All around us are nothing
but dummies of power,
but the mechanical illusion of power
still rules the social order,
behind which grows the absent,
illegible, terror of control,
of which we are the minuscule terminals.

The whole logical universe of the political
is dissolved at the same time,
ceding its place to a transfinite universe of simulation
where from the beginning no one is represented
nor representative of anything any more,
where all that is accumulated
is deaccumulated at the same time,
where even the axiological, directive,
and salvageable phantasm of power
has disappeared.

Yet it is there,
[in a universe that is still incomprehensible,
unrecognizable, to us, a universe with a
malefic curve that our mental coordinates…
violently resist] — it is there that one must fight,
if even fighting has any meaning anymore.
We are simulators, simulacra,
we are concave mirrors radiated by the social,
a radiation without a light source,
power without origin, without distance,
and it is in this tactical universe of the simulacrum
that one will need to fight — without hope,
hope is a weak value,
but in defiance and fascination.

Excerpt Simulacra and Simulation, The Spiraling Cadaver
p. 152 by Jean Baudrillard

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Part I

Today is Friday Juneteenth.  Until lately a day of little significance for us white folk.  Change is afoot, long overdue.  My bank of choice has declared this day a banking holiday; the local branch of BMO Harris is closed.  When banks close that indicates a real seismic shift.  June 19 1865 was the day a Union General proclaimed in Texas, that enslaved Black people were free citizens and could no longer be kept in servitude. 

The proclamation was not the last word to conclude servitude in various forms.   Reconstruction (the KKK), Jim Crow, the Civil Rights movement of the 60s, and the murder of Rodney King and riots in 1992, — all followed.  Since Rodney King, Black individuals have been killed by police, and sometimes by vigilante whites at irregular intervals.  That is how things have been.

So it is high time that Juneteenth be recognized, and observed straight-up, for what happened on that day.  We need the reminder.  We must make a breach between the present, and our past as a white-slave-holding society.  We must incrementally rid ourselves of the moral contamination tacit, tenacious, enduring, — that comes from having been a slave holding society.  It is as corrosive to our humanity to live in a bubble of white privilege as it is to be disadvantaged, discriminated against as a person of color.

Like therapy,  exhausting, but necessary that we confront our demons, as a society, one at a time. 

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Part II

What about the paragraph segments quoted from Simulacra and Simulation, written by sociologist Jean Baudrillard in 1981?  Why the effort to understand arcane lines, translated from French?  Baudrillard’s words capture my sense of life in the late 20th century, and more so, in the early years of the 21st century.  It is worth the effort.

A country with institutions of democracy respected, emulated, revered by many developing societies somehow elected in 2016 a self confessed con-man, TV reality show populist to live in the White House.  He is the pretend-president, unashamed and oblivious to his ignorance, his deficit of experience, insight necessary to getting things done.  He cultivates popular support by using racist tropes.  He incessantly uses twitter to shame, to denigrate all who disagree with him, and with the policies of his administration.  He thrives on rancor, on division.  His leadership has been non-existent while the nation, along with the world faces a contagious, deadly virus.

The circumstances described give weight Baudrillard’s view of modern society.  The arrangement of meanings by which we live our daily lives — presented by television, internet social media, the capitalist economy by which food, shelter transportation are all valued, and the urbanization which separates us from nature; these phenomena cause us to be lost, unable to place our feet, so to speak, on a firm ground of truth and moral value.  The things and meanings by which we live, no longer represent anything.  They are not even misrepresentations, a deceptive copy.  They construct a unreal reality, a *simulacra.   We, ourselves even — are become unreal.

*Simulacra are signs not based on reality, nor hiding a reality.  They hide that nothing like reality is relevant to our lives.  They construct a perceived reality, by which we render intelligible our lives and shared existence.