Re: <nettime> what exactly is breaking?

[Felix Stalder <felix@openflows.com>]

On 02.06.20 19:48, tbyfield wrote:
> These kinds of language games aren't as silly as they might seem at
> first glance, because pop phrases like that hint — as if through a glass
> or scanner darkly — diffuse assumptions about where we see ourselves
> historically. A world where people are drawn to seeing anything and
> everything as *broken* is a world in the past tense; all you can do is
> *rebuild* — another word that tracks "is broken" with almost hilarious
> precision...

Perhaps I was unclear, or insufficiently versed US conservative
rhetoric, but my intention was not inquire about things that
are broken (and hence in need of fixing) but about historical
discontinuities, about possible breaks with established patterns that
open up space for new dynamics, for the better or worse.

For example, the decline of trsut in institutions of liberal democracy
-- parliaments, elected governments, the press, the judicial system,
science and so on -- has been long and steady. More than 60% of
Americans trusted in US gov on the late 1960s, less than 20% do it
today. Internationally, this is perhaps decline is perhaps even
steeper.

But for a long time, relatively little happened, Legitimacy eroded,
but the institutions staggered on. No reforms, no alternatives. But
this cannot go on for ever. At some point, something breaks. Quite
arguably, the breaking point was the election of Trump/Johonson etc.
Of course, one can argue that someone like Trump is the effect of the
post-Nixon turn of the republican party, but at some point, the effect
becomes the cause for something quite different. But which effect and
cause for what, if anything?


Felix





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