American Dystopia
When Margaret Thatcher escaped the IRA’s bombing of the Brighton hotel on 12 October 1984, she immediately used it as political capital. She decided to continue the Conservative conference as normal, and was given a standing ovation by delegates as she entered the stage just six and a half hours after the explosion.
No doubt this is what MAGA is hoping and everyone else is fearing in America right now after … whatever it is we have just witnessed.
Zach Beauchamp has written (‘America is not ready for what comes next‘): “We should all be terrified about what comes next …The ultimate fear is a cycle of violence akin to Italy’s “Years of Lead”: a roughly 15-year period beginning in 1969 in which extreme left and extreme right militias perpetrated a spree of bombings and assassinations.”
But this is to assume that the present is a state of peace. It is not. The America that has produced Trump is a society saturated in violence, historically founded on colonialism and genocide and currently armed to the teeth. From John Wilkes Booth to Charles J. Guiteau, to Leon Czolgosz, to Lee Harvey Oswald (allegedly) to John Hinkley Jr, the presidential timeline is smeared by assassination. Minority communities face state violence on a daily basis and the USA is sponsoring genocide against the people of Palestine as we speak. But violence is asymmetrical. Condemnation of violence is not evenly distributed. As the anti-imperialist writer Sara Bafo notes: “Violence is only condemned when the political elite are targeted. Violence committed by the political elite is legitimatised and applauded when dropping bombs in the global south murdering people.”
Trump’s own language and rallies are riddled with violence, as are his mob events from Charlottesville to the January 6th. Listen to Trump speak about his opponents and there is always a thread of threat. It’s hard not to watch this latest American nightmare unfold and think that violence begets violence.
Within moments the memeification of the event kicked-in with instant conspiracies that it was staged, a ‘false flag’ event and the American ‘left’ (if it can be called that) using all of the bile and viciousness of the QAnon madness back on the MAGA culture. ‘Ketchup’ was trending as quickly as ‘Civil War’, as were photoshopped images of Trump as Van Gogh. This is a society that has degenerated together, the warning signs of online post-literacy and a post-truth political culture are a collective experience, not one confined to the ‘deplorables’.
This is a society that has completely normalised mass shootings in schools and allowed the NRA and other gun-lobby groups to capture their politics. It is packed with far-right armed militias and has been priming itself for this moment for decades. We are told that the twenty-year-old who shot at Trump used an AR-15, the same sniper assault rifle that Republicans proudly wear as a pin badge. As Joe Gallina has written: “As we process this news about Donald Trump’s assassination attempt in Pennsylvania, remember the shooter didn’t act alone. He was assisted by 220 Republican House members, 49 Senators, and the NRA who have consistently blocked gun safety.”
But now the grotesque becomes divine and the ascent of Trump from Sideshow Bob to President is assured. The semi-religious nature of the MAGA Cult and its alliances with the actual religious far-right will mean inevitably that Trump’s status will be elevated by these events, macabre as that might seem.
What comes next is unclear, there is already a war in the spin rooms of social media to make sense of the madness and weaponise the narrative. Trump’s modus operandi is big rallies to speak directly to people and for his ‘message’ to radiate out to electoral communities. Is that even possible any more? If not, that itself will be used as an example of Trump being suppressed shut down and cancelled. As America descends further into violent mayhem the hope will be that this is a moment for change and healing. But Trump’s optics in the immediate aftermath suggest otherwise ‘FIGHT’ he mouths to his supporters and your timeline as he is bundled away.
