The Protests: How We Got Here (The manner of protest)

When Martin Luther King was putting together the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955, he first went to white churches and implored to them that this was not a matter of race, that it was in fact a matter of economics and that poor whites were suffering alongside blacks and the two communities would do well to join forces. To which the white churches responded....no, it's about race.

The 'system' isn't racist. The 'system' is ruthlessly economic and wants everyone to be productive and make money. In fact, the 'system' cannot abide those that don't produce, so having a chunk of population off to the separate-but-equal side that doesn't participate in the larger economy is anathema to the 'system'. Which is why (I contend) that expanded industrial production of WWII demanded that blacks (among others) must participate in the economy in order to reach economic efficiency (which is the inborn desire of any economic system). Blacks must no longer be seen as separate and must in fact actually become equal because anything less makes no sense to the 'system'. MLK saw that black workers needed the buses to get to work and that polite society must honor that simple necessity. And he put it to the test. 

Transportation issues, too, were at the heart of Plessy v Ferguson (1896): separate but equal would imply, in that case, that railroad companies would now need to have a Blacks-only 1st class railroad car for every trip even though hardly any blacks at the time would've been able to afford a ticket. A railroad company carrying around an extra empty car could be ruinously expensive and is at best utterly useless. But the Culture of the South at the time demanded that blacks and whites remain separate. This is bad business but if the customer base makes demands, the corporations are obliged to supply. 

Plessy v Ferguson (1896) reminds us that the working class has the power to bend the Supreme Court and the corporate structures to their demands and at this point the working class demand was still decidedly white. Was it the 'system' that imposed separate but equal? No, this is a warping of the 'system'. It was the People, the illogical People who chose wastefulness and animosity over integrated forms of travel because social change is a hard thing to endure. Seeing someone else prosper gives the feeling of losing ground, even if that isn't the case. And in 1955, MLK was right: the economic circumstances were just as disadvantageous for the whites as it was for the blacks. But that was true in 1896 and the white people bungled justice then, too. In both cases the State, the corporations and the wealthy allowed this injustice to take place because another Civil War would've been worse (for them) than just letting poor people fight each other. 

MLK, echoing Gandhi (who became enlightened when he, like Homer Plessy, was thrown out of a 1st class train compartment in 1895), ushers in a wave of peaceful protests building on the legal victories of Thurgood Marshall before the war and the beloved stardom of Jackie Robinson after the war. He was adamant that the movement be peaceful and (even more to the point) legal. The point was to show that black people were citizens deserving of Constitutional protection and cultural assimilation just like everyone else and that it was their birthright. The notion of separate but equal was never real because it never applied to anyone else--there was no one to be equal to! Brown v Board of Education (1954) stamps this out judicially and even puts forth pronouncements for how it is to spread (namely "at all deliberate speed"). Again, the 'system' is ready to move on from segregation and embrace full economic efficiency, it is the Culture that drags its feet because social change must be forced.

The example of the Civil Rights movement forms the template of ongoing complaints of all stripes for the rest of the 20th century (re: the peaceful righteous fight is co-opted and re-purposed for everyone else's uses). From here the culture of protest takes over in America and, to my mind, has an entirely counter-intuitive effect: it makes people think they're rising up in the streets when increasingly they're just blowing off some steam. They congratulate themselves on speaking truth to power when really they've been given a place to stand and rigid rules of conduct and are mostly just harmlessly absorbed. Protests rarely lead to violence, indeed they are rarely even worth mentioning as they have become so ingrained in the civic culture. Protests have replaced parades: people are getting together to complain rather than celebrate, but the effect isn't wildly different. MLK was fighting for something, most people since have just been trying to look like they're fighting for something.

The turmoil of the 1960s begins an era where the white middle class was tearing itself apart and had no need whatsoever for the poor whites. They would rather magnanimously grant freedom to African-Americans than deal with the white underclass, which is now even more beholden to keeping black people down as a means of deluding themselves into feeling like they are living the American dream, that they are doing things right, that they are in God's good graces, etc. 

For the wealthy 'race' is an illusion. They don't need to pretend to be superior to blacks--they have more money in the bank, which is the only superiority they ever needed. The enlightened whites have discarded 'race', thus they want to treat blacks and other whites the same. This works for the wealthy because since they are in better economic standing (the only thing that matters), everyone else is naturally kinda all the same anyway. 

But to the poor whites, they see their world steadily eroding because they can't keep up with the pace of advancing technology and social change. Poor blacks have increasingly imbibed their suffering as race-related and while that may well be true, it is ultimately secondary to what they need to be doing: namely, accumulating capital to escape the misery of economic impoverishment. As the wealthy grow ever-wealthier, they grow further away from the others of their society, while the poor are continually getting pushed together and the racial differences that used to separate them are no longer honored in polite society.

