A Las Barricadas!
A Las Barricadas!
When a constitution and its laws are no longer followed by a government, it falls on the governed to revolt in order to restore them. - Jeffrey Fry
Most people I know are unhappy with the leading candidates running for the office of president of the United States in 2024. Here’s a take on that upcoming circus from Kathy Copeland Padden writing on Medium, that reflects the views of many angry, frustrated, cynical Americans fed up with our corrupt two-party corporatized electoral system. “Voting is a waste of time,” she proclaims. “First off, candidates for higher office are selected , not elected. The United States is owned by a small handful of oligarchs who call all the shots. That’s the first thing you need to understand. This country exists solely for the enrichment of a few old white guys. Do you think these ‘elites’ can spare even a wee fuck for you? Honey, none of us are even in the equation.”
It’s not just the smug predatory attitudes of those greedy “corporate ass-crack lickers,” as satirist Mr. Fish describes the elites manipulating the levers of power who have used their media platforms to suppress the democratic spirit of the populace and fan the flames of hate; it’s also the realization that the global capitalist system that’s enabled the rise of the greatest economic inequality in the history of American society, is destroying its own resource base—this beautiful blue planet spinning in space that we all call home. As Paul Street states the case in his March 2, 2024 Substack report It’s All Over Now, Biden Blue, “It’s the whole damn capitalist-imperialist system—the whole stinking base-to-superstructure mess that gives us the ‘democratic’ choice between a decrepit imperialist warmonger (Genocide Joe) and a deranged, Hitler-channelling wannabe fascist strongman for life (Donald ‘Take Down the Metal Detectors’ Trump)! —that’s got to go, and soon. The mutually reinforcing doomsday clocks of military, environmental epidemiological, and political catastrophe that this system has set ticking are leaving ever less time for viable postponement of the revolutionary reckoning required for human survival. A Biden re-election that takes places in the absence of a new revolutionary movement in the United States will do nothing really to slay the four apocalyptic, overlapping, and mutually amplifying horsemen that capitalism-imperialism has let loose upon the world: ecocide, potentially nuclear war, pandemicide, and fascism (perhaps I need to add Artificial Intelligence to the apocalyptic stable). We are out of time for postponement. Radical resolutions are already baked into the historical-material cake. The only question is this: radically liberating and revolutionary socialist or radically terrible and fascist, eco-tidal capitalism-imperialism with a boot on our necks? It’s like the radical Chicago musician Ted Sirota said the other day on so-called social media: ‘We need an actual revolution.’”
We have passed the point, Street adds, where voting makes a real difference in American politics and his message is a “call for the formation of a mass social and political movement that takes on the whole damn system and calls and plans for what Karl Marx and Frederick Engels rightly called the only alternative to the ‘common ruin’ of all—the ‘revolutionary reconstitution of society itself.’” I’ve quoted Street at length in this piece because he has written eloquently on the theme for years, helping others understand the scope of the changes required to address the extraordinary ecological crisis we face. Back in December 2023 he wrote: “We are in uncharted territory with the climate crisis. The ever-escalating project of turning the planet into a giant Greenhouse Gas chamber is a lethal experiment for which there is no real precedent. It calls for the radical replacement of our souless fossil fuel-addicted capitalist system by revolutionary socialism. If we want to save livable ecology we need to become actual revolutionaries; the old, reformist ways won’t work. And neither will the old communism; a new version, one shorn of production-ism and the futile drive to conquer nature rather than to live in harmony with the broader web of life.”
Street’s work amounts to a sustained, indeed heroic attempt to point mankind in the right direction by recognizing the need to let go of the false choices presented in the dualistic realm of capitalist exploitation in the quest for power and profit and emphasizing instead the necessity to establish a society that works for the benefit of all beings instead of a few rich people. Street’s vision is one that raises the banner for the coming revolution based on the ecological view as we face the challenge to adjust our mechanisms of perception so they reflect the larger purpose for human beings as stewards living in harmony with the vast biodiversity of the phenomenon world, a new reality “requiring a human personality capable of primacy over its biological needs and technological pressures, and able to draw freely on the compost from many cultures,” as Lewis Mumford stated the case. Continuing to mindlessly tread the destructive path as defined by imperialist bourgeois capitalism will only lead to a very unhappy destiny.
