The Theory of The Interregnum
In the last several years, it has occurred to me that American history since the turn of the 20th Century appears to have fallen into a cyclical dynamic. This is a sort of socio-political recurrence that came about with the closer integration of Capitalism and the American State, particularly with the increased power of the Federal Government. As neither of these two can be feasibly separated, neither can be understood in isolation, my approach in understanding this historical process sits outside of the Marxist line which is most common in radical circles. Rather than a focus on the economic cycles, which seem to have been marginalized in acuity since the Great Depression, my approach here is one that incorporates economic retractions as a particular form of disruption to the system, but one that is not by itself sufficient to undermine Capitalism and the American state. Instead, my focus has been on the continuity of these two, and how they are able to manage various types of disruption that in the past could have proven fatal. This essay works out a theoretical model for understanding how this continuity is perpetuated throughout time and how it develops new reiterations of itself despite issues that previous theories argued would produce an economic and social revolution. The primary focus of the model in this essay is the period of the Interregnum which is a necessary part of it.
As to the reason for this essay, its aim is to establish a new roadmap for the radical Left. Since the 2008 Recession, Socialist and radical Left groups have gained popularity and mass support. And then as quickly as they gained this support, they lost it. Whether it was Syriza in Greece, Podemos in Spain, Bernie Sanders in the United States, or Jeremy Corbyn in the United Kingdom, practically all far Left groups in the decade since the Recession have failed.
The prevailing notion radical movements have held for the last century since Marx, is that Capitalism’s tendency to Crisis will be its undoing. Nearly 150 years later, this has been proven repeatedly incorrect. Unforeseen by Marx and other Socialist thinkers of the 19th Century was the dramatic fusion of Capitalism with the State. The result was a situation that the economist Kenneth Galbraith called “Countervailing Power”. Rather than Capitalism dominating without question, the establishment of labor and state bureaucracies, court systems, and interest groups all limited the dimensions of the market. All the same, the economy has expanded, markets opened, and more of human life has been commoditized. However, this process has been perpetuated differently than predicted. The booms and busts of the American economy, which occurred at least once a decade in the 19th century, were ironed out in large thanks to the Federal Reserve, SEC, World Bank and numerous other financial laws and organizations. This is all to say that the Crises of Capitalism can no longer be expected to crash it or generate the conditions of Revolution originally theorized to do so.
With this in mind, it is apparent that an overhaul of radical theory is needed. Rather than keeping the determinism of Marxism, a new approach must be centered on the contingency of material reality. As such the theory of the Interregnum is a particular concept to understand the history of the United States since WWII. Rather than being a general metanarrative, this theory should be used as a tool of analysis and one to look for windows of opportunity for radicals
The Model
To start, there is the Order: This is the combination of Capital and State, Market and Government, that has developed since the middle of the 19th century. However, I’ll contain the area of investigation to the 20th Century and the first two decades of the 21st. My reasoning for this is that it maintains a focus on Modernity, and particularly the modern codependence and corroboration that Capitalism and State have had. For me, this is the Order, the general, underlying structure of American society. These two forms are the material substance and dominating forces of American life and remain constant throughout the period that’ll be investigated. Throughout this essay, Capital and State should be understood as synonymous with the Order.
Within the Order, there is the Mode: This can be thought of as the modus operandi, or the general approach and cohesive set of methods by which the Order is maintained and how it is perpetuated. While American society grows under the dominance of Capital and State, it has done so under different modes, different ways in which this domination has been organized. The Mode, as the general approach, is accepted by the general population, in a general consensus, as acceptable and the way that society ought to function and operate. It doesn’t matter that some individuals may only agree with parts, or none. Rather what’s important is that the general population passively consents and reinforces this mode of society, as do the myriad of organs of Capital and State. Unlike the Order, the Mode changes, and that’s the main interest of this essay, the change in Modes from one to another. It’s important to note that the Mode is separate from a Revolution which is a change in Order. The Mode, rather, is a general approach that changes without the Order being overturned.
Within the Mode, there are Modifications: These are operations that give the mode flexibility. When disruptions occur within the Mode (rights movements, economic retractions, technological innovations, wars, plagues, political scandals) it has the capacity to modify itself so as to deal with these issues. Thus, a Modification is a compartmentalized reconfiguration to deal with a particular disruption, while the general approach to maintaining the Order, the Mode, is still stable.
