Let me first say that it is refreshing to receive a comment on my work by such an apparently knowledgeable and politically-aware citizen.  It is an honor to debate with people such as yourself, considering the fact that such awareness is so often lacking in our culture. 

However, whilst mulling over your points, I found myself thinking “who is he arguing with?”, because most of your points I have no difficulty digesting as ones that I myself share.  I was therefore quick to derive that you don’t altogether grasp the particularity of my position (as perhaps you would were you to have read all the articles in my blog), but you rather have made certain crude deductions about my views based on those social factors to which I am opposed.  It seems that you presuppose the truth of certain socially-constructed binaries, such as the mainstream conception of left/right, conservative/liberal, and thus place me in a certain narrowly-defined category of “liberal” or “socialist” that I myself do not in any way endorse.

So, for the sake of clarity, let me dissect these presuppositions in the hopes of outlining the fact that much of your comments were superfluous in the sense that you were not actually addressing me at all, but perhaps some other “leftist” who I have long not shared ground with.

Firstly, your remarks on the “liberal faith in individualism” attests to your association of the word “liberal” with the liberal/conservative dichotomy in mainstream social discourse.  However, this is not the “liberal” of which I was speaking.  There is a large difference between what people crudely call “liberal” and the theory of liberalism (as espoused by thinkers such as John Locke, Rousseau, John Stuart Mill, and, most recently, John Rawls, to name but a few).  Liberalism grounds its entire theoretical framework on the conception of the individual as divorced from the social context in which it is derived.  Therefore, they naturalize the individual and silence the social history that actually made such a notion of the individual possible.  While there are forms of liberal theory that critique capitalism, liberalism’s rise was entwined with and certainly supports the maintenance of capitalism’s success, for capitalism feeds on an individualistic, atomized society.  Thus, you may begin to be seeing how your points about coercive state measures at the expense of individual “free choice” are completely misplaced, for I was in no way arguing that “liberals” (of your definition) always allow individuals to make free decisions.  I was referring to the mythical foundation of Western political society, liberal individualism, a mythology that grounds the economic platforms of both American parties, Republican and Democrat.  In fact, your apparent support of unfettered free choice is actually derivative of this Western liberal faith in individualism, because you presuppose that the ideal political system is one in which all forms of coercion that affect the choices of individuals are absent.

Liberalism is, in this sense, an ideology, and one that no Westerner can find himself outside of, and which is in no way “leftist” or related to socialism, as you seem to be insinuating.  While we cannot escape the way our identity is entrenched in liberalism, we nonetheless have the capacity to critique it in the name of “justice”, however ambiguously defined, a motivating “justice” that invests momentum towards a future social structure that is wholly “other”, another society whose character we cannot know, for its idiosyncracies will arise out of the political ramifications of those movements that are able to visualize the injustices that plague our contemporary social situation and attempt to move beyond them.  Therefore, I wholly agree with you that “socialism” is not the alternative, at least as it is traditionally conceived.  But I do not agree that simply due to the fact that historically represented forms of state socialism have failed this means that we should give up on anti-capitalist political energies.  Any attempt at revolution that posits a particularly defined structure as its ultimate objective is bound to fail, because that very structure’s definition was created through the spectacles of the present ideological apparatus, hence it is wholly a PART of that apparatus.  This is why socialism has not worked, because traditional socialism is only understandable and cohesive so long as it has capitalism as it’s enemy.  If capitalism is gone, socialism’s integrity dissolves. 

You seem to have fallen victim to the myth that current ways of viewing politics are the only way to view politics.  You cling to the “no better system” argument, which, in my view, stifles political energies and mobilizes apathy, because you believe that to be dissident must mean that you have a policy proposal of economic alternatives.  As I do not believe in utopia or the “perfect” society, I am an advocate of eternal political transmutation and critique; I advocate micro-politics and believe that the only possible radical action will come as a result of providing people with the tools to understand the ways in which they are ideologically shaped to their profound detriment.  Education, in this manner, gives rise to political energies that will transform society without the need for wholly defined conceptions of the “society to come”.   

I do appreciate the point made about Jesus not agreeing with coercive social programs.  My point was not necessarily that Jesus was a state socialist, but that we would have been a theoretical Marxist, a la Marx’s Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, where he lays out his conception of the species-being that idealizes the communal orientation of existence, one that perceives our neighbour as a brother (however masculinist) and not an economic competitor.

To close, I need to make some statements and ask some questions about the comments that you ended with, because some of the implications you make are completely disturbing to me, mostly concerning your talk of Europe.  First of all, I live in Europe (London, to be precise), and am very aware of the political problems at issue here.  First of all, you seem to be utilizing Europe as an example of how socialism has failed, but I don’t think any of us should fall victim to the false notion that Europe is in any way “socialist”.  Yes, Europe has more social programs, but this is because many of these countries have a larger welfare state than the United States, and the welfare state is not socialism.  I concur that the welfare states in these countries are facing dilemmas due to a diminishing workforce and other factors, but this point does not provide sufficient reason to argue that universal healthcare and regulated working hours are unmanageable.  That’s just not a good argument.

Furthermore, your point about Italian men living at home shows a complete lack of understanding for Italian culture in general.  This is not as a result, as you say, of Italian men “not bothering to grow up”.  What a shamefully crude misunderstanding.  More Italian men live at home, because it has been a long-standing cultural reality in Italy that families stay together in one household far longer than in countries like the United States.  This is a cultural difference, not a cultural fault.  You are naturalizing your own culture’s familial norms in order to criticize another’s.  That’s just ignorance.  

