I think Pieter’s “brace yourself” is the right expression. It’s like the hurricane forecast is now fairly clear, and the thing that was your house is on the beach at landfall. So what plans are you making? People are mostly institutional, and not so scrappy in finding ways to get things done on their own. That is going to become a big personal liability. It certainly describes me.
I don’t think that “all the immigrants” will be deported, not because he does or doesn’t want to, and very likely not because there will be a meaningful backlash. Americans haven’t got used to enough personal loss to be that brave in large numbers. The reason it won’t happen is that it isn’t logistically feasible, and it isn’t the point anyway. The point will be to find a subset and make very visible performative cruelty, which has always been the point. These things are not about content, but about performance and building a certain fictional world. Of course, Steven Miller’s a sadist, and if he could expand it without bound, he would. But logistics will be the thing that determines what he actually does. Somehow, the desires of one sadist are, while on the surface and in the direction of the action central, not the real issue. Like the sociopath is the focal actor, but not the issue. The issue is the cast of the society, and what they do with the movements of the sadist and the sociopath. That is like an epileptic siezure, which I think only stops when the cells performing it have been exhausted. Who they can deport is a very large swath of the competent and good-faith civil servants. The thousand cuts that currently don’t happen to people, and that they don’t think about for the same reason they don’t want to fund public health programs, can now start to accumulate. The model would be mismanagement in Weimar, as nearly as I can think of one. Recall Louis deJoy’s shutting down of post-office capabilities to try to delay ballot delivery in the 2020 election. That kind of thing, except in every department and function. Food safety and water regulation, already under-funded, become very unreliable. Transportation safety, whether rail, road, or air, probably further corrupted. Tax enforcement completely ended for the wealthy, as opposed to merely severely inadequate, as it is now. Public education, again already badly under-funded and uneven, really strangled, so that it is hard to staff, with money redirected to whichever loyalsts make the most attractive bid for it (in the form of “private” institutions). They could succeed this time in reversing the ACA (Obamacare), which will throw some tens of millions of people off health insurance again, and relieve what modest pressure there had been against price inflation in pharma and medical services, as the insurance companies will now be less subject to paying them. Surely much more, but I don’t spend my time here and can’t rattle it off the tip of my tongue. A thing that is personally immediate for me is going blind. Being in the community I am in, I am used to being able to see. I don’t think much of the mainstream media. For interpretation it is next to useless, and they fill a lot of time with crap and ignore a lot that should be reported. Public broadcasting does better, but it is less distinctive than I wish it were. But if a ship drives into a bridge somewhere, or there is a large power outage, or some group of poeple shoot many other people, it is unlikely I wouldn’t hear about it. Then I can go looking for more content elsewhere. All that can get closed off, so it becomes like Russian state media. Not immediately, but incrementally and not all that slowly. North Korean media is so hilariously self-cartooning, that one doesn’t quickly convert the whole U.S. to that. But to attenuate anything that isn’t like the current right-wing outlets, and to expand them, would be quite feasible. Half the country already chooses that, so it’s just a matter of hemming in the other half so it gets harder and harder to escape from it. If I have no sort of baseline that, within modest time, can give me a skeleton, then I am out in the open ocean, looking for sources, and trying to find out what is factually accurate and interpretively reasonable. That takes a of time for even small things, and it probably becomes infeasible for a larger worldview, unless it is all you do. See above comment about Americans’ being too institutionalized and passive, and not knowing how to scrap. Steve G., keep FRIAM open, and let the community be a kind of antenna complex that can do some filtering. I do think U.S. foreign policy will become more consistent. Feed Ukrain to the lions, and support the worse part of Israel’s destructiveness. I don’t like to bring up Israel, because it is a subject that can absolutely be talked about well but rarely is, in its full nightmarish complexity, with acknowledgement of how