Within the Mode, there is a Tolerance for Modification: While every Mode has the flexibility to adjust itself to disruptions in society, it is limited to a certain capacity. This limit is either in how much it can modify itself to a particular disruption or how many disruptions it can modify itself to without collapsing. Therefore, Tolerance is a matter of the elasticity of the Mode when disruptions arise, and its capacity to modify enough to continue, or to collapse as it’s unable to make the needed modifications. When the Mode’s Tolerance has been met, this is the Mode’s Saturation point, where it has modified to disruptions as much as it is capable to. When the Mode’s Tolerance has been exceeded, we can think of this as a Hyper-Saturation of disruption.
The Saturation Point, precedes and is necessary for the Hyper-saturation point: The Mode over time is able to modify itself as necessary to certain disruptions. However, there comes a point at which it can modify no more - it has reached its Tolerance. Further disruptions, especially in multitude will exceed its capacity and it loses its cohesion as well as effectiveness in modification. The issue for the Mode at this point of Tolerance, is that in dealing with any further disruptions it will break from its centrality and cohesion, it will in effect fracture in attempting to modify further. At the same time, when at Saturation point, the Mode appears to exemplify its own flexibility due to its past modifications. Ironically, the Saturation point can appear as a high point for the Mode, when in actuality it is on the precipice of reaching its Hyper-Saturation point.
The Hyper-Saturation point, where the Tolerance has been exceeded is the start of the Interregnum: When the Mode can no longer meet disruptions and modify effectively to mollify them, the Mode enters into a collapse. In this way, the Interregnum is the period in which a Mode is breaking down. As such, there is no longer a general approach to handling disruptions and ground is open for these disruptions to claim and organize themselves in such a way that appears to threaten the Order. During the Interregnum, the component organs of the Order engage in ideological, social, economic, and physical combat with these disruptions. Through this process, a new set of approaches emerge and over time they themselves fall into an equilibrium with each other and solidify into a new, cohesive, general approach.
Within the Order, the Renovation is the start of the new Mode: Once the disruptions of the Interregnum have been mollified, a new Mode is established. This new Mode is now equipped to engage with the past disruptions that exceeded its predecessor. This does not mean that all the approaches of the past are gone, but that many have been left behind and many new ones have been incorporated. Thus the new Mode is functionally different from the one that collapsed before the Interregnum. The Renovation is begun once all the sets of approaches generated and reconfigured in the Interregnum have been consolidated and sublimated into the cohesive whole of the new Mode.
Study I - 1960-1982 - Transitioning through Modes -
You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.” - Lee Atwater - 1981 - Former GOP Campaign Consultant
While the breakdown in the last section is abstract, it’s best to have an idea of the structure we’re discussing before going through examples as large as the periods we’ll be dealing with. The first one will be the period of the 1960’s through 1982. This is because this period has all the key concepts explored thus far and gives body to the theory.
To start, this period comes at the end of the Postwar era. This Postwar era within the theory should be understood as a Mode, that generalized approach that maintained the Order of Capital and State. Without going back too far back, this Mode was one constructed out of the Great Depression and fully initiated at the start of WWII. The Postwar era as a Mode was one marked by the blatant cooperation of corporations and the government. The Military Industrial Complex that came out of it is testament to the extreme cooperation that had been created and which continued long after the war was over. However this approach of the Mode is visible far beyond it. The Governmental arbitration between Labor Unions and Corporations created a substantial middle class, a well known hallmark of the era. Similar arbitration was visible throughout culture from Hollywood, to where the government set standards of decency and had powers of censorship. The further development of federal projects such as the Interstate highway system and the GI Bill, on top of the programs of Social Security, other welfare programs, and public works, this Mode was one of direct and blatant cooperation of business and government.
In dealing with disruptions, this Mode maintained a standard approach of outright cooperation between the government and big business to coordinate in dealing with them. In the case of a war, Industry was easily mobilized as a component of the war machine as seen in WWII and later in Korea. In terms of economic retraction, the Federal Reserve had learned all that it needed from the Great Depression and resolved the Recession of 1953 within a year. In the case of groups of dissent that threatened the Order, the House Un-American Activities Committee, Hollywood Black List, Joseph McCarthy, Lavender Scare, and the trial of the Rosenbergs demonstrated that there were clear, agreed upon strategies to dealing with these groups. Through all these examples we can see a clear capacity for Modification of the Mode to the disruptions that arose.
