Surrealistic Nightmare
Surrealism is based on the belief in the omnipotence of dreams, in the undirected play of thought. - André Breton
When it comes to powerful, surrealistic writing, it’s hard to beat That’s Another Fine Mess author Tom Cleaver’s image of “31 spineless Senate turds masquerading as senators” as “Caligula’s horse laughs at them,” when he described a recent Republican vote in the senate. That’s about as good as it gets. It falls right into alignment with the theories of André Breton, the French poet who founded Surrealism, and his mission to sweep away the conventions of the bourgeois capitalist system that created the horrors of World War I and usher in a new way of thinking about life and art. Comedian and veterans’ rights activist Jon Stewart, another media master of the surreal quip, made my day when he called the vile caucus of 41 fascist Republican senators who opposed healthcare benefits for 3 million veterans and 9/11 first responders “cowards” and “motherfuckers.” “If this is America First, then America is fucked.” Stewart also told them, “You don’t support the troops. You support the war machine, adding that “They haven’t met a veteran they wouldn’t screw over.”
“We sometimes forget that Breton, a mediocre poet,” writes Jackie Wullschläger in the January 27/28 Financial Times, “inspired chiefly as a prophet, he believed Surrealism would change the world.” Part of the Surrealist vision included the liberation of society via the overthrow of capitalism. Citing curator Anna Weill Kiser, who noted “In our late capitalist condition, you could argue that our subconscious has instead been colonized by capitalism and is in fact being shaped even more by social media,” Wullschläger points out that “Perhaps Surrealism is so popular today because we are all capitalist Surrealists now, hooked on endless streams of disconnected pictures flowing through our phones, as incongruous as any Surrealist montage. In its abundance of screens, objects, reproduced images-that stream expresses precisely the capitalist grip on the mind, unassailable in the 21st century, which the Surrealists wanted to vanquish.”
Despite Surrealism’s characterization as unrealistic, ludicrous, Dadaistic and absurd, Wullschläger revives the art movement’s seminal spirit as a quest for freedom of expression. Quoting art critic Robert Hughes, who pronounced in 1978 that “Surrealism remains one of the century’s noblest proposals of liberty,” Wullschläger concludes that since no one could have imagined democracy and free speech under threat as now, we need Surrealism’s voice today.” Well, we seem to have arrived at the point when simply telling the truth can be construed as a surrealistic act in light of Wullschläger’s definition. In the context of America’s disingenuous political realm, the courageous act of telling it like it is based on verifiable evidence easily qualifies as a noble proposal of liberty as per Robert Hughes. With that idea in mind, enter stage left, Robert Hubbell, a lawyer/citizen journalist who by virtue of his honesty, decency and predilection for telling the truth, might now also be considered a surrealist. To wit: In Today’s Edition Newsletter, March 15, 2024, Hubbell states that US Attorney General Merrick Garland’s “mission to restore trust in the Department of Justice has failed miserably,” further suggesting that “the honorable thing to do is for Merrick Garland to resign.”
Such an event might be considered surreal indeed in the context of the nation’s current dishonorable political circumstances, but let’s face it—the honorable thing—Garland’s resignation—ain’t gonna happen because Merrick Garland is not an honorable man. He’s proven that in his handling of the case against Donald Trump and our erstwhile chief executive’s crimes against the Constitution. Refusing to prosecute a criminal because the perp also happens to be a former president in order to improve your public image is not what an honorable person does. A truly honorable Attorney General goes after the culprit no matter what, in accord with the rule of law. The word “honorable” connotes actions that are worthy of respect. An “honorable person is someone who believes in truth and doing the right thing,” according to vocabulary.com, “and tries to live up to those high principles.” By definition the word does not describe the deportment of either Garland or his cohorts in malfeasance at the DOJ, nor does it apply to the machinations of the MAGA contingent in congress, the hard-right members of the SCOTUS, or the thugs running the GOP at the behest of Victor Orbán’s ardent lover Donald Trump, one of the most reprehensible, dishonorable individuals to ever hold high office in the land, the man Noam Chomsky called “the most dangerous criminal in human history.” None of the aforementioned liars fulfill the virtues synonymous with the word honorable—honest, law-abiding, conscientious, ethical and trustworthy— and that’s why we’re in the “surreal” mess we’re in today.