trapped very many people of good faith are within the country’s trajectory as well as in the various Palestinian territories that have been pawns for everybody. But within that full view, I think it is very doable to call out the part within Israel’s society and government that are overtly predatory, and who have enough leverage to keep the various middle people sort of pinned into corners, trying to protect themselves from violence, and thus perpetuating a status quo. Those are the forces that a fascist U.S. will be supporting. Not the good-faith actors. A change that I think can happen, and I don’t know how fully it can change in four years, which is the time to find out whether the whole electoral system and federal judiciary can be completely rewired, is that Americans become a lot more like Russians. Small, localized, and trying to hunker down and get through one’s own little day and little life, and not be visible enough to become a target for anything. Everything that is a problem and that needs to change, is a problem because it brings together a lot of actors. To change, it needs coordinated commitments. That’s what wasn’t great in the U.S. already, but gets very very hard in an atomized society. I do expect the bullying and belligerent behavior from the MAGA faction, which has already been getting systematically worse over the past 9 years, to undergo a large increase. Maybe by about the same factor as cannabis use increased when it got legalized, and for sort of similar reasons. There will continue to be people who don’t like it, as there are now, and as there are lots of Chinese who still have global and humane views and don’t like the rise of belligerence being driven in their society, but aren’t doing anything effective against it. Case in point re network-driven problems: will some movement one way or another on immigration help or hurt any given group? The current system is the way it is because of a coordinated network of businesses, government, and people who buy things (here, they actually do deserve the denigrating economist’s term “consumers”, which strips them of personhood, as they have already relinquished that). The government hasn’t tried to stem illegal immigration because businesses want the power that comes from undocumented labor. They have absolute power over the laborers as long as those have no other support or safety, and they have very strong leverage against documented or citizens. But the reasons businesses have all that power is that consumers will always buy strawberries for 50c less a tub if they have a choice. Marginalist pricing again atomizes the society, and everyone individually makes decisions against the institution (the price system), not as a member of some purposive community. If that were to change (if the thing we could change it to would even be a thing that, after it is accomplished, people wished to keep), the change would require coordinated purpose and pressure across all three levels. That wasn’t happening already, since the sort of wholesale handover to neoliberal everything. In an atomized society, how one even tries to do it seems even more remote to me. (Sidenote: here I like listening to Gary Gerstle about how we went toward neoliberalization of everything, in the early 1980s, sort of the Carter-to-Reagan transition. He casts it as a response to other things that weren’t working, and if his analysis is right, I think it is important if one is to talk about any of this in real terms.) Will shutting off any part of immigrant entry (even if it were to happen, which I’m not convinced of — but again, in a country where there is less and less news, I will also not know) allow U.S. workers to bid for better conditions in the jobs immigrants formerly performed, than the immigrants had? I don’t think so. The gig economy already puts people on a stragulation leash (amazon drivers and warehouse workers). How it works for roofers, masons, farm laborers, etc., I don’t understand well enough to predict. But I don’t think they have anything like the understanding of the system, or the coordination, to gain anything at all against businesses that are fully backed up by a fascist state. I will stop now. Even if any part of what I said above is roughly right, it is an epsilon of what needs to be understood, and others here will do much better than I can. In the meantime, in a few hours, my partner will awake in a mood of grief and rage, and my own little life will become a place where it is very hard to maintain a train of thought, which I need to do in order to get work done. Eric > On Nov 6, 2024, at 4:24 AM, Pieter Steenekamp <[email protected]> > wrote: > > I totally agree that Trump isn’t exactly a beacon of virtue. But on the > bright side (if we can call it that), he’s not driven by a political > ideology. Trump does what’s good for Trump—he doesn’t care