Even though voting, at least in the upcoming presidential race, won’t make much of a difference in terms of fixing the overarching problems presented by the climate crisis, it can save us from another Trump administration, a travesty which would, as indicated by candidate Trump’s fascist public outbursts, mean a long slide backwards from the domestic gains achieved so far by the Biden administration. Indeed, if Trump wins the presidency in 2024 thanks to the corrupt SCOTUS that betrayed the rule of law as set forth in the 14th Amendment, it would likely mark the end of the Republic and a long violent descent into fascism or worse. Ever since the GOP plan to destroy democracy gained traction in the Reagan administration, voting has been based on the lesser-of-two-evils principle. As defined by Aristotle, “the lesser evil can be seen in comparison with the greater evil as good.” In modern elections, as Wikipedia points out, “The concept of ‘lesser evil’ voting (LEV) can be seen as a form of the minimax strategy where voters, when faced with two or more candidates, choose the one they perceive as the least harmful or the ‘lesser evil’…In 2012, Huffington Post columnist Sanford Jay Rosen stated that the idea became common practice for left-leaning voters in the United States due to their overwhelming disapproval of the US government support for the Vietnam War.”
The “minimax” mantra, Rosen also noted, delivered us to Richard Nixon in 1972 and George W. Bush and Dick Cheney in 2000. Well, here we are again, but this time the stakes have never been higher. As Tom Cleaver describes our perilous situation on That’s Another Fine Mess on Substack, March 5, 2024:
The 2024 presidential election is not only the most important election of our lifetimes, it is the most important election in the history of the United States of America. There is only one question to be asked and answered in deciding who to vote for now: Do you support the continued existence of this democratic constitutional republic? The answers are Yes and No.
If Yes, then all the issues you consider important - the right of people to vote; the right of women to make their own decisions about their bodies; the need for government to serve the needs of the people; the need for mobilization to confront climate change; maintaining the United States as the world’s strongest defender of democracy; the separation of state and religion - all these and any others you care to add to the list are at risk of destruction and failure if Sauron (er, I mean Trump) and the Orcs (umm, MAGA) take power in Washington.
There is no other question to be asked and answered, and none of those issues is so important standing alone that your discontent with the way things are going regarding that issue can stand in the way of you voting to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
Cleaver is a Vietnam veteran and his views reflect those of millions of other combat veterans who have rallied to the cause of saving democracy. Many of them, myself included, also support the work of Veterans For Responsible Leadership, an Alabama-based organization that issued the following statement on March 6, 2024: “Super Tuesday is in the bag, and it’s going to be Trump versus Biden for all the marbles,” it stated in part. “One marble is American democracy. One marble is reproductive rights. One is civil liberties and the separation of church and state. Another is the future of ethnic and racial minorities in this country. And still another is the security of Europe and indeed the democratic world. All of this is going to be on the ballot in November, and we have only one shot to get it right. What we do over the next 8 months will be the most important thing we do for our country in our entire lives.”
If the prospect of a dead planet isn’t enough to convince Americans that a revolution is necessary, try adding the details of the GOP plan for a fascist society to the picture. Included in the Republican machinations to take power and destroy democracy is the Supreme Court’s recent decision to allow Donald Trump, an avowed insurrectionist, to run for office, and in effect, it includes all insurrectionists who run for public office in the future. Distinguished lawyer turned citizen journalist, Robert Hubbell, writing in Today’s Edition Newsletter, March 5, 2024 about the Supreme Court’s decision to overrule the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to remove Donald Trump from the primary ballot, came out to face the outlaws in the gang of hard-right Republicans that seek to destroy the Constitution with guns blazing:
The most important lesson from Monday’s disqualification ruling is that the Supreme Court is broken beyond repair,” he writes. “Those sworn to protect the Constitution are dismantling it. The protectors of the Constitution have become its adversary in order to protect a failed insurrectionist who has promised a second effort to overthrow the Constitution…Monday’s opinion is a clear warning to all Americans that the threat to their liberties is immediate and real.
To make matters worse, the corrupt justices went beyond the scope of the decision to expand the court’s venue from interpreting the law to making law, which is, according to the Constitution, the function of congress. The shameful machinations by the traitors posing as judges reflects the long-term strategy of GOP operatives to bypass democratic institutions in favor of authoritarian maneuvers enabled by thwarting the will of the American people by stacking the courts with rightwing insurrectionists. For those who still believe the word “insurrection” is an inaccurate description of the violent events of January 6, 2020, which was inspired by the fear mongering and divisive speech of the malignant narcissist who was then our president, recall Heather Cox Richardson’s report on the action in Letters from an American. “Egged on by Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, Representative Mo Brooks, Don Jr., and especially by Trump himself, Trump supporters stormed the Capitol just as Congress was meeting in a joint session to confirm Democrat Joe Biden as our new president…As videos have emerged and timelines established, it has become apparent we came seriously to seeing our elected representatives taken hostage or even executed on the makeshift gallows the rioters set up outside the building.”