“Wanton immigration”, something you seem to criticize, would only be possible if people had a need to emigrate.  Certainly, if their country had the resources necessary to provide some semblence of economic security, they would have no desire to leave the country where their entire identity is rooted.  Yet, this intensified rate of immigration is intrinsically connected to the profound economic disparities across nations that arise as a result of unfettered global capitalism.  Thus, if you are so opposed to immigration, perhaps you should be a little more critical of the capitalism that is inciting it.

Additionally, France now has a conservative government, a government that got into power by fomenting French fear around issues of immigration.  Yet, the economic system that Nicolo Sarkozy advocates depends on that immigration.  Thus, the rebellious “youths” of which you speak are those who are understandably frustrated by the xenophobic, unjust environment that Sarkozy created, and in which they are finding themselves as second-class citizens.  Accordingly, this xenophobia arose through a conservative propaganda program that projected the blame for French economic hardships onto the “aliens” in their country, a blame displaced from its appropriate target, the unsustainable structure of a capitalist state.  We Americans can consider ourselves familiar with such a phenomenon, as American economic downturn becomes increasingly associated with the Mexicans “stealing our jobs.”  Thus, there is absolutely no relation between French social programs and the dissent of marginalized immigrants.  Quite the contrary, these social upsets arrive from a collision of the cross-boundary emigration of global capitalism and a population manipulated through racist propaganda, disallowing them the opportunity for a more just alternative: conceiving new forms of identity that include these immigrants as “French citizens” and not malevolent foes.

I certainly agree that any establishment of Sharia law in a nation would be a scary prospect indeed, but the fear that you seem to hold is not legitimate based on one very important factor.  All nations of Eastern Europe have a profound interest in joining the European Union for the stable economic security that it promises.  And since the European Union will never allow a nation to join its ranks with a political regime based on Sharia law, you can be guaranteed that this talk of Sharia law will ever come to any serious fruition.  Economic interests will always debunk religious when it comes to the nation-state’s capacity to join the EU.

Finally, I have no idea what you could possibly be implying through your point about a new Mosque being constructed in the East London neighborhood where the 2012 Olympics will be held.  London has long had a large Muslim population, certainly more than any city in the United States, but one of the most profound beauties of London is its vast diversity.  You seem to touch on this point as some sort of frightening development, but from the way I see it, any presupposition that would think a new place for individuals to worship in accordance with their particular faith to be threatening is a completely unjust one that should be eradicated.  Why not find equally terrifying the prospect of Christians building a church in the same area?  I can only presume that you have fallen victim to the very unfortunate American fallacy of conflating Islam, an inherently peaceful religion, with the very particular minority forms of it exemplified in such realities as Sharia law and terrorism.  This is like saying that the Ku Klux Klan is an accurate representation of Christian values.  Ultimately, this is a product of Bush administration propaganda, not truth.  Forgive me, but only an American brainwashed by such rhetoric could find such significance in a Mosque near the Olympics.  Londoners, however, are quite used to Mosques, as we have an opportunity of engaging, working, and living alongside Muslims peacefully on a daily basis.

I can understand your misunderstanding of many of my arguments and statements, and I am grateful to you for the opportunity of clarifying some of them.  Ultimately, my education and interests are in theory and the power it holds to enlighten us to certain manners through which we come to conceive of the world.  At the end of the day, the politics of the Republicans and the Democrats are symptoms of the same disease, and it is my project to best understand this disease.  I do not have a socially-structured solution, for I think that to pretend to have one is counter-productive at best.  The truth, for me, is not in the solution; it is in the critical understanding and mobilized activity that this entails.
I cannot know what lies on the horizon.  I only know that I must approach it.

A dear friend, motivated by her interest in the subject, asked me to write a piece on physician-assisted suicide.  In my sheer excitement of feeling that my thoughts are actually worth something to someone, I have attempted to sort out my position on a topic that I grappled with previously in a paper for my masters, for which I was graded less well than I’d have liked.  I will therefore avoid the points that led to my academic demise.  On that silly and probably irrelevant note, the following is dedicated to Emily.

The 2002 debacle regarding Terri Schaivo’s withdrawn feeding tube indicates that physician-assisted suicide is a topic that foments intensely disparate opinions.  However, we often find that the opposing sides of the debate do more to restage another battle in America’s liberal/conservative culture war than to actually provide legitimate arguments for their conclusions.  However, it is my stipulation that both fundamentally rely on “religious” notions to ground their arguments, be they of a Christian or secular variety.  For the Christian, talk of “playing God” and the “sanctity of life” become power points; while for the liberal, the “rights of the individual” becomes the platform of debate.  It is important to acknowledge that both sides of the argument rely on particular “faiths” in that they posit a particular ideology that is presupposed (God’s position/liberal individualism).  Therefore, someone who holds one faith will never be able to convince someone who holds another, for faith is at the core of how they define themselves.  There is no “objectively true” way to answer these questions.  There is only the logical argument that derives from a particularly defined faith.

This may seem to imply that in this matter there is nothing we can do, that we are at an insurmountable impasse.  But this is not so, for there is still the ability to take the logic of one of these parties and outline its incoherence.  We can, in a sense, turn a faith against itself without attacking this faith (which, in the end, only leads to more culture war).