When it comes to the general consensus, this Mode maintained the population’s support in it’s approaches and modification was an acceptable avenue for change. Whether it was the opposition to Communism, the arbitration between labor unions and big business, the censorship of media to traditional values, or even the expansion of the government bureaucracy, these were generally accepted as the proper way that society should function. Even when certain groups took issue with components of the Order (racism, homophobia), these people would first move in accordance with the general approach. This could be seen with the movements by the NAACP through Brown v Board of Education and the Homophile movement, in both cases these dissenting groups approached the Order through the methods of the Mode to attempt Modification. A key point here was they did not aim for the total subversion of the Order, but rather believed that components of it needed alteration. Especially in the Homophile movement, the point was to obtain this change, specifically “by advocating a mode of behavior and dress acceptable to society.”
This then brings us to the election of JFK. Through the theory this is where the Saturation Point begins. JFK’s presidency should be seen as when the Mode comes to a point of Saturation. During his presidency, a number of modifications are performed: the Civil Rights movement was worked with and one of the highpoints, the March On Washington was orchestrated along with the administration. Also during this time, the issue of nuclear annihilation is addressed, even if by necessity, and back channels were created to avoid it again. The Feminist Movement is addressed by Kennedy through his Presidential Commission on the Status of Women. The New Frontier Plan dealt with issues of poverty and the disparity between the town and country. The New Frontier plan in fact should be seen in continuity with the Mode of the Postwar Era as it continued the outright cooperation of business and the government and expanded on many of the programs (Social Security and the Interstate Highway system) that had been so popular and common during the period. This situation appears to continue even after Kennedy’s assassination with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voter Rights Act of 1965, the Equal Pay Act of 1964 and the Griswold v Conneticut ruling by the Supreme Court.
By 1968 both JFK and Bobby Kennedy had been assassinated along with Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. The War in Vietnam was raging and the Anti-war movement was in full swing, the Sexual Revolution had arrived, the Black Panthers were patrolling the police in Oakland, the American Indian Movement occupied Alcatraz, and the next year the Queers fought the cops at Stonewall. Likewise the American Nazi Party had formed and was on the march, the Weather Underground was bombing government buildings, riots raged before the the shooting at Kent, and the Manson Family etched their mark in blood across the headlines of the Nation. It is at this point that Hyper Saturation had been reached, the Tolerance for Modification had been exceeded, and the period of the Interregnum was in full force.
It’s this shift from relative calm to chaos that the theory attempts to dissect, how a period of social acceptance and cooperation, with regulatory organs holding an arsenal of viable mechanisms of control, had so rapidly deteriorated. The period of 1960-1968 is of interest because it shows the capacity of the Mode to maintain continuity as well as this capacity’s increasing impotence to do so. Modifications were possible and were performed but they were ultimately unable to resolve the disruptions that were arising. It’s also this period that in order to deal with these disruptions new methods had to be devised. This should be understood as the movement from the Saturation Point to the Hyper Saturation Point, where the Tolerance of the Mode had reached its breaking point. When this Point was reached can’t be clearly determined as the complexity of the social body is too great to hammer down. It can only be understood in magnitudes of intensity and the visible collapsing of the Mode in capacity. In other words, one day all is right in Rome, the next the barbarians are at the gates.
The quote at the start of this section reflects one of the new approaches that were being created during the Interregnum. The change of focus from de jure segregation and racism, to one that performed the same de facto result, but through economics, was a strategy that started in this period and was integral to the long term effectiveness of the Southern Strategy later. However, this quote goes beyond the racism that would be perpetuated but in a different mode. Rather, the quote shows that this period was that which required new approaches. The continuity of the Order, of Capital and State, and the myriad of components that are part of it required a new approach to being maintained. This will be the running theme of the Interregnum, the same domination must be perpetuated but must now do so through a new approach.
Proceeding forward through‘68-’69, the election of Nixon shows one of the attempts of restoration. When the Pandora’s box has been opened, most of the population would like to have it closed again. The rising intensity of the Interregnum and the overarching sense of turbulence that permeates through American society brings about a desire to go back, to return to the Mode’s stability. This can clearly be seen in Nixon’s slogan of “Law and Order” which was directed at the instability that pervaded the period. In Nixon, there was an attempt to save the Mode, however this is not possible. While the Silent Majority may want to bring back the Mode, the Dissenting Minority can no longer be contained by the Modifications that were used in the past. As such, this point is where the tactical conflicts between the Order and the Disruptions are their most ferocious. Without a general approach, new ones are created ad hoc and by the organs of the Order in battle. They don’t begin with a succinct theory but create these new approaches of engagement through the conflict. This conflict is in fact a requirement for the future Mode to be created.
