Thoughts on the Nature of the Beast
Progressive politics are over.
Viva la oligarchy.
It would be a lie to say I don't find its brevity depressing, but most disheartening is that five years of turbo-charged theofascism continues being met with a shrug and a sigh.
I've long used The Script as a term to describe the structured, unthinking manner in which we function in and as a society, but I had wrongly assumed we were capable of deviating from it under extraordinary circumstances. As it turns out, the more extraordinary the circumstances, the more we rely on The Script. This is what I find so surprising.
And now I'm realizing, finally, that today's amorphous Left is a laughable role player and useful tool for the soul-scavenging hyenas it ostensibly endeavors to oppose. This is on full display every day in Left Blogsylvania. We all hit our marks, make our speeches and the curtain closes. Then we get up and do it again. This routine seems no less addictive than nicotine or sugar, and about half as useful.
Whether America - or, for that matter, what many of us think of as The Civilized World - will ever awaken from its slumber is an open question, if only because "ever" is a long time. I'm convinced I won't see it, but I thought there would at least be resistance. The individual spheres of isolation in which we live our lives make resistance exceptionally difficult, much more so than during the social movements which peaked during the Sixties and early Seventies. A progressive movement is not impossible, but it is increasingly implausible. I don't presume to know, given our current and foreseeable sociopolitical environment, what could serve as a catalyst for such a dynamic.
As the potential for a progressive movement is strangled by the rapacious appetite of human capitalism, amplified by a factor of a thousand in these hyper-materialistic United States, it stands to reason people have put all their eggs in the rotten basket of electoral politics. Yet, left to function in a vacuum, politics is a terribly destructive organism. It appears we have bought into a circular cycle of cannibalism which seems virtually impossible to break.
As a political creature by nature, thirty years of closely watching politics is an exceptionally hard habit to break, but, alas, this is clearly emerging as a significant personal challenge. I'm at an intersection and am unsure how to proceed. More of the same would amount to intellectual rubbernecking. But there's no denying Spartacus is right when he recommends looking at the stars, and that's exactly what I'm going to do.
Viva la oligarchy.
It would be a lie to say I don't find its brevity depressing, but most disheartening is that five years of turbo-charged theofascism continues being met with a shrug and a sigh.
I've long used The Script as a term to describe the structured, unthinking manner in which we function in and as a society, but I had wrongly assumed we were capable of deviating from it under extraordinary circumstances. As it turns out, the more extraordinary the circumstances, the more we rely on The Script. This is what I find so surprising.
And now I'm realizing, finally, that today's amorphous Left is a laughable role player and useful tool for the soul-scavenging hyenas it ostensibly endeavors to oppose. This is on full display every day in Left Blogsylvania. We all hit our marks, make our speeches and the curtain closes. Then we get up and do it again. This routine seems no less addictive than nicotine or sugar, and about half as useful.
Whether America - or, for that matter, what many of us think of as The Civilized World - will ever awaken from its slumber is an open question, if only because "ever" is a long time. I'm convinced I won't see it, but I thought there would at least be resistance. The individual spheres of isolation in which we live our lives make resistance exceptionally difficult, much more so than during the social movements which peaked during the Sixties and early Seventies. A progressive movement is not impossible, but it is increasingly implausible. I don't presume to know, given our current and foreseeable sociopolitical environment, what could serve as a catalyst for such a dynamic.
As the potential for a progressive movement is strangled by the rapacious appetite of human capitalism, amplified by a factor of a thousand in these hyper-materialistic United States, it stands to reason people have put all their eggs in the rotten basket of electoral politics. Yet, left to function in a vacuum, politics is a terribly destructive organism. It appears we have bought into a circular cycle of cannibalism which seems virtually impossible to break.
As a political creature by nature, thirty years of closely watching politics is an exceptionally hard habit to break, but, alas, this is clearly emerging as a significant personal challenge. I'm at an intersection and am unsure how to proceed. More of the same would amount to intellectual rubbernecking. But there's no denying Spartacus is right when he recommends looking at the stars, and that's exactly what I'm going to do.
posted by Arvin Hill at 7/20/2005 01:30:00 PM
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