Because I do not believe that the lower life forms resulting from “god” could possibly ever fathom completely him/her/it, I find it meaningless to try and project on “god” a position on this matter.  At the end of the day, it is entirely narcissistic, in my view, to presume that “god” gives a shit about whether or not one of these parasites of the earth kills him/herself.  To me, “god” is merely the fullness that we feel we lack, the completion that always lies on the horizon.  Therefore, any character traits that we attribute to “god” are nothing but the byproduct of a contingent social circumstance.  However, I am humble enough to realize that it is violent to try to impose my conception of “god” on those whose entire being is related to another conception of her.  Unfortunately, this is not the view of the religious loud-mouths who are protesting physician-assisted suicide, in that they are attempting to impose a view of “god” on others that is not universally held.  This attempt to universalize a particular person or group’s truth is the highest form of evil.

And so, whilst I have many other issues with the ramification of the liberal faith in individualism, I do feel that on the issue of physician-assisted suicide, the tenets of this faith lead to a positive outcome, mainly the ability to recognize the conditions needed for meaningful life and the point where it is appropriate to advocate the “sanctity of death”.

So, to use the arguments of fundamentalists against them, let us address this issue of the “sanctity of life”.  Firstly, it is a shamefully easy point to make that those who most often rail against physician-assisted suicide and abortion are the same people who lose no sleep at night over the rising death toll of Iraqis and the millions of destroyed lives in the Middle East at the hand of our government.  It seems that the “sanctity of life” is only valid until it reaches the boundaries of the United States, beyond which the value of life becomes absent in their eyes.

But this criticism is all too easy.  What is a far more powerful one lies in looking more closely at what such people are actually flailing about when they invoke the “sanctity of life”.  Is it not the ending, the un-plugging of life that comes as a result of modern technologies which incites this response?  Let us then focus on the most common instances, not the fear-mongering, mythical image of a doctor looming over the patient with a dagger, but the majority of actual instances where a machine, a human technology that is preserving the heartbeat or the cycle of nourishment in an artificial manner is shut down, allowing the natural process to complete itself.

The un-argued for presupposition here is that whereas God certainly would not approve of such an unplugging, he would most certainly approve of this mechanical prolonging.  If the “sanctity of life” is something of which we support, are we not already tampering with it when we hook up a human being to a machine?  Why are people presuming that God would want us to tamper with maintaining someone’s heartbeat or eating pattern via a tube if they are so quick to assume that disconnecting these mechanisms is so impermissible?  And certainly, if heaven is the utopia that we are all geared towards, isn’t it legitimate, based on this line of thinking, to believe that God would be utterly pissed off at the prospect that we are trying via man-made tools to keep people from the relief of eternal happiness?
Thus, we see that the arguments of those who advocate the “sanctity of life” are at root incoherent and illogical.  You cannot at once say that it is right to tamper with this sanctity by prolongation whilst simultaneously saying it is wrong to tamper with its discontinuation.  If this argument is to have any weight, it must altogether disavow any use of human technologies (to prolong or end) as an instance of “playing God”.  Once such human technologies are deployed, we have moved into an arena of reality beyond the natural way of things particular to “God”.

Obviously, my position on this matter is not determined by any conception of “god”, for as I outlined before, I believe it is meaningless to speak of what God “wants”.  In my view, the question comes down to what it means to be a person, in that what are the conditions necessary to make any life meaningful.  Therefore, in an instance in which someone who is kept alive by machines is able to communicate and interact with loved ones without such overwhelming pain that these interactions remain meaningful, then an individual’s “person” is present.  However, in cases like that of Terri Schaivo, where all communication had been absent for years and there was a consensus from professionals that Terri was in a permanent vegetative state (PVS), we can easily feel that there is something intuitively cruel and unnecessary about keeping what is in reality a shell hooked up.

The common rebuttal pitted against those who advocate physician-assisted suicide for those in PVS is the notorious “miracle” argument: that there is always a chance that God will act (or something beautifully random will occur) and reverse the PVS.  Unfortunately, Hollywood has played a large part in contributing to the belief that this is an occurrence common enough to actually be worthy of legitimacy.  The reality is that it is as rare as someone being buried before they are completely dead, and are we equally as prepared to leave coffins above ground in preparation for the unlikely phenomenon that their inhabitants wake up?  This is an absurd prospect, just as absurd as controlling the preservation of someone’s heartbeat despite all evidence indicating that this individual is a vegetable.

Ultimately, there are a variety of instances with different circumstances, and decisions need to be made based on the factors of the particular situation.  Thus, I do not advocate one entrenched principle to determine the decisions made in all cases, because this would not respect the individuality of circumstances.  However, we should at least concede that if someone has made the decision that they do want the plug pulled when the conditions for the meaningfulness of their lives have come to a close, this wish should be respected.  In the same manner, if someone wants his/her life to be preserved no matter the cost and no matter the state, the same respect should be administered.  And in those ambiguous circumstances where no wishes have been outlined, it becomes the responsibility of medical professionals and loved ones to make the hard decision of whether or not the “person” is present in such a way that his/her life may be meaningfully continued.

Life’s beauty arrives through the experiences and relationships that dominate waking life.  Is not, then, this beauty absent at the point where such things are no longer available?  If there is an afterlife, the individual will be sure to appreciate the passing; if not, then the decision made no difference anyway.

The precariousness of life is a transcendental phenomenon.   The moment we think we’ve located a knot in the sporadic strings that pass through us, it unravels before our eyes.  Is not that endless search for the knot that will indicate a closure that sustains us built on the back of a socialization that directs you to stabilize and root yourself in the social order before you?

What is this injunction to “get yourself sorted” if not the “Big Other”, the social structure, the embedded socio-symbolic framework commanding you to take your place as a cog in it’s institutional machine?  This call to “assume your role” is none other than the command of the artificial economic edifice that desires you as it’s object of sustainment, and it deploys a plethora of psychological tools to assure its satisfaction.  It is our inability to welcome and understand our fundamental precariousness that so often disables us, but it is this on which the monster feeds. 

