrants in general including illegals. It was a lie and is a lie--Democrats didn't care and don't care now--they're only interested in the solid Hispanic vote just as Republicans are interested in the white working class vote and once they get in power they do little or nothing to change anything.
I've talked about the corruption of the System in education, the "justice system" (money=justice), the military industrial complex, health-care an so on. Each major sector is an example of rampant corruption and lies. None of these major systems has much interest (as systems) in the well-being of citizens only in the well-being of the rich. While this has been the tendency in the USA there has been a balance between the needs of the rich and powerful and the needs of the rest of us. Well, that's no longer the case. The system exists only to make sure the most powerful get the most loot and the rest of us only get enough to keep us from rebelling. This began to change in 2016 when Trump was elected instead of Bernie Sanders who would have been elected had the Democratic Party not stolen the primaries from him through, frankly, fraud, deceit and manipulating ballots and counts. To put it simply, what the state says is real, is not real. What the media Narrative is today is almost completely false and intended to be false to mislead each of us so we don't trust our lying eyes.
All this filters down to our personal lives. This is something very few people seem to understand. There is "politics" and it has no connection to culture, our own personal lives, it is just a chaotic bunch of stuff most citizens flat out refuse to think clearly about because they feel unconnected with it all. And it is for this reason we are no longer a republic but an empire. That means we have stopped being citizens and are now subjects to the state and the major corporations who are, for all intents and purposes, part of the State apparatus. We don't even recognize that our lives spent at "work" is when we are "subject" to the direct rule of oligarchs. We have few freedoms at work. If they tell us to shut up, we have to shut up. They order us to do stuff and we have no choice other than drag our feet or, as many of us do, actively sabotage the corporation we work for. Most people do not feel engaged in their job and actually believe that this is ok and "normal." It maybe normal but it is decidedly unhealthy and contributes to the epidemic of depression, anxiety and addiction which we now seem to accept as a matter of course--that too is "normal" now.
Now myth generates values and if our myths are confused and distorted and directly contradictory confusion and destructive behavior both personal and collective results. I believe the first toxic aspect of our framework is actually also our most positive. Americans tend to believe that we should always put a smile on our face and think positively no matter how dark appearances are. Yet when this is a clear value and combined with a lack of training in critical thinking, this results in a culture of denial. We pass over and don't think about matters that seem negative or out of our control. While this may have positive results in our daily life it also slowly dumbs us down. We stop catching the contradictions in what powerful people say and only hear what sounds positive. We stop looking at the consequences of our actions and expect other to do the same. We don't want to remedy injustice we just want people who suffer to shut up and are considered "cry-babies" for complaining about racism, sexual assault and so on. Yet, the data is clear--millions of women have been raped and millions of dark-skinned people have been assaulted and harmed by physically, emotionally and systematically (we only have to look at racial discrimination in loans).
The second toxic aspect of our lives is that we are focused on "success" and so anything about us that does not appear "successful" (whether it does or not)--being a "loser" is the worst possible insult in the USA. Lack of material success is considered a sign of immorality. People who have endured horrendous conditions are expected to "win" despite their horror. When one out of thousand seems to do well that is pointed to as proof that those who did not "make it" just didn't work "hard" enough. If a person who was born a millionaire makes a few million more by receiving the best food, education, and access to capital they are still praised for being "successful." There is almost no sense of collective success. You see this in sports. While team sports like basketball are clearly dependent on good teamwork the media lauds, mainly, individual success, lionizing "stars" in any league while underplaying their weaknesses. We have a star-system in movies, music, and all the arts. It's the same star system in corporations. While many professionals receive good salaries for being good at following orders and solving problems it is the CEO who makes the big bucks--on average about 350 times the salary of the average employee and that does not include perks and stock options so the number is much higher. This multiple times more than what other countries have as a normal practice. Success of an enterprise is seen as a collective effort.
The third toxic aspect is the aversion for community and refusal to consider actually reforming our system of government. The reaction to our increasingly corrupt government is not to try and fix it but to not only increase the corruption but limit its scope in favor of allowing private corporations to take over regulating themselves. The reasoning is always that the motivation of making money is the only valid motivation. Though social science and even neuro-science shows that we are deeply cooperative beings and money is only a prime motivator in periods of great scarcity the American cultural elite and, therefore, the average person refuses to believe it.
Finally, the fourth and perhaps most important toxic aspect of our culture is what has now become a militant anti-reason, anti-science, anti-intellectual and, even more dramatically, an anti-compassionate culture that has become tribal. This includes people on the left, right and center--in fact those classifications don't even make any sense as currently constructed yet they endure because we are confused and refuse to use the tools at our disposal to clarify our confusion. Even the sophisticated tools we have developed based, fundamentally, on advances made 50-80 years ago are not being used to solve our collective problems and, instead, are mainly used to increase the wealth of a couple of million people. In social situations bringing up ideas about life, meaning, philosophy the implications of events and discoveries and, above all, politics and religion, is considered rude. At times, men are tempted to start these conversations and you see women, who still see themselves as guardians of social mores, start darting their eyes about and try to signal to the guys to shut the fuck up. Women tend to do this, not because they are any more anti-intellectual (in fact the opposite if often the case) but because they know feelings will be hurt and they are right. Why? Because our social ability to engage in civilized (non-hostile) discussions has rapidly degenerated over the years whether people are college educated or not.
How do we remedy our situation? By waking up in every way that you know how to do and watch carefully what is actually going on that you fear looking at--and by following the song lyrics partially presented (by Frou-Frou):
"Let Go"
drink up baby doll
Are you in or are you out?
Leave your things behind
'Cause it's all going off without you
Excuse me too busy you're writing your tragedy
These mishaps
You bubble-wrap
When you've no idea what you're like
[Chorus:]
So, let go, let go
Jump in
Oh well, what you waiting for?
It's all right
'Cause there's beauty in the breakdown
So, let go, let go
Just get in
Oh, it's so amazing here
It's all right
'cause there's beauty in the breakdown
It gains the more it gives
And then it rises with the fall
So hand me that remote
Can't you see that all that stuff's a sideshow?
Such boundless pleasure
We've no time for later
Now you can't await
your own arrival
you've twenty seconds to comply
Are you in or are you out?
Leave your things behind
'Cause it's all going off without you
Excuse me too busy you're writing your tragedy
These mishaps
You bubble-wrap
When you've no idea what you're like
[Chorus:]
So, let go, let go
Jump in
Oh well, what you waiting for?
It's all right
'Cause there's beauty in the breakdown
So, let go, let go
Just get in
Oh, it's so amazing here
It's all right
'cause there's beauty in the breakdown
It gains the more it gives
And then it rises with the fall
So hand me that remote
Can't you see that all that stuff's a sideshow?
Such boundless pleasure
We've no time for later
Now you can't await
your own arrival
you've twenty seconds to comply
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