Take for example the War on Drugs. This arose as an approach to combating dissidents that the Nixon Administration took as their main opponents. As John Ehrlichman, Nixon’s Counselor and Assistant on Domestic Affairs told the writer Dan Baum in 1996:
“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news."
What this illustrates is that the War on Drugs was not ideologically based on the Post-War Mode. That doesn’t mean there weren’t previous moves against drugs as there certainly were, rather this new tactic wasn’t derived from the Mode, it was created to engage with the dissident groups that rose up during the Interregnum. As such the War on Drugs was a new approach by the Nixon Administration to maintaining the Order without the overarching construct of a Mode. Whereas modifications are derived and performed within the Mode by generally approved methods to mollify disruption, the new tactics developed during the Interregnum are not derived from the Mode but by the need to win. What must be understood here though is that because it was one of the successful tactics employed by necessity in the Interregnum, its ideological justification would come afterward.
Continuing on, the Nixon Administration would collapse in on itself. This was due to the Impeachment and ongoing investigations into Nixon’s government. The great irony of this was that the attempt by the Silent Majority to restore the Mode, only created greater fractures, discontent, and distrust in the process. And this may not be surprising. Nixon was a belligerent whose goal was simply to try and reconstitute power as it was before. The fact is that his heavy handedness in doing so brought only more disastrous consequences.
When considering Gerald Ford, his presidency was short and unremarkable. However one incident of note is the bailout of New York City in 1975. The city having fallen into debt was forced to employ an Austerity program in order to avoid bankruptcy. For the bailout the city government had to raise the costs of service, stop wage hikes of government employees, as well as downsize the number of employees. Later this austerity program was a model when other cities and states were in crisis situations like the 2008 Crisis.
Nixon’s successor Gerald Ford would prove to be impotent in being able to handle the situation in Nixon’s wake and eventually Jimmy Carter would become President. Jimmy Carter was the uneasy, like Gerald Ford ill equipped, victor after. While he attempted to remedy some of the situations like pardoning the draft dodgers of Vietnam, creating new institutions to deal with the energy crisis, and govern a bipartisan government, these would all be incapable of solving the issues. By this time in 1977, some of turbulence would lessen and by 1980 most had dissipated. The Panthers were a ghost of their former selves, the Weather Underground had ended its activities, the Hippie movement had either dissolved or become green capitalists, the American Nazi party had gone defunct, and Jim Jone’s Peoples’ Church had ended in mass murder and suicide. None of this of course was due to Jimmy Carter but he came at a time when the population had become exhausted, and as his foreign policy with the Oil Crisis and Iran-Hostage Crisis didn’t alleviate anyone, he had proved incapable of bringing the change needed.
All this would run into the rise of Ronald Reagan. With Reagan there was a new era, and in fact a new Mode. This could be seen with his policies that were fundamentally different from the Postwar period in a number of ways. Rather than government cooperation with business, business was now to be the leader and the Government supposed to get out of its way. Other than the Military Industrial Complex, the reigns on business were let loose and to drive the path of the economy. This new Mode, the Neoliberal Mode, also encompassed a movement back to traditional values as seen with the Moral Majority led by Jerry Falwell.
What should be understood is that Reagan’s assumption to office was the signal of the Renovation. This brought in the new Mode and established the new general approach of the Order to maintaining itself. It should not be understood that elements of it weren’t already visible, they in fact were. The move to using economics as a validation to perpetuate racism or the War on Drugs as a tactic to deal with dissident groups were both existent before Reagan. However, what changes is that these policies were now brought together, and philosophized into coherence. Neoliberalism as a Mode holds that liberalization is an inherent good, philosophically, so all the cuts in welfare and taxes are now validated. With the War on Drugs, the addict and the “welfare queen” became the targets of moral decay that the traditionalism of Neoliberalism deplored as dead weight. The Mode retroactively validates the effective approaches developed in the Interregnum, and brings them into a philosophical coherence that had not been present before. If Nixon created guerilla groups to keep the dissidents at bay, Reagan made them into a cohesive and regimented army.