Were we to conceive of instability’s rootedness within us, the acknowledgment would quickly follow that not only is the self precarious, but that it is constitutively open-ended in such a way that to even speak of the self in some self-enclosed, easily defined manner is meaningless.  We lack a core and one of our fundamental oppressions lies in that socialization which dictates that we must uncover this core (“I’m going on a journey to find myself” being the prime example of this socially constructed mindset.)  The insanity that inhabits where the core should be, the polarities and the paradoxes that cause us psychological turmoil: this is the truth of us, not the exception to be eradicated.  The attempt to eradicate this realm of ourselves is what easily leads people into the arms of the pharmaceutical industry – we medicate ourselves instead of understanding ourselves.  And at the end of the day, this derives from the quick fix prescription entrenched in us by capitalist institutions. (“What can I buy quickly to ease the sense of my own contentlessness?”)  We look for emancipation (a longing derivative of the void at the heart of language) through the manipulative tools of the capitalist system, rather than harness our energies to emancipate ourselves through more productive means, by seeing the ways in which the outlets for “liberation” easily available to us are internal to the oppressive social structure itself.  We think our prescriptions (be they medicinal or otherwise) actually aid us rather than ultimately constrain us.  It is an aspect of the brainwashing that we fail to recognize, to the detriment of the world. 

If we actually cared about an impending environmental catastrophe (instead of eased our guilt by paying lip service to those “people out there” who are getting things done for us) we would see the ways in which our very participation in the prevailing order secures the catastrophe to come.  If we actually cared about global poverty (instead of easing our guilt by sending monthly cheques to charities) we would be wiling to sacrifice the affluence that defines us to let the wealth we have hijacked become more egalitarian in its distribution. 

But one of the biggest fallacies ever perpetrated on Western people is the idea that you can have both global capitalism and global justice.  Capitalism is an inherently unjust institution; it cares about nothing but its own boundless growth, a growth dependent on where corporations can relocate to find ever-cheaper labor, ever-decreased regulations.  Thus exploitation is constitutive of its success.  If global justice is what we truly invest our faith in, then the entire Western world is lacking a long overdue wake-up call. 

And wasn’t Karl Marx the one who first warned us about this paradox?  It should be to all our dismay that Marx’s name was delegitimized through a collapsing of the truth of his work with the communist hysteria of the 1950’s, a hysteria that has rooted itself within us again with the new label of “terrorist”.  And what do these two hysterias have in common if not the ways in which these constructed enemies serve the same function of consolidating our imperialistic patriotism?  These empty labels provide us with a phantom that masks the crack at the heart of our social order, a phantom which consolidates and glues together the hegemonic structures that determine our demonic downfall from any meaningful democracy. 

Rather than confronting the crack that keeps us crazy, we project onto other, dehumanized figments of our social imagination.  We create artificial representations of the evil “outside us” rather than recognizing the evil as actually at the heart of our social system. 

And this comes down to a widespread myth that we are inherently good.  This is a religious idea, baffling in the seeming indestructableness of its preservation.  Yet world events that scream the contrary are everywhere, enlightening us to the fact that we are just as capable of doing things that harm and oppress others as we are to selflessly help and assist.  This reality cries for recognition every day.  We are not inherently good; we are crazy.  Let’s get over it.  Or better yet, let’s find comfort in it in a way that then allows us to see the cyclical manner in which we attribute this insanity to the other that we fail to understand.  Through such an acknowledgment, we will become sensitive to the perception of the vast wrongs for which we are responsible.  We can then unmask the phantoms to reveal the abyss beyond, and only then will we become capable of acknowledging the contingency of our social reality in such a way that new forms of social life become realizable.

We are completely out of joint, yet we have normalized and naturalized the way we live as the only way by clinging to the fantasy that we are already free.  Free of what?  The only freedom we understand is the freedom to consume products and objects and lifestyles.  This is not freedom.  This is oppression of the highest magnitude of which we are blind.

We need to become otherwise and also “other wise”, perceiving the way the “other” is actually part of us, whilst not properly included in “us”.

Justice is not the best argued-for principle of legal order.  Justice is the horizon that allows for the constant destabilizing of the “enemies” that temporarily define our united “inside”; it is faith in the madness beyond the socially entrenched which demands incessant radical action of a democratic variety, a variety vastly exceeding the very narrow one exhibited in contemporary capitalism.

The paradox is in the security of youthful arrogance, and the question is how to maintain the security when the arrogance has gone.

One of the intoxicating aspects of youth is the uncritical confidence, the unquestioned self-esteem that accompanies all decisions.  (The author is humble enough to acknowledge that this may not be the reality for all youth, but let him be permitted this generalization).  This self esteem may arise in first contrasting oneself from the context in which one was raised, perceiving freedom to be the newfound ability to view the world through different eyes from mom and pop (or pop and pop, as the case may be).  It can be euphoric, this sense that one is now thinking, analyzing, and criticizing from a subjective place that one believes to be one's own.  The repressive authority from above that one feels compelled to fight, this is the very ground of identity, the constitutive difference.  In a sense, then, the confidence of adolescence is only found when one can depend on parental oppression, on the tendency of those who’ve raised us to resist our independence and the acceptance that we have unique and “important” things to say.  Comfort is maintained so long as this force is present, for once it is gone is it not the law that we seek out new forms of oppression to propel us and secure us?  Does this not mean, thus, that we can only live and think freely with an element of oppression?  Certainly, I would say, for strength to leap higher comes when one encounters hurdles to foster it. 

