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Capitalism has reached its endpoint, blind to its death march


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2016 Dec 5, 12:17pm   6,360 views  13 comments

by CaltRightCrazy   ➕follow (0)   💰tip   ignore  

A more theoretical language produced by Marx talked about alienation as a separation from the fruits of one’s labor and later through the Frankfurt School’s notion of the culture of instrumental rationality, which has made a comeback in the new data-driven culture that is sweeping US society. Yet, traditional forms of alienation and the audit culture we now live in have evolved into something new and more poisonous. The culture of atomization and isolation under the current regime of neoliberalism is more extensive and governs the entirety of social life in a consumer-based society run by the demands of commerce and the financialization of everything. Isolation, privatization and the cold logic of instrumental rationality have created a new kind of social formation and social order in which it becomes difficult to form communal bonds, deep connections, a sense of intimacy and long-term commitments. Neoliberalism has created a ruling-class society of monsters for whom pain and suffering are now viewed as entertainment, warfare is viewed as a permanent state of existence, and militarism is viewed as the most powerful force shaping masculinity. Politics has taken an exit from ethics and thus the issue of social costs is divorced from any form of intervention in the world. This is the ideological metrics of political zombies. The keyword here is atomization and it is the curse of both neoliberal societies and democracy itself.

What must be remembered is that US politics is not simply representative of the death of reason and the emergence of a raw, unblemished, intense stupidity; it is also about the death of the formative cultures that make thinking possible. Manufactured thoughtlessness produces not only an inattentiveness to the never-ending task of critique; it is the failure of conscience and moral witnessing. Reminiscent of Francisco Goya’s “The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters,” the scourge of stupidity sweeping US culture represents a war against thought and critical agency, and flirts with a kind of fascistic irrationality, which lies at the heart of the spectacle of violence engulfing US society. The triumph of stupidity and manufactured ignorance is on full display in US political life and is matched by a savage militarization of the culture, an intensified level of daily violence and aggression, the withering of the social, and the withdrawal into private obsessions. Citizens have now become consumers, smothering in a fog of exaggerated self-interest.

How else to explain the pure idiocy that now permeates the political sphere with the climate change deniers, advocates of creationism, those urging a war against women’s reproductive rights and the financial elite who are waging an assault on all forms of public and higher education, and so it goes. In a society in which social relations are reduced to a form of social combat and thinking collapses into a hypermasculine adulation of self-interest and what Hannah Arendt called thoughtlessness, there is no room for thinking, only the madness of violence, cruelty and misery, dressed up in the lie that the market should govern all social relations. But the posture of stupidity has another darker side; it becomes a way to flee from all forms of social responsibility and to hide the totalitarian interests that it legitimates. Power now thrives on stupidity, not simply the ignorance that ties the public to dominant forms of oppression, but to a form of stupidity that colonizes power and thrives on a form of mental and ethical tranquilization. James Baldwin was so right when he said, “It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.”

Absorbed in privatized orbits of consumption, commodification and display, Americans vicariously participate in the toxic pleasures of the authoritarian state. Violence has become the organizing force of a society driven by a noxious notion of privatization in which it becomes difficult for ideas to be lifted into the public realm. Under such circumstances, politics is eviscerated because it now supports a market-driven view of society that has turned its back on Hannah Arendt’s insistence that “Humanity is never acquired in solitude.” This violence against the social mimics not just the death of the radical imagination, but also a notion of banality made famous by Arendt who argued that at the root of totalitarianism was a kind of thoughtlessness, an inability to think, and a type of outrageous stupidity in which “[t]here’s simply the reluctance ever to imagine what the other person is experiencing.”

#pepescuckssucks

Comments 1 - 13 of 13        Search these comments

1   Ceffer   2016 Dec 5, 12:22pm  

The Marxist experiment failing scores of times with tragic consequences to the populaces is no reason to stop believing in it. Society can be a free shit dispenser indefinitely and still work!

2   Entitlemented   2016 Dec 5, 12:30pm  

zzyzzx is deplorable says

that at the root of totalitarianism was a kind of thoughtlessness, an inability to think, and a type of outrageous stupidity in which “[t]here’s simply the reluctance ever to imagine what the other person is experiencing.”

Yes, it was beyond thoughtless to implement NAFTA, and the effects are tearing the nation apart. Those whos world has been snuffed out by NAFTA and seeing the exponential division caused by the left by doubling down is terrible for all. For those who have been out of the workforce, have been force fed propaganda that the people who wanted to create jobs, create more innovation are the cause. This blame casting onto the ones that wanted to preserve and even expand R&D and Manufacturing.

3   MisdemeanorRebel   2016 Dec 5, 12:33pm  

"If only I could create a fake account to troll Trumpeteers into reading my left wing propaganda about 'colonizing power' and other buzzwords." - Fake zzyzzx

The most ridiculous is the bit about warfare and masculinity: Some of the greatest advocates for endless Neolib-con intervention in the US are women - Pelosi, Boxer (huge MIC boosters), Hillary Clinton, Victoria Nuland, Obama saber-rattlers Marie Harf and Jen Psaki, and Samantha Powers.

