The Bind We’re In
Trump and Other Continuities
We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable — but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.
- Ursula Le Guin
The trouble is we function as if the divine right of kings was still in force, for we have not excised from our Weltanschauung the figure of the sovereign. It is still believed that power is centralised in one person. But in the Age of Behemoths, explored here, any such claim about society today is dubious. It is the agency of institutions we must look to to understand power, rather than to any particular bipeds (those duped millions, which include those long ago cast into the void and those freaks clamouring to rule it).
Trump, of course, is portrayed as a counter tendency. Surrounded by believers of the unitary executive theory, and he himself promising to be a dictator on "day one", shouldn't this give one pause? It should, but not because it signals a rupture -- it rather means an exacerbation. For decades, some suggest since FDR (although even Jefferson seems a safe bet), the executive branch has wielded extraordinary power over the rest of government, of which waging wars unilaterally is but a salient example. In one sense the power of the executive is limitless (Nixon with the gold standard, Lincoln suspending habeas corpus...) but a president's reach and very imagination is constrained by something else: by the demands of the largest and most militarized empire the world has known. In this Trump is no different to the rest. For as Christopher Lasch knew, as long as the United States remains capitalist, it requires an empire; and as long as it remains a modern nation, it will be capitalist.
To emphasize the point, how another Trump administration is not a break and certainly not sovereign in the way typically understood: NATO. This organisation among several functions to stamp out independence from the globalized dollar regime, among the "allies" of the north Atlantic region (and now further east...). Especially in the geopolitical headache called Deutschland. This involves a network of clandestine violence, of which GLADIO was but a part, and the occasional aerial bombardment - such as when the collapse of Yugoslavia threatened capital flows. In brief NATO is the very structure that permits - and, make no mistake, has allowed - the US to behave as a Mafia state.
The return of Trump has occasioned much hand-wringing, amongst a few bent knees. How easy to ignore that for many millions, enlightened Liberalism has meant mass deportations, irresponsible and life-threatening rhetoric, indebtedness, war and - dare we forget a moment - genocide. To reiterate, we face an intensification of current trends, not a break. Perhaps the reason this is so often denied is because it spells a radical pessimism: a revolution, let alone a return visit to the ballot box, will not fix this. Who do we string up, to whom do we target our ire -- and does the very posing of these questions underscore the mess we are in?
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In relation to similar issues, Michel Foucault wrote,
"In political thought and analysis, we still have not cut off the head of the king."
His penetrating works, in ways akin to the darkest edges of the Frankfurt School, suggest late moderns are facing a huge bind, a problem that surpasses mere Gordian knot. Power permeates everything and, I may add, leaves everyone complicit -- you may rage against the oil companies, but for whom do they provide a product? No, here, a revolution is no good. And in truth only the Apocalypse offers hope.