Now would be helpful to consider the intellectual movements that had developed during the Interregnum that would influence this shift. William F. Buckley and the National Review were pivotal as their brand of Conservatism brought into the folds the more liberal elements that had been less adhered by the Postwar politicians. The influence of other thinkers such as Friederich Hayek, Milton Friedman, James B. Buchanan, Thomas Sowell, Ayn Rand had been growing during the Interregnum and would find their place in the “Free Enterprise” policies of Reagan. While far less obvious than the dissenting groups that rose up at the time, these intellectuals, and the movement that would come out of their dialogues and work would prove pivotal to the philosophical coherence that arrived with Reagan. While the streets were filled with protesters, the works of the Intellectuals intent on preserving the Order were in conversation of the underpinnings of what would come after.
It would be wrong to state that all these Intellectuals aimed to create such a condition as the Mode or even supported the culmination of it in Reagan- some were even opposed to him. However it would be equally wrong to believe they weren’t elements that were integral in the movement that Reagan ushered in. The underground intellectual movements of the economists and philosophers were of their own individual projects. However through their varied communications and organizations, they were able to spread particular concepts and ideological components that could be adopted and bootstrapped toward the Renovation’s new conditions. Yes, Ayn Rand may have despised Reagan, but the extreme individualism of her work functioned particularly well in the rise of the Yuppies and . It was not that they needed to back him and justify him directly, but that their catalog of defenses and philosophical work could be employed as its intellectual approach. The philosophy of the Neoliberal Mode, just like its tactics, was the one that had proven effective through the Interregnum and therefore helped bring the rest of its coherence.
What should be taken from this study is that the process of Renovation and Interregnum is one that gives the Order flexibility. When the old Mode has run its course, the fallout, rather than the sign of Revolution, is the period by which the new Mode is being created. During the Interregnum the breakdown of the past Mode gives ground that dissidence can rise up, and as the defenders of the Order engage with the dissidents, they create and formulate the next Mode in the process. The Interregnum then ends once the new and effective tactics and approaches to dissidence have been bundled. Once bundled, they are harmonized by the philosophical developments of defenders of the Order and a new Mode begins.
STUDY II: The Current Interregnum
My contention is that we are in an Interregnum now. I argue this because parallel markers that indicated the Postwar Mode’s end have occurred recently, and now the same turbulence that permeated the 1960s & 1970s appears to be here as well. This time the Neoliberal Mode has ended and the Interregnum we’re thrown in holds what will constitute the Renovation and next Mode.
The Neoliberal Mode began with Reagan and continued through Obama. While this was a rather long period, there does not appear to be a clear break that indicates that an Interregnum occurred since the 1960s & 1970s. There have certainly been Modifications. The change from the Cold War to the War on Terror was a very real one. However, this is best understood as a Modification because there was no real break in Modal approach. The approaches that had been employed against the Soviet Union were simply reworked, reconfigured, and expanded to deal with Terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda. The evolution of the transition was visible from Bush Sr., to Clinton, to Bush Jr.. There were also occasional racial riots, moral movements, recessions, and actions against Globalization. The fact is that these were not happening all at the same time and Modifications were able to mollify the disruption sufficiently.
The first indication of a nearing Interregnum was the election of Barack Obama. As with the election of Kennedy, we saw the power efficacy of a new communication medium. Only this time it wasn’t the television, which sank Nixon in his debate with JFK, but rather Facebook and the now dominant power of social media. Like JFK, Obama rose as a figure that glorified the progress of the Neoliberal Mode. He was not only a black American, but had risen from a single mother household, become a lawyer, a professor, and later president. His handling of the 2008 Recession, passage of Obamacare, withdrawal of troops from Iraq, assistance in passing gay marriage, and Iran Nuclear deal all demonstrated that he was capable of making Modifications to disruptions that arose. And yet, like Kennedy, these were insufficient to resolve the disruptions, but rather hold them at bay. In effect, Obama’s election was like Kennedy, the Saturation Point. By the end of his term Occupy Wallstreet had pushed the envelope on inequality, Black Lives Matter had taken to the streets, the Trans Movement had grown in prominence, the Immigrant movement gained traction, Neo-fascists were on the rise and a new Socialist movement was on the march. Obama governed over the Saturation point and then as the Hyper Saturation point had been reached, the Interregnum had begun by the time he left office.