Childhood rebelliousness is perhaps the earliest and most predictable example of this phenomenon.  It is not an unfortunate byproduct of poor parenting, and if it is “poor parenting” that brings about this reaction, then perhaps we all deserve parents ill-versed in good parenting, for isn’t it conceivable that being raised by the most open-minded and accepting parents will create an identity without the thirst for liberation, lacking the zest for more?  It certainly does seem like the comfortable corrupts us in a way hard for the everyman to ingest.  Indeed, we have been programmed to reject such a notion, clinging as we do to the idea that only justice brings about just individuals.  But is justice so simple, or is it perhaps slightly more textured, more praised and asserted in times of the most intense injustice?  Are not revolutions (political overhauls hinged on some definition of justice) realized when injustice and justice exist simultaneously, mutually creating each other?  And if this is so, then we can see that justice is not something that can reign eternally, for it depends on the injustices against which it is defined.  Hence, revolutions happen, followed by a period of relative “justice”, only to then become subject to entropy, that great concept of physics, which points out the manner in which all systems naturally tend towards their dissolution.  What better argument for constant revolution!  What better way to point out the mythological nature of our social conception that some constant state of utopia is actually realizable!  In the face of this analysis, that myth reveals its true identity, being grounded in the age-old religious belief of the possibility of heaven on earth.

But I shall somewhat digress here to return to the subject of which I initially engaged: how to maintain the unfettered resilience of youth without the arrogance that can serve as a destructive force in our interpersonal and social relationships.  

Elaboration is perhaps needed here.  So often our culture of individualism is our springboard for liberation and also our gravest constraint.  The subjective identity of the youthful, as we have seen, is one of the clearest examples of how individuality arises out of repressive difference, and this often leads us into self-righteous and militant defense of our newfound internality.  Through the lack of respect from above comes a profound respect for oneself.  Indeed, where cases in which this is not manifested we find death, unbearable submission, spiritual disease.  Absolutely, these cases are to be occasionally found, but it is my observation that this is not the general way of it, for when one encounters that which is unbearable, one either transcends it or ends it, choosing the purported solace of physical death over faith in emancipation.

A typical rebuttal to my claim may be the profound existence of depression, that I am wrong to only present these two options (transcendence or death) in the face of unbearable unhappiness, for many people live in such states for the entirety of their lives without choosing either.  But there seems to be a fundamental mistake here in conflating the unbearable with unhappiness, for yes, unhappiness is most often entirely bearable.  It is only our contemporary Western culture which implies that it is not, convincing its citizens that there are no truths to be found in unhappy states and thus offering pills as the only feasible option.  “Choose not transcendence or death.  Choose Prozac!”

Unhappiness is not unbearable.  In fact, unhappiness can perhaps be one of the most mobilizing forces available to us, for what is unhappiness if not the indication of a very health desire?  Unhappiness makes us more aware of our desire and thus consolidates our self-awareness.  This is not to say that unhappiness is the necessary state of positive existence, but merely that it is one of those necessary oppressive forces of which we have been considering.  This is why unhappiness tends to arrive after the shackles imposed by our parents have been broken, for it is a form of that oppressive force that gives the self meaning.

“But I don’t want to be unhappy!” one shouts.  “Despite your explanation, I want to be happy!”  If the previous analysis can be digested- if one can accept that argument, then it becomes not a question of how to be happy, but of how to understand oppression and its profound function in life.  The pursuit of happiness and the battle against depression is merely the battle against oppression, yet completely misunderstood.  Happiness is a completely ambiguous phenomenon, and its opposite can only be deemed a mental illness in a culture fully ignorant of the social dynamic that surrounds them, only in a culture that has normalized its social conditioning as “natural” and unchangeable. 

In a capitalist culture, happiness becomes attached to materiality, to the accumulation of wealth, of objects.  Capitalism capitalizes on the human psychological reality of desire, on our specie’s inherent search for fulfillment and wholeness.  This wholeness is not actually realizable, which is why we create mythical places such as heaven or utopia on the horizon to appease the constant disappointment of life.  Capitalism manipulates this psychological fact by convincing us that wholeness is attainable right here, right now, so long as you buy enough to get it.  But, of course, it is no profound observation that if this were actually so, if a certain amount of material wealth were enough to secure our fullness, then capitalism would cease to function.  It is perhaps the most brilliantly effective institution in this regards, for it perfectly manipulates human insecurities and desire to its eternal benefit.  So, because we implicitly believe that capitalism is the only way society can function (revealed through our continued participation in it), we attribute depression to some individual fault of the self, rather than being a social manifestation of the oppressive force of capitalism. 
    
This leads us to the realization that to fight against depression in the self is to fight against an apparition, for it is oppression blindly internalized, oppression seen not as a motivating and meaningful condition for action and agency, but as an isolated individual pathology, seen as some ambiguous force whose explanation must lie in biology.

So if oppression is the constitutive force that propels us forward, and depression being the most destructive form because its causal basis is displaced, then the only feasible form of “happiness” attainable lies in the actual understanding of oppression that steps out of self-obsession and isolated analysis.  To fight against depression is to fight for new social conditions of existence, new social frameworks: in a word, revolution.  This revolution of which I speak is not the traditional Marxist one; no, it is far more subtle and intricate.  The Marxist revolution is metaphysical, in that it implies that the socialist utopia to follow is maintainable.  But, as we have seen, static justice is not maintainable due to its dependence on the injustices that give it meaning. 