much about what’s > best for the U.S. or the world. And if he needs to throw a country or two > under the bus (hello, South Africa?), he won’t think twice. So, South Africa, > brace yourself! > > But let’s try to find some good in this situation. Here are a few thoughts: > > a) I’m admittedly a bit of an open-borders extremist—within reason! But I get > that many Americans feel differently, just as South Africans are divided > about immigration, especially with some of our neighbors facing near-state > collapse. The question is, what positives could come from cracking down on > illegal immigration? Perhaps it could help those who feel their jobs are at > risk or their neighborhoods are changing too quickly. Realistically, though, > I don’t see Trump deporting everyone; the backlash would be enormous. More > likely, there’ll be tighter border control and screening, which might even > turn out to be a net positive. > > b) On Ukraine, I saw Trump’s claim that he’d stop the war in a day, which... > let’s just say sounds optimistic. But maybe there’s room for a different > approach. Endless funding isn’t exactly resolving things quickly. Could > Trump’s, er, unconventional diplomacy (or hardball bullying) possibly shake > things up and push for a ceasefire? I’m not predicting peace overnight, but > could he use his style to negotiate a better outcome? Stranger things have > happened. > > c) Finally, the U.S. economy seems to be on an “endless spending” spree. The > national debt’s ballooning, and maybe a financial reckoning is coming? > Cutting government waste might actually do some good. Elon Musk claims he > could save a trillion dollars—he’s said a few wild things, but maybe he’s > onto something here. A leaner, more efficient government wouldn’t hurt. > > On Wed, 6 Nov 2024 at 10:34, Jochen Fromm <[email protected]> wrote: > I woke up today and saw the horrific news on TV that Trump has won again. It > is incredibly bad on many levels. It is bad for the environment. The world > will not be able to stop global warming without the U.S. It is bad for > Ukraine as well. To me it feels like the end of civilization and democracy. > The people who voted for him probably do not read Paxton, Arendt or Levitsky > and Ziblatt. Or do not care. > https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/562246/how-democracies-die-by-steven-levitsky-and-daniel-ziblatt/ > > I was wondering how this is possible. If we define populism as an ideology > that presents "the people" as a morally good force and contrasts them against > "the elite", who are portrayed as corrupt and self-serving then this could be > a reason why Trump is so successful. He is good at populism because he is > corrupt and self-serving himself, and uses projection to accuse others. > https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/308163/what-is-populism-by-muller-jan-werner/9780141987378 > > What do you think? Why have people voted for him although they know what kind > of person he his? Are we doomed now? > > -J. > > .- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. / ... > --- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-.. > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom > https://bit.ly/virtualfriam > to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ > archives: 5/2017 thru present > https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ > 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/ > .- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. / ... > --- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-.. > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom > https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fbit.ly%2fvirtualfriam&c=E,1,6IT7qgKX8_HiBO6YVUBzljIG3zTKkq4oDmVmDE0saI7TRNgg0EsU9J-pC86mXImktPnKzaV-lLOfCH9r0lyJigGW4fHH0RgCTQdqQ9PCPlJWnS0jQZ1fRw,,&typo=1 > to (un)subscribe > https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=http%3a%2f%2fredfish.com%2fmailman%2flistinfo%2ffriam_redfish.com&c=E,1,wg2wX1nuwZ0F-3cj1gRhuFq_q5RxXn2cZdTJOm5v6cMOTRQCU5WWevs4BsfdzHv0CIpGGsb4eDumo6dWYoC5ZQphNYNzLOSoqWAuNNFcPypZxFkH&typo=1 > FRIAM-COMIC > https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=http%3a%2f%2ffriam-comic.blogspot.com%2f&c=E,1,Tnp2_mzeyLaY22JbrVsmQcR3Mzvlwn8zKwBoVM4o0V4VYmMGaSBFpuSTw2s1OwmV-EoTojbFLENlwcmP6Tlv95uMRe0IhgYFvZkbxR2MmaAhjfnKqwg4TTZX_iKO&typo=1 > archives: 5/2017 thru present > https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fredfish.com%2fpipermail%2ffriam_redfish.com%2f&c=E,1,hO1byljZrnHA7-d02VlDFgjjUADqktpbAnduGxNNUuej8U-PF2a4O6XMLUGtyOn8eAJ-zcI5eRUB-T_M5L1kHYqrLjjHtC9EouoV0_3_BVjPfE7CK8oD42Oh2DVa&typo=1 > 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/ .- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. / ... --- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-.. 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