<nettime> Ocular facts

[Brian Holmes via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

When we turned on the TV last night, I did not expect to witness the
president of the United States physically losing power before my eyes. But
he did. Barring the ardently desired possibility that Biden should stand
down, Donald Trump's second term began last night.

Pundits say that Biden can do the job of president - he just can't perform
it. That's right, but the failed performance arises from the specific
nature of the job being done. Mainstream Democrats cannot span the
contradiction between globalist imperialism abroad and brutal class war at
home. They have burnt the earth's climate on the altar of war. They have
thrown the progressives and the black, brown and red minorities to the
batons of the police, after lionizing them during the George Floyd
protests. They are unable to stake out an arena where they can express both
a vision, and the means to achieve it. Society stands at a turning point
and they are tongue-tied with fractional numbers.

Sure, the Republicans have solved this contradiction through the creation
of pure fantasies based on outright lies. No doubt about it, and that, too,
was flagrantly visible last night. But with their fantasies and despicable
lies, the Republicans are winning and the Dems are sputtering and drowning
in plain sight of the shore.

What we saw last night was far more than the end of the era that began in
the 1990s, with the Internet and Clintonian globalism. We saw the end of
Franklin Roosevelt's liberal compromise, which offered social democracy at
home in exchange for militarist imperialism abroad. This sense of an ending
was driven home by the two Supreme Court decisions that came down as we
opened the papers this morning: the abrogation of the EPA's power to
effectively regulate corporate activity (the repeal of the Chevron
decision) and the exculpation of the January 6 rioters, who can no longer
be called insurrectionists.

The dam has broken. The flood is rushing down the valley. It takes
incredible courage to stand up and say, "I can stop it. By main force I can
turn the course of this river. I can save your world from being swept away
- by changing that world for the better, and making it unrecognizable to
your former selves."

Without another fact-in-the-eyeballs - the unlikely spectacle of a new and
decisive Democratic candidacy - we have just crossed  a threshold in
history. Despise it as you may, a new world is being born. It's all about
nativism, nationalism and religion. It's driven by a raging bull. It's
headed hell-bent for war. And it has been enabled by the pathetic cowards
who made Joe Biden president, then allowed him to run again toward certain
disaster.

A curse on their house and its rotten foundations. Their walls have no
windows. They can't even see what everyone else just took full in the face.
The end of the former world, with no replacement - only the return of the
unspeakable horrors that marred the twentieth century.

Democrats, dump Joe Biden now. Stand up and make a stab at the future. You
have nothing to lose but your hypocritical illusions.
-- 
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