I don't give too much of a shit about Women's Reproductive Rights because men have no reproductive rights at all.

4   Entitlemented   2016 Dec 5, 12:35pm  

Many Dems are apologetic for the situation that they helped create with high tech job loss in many sectors, but you still see those, even those who stood on that Debate stage in 1993 claiming over and over that NAFTA was going to be great for the USA.

So much for poor lies, good lies, Rhetorics, and da_ _ lies.

5   joeyjojojunior   2016 Dec 5, 12:40pm  

It's truly amazing that folks on here try to tie NAFTA to the Democratic party. I mean, it wasn't all that long ago and it's pretty easy to use a search engine to see which party was the engine behind NAFTA. It's the same party that champions all causes that benefit the rich. The one that always stumps for cap gains tax elimination, inheritance tax elimination, lower top tax rates, etc.

6   CaltRightCrazy   2016 Dec 5, 12:43pm  

Ceffer says

Society can be a free shit dispenser indefinitely and still work!

Government must exclusively benefit investors because of trickle down = wrong! wrong! wrong!

40 more years of that farce is not going to make it right.

There's nothing wrong if some of the shit goes to the electorate, like the growing defenseless class at the bottom, some working 3 gigs to qualify for food stamps.

7   CaltRightCrazy   2016 Dec 5, 12:44pm  

obligatory:

@Thunderlips is Tovbot2 is triggered

8   curious2   2016 Dec 5, 1:31pm  

Thunderlips is Tovbot2 says

The most ridiculous is the bit about warfare and masculinity: Some of the greatest advocates for endless Neolib-con intervention in the US are women....

I Liked your comment though felt ambivalent about some parts of it. I suspect based on evolutionary theory and anecdotal observation an inherent association between warfare and masculinity. As bucks lock horns to prove superior strength and dominance, and thereby gain mating opportunities, heterosexual males seem to have a disproportionate tendency to seek out similar opportunities. Correspondingly, a significant subset of females seem to encourage that. You listed some politicians, whose individual motivations might differ somewhat from the average, but I have seen females who seem to like the thought of males fighting for them, and to encourage that, and it seems possibly instinctive.

Regarding reproductive rights and STIs, I hope advancing technlogy will address both. Someday a male pill or strategically placed heating device might increase further males' ability to exercise reproductive rights. Likewise the increasing availability of female/receptive condoms might prevent unintended pregnancies and STIs.

9   MisdemeanorRebel   2016 Dec 5, 1:58pm  

zzyzzx is deplorable says

@Thunderlips is Tovbot2 is triggered

Not really, that was more amused and sarcastic. I wonder whether you are neplusultra or one of the other triggered cowards who stopped posting the moment it became apparent that the Pundits' chances of her 98% winning the election didn't seem to be coming true, and are now doing so under a new account.

Low Energy!

Psst: Hannah Arendt was a snotty little JAP who fell in love with nazi-accommodating serial adulterer Heidegger at 19. Hence her lifetime need to make Reactionary-fueled mass murder into a cold, bureaucratic, boring process (based on a few hours at a trial, during a week they were going over particularly dry documents), normalizing what was a particularly unusual situation. The only banality of evil is the lengths a Pretentious Academic Alpha Widow will go to come up with apologetica to justify her Vagina Tingles.

http://www.heartfield.org/love.htm

10   zzyzzx   2016 Dec 5, 4:37pm  

joeyjojojunior says

It's truly amazing that folks on here try to tie NAFTA to the Democratic party.

11   lostand confused   2016 Dec 5, 5:05pm  

Just imagine if the gold standard of trade deals-the TPP- had been signed. if Hillary won, Obama would have rushed and signed it.

12   HEY YOU   2016 Dec 5, 8:36pm  

Well written thread & good comments.
We will have no more of this.
This is patnet.
Trolling only from this point forward.
Understand?

zzyzzx says

It's truly amazing that folks on here try to tie NAFTA to the Democratic party.

George H.W. Bush was a not so silent partner.
"PEROT: [to Bush]: You implement NAFTA, the Mexican trade agreement, where they pay a dollar an hour, have no health care, no retirement, no pollution controls, etc., and you're going to hear a giant sucking sound of jobs being pulled out of this country. We don't have good trade agreements across the world."

http://www.ontheissues.org/celeb/George_Bush_Sr__Free_Trade.htm

I realized a long time ago there wasn't much I alone could do but I try.
Guess we can laugh even though this FUBAR is FUBARed.

www.youtube.com/embed/CZGk_wVgq_0

13   MisdemeanorRebel   2016 Dec 5, 10:18pm  

Mexico pays a dollar an hour.

The TPP has an important "Labour Protection" clause, that guarantees $1/day. That's right, per day. Giant Sucking Sound would be like the Merry Maid from Spaceballs if that was signed.

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