Blacks are not victimized by the 'system', they are victimized by those keeping them from being a part of the 'system'. Blaming the 'system' is missing the true danger, it is the barriers to joining the 'system' that bedevils them. Separate but equal was not the 'system', it was the absence of 'system'. Homer Plessy bought his ticket for the 'system' and was denied; Rosa Parks bought a ticket for the 'system' and was taken to jail.  

The 'system' is color blind--it is completely blind. But we don't experience the 'system' in our day to day lives, we experience each other in what we call 'culture'. But we live in a multiplicity of paradigms with a range of metaphors, tastes and social signals. You might find it easy to know which side you're on, but how to represent that and/or aid your chosen group is not at all plain to see.

With the outgrowth of social media and smart phones in the early 2000s, the culture is now primed on a granular level. This could be dangerous, riotous, but more often than not is petty and minimal and burns out quickly. Social media has a more insidious effect--creepy because it is inside of our homes rather than out there in the streets--but at its best it does at least suggest that the 'bad apples' can be singled out. At its worst, though, it is a replay of the Cultural Revolution: each citizen is now a petty tyrant and the People are a mass of judges, juries and executioners. 

The MLK model of peaceful protest is probably dead. From here the cancel culture will mature and take root.

So far in my reckoning I've basically only dealt with the richest of rich and poorest of poor. This makes up roughly zilch percentage of the population, but establishes the visual template seen by the vastly larger middle class. The middle class watches this all play out on their media screens and they choose sides and they go forth in righteous indignation. Race is just a detail but by now this has created a schism within white rhetoric causing people to choose sides, generally based around either preserving the past or looking to the future. Some of the wealthy may enjoy the new middle class war, some may hate it; some rich are unaffected by it, some rich are in great peril. Some poor folks may be encouraged by the turmoil they see in the streets, some may be horrified by it. Some will see the looting as an unfortunate by-product of so much chaos, some will see it as the point all along. Some will become enlightened to the crimes of local police, some will see those police as more important than ever! These may be entirely different groups of people that think they've chosen the same thing. And they don't understand that they're now in opposition to each other. And a lot of the people who think they disagree with each other may be working side by side, while some who see each other as enemies will be doing all the same shit.

We exist in a multiplicity of paradigms and when a variety of paradigms converge, no one really knows what's going on any more. All of life becomes inchoate and the active people aren't really doing anything while the inactive people may have far more influence than they realize. This is, I believe, what is living in our television sets and smart phones right now.

According to Wikipedia, the violence of the past two weeks is pretty much evenly split: protesters injuring cops, cops injuring protesters, protesters injuring each other at a pretty similar clip. Some cities are perfectly peaceful, some are experiencing all kinds of wanton destruction. Some people just want to fuck shit up, some people truly want to be heard, some people want to publicly grieve, some want to express their anger, some want to keep others from expressing anything at all. And they're all doing what they're doing in the same place at the same time. The tangle of desires and motivations and plans of action threaten to be merely a meaningless jumble. 

As for the 'system', all it wants is money. No Lives have ever mattered to the 'system' because the 'system' is going to outlive us all and therefore does not need us as much as we need it. And the only differentiation it makes between us is the money in our pockets--not the kindness in our hearts, not the color of our skin, not the sweat of our brows. It'll take black money and yellow money and red money and white money, too. (It'll take stolen money, inherited money, gambled money, criminal money, found money....) When your ability to make money has been eclipsed, that's when rioting in the streets becomes the only answer. 

Lives matter to other lives. We should be taking care of each other. The 'system' will help us stay healthy, it will help educate our children and it'll help us feed ourselves and have fun. It isn't going to give our lives worth because that's not what it does. We have to do that for ourselves and each other and if we don't no one else will. The 'system' is built for those who help themselves and the enemies of the 'system' are those that attempt to keep others out. Homer Plessy knew that in 1896...and the Supreme Court buckled under the weight of apartheid instead of doing its job. MLK knew that in 1955....and the white churches blew their opportunity to be on the right side of history. 

Right now, the 'system' is trying to repair itself from the corona virus lock downs. The 'system' will be going through a major overhaul in the next 12 months or so and these protests are about (hopefully) positively positioning the Culture to get it right this time. I don't think things are different, I think the Culture has evolved to where they always should've been: namely by realizing that the problem isn't the 'system', it is the lack of 'system'.

Impeachment (Phase Three)

The Senate, yesterday, voted down both articles of impeachment against President Trump, as pretty much everyone predicted from the start. Trump stands Impeached but not Removed and seems ready to stand for re-election in November.

The process is now completely over and I'm still in the same place I was at the beginning: what was the point of this? What were the House Democrats trying to achieve? I don't get it and I never got it. Two takeaways: the House lost track of the crime committed and Trump's refusal to participate has given future presidents a brand new game plan.

The crime Trump stood accused of was holding up aid to Ukraine as allotted by the Congress, the Pentagon and the State Department. The whole business about an investigation of Hunter Biden was the motive for the crime, not the crime itself. The crime was never properly laid out because since the White House chose not to defend itself, the House Dems never bothered to actually follow through on the crime. They brought a steady diet of ambassadors that had their thoughts on what was going on and why, but none of them concretely showed that the aid was ever actually held up. They were able to talk about Rudy Giuliani-led shenanigans into the Ukrainian political scene but none had any worthwhile knowledge about the aid itself.

