Ten Days Before The Election
WHAT HAS TO BE DONE WHEN NOTHING CAN BE DONE.
Dystopia has to be faced
and dissolved by irony.
If paranoia “knows well”—
we need a method of ignorance.
The spectrum of the possible
is much larger than
the range of probability.
Irony is the excess of language
that opens the door
to the infinity of the possible.
Ironic autonomy is the answer.
Do not take part in the game,
do not expect any solution from politics.
Revolt against power is necessary
even if we may not know how to win.
Do not belong.
If you accept slavery,
you will die sooner or later anyway.
As a slave.
What is important
is how you live your life.
Despair
is a consequence of understanding.
Joy
is a condition of the emotional mind.
The only truth
is shared imagination.
Despair does not delimit
the potential for joy.
And joy
is a condition for proving
intellectual despair wrong.
Irony is about the independence of mind from knowledge; it is about the excessive nature of the imagination.
So, at the very end: don’t believe (me).
–*–
These are the last three lines of the last chapter of Franco ‘Bifo’ Barardi’s book, HEROES MASS MURDER AND SUICIDE published 2015
11 thoughts on “Ten Days Before The Election”
Well, you have to be careful about the extent to which you expect change to occur: it’s not that “nothing can be done”, but rather that one must slowly and prudently begin the process of correcting the damage already done. Progressives keep using the phrase “comprehensive reform” indicating their alacrity for instant political gratification. Yet as the meticulous observer of democracy and aristocracy Alexis de Tocqueville Pointed out long ago, it was exactly the combination of intellectuals in politics and their attempt to institute “comprehensive reform” that directly led to the horrors of the French Revolution. In politics, unlike philosophy, one is simply not allowed to wax in nastalgia at present circumstances while Rome burns.
Joe, by “while Rome burns” I take it that you are referring to the siege of Aleppo, the epidemic of suicide among Indian farmers burdened with unpayable debt to Monsanto, Europe inundated with war refugees, the melting of Greenland etc. We have a globalized economy that valorizes growth, that is based upon media driven desire. If you have spent any time with a 2 year old, you know that there are no limits to human desire, or to the human imagination.
,
Once again we are nailing Jesus to the cross.
This time around we are not going to be able to bury the body.
No, I mean the severe worsening (by every standard) of the various crises around the world in the absence of American leadership as well as the domestic crisis of the leading presidential candidate being under criminal investigation by the highest department of criminal investigation in America, the FBI.
Granted some crises appear to be worsening, but the causes are very very complex. There has been no absence of American leadership as far as I can tell. By absence, I guess you mean the type of leadership that you approve of.
I noticed you did not mention Islamic terrorism which has killed more than everything you listed combined. I’m curious about that omission or at least a reference to the epidemic of suicide bombers to supplement your reference of farmer suicides?
The omission was inadvertent. My intent was a brief mention in order to make a point. Anyone who commits suicide for any reason is engaging in a act of extreme desperation to end a hopeless life, by making a final statement. Would you or I want to trade places with a poor farmer with a unpayable debt, or with a young person in a fundamentalist middle eastern society?
https://www.google.com/amp/mobile.nytimes.com/2016/06/17/world/middleeast/isis-genocide-yazidi-un.amp.html%3F0p19G%3De?client=safari
I honestly have no idea where in anything I have ever written you could possibly have gotten the impression that I would be so intellectually shallow as to only agree with something I approve of. That statement is manifestly passive aggressive, especially since (at the least!) in your own discussion group I have consistently referred to the antics of Donald Trump as inarticulate buffoonery. When has ANYONE in the group similarly criticized HRC or Bernie Sanders – EVER?
I am not aware that our Department of State has lapsed in awareness or engagement with any of the situations as they have occurred around the world. At best outcomes can be influenced, sometimes. What other nations, movements, and individuals do is outside of U.S. control. Additionally there is no lack of bright, credentialed individuals who rue the last eight years of foreign policy under the Obama presidency. And I suspect that he’d make some decisions differently if he could.
Even Obama’s own State Department would not deny that its Iran “deal” had in fact emboldened Iran toward aggressive behavior – these are not merely my personal opinions or simply things I’m speculating about: https://youtu.be/1oUyJFDw3EE
No argument from me. Any treaty over something as momentous as nukes is a matter of striking the best deal possible, at the time. Second guessing is pointless. Neither do we have veto over any other nations change in posture in a more aggressive direction. It’s foolish to think otherwise.