Re: <nettime> Brexit democracy

[Brian Holmes <bhcontinentaldrift@gmail.com>]

On 11/06/2017 05:13 AM, David Garcia wrote:

> The success of the slogan ‘Take Back Control” is cruscial to understand it speaks to the profound loss of agency that so many of us feel and how for many the capacity to disrupt politics as usual gave Brexit voters a sense of power.
This is spot on for the United States as well. Alas, in our country the 
wording for a very similar sentiment was very different: "Build That 
Wall." The many degrees of hatred condensed in such a statement have 
made it almost impossible to have any conversations with core Trump 
voters, who definitely want to hang on to their sense of empowerment. 
However, you can have conversations with centrist people who simply 
never would have spoken to strangers about politics before. Not just the 
Republicans, but also the plutocracy, the corrupt Democratic 
establishment and sometimes even the police and the military are 
critiqued in ways that were formerly taboo. Universal health care and 
climate change mitigation are increasingly seen by the Center Left as 
urgent needs. But it's tough to get to the three key questions: How do 
we restore democratic equality? Who is the 'we'? And is 'restore' the 
right word?
The Right has presented us with the demand for system change. So doing, 
they have responded to a deep and fully justified anxiety which the 
Democrats - and to some extent, even the post-68 Left - could not voice. 
But it's clear that Trump cannot produce the change, only its 
media-driven, hate-drenched simulacrum. The real thing is so much harder 
to achieve. It requires a political, economic, philosophical and even 
spiritual shift in each of the people who would be its agents. You 
cannot get that from a single leader or a single doctrine, much less a 
slogan. I can only speak from my own narrow position in society, among 
academics, artists and activists in a Midwestern city. Before we could 
successfully argue with Republicans on a train, we would have to have 
much deeper conversations among ourselves, while at the same time 
becoming much more sensitive to worlds beyond our enclosing spheres.
Brian
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