Author: WS
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Lord give me fascism
earlier version printed in issue 402 of Fifth Estate
What is it that people are viscerally drawn to and simultaneously repulsed by in fascism—as it takes on its strange character in this second (digital) mass iteration?
Is it a sort of mass masochism, mass schadenfreude? This seems to apply to the dynamics of its [fascism’s] coming-into-existence. The same spirit that blandly fetishizes fascism enjoys liberalism’s tepid rebuttals: op-eds in the New York Times, John Oliver bits, the Democrats’ self-flaggelation. Is this merely thanatos, the death drive? Certainly it is a manifestation of the guilt within the liberal complex.
What are people drawn to in fascism? Is it its unbridled expression of the ethos underlying this civilization? Is this too much of a blanket statement? I wouldn’t think so. Its plain crudity, its so absurd, obvious, ultimate and base vulgarity—(here in America, the bastion of ‘plain-talk’—albeit a ‘common-man’ mentality by no means unique to here—manifested in this most American of cartoon villains: DT.)
What underlies our civilization?
Domination of the natural world & life in general, stratification of wealth & resources, militarism, classed and racial hierarchies, submission of women, environmental degradation; the list goes on. Is this not what is unabashedly signified by Trump and his cadre, indeed manifests in the most chilling & intense ways in the most diehard of his followers? They at least have the temerity to see this for what it is—but then again, maybe liberals do too, and maybe the horror and fascination of this slow fall into post-postmodern dystopianism are one and the same—maybe we are willing it to happen, along with everyone else.
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ARUNDHATI ROY: As the ice caps melt, as oceans heat up and water tables plunge, as we rip through the delicate web of interdependence that sustains life on earth, as our formidable intelligence leads us to breach the boundaries between humans and machines and our even more formidable hubris undermines our ability to connect the survival of our planet to our survival as a species, as we replace art with algorithms and stare into a future in which most human beings may not be needed to participate in or be remunerated for economic activity, at just such a time we have the steady hands of white supremacists in the White House, new imperialists in China and neo-Nazis once again massing on the streets of Europe, Hindu nationalists in India, and a host of butcher princes and lesser dictators in other countries to guide us into the unknown.
While many of us dreamt that another world is possible, these folks were dreaming, too. And it is their dream, our nightmare, that is perilously close to being realized. Capitalism’s gratuitous wars and sanctioned greed have jeopardized the planet and filled it with refugees. Much of the blame for this rests squarely on the shoulders of the government of the United States. Seventeen years after invading Afghanistan, after bombing it into the Stone Age with the sole aim of toppling the Taliban, the U.S. government is back in talks with the very same Taliban. In the interim, it has destroyed Iraq, Libya and Syria. Hundreds of thousands have lost their lives to war and sanctions. A whole region has descended into chaos, ancient cities pounded into dust.
Amidst the desolation and the rubble, a monstrosity called Daesh, ISIS, has been spawned. It has spread across the world, indiscriminately murdering ordinary people who had absolutely nothing to do with America’s wars. Over these last few years, given the wars it has waged and the international treaties it has arbitrarily reneged on, the U.S. government perfectly fits its own definition of a rogue state. And now resorting to the same old scare tactics, the same tired falsehoods and the same old fake news about nuclear weapons, it is gearing up to bomb Iran. That will be the biggest mistake it has ever made.
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Notes on the Mueller Report
Robert Mueller has released his long-awaited report and for those of us who have not spent our days poring over this story in the national media outlets this denouement feels both foregone and entirely meaningless.
That this thing was treated as a somehow mystical event from the start would obviously lead to a let-down—in that the only way it wouldn’t would be if it provided some sort of insane smoking-gun conclusion that reset the political situation in the country back two years. That (for a time) a seeming majority of the liberal political and media class allowed themselves to believe that such a thing could and often would happen was a feat of collective delusion that is frankly astonishing taken as a whole, obviously indicative of mass systemic breakdown, and something that ultimately became ridiculous for most of us long ago.
That ‘smoking-gun’ evidence was ever needed or warranted is also absurd, as it is obvious on the face that DT, his administration, and his family are tremendously corrupt. This suggests the darker and more menacing truth that providing or denying traditional ‘legal’ legitimacy was never really the point—the regime is obviously unjust, and so it is largely a question of power, and the somewhat delusional hope of liberals that the rule of law would seriously constrain a movement like Trumpism.
And so in total the ‘Mueller period’ feels something like a fantasy period, whose conclusion was obviously predestined, and frankly largely irrelevant to the situation as a whole.
There doesn’t seem much to say here. The nature of the regime continues; it is not absolved by this report any more than it could have been convicted; the serious problems remain undiscussed. I suppose the best we can hope is that a select few in the media and the political system who devoted so much time and energy to this over the last two years and gave credence to the process as an important or serious part of our current situation will focus on something real.
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Report: 70 Percent of U.S. Produce Contains Pesticide Residue
MAR 22, 2019
A new analysis by the Environmental Working Group finds 70 percent of fresh produce sold across the United States is contaminated with pesticide. Topping the list of contaminated produce are strawberries and spinach, while more than nine out of 10 samples of kale were found to contain residues of pesticides, with some leaves containing up to 18 different chemical compounds.
from Democracy Now!
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‘Buy High, Sell Cheap: An Interview with Alejandro Jodorowsky’
JODOROWSKY
Each art has its own rules and different forms, nothing more. All art consists of the same content—a human being expressing himself. The difference is only in the form, the content is all the same. All of my work consists of works of initiation. It’s the complete opposite of Shakespeare.
INTERVIEWER
How do you mean?
JODOROWSKY
Take Hamlet, for example. Hamlet doesn’t change, and at the end, he dies like an idiot. Don Quixote de la Mancha continues being Don Quixote until the end of the book. In these books, there’s no development in the characters, no spiritual development. What’s the point of all these classics if a person cannot change? The universe is changing, the universe is expanding. Everything is constantly changing. So when a human being remains unchanged, like a rock, clinging to what he or she is throughout an entire lifetime, it’s a tragedy. A human being has to be fluid, changing, expanding, developing, and at any given moment, has to ask, Why am I suffering? Why does this bother me? Why am I searching for something? Why do I hate such and such thing? Why can’t I forgive and why can’t I liberate myself from this? All of my work is that, it’s the development of a character who slowly but surely expands, self-actualizes, and reaches a higher spiritual level. My characters obtain wisdom. To arrive at such wisdom is to arrive at the joy of living.
decomposing nightmare parody 