Don't Look Up - Review

Don't Look Up is a brilliant critique of neoliberalism, even better than They Live (if that's possible).

 

They Live's villains are non-human, and as such at least their behaviour makes sense. They're aliens out to colonize earth and pollution is used to "de-terraform" the environment so they can live here more comfortably. The type of evil they represent is kind of obvious, schlock-horror movie stuff.

 

But DLU's baddies are brilliant precisely because they're all too human. They really are "not smart enough to be as evil as you're giving them credit for". They really would endanger everyone on Earth just to make a few bucks and prove an ideological point.

 

As we saw at Chernobyl, hell, as we saw before World War II when an obviously mad dictator was threatening the world, elites just stood around or even tried to make money out of it - until it was too late. And now, with climate change - the same process. Ordinary people with half a clue can see that it's a disaster, and politicians and the rich just stand around and get richer. And the film dramatizes that brilliantly, I think.

 

BTW, I call dibs on the comet metaphor, Hollywood!

Why don't we have dictators?

Maybe the reason that dictatorship never really took off in the Anglo-Saxon world is that our ruling classes don't need to impose a dictatorship - they already have absolute control over the country.

Even Mao-Tse Tung, Stalin and Hitler did not go as far as to make swimming illegal. David Cameron did. (He also passed laws which would see the following activities criminalized: Skateboarding, walking dogs, passing out leaflets, busking, running, cycling, sleeping and sitting down, as well as napping, shouting, climbing trees, and feeding the birds.)

Boating on the boating lake is a serious crime!

 

Comfortably nested and sclerotic, the British ruling class face no external threats and no internal rivals. Unlike Fascists, they don't have to resort to mass murder to preserve the existing order, and unlike Communists, they do not have to purge an existing order themselves. They are the existing order, one which has existed since 1066 and shows no sign of losing power a millennium later. Open warfare, mass genocide, political purges, civil wars? That stuff were all settled centuries ago. We just don't do that anymore.

Literally - our last genocide was over a hundred years ago, and nobody even remembers it. Even the notoriously tenacious IRA have called it a day and quit. (fortunately - I am NOT an apologist for terrorism!)

All our rulers have to deal with these days are a few working class Johnnies, who are for the most part shut up in large cities away from "decent folk" (ie, rich people). If we stray out of our little bantustans a few Bobbies will suffice to herd us back where we belong but otherwise, all's good in the hood for those toffee nosed fuckers.

Remember the Beanfield!

Also, people don't fight for their rights - so they have none. Britain is so depressingly tame; beneath the radical pose, our activists are pussies when it comes right down to it. After all these years, they still don't understand that class conflict takes place in the terrain of everyday life, not the battlefield of the Spectacle. You can have all the riots you like, we'll still have to go to work in the morning, live in overpriced, rabbit-hutch accommodation, play in controlled, contrived corporate nightmares little different to our workplaces.

And we'll be happy. That's their secret. Somehow, for some reason, most people in this country are happy with their lot. The government treats them like shit, but they love it. They enjoy being treated with contempt - unless of course the people dishing it out aren't in power. Then they get pissy - not so much because they feel insulted by how patronizing liberals and socialists can be, but because liberals and socialists are "getting above their station". They're upsetting the "natural order" which my overly-deferential countryfolk worship like a god - constantly and unconsciously.

How fucked up do you have to be to admire these things?

All of which changes our entire problem from a political one to a personal one: How do I exist in such a suffocating society when I'm the only one who actually feels suffocated by it? Drugs suit some people. Others, insanity. Still others play revolutionary, like those role-playing games that are so popular: LARPers, as they say.

But let's deconstruct this problem we have with deferentialness. I think it comes down to the rural mentality. Anglo-Saxons never really urbanized psychologically, even as they were among the first mass urban societies since ancient times. Perhaps it came too early. In Britain they speak with provincial accents even in the middle of big cities, while in the US they do not entirely retain the same rustic mentality, elections there are rigged to ensure their large rural population has enough political power to decide a Presidential election even with three million fewer votes than the "loser". Meanwhile Australia is still actually a predominantly rural society - as is Canada. 

Culturally, Anglo deference shares the same origins: The British peasantry. We have never quite shaken that off. The Russians and French murdered their aristocracy, the German Kaiser abdicated in disgrace, and the other Euro-monarchs have all succumbed to some degree of humility, made some concession to democracy, if not outright Republicanism - but we have always worshipped the royals, the aristocracy, and the rich, and that is our main problem: We have a peasants' worldview.

On the nose. PS: Please don't sue me!

 

Perhaps the greatest irony of modern anti-racism is that, far from considering themselves a master race, the problem with white people is that they are so submissive to those in power that they cannot countenance anyone overthrowing their masters for any reason - and will fight tooth and nail to retain their own chains, let alone those of other people. Of course the bastards are racist - they're even bigoted against themselves!

Until that stops, until we see working class consciousness and working class unity, nothing will ever change. People in Anglo-Saxon societies will continue to be dominated by the same arseholes who have run the show for a thousand years: The rich.

Until then, like the song says: Pray for daylight. Or you could always make it happen!

https://iww.org.uk/

https://www.acorntheunion.org.uk/contact

A Spectacular stock market? Or, Guy Debord finally gets his day in the sun!

The Economist published a fascinating editorial that, fortunately, I believe disproves itsself. The thesis of which is that the Situationists were right and political economy is now completely spectacular. 

The thesis, written in an offhand way in an article about overvalued markets, goes like this: On top of the already notorious spectacular politics, we have a spectacular stock market which provides only the illusion of a free market, but whose real purpose is to provide bread-and-circuses style entertainment and a way for ordinary people to feel as if they are participating and can even "beat the system" - as seen in movements such as /r/WallStreetBets.

Such a theory has consequences: It follows from this that in reality, the economy is completely divided up between the big corporations and politicians, effectively it is a planned economy, though not a socialist one. This not only isn't theoretical, it isn't even a secret - the economy is openly manipulated by governments and corporations - as we all know, the real conspiracies take place in plain sight.

Spectacular stock markets, therefore, are basically a safety valve, one which replaces Leftist activism and even improves on it by preventing people from thinking outside of the system and potentially making participants rich. 

Spectacular Leftism (as opposed to actual organizing, such as trade union activism) had a very real problem, in that, by definition, it must not only not promise to make most participants wealthy, it actively promises to make participants poor. 

 I used to hang around with crusties myself because I actually was poor, rather than a wannabe, and I can tell you from brutal experience that "activism" of this sort promises a penitents' life of cold water, abandoned buildings, and regular beatings while stockmarket "activism" (or just participation) promises to buy you a house, put your kids through college, pay for your granny's operation, etc, etc, etc.

So anyway: It's all a lie, the stock market is bread and circuses, they've done an end run around us, and blah, blah, blah. It's got legs, I guess.

However, if this were entirely true, it would not be in the editorial page of The Economist. People may conspire in plain sight these days, but they  do not like to admit certain things even to themselves, such as "our profession is a complete fucking joke and we are all being taken for fools by even more powerful elitists than ourselves."

Situationism / Debordism is all very well and good, but like a lot of left wing philosophy it has the potential of turning into a weapon of the system, a weapon against change. It has a self defeating core that says "Hey guys you're all actually in the Matrix, nothing you do can actually change anything, it's all the Spectacle, don't even bother" - that's a counsel of despair, and anyone who promotes despair is not your friend.

I mean, it was in The Economist!