Greetings from The Belly of the Beast, the Godfather of the imperialist crime family collectively known as “the West,” where faithful capos, triggermen, & soldiers both literal and figurative, “manage” the territories as our Fourth Reich “does business.” Endlessly proclaimed a democracy, it is nothing of the sort; it is a demockery, its elections–held up as the sole, necessary criterion as proof of rule by the people–massively, steadily amputated, pruned, reduced to two parties both dependent on streams of millions of dollars to meet the expense of campaign advertising and infrastructure–in fact an electoral casino, with high rollers the only ones with a chance at success. Truth is an outlaw in the eyes of America–that’s a line from a song by The Jefferson Airplane, written when insurgency of a very different type gave hope to an era and generation gave real hope of creating democracy for the first time in this nation. Julian Assange was the intended example to one and all what becomes of wayward people who insist on truth…but that one didn’t quite pan out. Well, no matter–there is still NDAA, under whih anyone can be “disappeared” now, today, with no access to a lawyer, at a site unknown, to be subjected to acts not publicized, and for which camps have already been allocated. America’s famous ”freedoms” are all decorative bunting on the executioner’s scaffolding, a Potemkin bric-a-brac for those happy to accept officially approved appearances as substantive reality. Wide swathes of the population know things are widely and wildly amiss, largely due to the availability of internet-mediated news. Not all information is controlled…not quite yet. And all this is just framing the situation, the circumstance “on the ground,” in Fortress Amerika. Anyone who looks to this nation as an exemplar or protector of human rights is at best deluded. The reality of what our 1% rulers intend and carry out, is daily endured by the wretched people of Palestine…and many other locales not so well publicized. As the US goes, the world goes–here not a statement of grandiosity or triumphalist posturing, but a warning. The basic ecological rule: what goes around, comes around. Consider what is happening to the UK–is it so very different?
All true, Daniel, and while hardly a new analysis, it is the reality which too many deny or gloss over.
But the challenge remains to find paths to change it?
How can the imperial monster be broken up and its power dispersed?
I so hope you’re wrong but fear not. Sowing the wind and reaping the whirlwind comes to mind. We need to make sure our society turns away from this barbarism
You reap what you sow.
So the AR-15 has gone from “Armalite Rifle” to “Assault Rifle” to, now, “Sniper Assault Rifle”???
I was totally on-board with you until the “Sniper Assault Rifle” assertion. I’m even generous enough to ignore the “assault rifle” part because it’s become it’s become ingrained in the misinformation lexicon. To refer to the AR-15 as a “sniper rifle”, however, is a bridge too far. It reveals a level of ignorance on the subject that negates anything else you have to say. If someone uses a pellet gun to snipe someone, it doesn’t make the pellet gun a “sniper rifle” but you clearly don’t know that.
The sad irony is you’ve added yourself to the the host of “online post-literacy” illiterati.
@Veterans For Peaceful Dissent, serious question, though my first example is from gaming. In Fallout 4, there are extensive modifications (mods) that can be made to ballistic (and other) weapons. The nomenclature of the weapons changes appropriately and there are lots of hybrid configurations. We also see that replica weapons can be converted into lethal weapons with mods in real life. So, clumsy naming apart, we don’t need to imagine that every firearm in USAmerican hands is factory-standard, do we? Some modifications could be made, or factory-variants with addition of a scope, stabilising and ranging components, to a standard pattern?
I didn’t write any of those things? You seem confused
It is basic psychology that those who celebrate genocide of indigenous peoples, racialised chattel slavery, violent misogyny, religious persecution (and so on) will fear retribution one way or another.
#karmaphobia
Does anyone outside this deeply sick polity and its Armageddonist lackeys still think NATO is a good idea?
I mean, this is the rogue state/evil empire/Great Satan that refuses to ratify “the most widely-ratified international human rights treaty in history” (UNICEF) which is obviously of such relevance to the ongoing Israeli genocide of Palestinians, the school shootings in the USA, reparations for indigenous residential schools, the possible resumption of the execution of minors, the right to education… And why refuse to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child?
https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/jul/09/child-marriage-laws
Well, and then there’s National Security Cinema, the role of the CIA in funding and directing the Arts in Europe after WW2, and probably next on my reading list USAmerican necolonialism in Africa. We’re allied to this?
As usual you have gotten to the heart of the matter right away.
Might the “world’s biggest madhouse” be heading for another civil war?
And yet, there are 11 million illegal immigrants living there and many, many millions more who would like to live there.
Just as there are people paying large sums of money and risking – and, sadly losing – their life to get out of France and into the failed state of Britain. Few of these seem eager to continue their journey till they reach Scotland.
“post truth”????
Ask any woman in Scotland or if your prefer Palestine