The whole sordid event was a surreal display of civic protest gone wrong, a violent departure from the normal protocols of democratic governance, reflecting all the irrational characteristics of Trump’s character and manifested in ways that were totally unsuspected. In a word—it was surreal. I suspect the majority of Americans by now would agree that we endured throughout the entire erstwhile Trump presidency a truly surreal situation indeed, which is to say, bizarre, jarring, incongruous, and perfidious, right in sync with all the moronic policy positions of The Orange Menace’s administration that made no sense within the context of the ecological and national security realities we face as a nation. The legendary, unhinged rantings of the man are a case in point. As Robert Zarestsky, writing in the August 11, 2017 Los Angeles Times pointed out, “Trumpian word salads bear the surrealist seal of absurdity,” as do the president’s inane boasts about his performance that bear no resemblance to reality. “I don’t know how you can impeach somebody who’s done a great job,” Trump famously said, “so I give myself an A-plus.”
“Among the dozens of isms used to explain the Trump presidency—from isolationism and pluto-populism to narcissism and authoritarianism—none does a better job than surrealism in capturing the current mood,” Zarestsky concluded. Add to that the incessant flow of misinformation still emanating from conservative propaganda mills like Fox News amidst the echoes of the bizarre, illogical, disorienting tweets of our erstwhile president, that daft, orange-haired, climate and virus denying, law and order bully, Donald J. Trump. Now that the insane “Coronavirus-in-Chief,” as CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta called the president, is back in the limelight seeking another term as chief executive, perhaps the citizenry will be sufficiently roused to challenge the illusory electoral spectacle of late-stage capitalism, the “petty system of debasement and cretinization” that Surrealism founder André Breton was so eager to dismantle.
For readers who deem Surrealism misapplied as a reflection of our cultural milieu today, Peter Schjeldahl’s point made in his review of the Metropolitan Museum show “Surrealism Beyond Borders” in The New Yorker, November 1, 2021 issue, might open the doors of perception. “Man Ray idealized original art as ‘a creation motivated by desire,’” Schjeldahl writes, “That for me, is the keynote of Surrealism, which was dedicated to anarchic motives that brooked no institutional authority. Each work is a jailbreak, successful or not, from a civilization that could be held responsible for spirit-crushing conformity and in the annals of war and injustice, systemic lunacy. In the end, Surrealism came down to gamy incoherence, but its gospel of liberty encourages a rethink, even now, of what cultural adventure is all about.”
Perhaps at this point in the surreal drama unfolding before us we can take inspiration from Gershon Scholem’s idea of history’s “plastic hours,” those critical crisis moments when it is possible to implement radical changes for the better in our political and cultural arrangements. Perhaps it’s even possible to defeat Trump and his fascist rabble at the polls and save the day. Or maybe we’ll have to have a civil war. We’ll see what happens. Professor Cas Mudde, writing in The Guardian, March 6, 2024 framed the possibilities in terms of the implications for the rest of the free world. “Whether we like it or not,” he writes, “American voters have a choice between two very clear and different Americas, represented by two old an unpopular candidates. If Biden wins, not too much will change - except for an even more brazen insurgence from Republican - led states against the federal government. But should Trump return to the White House, the US will change fundamentally, and not for the better. Whatever (legitimate) issues potential Democratic voters have with Biden, let’s hope that they can get over them by 5 November. The fate of both the US and the world depends on it.”
If American democracy depends on the principle of majority rule requiring political equality and sovereignty for all, not just for the elites, then government as now organized with its corrupt two-party system beholding to corporate control is clearly not a democracy; it is an oligarchy enabled by a one-way plutocratic monologue, but it’s possible to change that if We, the people, demand it. As Frederick Douglas said, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” So we must rise up and do it soon. And perhaps in these rare “plastic hours” we might even demand a solution to mankind’s literal “plastic” problem, a looming threat to the survival of life in the oceans as well as humans around the world. According to impacthub.net, 8.3 billion tons of plastics have been produced since 1950. In the US, the world’s worst plastic polluter, only 14 percent of that plastic waste has been recycled, the rest ending up in landfills. Annual plastic production today worldwide averages 350 million tons. Plastic waste from this never ending deluge is expected to quadruple by 2050 when it’s predicted there will be more plastic than fish in the sea. “With waste going into the ocean at a rate of one garbage truck per minute,” says impacthub.net, “the time to act is now.”