As for the aid, it went out by the deadline without any strings attached and the President of Ukraine has said numerous times that he never felt pressured or extorted. Now the crime may well have been committed but the House never really got around to making that case. A few reasons the House didn't go down this road: 1) the White House never showed up and forced them to lay out the case; 2) the aid was in fact delivered without penalty, so was there actually a crime?; and 3) pointing out the White House isn't actually able to hold up aid begs a further question: if the POTUS isn't allowed to do this, then why was the POTUS allowed to do this?

The circumstantial evidence did not look good for Trump; it certainly looks as if Trump held up aid in hopes of getting the president of Ukraine to announce an investigation into the workings of Hunter Biden, which presumably would help Trump's re-election efforts. But because the House never went beyond the circumstantial evidence, they left enough room for the White House to maintain a shadow of a doubt: there's enough circumstantial evidence to suggest that Trump's queries all related to the 2016 election, which is the POTUS's job to potentially investigate. And that withholding aid is actually standard procedure, as shown by VP Joe Biden holding up aid in the same place in the same manner in the previous administration. Did Trump look guilty? Yeah, but not guilty enough to my eye to make it a slam dunk. If this was a real trial in a real court, there's plenty there for Trump's lawyers to work with.

And even if he was guilty...guilty of what? Of doing the same thing the previous administration had done? That makes Trump look no more guilty than Obama, and is that really where the House was intending to go with this?  And, again: guilty of what? If a crime had clearly been committed, why was the 1st article of impeachment for the abstract accusation of 'Abuse of Power' and not an actual crime? (*)

It sounds weird to say that Trump didn't participate, doesn't it? Trump was still there every single day in one form or another. But he wasn't ever in the Congress. He wasn't ever in these hearings or in this process. Such is the layout of modern media: the President gets to talk all god damn day long without really ever having to do anything. So when I say Trump ignored the proceedings, I mean he ignored them in the Houses where they took place, he stepped outside of the actual processes and went straight to the American people. Not every president is willing to just be impeached by a grumpy House but Trump will wear this as a badge of pride. And he knew full well that he had the support he needed in the Senate (with or without Mitt Romney, who groveled pretty hard to be Trump's Secretary of State, you may recall).

But more than any of this: impeachment is strictly a political act, not a proper trial, and the votes for removing Trump from office were never there. So why on earth did the House move forward with this action at this time? The House assumed that just flinging around the potential of Trump's electoral paranoia would lead to more revelations and bombshells (not really, mostly just more of what we already knew) and ideally galvanize public opinion against him and/or the Republicans up for reelection in 2020. But the case was flimsy and Trump's masterstroke of ignoring the whole thing worked perfectly. It made the House Dems look like, well a bunch of fantasy-driven masturbators with no real sense of what the truth is or how to get to it.

If the point of this was to remove Trump from office, well that never had much of a shot of succeeding.

If the point of this was to simply convince everyone that Trump is sleazy and self-aggrandizing, well....who didn't already know that?

If the point was to show that House Democrats are fighting for America while everyone else is not, well the shoddy case didn't win me over and the cynicism necessary to do all of this is anathema to any of that high minded feeling.

If the point was to derail Trump's chances of getting reelected, well I don't think this did the job--though it may well have knee-capped Joe Biden for the final time!

If the point was to galvanize Democrats heading into an election year, well the disaster of this year's Iowa Caucus pretty well shot that in the foot.

I just don't see it, I never did see it, I still don't see it.

If the House never bothered to prove the crime, then why on earth were they trying to get to trial? The Senate did the right thing in keeping this to a minimum and getting it over with. We now know that impeachment is just a political tool like any other, hardly the fail-safe device the Founders imagined--and the House has foolishly laid out a blueprint for future presidents to avoid their comeuppance.

I just don't see how any of this was good for America, for Americans, or for the federal gov't. I don't even see how it benefited the Democratic Party, which looks worse in every way today than it did six months ago. (**)



(*) As for the 2nd article, well that was just bullshit from the git-go: the House was eager to remind us over and over again that the Constitution leaves all impeachment power to the House, but I don't see anything in the Constitution that says the Executive has to participate, so citing him for not participating is just manufactured nonsense. Indeed the Founders are the same guys who invented the 5th Amendment, its not hard to imagine that they would've seen Impeachment as something that happens in absentia or with a hostile Executive, so why would the President be expected to participate? And how do you cite him for not doing something he's not required to do?

(**) So do Mitt Romney and Joe Biden get together to form a new party? Can they suck George Soros and the Koch Brothers in? Or how about Michael Bloomberg and Steve Forbes? Can Rand Paul and Amy Klobachar co-exist in the middle? Do Susan Collins and Tulsi Gabbard join the new team? Yeah...none of that sounds right, does it?