Garland’s failure to prosecute Trump marks one of the darkest episodes in the struggle against fascism documented by Paul Street on his March 18, 2024 Substack report in which he lists the many bungled opportunities to bring fascist Trump to justice and thwart his diabolical quest to return to the White House:
Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland’s absurdly long delay in appointing a special prosecutor to investigate and indict Trump for attempting to overthrow the 2020 presidential election - basically for the open attempted overthrow of previously normative US bourgeois democracy and rule of law. The delay that means Trump will not likely face a verdict before the 2024 election and that Trump will be free to shut down all federal cases against him after re-entering the White House.
Special Trump prosecutor Jack Smith’s failure to act on the US House January 6 committee’s recommendation that the Justice Department charge Trump with insurrection, conviction for which would have constitutionally forbidden him from returning to the presidency.
The blood-soaked imperialist Biden’s apparent willingness to privilege Israel’s genocide in Gaza with US bombs, funding, and politico-dipomatic protection over defeating Trump in the general election. Biden’s defense of Israel’s genocidal ethnic cleansing operation is highly unpopular in the Democratic Party base and may well cost him the large Electoral College slate in the critical contested state of Michigan.
So, while the brighter, realistic aspect of Surrealism supports the refreshing act of simply telling the truth, i.e., declaring to the Emperor that he isn’t wearing any clothes, a deeper investigation into the matter reveals that surrealism is a also a belief in “the undirected play of thought,” as defined by Bréton. That notion raises the question what could be more surreal than the unhinged, motormouth Trump babbling incoherently to audiences of fascist morons, spewing his hostility and vengeance? His rants starkly sharpen the point recently made by Clusterfuck Nation author James Howard Kunstler that “A society hostile to truth can’t possibly remain civilized, because it will also be hostile to reality.” In America’s case, the hostility and disconnection from reality is exemplified by a raving, orange-haired maniac who lies every time he opens his mouth, a narcissistic monster who predicted in a speech recently that if he loses the 2024 election, life in America will become very uncivilized indeed. “Now, if I don’t get elected,” he said, “it’s gonna be a bloodbath. That’s going to be the least of it. It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country.”
What’s even more surreal is that he delivers such violent threats to an audience that gleefully receives them in the name of Jesus, a religious figure whose message to the world is the very antithesis of Trumpian edicts of murder, mayhem and revenge. To put it mildly, such behavior not only freaks people out, it undermines trust, which is the fundamental glue that holds the prospect of civilized society together as a viable paradigm for harmonious relations. Alas, trust in human affairs has always been a fraught virtue, as Shakespeare opined in Romeo & Juliet, “There’s no trust, No faith, no honesty in men; all perjured all forsworn, all naught, all dissemblers.” Yet it still remains a virtue, at least one valued and worthy of aspiration, if rarely fulfilled.
One contemporary journalist who bemoans its absence as he courageously exposes the untrustworthiness of our leaders as he speaks truth to power is Substack author Thom Hartmann, whose truth telling seems surreal within the context of a government driven almost entirely by the influence of corporate money. “The lack of trust is “tearing America apart,” he writes. “Trust, at the end of the day, is the only currency governments can trade in. Trust is so critical it largely defines the stability of a nation’s money, both at home and around the world…Trust is the single most important thing any government has; it is truly what makes a nation viable. Ever since the Reagan administration, trust in the institutions of government in America remains a fugitive.” As Pew Research Center states the case, “Public trust in the federal government, which has been low for decades, has returned to near record lows following a modest uptick in 2020 and 2021. Currently, fewer than two-in-ten Americans say they trust the government in Washington to do what is right ‘just about always’ (1%) or ‘most of the time’ (15%).”