No, injustice will never disappear, and this is not some cynical retreat from responsibility, but is quite the opposite: it is the incessant demand for it.  The point comes down to this: if oppression is that which enables us to transform and liberate- if oppression forms our identity (as it does from adolescence onwards)- if the fight to be free and to create our identity depends on forces saying, “No, you shant!  You shall be what I tell you!” (be it parental or institutional), then if we value such emancipation we must never lose sight of that which we are fighting, for to do so comes at the consequence of turning the fight around onto ourselves.  We must not pretend that in our social matrix oppression does not exist, for we need it.  We need to name it, analyze its sources, and throw ourselves into the eternal fight for its dissolution.  What an exhausting process, one may think, but no!  This is precisely not the case, for the verve, confidence, and creativity exhibited in the rebellious youth returns when we acknowledge the mobilizing potentials of acknowledging oppression in its various forms and stop in principle this social addiction to oppression’s denial, an addiction that serves only to enhance our unhappiness through the accompanying inability to conceive of its foundations.  In short, I am advocating the most productive form of therapy.

This revolutionary form of awareness may lead to a radical overhaul of the capitalist system in one dramatic moment, but my guess is that it will not, that the revolution it manifests is one of transformative creativity.  Indeed, once the concepts used to evaluate life are perceived to be contingent and inherently oppressive, then one begins to see the value in creating concepts, identities, and forms of community that counter those that enslave us.  And if we find truth in Chaos theory’s metaphor that a butterfly’s wings in Brazil can create a tornado in Texas, then we can see the value of micro-politics:  we can transcend the destructive apathy that whispers into our ears the meaninglessness of our individual actions.  Indeed, isn’t this apathy yet another manifestation of the internalized oppression that all previous words here try so desperately to illustrate?

The reader is perhaps perfectly aware of the fact that I have not actually provided an answer for my initial question of how to inhabit the empowering, radical identity of youth without its destructive arrogance.  Surely, we have seen the necessity of oppression and how its understanding is the “secret of youth”, but what surmounts the apparent paradox of wanting to be free but wanting to still stay connected to those around us without marginalizing them through militant arrogance?  Perhaps, after all the previous ranting, the answer has become far easier than my initial questioning of it would imply.  Perhaps the loss of arrogance comes through the very analysis applied here, for what is the difference between the form of identity advocated here and that of the youth but the fact that the youth cannot acknowledge the dependence on oppression?  The youth believes that the confidence and strength to rebel and create comes from the fruits of his self, from the specialness of his unique personality, whereas we have come to acknowledge the displacement of the self in the necessity of oppression, therefore we can derive a certain kind of respect for it.  This is certainly not a respect that praises it and lets it be, but a respect that comprehends its nature of being a part of our very selves, our conditions for an incessant pursuit of justice that grounds a healthy psyche.  Arrogance passes away when one perceives oppression not to be that imposed on us by “evildoers” but as that which inhabits us and is perpetuated through our continued daily repetition of the identities through which it is realized.  We thus reserve a place for the respect of self-transformation, for we know that engaging with oppression is engaging with the foundations of our very selves.  Arrogance comes from the misled belief that we have transcended oppression, rather than acknowledging its necessary fundamental existence within us.

And so we have arrived: the secret of youth lies not in botox or exercise, herbal medicines or yoga.  No, the obsession with the physical beauty of youth is a capitalist mask for that which we actually desire: the ever-resilient, resourceful, creative confidence we have lost.  The secret of youth lies in our conscious and active relation with oppression and the lived revolution that this entails.

It was always an intoxicating experience.  The impassioned rhetoric alone would suffice to tear me from the monotonous conformity of everyday routine, resounding as it did in the bowels of my morality.  The leaders that I despised being disparaged so vehemently by powerful voices sent empowering anger coursing through my veins.  As I looked around at those others who had gathered in the city square, with their banners and politically-iconed t-shirts, I found myself loving them, for here we were in solidarity with one another, united against a fiercely vindictive foe. 

I wept most times, tears streaming down my cheeks like many who encounter that feeling of their spirit being unshelled and caressed.  And it certainly was a religious experience, if I could be permitted to stretch the term, for this was my church, the speakers my priests and the gatherers my congregation.  The subsequent march would seal the beauty of these events, as the drums and dancers, the chants and wind-blown banners, all comprised our hymns of praise to a commonly-held utopian vision.  Never has the sense been so present that things can change, that things must change, and that things will change, than at a political protest.

If only I could cling to my former naivety and derive the same emotional resonance from these demonstrations, as I did then; but for some time now they have been unable to appease me, and it has taken some time for me to work out exactly why.  Now, I must speak, for I have lost faith in this church, as I once lost faith in another more traditional one that grounded my childhood identity.  My faith has dissolved, because I was told that this was activism, meaningful action, a testament to our first amendment rights.  However, if activism is defined in relation to its practical impact, then this cannot be real activism.  As the march reaches its destination, and after we’ve howled at a building filled with people giggling at our display, the system has not been shaken, the status quo has not been tipped.  No, in fact, I would like to be so bold as to argue that the normalcy of protests actually contributes to the status quo’s hegemony.  But I won’t get ahead of myself here; for now, the reader can simply chew on what is no doubt, at present, a very distasteful morsel.