The election of Donald Trump was similar to the election of Nixon at the end of the 60's. The white majority attempted restoration with a president with the slogan “Make America Great Again” that promised to bring back the heyday of the Neoliberal Mode of Reagan, if not farther back. Yet the disintegration of the Mode, the general approach, has only become more clear. The country is demonstrably more divided than it was in 2016 and it is getting progressively worse. Even at the time of writing this, the country, as well as the globe, is caught in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic which acutely demonstrates the incapacity of the system to deal with disruptions effectively. Like Nixon, the Restoration has only made the Interregnum more severe.
Like the 1960s and 1970s, there have been fundamental movements that stand without a coherent ideological structure but are created to deal with real disruptions. The movement by the Trump Administration against illegal immigration is a key example that indicates that a new ideology and Mode is being formed. While Neoliberalism has long accepted illegal immigration, it’s always done so with a blind eye. The economic benefits of immigration have been extensively proven but the reality is that the economic consequences of Neoliberalism have been unaddressed. The desolation of the manufacturing and blue collar workforce, thanks to the outsourcing of Neoliberalism, has left a swath of the population without adequate work or financial stability. As such, the pivot to targeting the illegal immigrant population serves a purpose of providing a scapegoat. The focus of illegal immigration is then a useful tool to redirect antipathy from the ruling classes.
While this is only one of the examples that seems to have arisen so far in this period of the Interregnum, it’s enough to indicate that further structuring is in the works. What this means in concrete terms is that we must be keenly aware of the actions being engaged in, and the tactics being developed. Also the philosophical developments in politics by the Intelligentsia must be paid attention to as it will be from these groups that the new harmonizing philosophy of the next Mode will sprout.
POSTSCRIPT - 2 YEARS LATER -
The above was written in its current form in the Spring of 2020 and left without update. At that time, the Covid 19 Pandemic was still in its early stages and that’s to say nothing of the George Floyd Protests that would occur in June or the Election later in November. I confess it was because of my own concern with being incorrect, ill spoken, and ultimately too cowardly to release it. However, over a year after the election of Joe Biden, it seems safe to say the situation has not changed and I think the analysis of the Interregnum remains as I described. In further writings on this subject, I’ll work to avoid such self-sabotage.
The dynamics as worked out here seem to have remained consistent. The chaos of the pandemic indeed caused a myriad of responses however the centrality of them remained inconsistent. With the federal government under Trump, the back and forth between the medical intelligentsia and the president was a continual seesaw. At the same time, the states developed their own policies, from the most serious ones imposed by the liberal states like New York and California, or the non-existent policies of Texas and especially Florida. The overall result being a further fracturing of consistency between the federal and state governments, and the production of open ground for contention. While the fractures have most clearly been along party lines, this is merely the surface analysis as internal alliance formation and antagonisms between industries, unions, and other competing parties have developed.
Outbursts of public and political violence have also continued, as mentioned with the George Floyd Protests as well as the January 6th storming of the capital. In both instances, very clear political violence by organized groups took ground in unprecedented ways be it the destruction of the Minneapolis Police Station, the autonomous zone in Seattle, or the outright seizure of the US Capitol building. While they demonstrate outright dissension, they also show new degrees by which parts of the population have moved far outside of the control of state and as such new methods have actively been formed to counteract. This includes facial recognition, social media analysis, as well as vigilante doxxing and infiltration
At our current time, one could say there is a great chaos under heaven. The president Joe Biden has proven as infirmed as always thought and his administration as impotent. The congress remains regularly at a stalemate even in Democrat hands, though their loss in the midterms is all but a given. While the pandemic has passed, the distrust of the government and even more seriously, of the rest of the population, remains intense and actively irreconcilable. The result has been the formation of certain strongholds like DeSantis’s Florida. The culture wars have been reignited around Critical Race Theory, Abortion, and Trans rights which subsequently has reopened a more generalized homophobia from the right wing that had lied relatively dormant after the Gay Marriage victory in the Supreme Court. At the state levels, the right wing has installed its social agenda and is likely to find new victories as it takes a number of court cases to the Supreme Court. At this time, the left is forced into another coalition with the liberals as they face a reactionary movement that has more potential than even the Trump landslide in the 2016 election. And still, the dearth of leadership remains in both parties, if particularly acute in the DNC, without any light at the end of the tunnel.
It’s my intention to write further on this subject quite soon, fleshing out the dynamics I’ve described more as well as examining other contours of the phenomena that I’ve not yet touched on. I thank everyone who take the time to read this, and I hope you’ll return for my updates as they come.