The domestic fascist forces of the GOP of Trump in their endeavor to destroy democracy, are not the only ones to blame for the present predicament; they had plenty of help from the other half of the dysfunctional duopoly in Washington. Chris Hedges’s analysis in his March 17, report on Substack, Joe Biden’s Parting Gift to America Will be Christian Fascism, makes it clear that’s why revolt is now our only option:
The Democratic Party had one last chance to implement the kind of New Deal reforms that could save us from another Trump presidency and Christian fascism. It failed…Joe Biden and the Democratic Party made a Trump presence possible once and look set to make it possible again. If Trump returns to power, it will not be due to Russian interference, voter suppression or because the working class is filled with irredeemable bigots and racists. It will be because the Democrats are as indifferent to the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza as they are to immigrants, the poor in our impoverished inner cities, those driven into bankruptcy by medical bills, credit card debt and usurious mortgages, those discarded, especially in rural America, by waves of mass layoffs and workers, trapped in the serfdom of the gig economy, with its job instability and suppressed wages.
Biden and the Democrats, along with the Republican Party, gutted anti-trust enforcement and deregulated banks and corporations, allowing them to cannibalize the nation. They backed legislation in 1982 to green light the manipulation of stocks through massive buybacks and the ‘harvesting’ of companies by private equity firms that resulted in mass layoffs. They pushed through onerous trade deals, including the North American Free Trade Agreement, the greatest betrayal of the working class since the 1947 Taft Hartley Act, which crippled union organizing. They were full partners in the construction of the vast archipelagos of the U.S. prison system—the largest in the world—and the militarization of police to turn them into internal armies of occupation. They fund the endless wars.
The Democrats dutifully serve their corporate masters, without whom most of them, including Biden, would not have a political career. This is why Biden and the Democrats will not turn on those who are destroying our economy and extinguishing our democracy. The slops in the trough would dry up. Advocating reforms jeopardize their fiefdoms of privilege and power. They fancy themselves as ‘captains of the ship,’ labor journalist Hamilton Nolan writes, but they are ‘actually the wood-eating shipworms who are consuming the thing from inside until it sinks.’”
In the context of the stretched surrealism metaphor that launched this rant from my soap box, the challenge is to resurrect the “proposal of liberty”that Robert Hughes attributed to surrealism’s seminal spirit and create a viable alternative to the darker dimensions of the phenomenon now reflected in the rising expressions of rampant fascism and the harsh reality of a gridlocked government that has ceased to reflect in any meaningful way, the principles upon which it was founded. In surrealistic terms, the Swamp metaphor is an apt characterization of a government presided over by a gathering of thugs in charge of a system of grift and legalized bribery that no longer serves the common good, a predatory arrangement in which exploitation prevails and the rule of law is replaced by the law of the jungle. A fascist total takeover is one really scary possibility, but so is a massive, grass-roots revolution. Either way, the future is looking positively surreal! As Mark Twain put it in Huckleberry Finn, “Here’s your opposition line…you pays your money and you takes your choice!”
Ahhhhh, Mark Twain now there was a man with vision - of sorts, but even he could not have possibly foreseen what a complete boiling pot there now is in the USof A - hell, I suspect that even Nostradamus himself wouldn't have believed it - even if he had predicted it! Batten down the hatches my friends because you are ALL going to be in for a VERY bumpy ride! But then again - so are we on this side of the pond!!!!
Garlands "delay" is a result of the length of time it takes to obtain call and text records and then the text of the texts of interest. The first part (just subpoenaing the call and text lists) can take months. We also can deduce that Garland's DOJ was actively investigating Trump because it the Special Counsel hit the ground running and rapidly advanced the investigation to indictments.