Let me be more direct:  The political protest is a lingering echo of an age that has past, at least in its most common character.  It is an archaism that has been normalized due to a flowery legacy; the modern political protest remains as the most common form of activism by tricking us into believing that change comes about every time we scream our political beliefs in the streets, a misperception incited by affectionate memories of a radical time when dreams were accomplished, when equality seemed fully attainable.  But it doesn’t require much research to realize that it has been some time since protests dealt a blow to the establishment.  Now, we are lucky if we make the local news.  What happened?
It would be a mistake to consider me as having succumbed to apathy, for it could not be further from the truth.  My intent is not to say that change is impossible, but to say that the forums capable of producing change have shifted to a place that has yet to be practically realized.  Those so desirous of change have lost their creativity and have been duped by a sly and manipulative social system.
I am also not trying to argue against the obvious fact that perceptions can be altered after only one protest attendance, as a bus trip to a School of the Americas protest in Georgia once fundamentally altered myself.  The point is rather that these occurrences pale in comparison to what could potentially be achieved were we to debunk this protest paradigm.  I would like to lay out, then, what I think has happened and why our unfettered faith in the protest is a counter-productive and dangerous one.

Undoubtedly, the 1960’s was a period of profound social change.  A sleeping population met bucket after bucket of frigid water to disturb its comfortable slumber.  From civil rights to women’s rights to the glorification of marijuana, American society was never to be the same.  But people fell victim to a prevailing misconception that progress achieved is progress forever kept.  When Reagan and his cronies scaled back on the achievements of the 60’s, liberals returned to their protest squares, only to realize (or fail to realize, more like) that the context was now different.  The system had evolved and learned to accommodate the political protest.  What hippies, young and old, failed to see was that it was now a wholly different system, one that now provided a place for the protest (nowhere more starkly apparent than in the newly established “free speech zones”), and which now required new tools to disrupt its dominance.  The mistake was to presume that the truth of protests in the 60’s was a universal one, one that would remain true across periods of historical context. 

But radical change is only ever possible if its tools are extra-systemic, outside structural norms, and in the 60’s, protests were.  American society had never seen such upheaval, such overt displays of dissent, and it terrified leaders into acts of progressive submission.  But protests have long ago ceased to be so, they are entirely systemic, and thus not capable of producing the type of change that their attendees desire.  How appalled the flower children would be were we to pull them from the past to observe us as we’re funnelled in an orderly manner down one lane of a three-lane street by rows of armed police officers.  How disappointed would they be to know of our plans with local governments, made three months in advance, to be permitted the opportunity to gather in such quantities.  (We must not frustrate the market!)

But even if we were to shun the boundaries imposed on our public streets, even if were to step onto that square without an arrangement with the city, this would do nothing to address what a propaganda machine can do to the image of these demonstrations, and the meaning now associated with them.  Why is it that those who don’t value protests observe (as they stroll past en route to Abercrombie and Fitch) with curious amusement?  The protest is a spectacle for them, and all its contributors on the list of potential terrorists.  They cannot hear the truth of the words, but can hear only irrational ranting.
I can hear the whisperings of a “false consciousness” rebuttal, that all it would require is further exposure to reveal to them the truth of this form of political dissent, more education to comprehend the merits of such a display.  But the problem with every “false consciousness” argument is that it presupposes that there exists a “true consciousness” underneath the mucky layers of social construction.  Every notion of what this true essence consists of (be it, for example, the Marxian “species-being” [equality] or the Neitszchean “superman” [freedom] ), for such an essence to resonate, one must have faith in it.  Therefore, no amount of ranting and raving will instil emotional resonance in one who has a pure faith in something else.  Indeed, many, such as the Amish of the Northeast, have shown that they prefer to sacrifice liberal liberties for the value of traditional community.  Thus, any attempt to practically implement one particular notion in a political structure is an easy slip into the arms of authoritarianism, because the fact of the matter is that every “true consciousness” is a metaphysical presumption.
   
The point here is then that there is no such thing as “false consciousness”.  There is no underlying truth beneath ideology; there is only ideology.  For if we are all constituted by layers of socialization, any essence we attribute truth to will be contingent on the existence of this socialization (i.e. the “species-being” only understood in relation to capitalist wage slavery, the “superman” only understood in relation to a stifling moral conformity; or, as Derrida would put it, the “inside” only understood in relation to its “constitutive outside”).  Get rid of capitalism and slave morality and these essences lose their meanings.  Hence, the matter we must confront is that if protests now inhabit the realm of the “inside”-, if the present ideology has conceptualized protests (on the mainstream level) as frivolous and humorous-, if the revolutionary truth of protests is dead in the eyes of a critical mass of society, then it is sadly a social reality that many have been constituted against it.  Perhaps the circumstance we are encountering is that, just as many reactionary (and certainly admirable) forms of justice are arising out of our problematic social situation, new conservative positions are similarly deriving from the liberal protest paradigm.  So, isn’t it time for the creation of a new truth, of new form(s) of political action?  Mobilizing people around something new is a far easier task than mobilizing people around something that has become loaded with disparaging meanings by the political ideology of our time.   

The hypocrisy of much Christianity today is that “living the faith” is primarily associated with church attendance (“your faith, like a muscle, must receive nutrients to remain healthy”), and this most often implies that so long as I believe in God and Jesus Christ as my saviour (exemplified by my impeccable pew-bound record) then I need not be concerned with how contrarily my deeds are in relation to the acts of Jesus’ life (i.e. ones that showed mercy to the socially disadvantaged in a way that certainly may have led him to join the ranks of the socialists).  Yes, “belief” has become an opiate, comforting people via a dumbing down of what is required to actually live in accordance with the truth of Jesus Christ.  But, of course, this is all very well understood, as hijacking the truth of Jesus Christ by calling it “belief” and then associating it with listening to a sermon is a great tactic to keep attendance numbers high and hence financial pockets sufficiently lined.

