[-empyre-] Trumpulism

[Alan Sondheim]

- Woke up insomiac, groggy. You write,

"... yes, I put that badly, sorry. What I meant was the fabrication by 
totalitarian orders of an atmosphere where the truth is a consensual lie 
and the difference between the two is in the (potential) force applied: 
I'll say it is so, as long as it what 'most' people agree, despite 
knowing, with 'most' people, it is a lie popularised by the regime... and 
if tomorrow it changes, with 'most' people, with whom I happen to agree, I 
will say yesterday's truth was a lie. But here the force that is applied 
is a kind of consensus from which has been removed every impurity, in the 
evidence of force, in the evidence of any evidence, of fingerprints or any 
human contact, of it having been manipulated, or wrongdoing, ... it is as 
clean as data, clean as an algorithm. (And here perhaps enters 
<<empyre's>> other theme, of a mediated digital culture, of one being 
maintainable or conceivable.)

"The question of what Alan calls "critique-in-opposition" is of an 
immanent critique: the truth (of the opposition) will not puncture the 
bubble (of the consensus) but is a part of its swirling phantasmagoria."

-- I think what you describe is much more a totality than exists on the 
ground here. Totality, totalization. The consensus for one thing isn't a 
consensus; the swirling phantasmagoria (great phrase!) isn't such outside 
of Trump and his comrades literally in arms. What goes on, at least in RI 
and what I've seen elsewhere in the U.S., are very specific local actions 
that produce results - that's a new thing here. What's popularized one way 
or another by the 'regime' has been constantly falling apart, even among 
Trump's followers; an example is the growing realization among them that 
healthcare may be disappearing, and there's pushback of all sorts. The 
difference between T and totalitarianism is that the latter is program- 
matic (Arendt talks about that), within core beliefs and unification - the 
most extreme example for me being Kim Il Sung's juche idea, that the head 
of the state does the thinking and planning for the state, just as the 
head of an organism contains the brain. But that's not what's happening 
here; it may well turn fascist (we worry about T calling out the militia 
sooner or later, starting a war, etc.), but at the moment it's a scatter- 
ing of brutal laws and actions by a government which continually displaces 
itself - opposed by localizations, and all of this an over-ture so to 
speak covering racist / religious / you name it / attacks of all sorts jut 
beneath the surface.

Something reminds me of the French resistance, which romanticized itself, 
found itself as resistance, acted piecemeal, and so forth. Like a lot of 
other resistances, and micro-cultures grow out of these - literatures, and 
here in the U.S. there are artworlds responding in all sorts of ways (for 
example the anthology Resist Much / Obey Little which just came out).

You say above "But here the force that is applied is a kind of consensus 
from which has been removed every impurity, in the evidence of force, in 
the evidence of any evidence, of fingerprints or any human contact, of it 
having been manipulated, or wrongdoing, ... it is as clean as data, clean 
as an algorithm." - which is a brilliant description, but the issue is 
this I think - that in fact all that is occurring _is_ impurity, and the 
incompetence of the regime finds this intolerable. Impurity: in women, in 
Islam, in any culture other than that of white christian - and impurity in 
the decohering of resistance resulting in continuous reorganization.
- Which again is why the military option or other forms of violence 
(immigration agent invasions of neighborhoods, initiating nuclear testing 
again, and so forth) are so utterly dangerous...

Thank you so much for this!, Alan