My point is that I harbour the same criticism of the political protest, in that it serves as an opiate for left-thinking people (“What do you mean I’m not doing anything?! I went to three friggin’ protests last year!”).  Do not the excuses of the protester who does nothing beyond the protest parallel those of the churchgoer, in that they both think that the ritual itself is enough to live in accordance with their respective truths? 

Due to its misperceived consideration as being anti-conformist, it directs people’s political frustrations into a forum that fails to deliver.  We arrive, we scream in unity, we shed some tears, and then our dissenting needs are satiated for another three to four months, as easy as a Sunday service is to rectify the sins of last week and as an ecstasy-trip is to release some of those submerged emotions.  Of course, the protest is positive in that it does empower individuals’ sense of solidarity and recharge their political batteries, so this is why it is important for me to articulate that I am not arguing for its eradication, merely its displacement from such a hegemonic status.  The hope is to see the protest for what it is (a form of liberal-spiritual ceremony), and open up new avenues of political engagement, ones as yet unseen, which can redirect these frustrated energies into tactics which the status quo has not yet accommodated, which propaganda campaigns have not the foresight to effectively disenfranchise via tools of rhetoric. 

And this is the crux of it: with every action there is a reaction, and American social structures reacted to the initial “dangers” of the protest by integrating it into its framework, making it appear effective to the left and silly to the right (If one can be permitted such a simplistic contrast).  Thus, even the actions I am proposing will one day need to be done again, for undoubtedly the oppressive structures will react yet again against our new forums of engagement.  Therefore, no forum of dissent can be naturalized as THE forum of dissent.  Let us instead foster a new political creativity that seeks to endlessly diversify the ways one can make a political impact.

Real change is painful, therefore activism should never be considered an easy task.  To be a part of radical change should be something that makes us feel insecure, for we are meddling with real freedom beyond the boundaries of the recognizable social framework.  Since we depend on this framework for the understanding of our identity, we must be comfortable with a certain degree of identity crisis.  Like a phoenix from the ashes, new, and hopefully more just, identities will emerge from the remnants of past selves.  The mistake would be to presume that we know precisely what this future identity dynamic will be (the mistake made by many Marxists), for the objective is always less true than the process.  It is rather the process that should be our objective, for any absolutist conception of the future structure is in fact a reflection of the issues of the present, a present that is fated to shift and change.

In a recent drunken stupor, I retired to my room with my laptop under one arm and the intent to open www.alluc.org, that wildly satisfying website that allows you to watch any television show or film one could possibly imagine.  Horror always seems enticing after unseasonable amounts of wine, so the graphic of a blood soaked "300" certainly seemed to fit the bill. 

Well, I definitely was horrified by my selection, but unfortunately not in the way I was anticipating.  300 is, for those who are not aware, a film that attempts to represent itself as an accurate portrayal of ancient Spartan society and its glorious war against the growing Persian empire.  Seems "run of the mill", yes?  No.   

300 is a propagandistic spectacle with an unspoken objective of fomenting a particular mindset and world-view.  In the aftermath of September 11th, a neoconservative propaganda machine was so powerful that the interpretations and meanings associated with 9/11 were shaped in accordance with this prevailing ideology (i.e. the notion of a "war on terror").  300 can be seen then as simply another instance where this ideology is supported and endorsed, and it is our responsibility to ensure that we are not brainwashed by it.

After googling for the script, I realized that perhaps my expat distance had made me unaware of just how controversial this film had been (which, of course, was a minor relief).  However, most criticism existed in the form of satire and sarcasm, and, whilst hilarious, this form of dissent fails to take seriously the implications of this film rhetoric.  That said, I would like to discuss some of the mortifying ways in which our destructive American ideology attempts to make itself more edible in 300.

Violent militarism sugar-coated with rhetoric of "freedom" has long been a staple theme in American epic films (Mel Gibson perhaps being the poster-child of them), but the instance of this theme in 300 is an altogether different beast.

In the satirical script by Rod Hilton, the idiocy of our blind invocation of "freedom" is revealed:


And is it not the case that "freedom" has become the signifier of all that is good in the world from the perspective of your typical American, despite the fact that this principle is always ambiguous and never clearly defined?  So much so that this movie manages to portray baby-killing as retrospectively legitimate from the standpoint of an empty "free society".  It seems parallel to many of Bush's statements that history will portray him heroically once the merits of globalized capitalism are realized.  Enemies of "freedom" (those opposed to the globalized triumph of western values and free-trade economics, in the eyes of our neoliberal politicians) are dehumanized by being portrayed as in antithesis to what is purported to be the necessary future of humanity.

Heterosexism and homophobia are deep undertones in 300's script, as one line mocking the Athenians as "philosophers and boy-lovers" clearly illustrates.  And isn't this union of supposedly contemptible types of people quite telling, in that the intellectuals and homosexuals are, from the standpoint of our present militaristic mindset, obstacles to the delivery of "freedom" to the middle-east?  "Those arrogant intellectuals just want to think while islamo-fascists threaten our very existence, and the growing presence of homosexuals in our military are dissolving the strength of manhood necessary to succeed!"

Of course, this patriarchal heterosexism is all very ironic while the machismo stars of this movie traipse around with Apollonian bodies in skimpy underwear.  But I digress.

Perhaps one of the most important parallels in this film is the one I find between the
Ephors (the priests of Sparta) and the Supreme Court of the United States.  Is there not something strikingly similar between the restrictions imposed by the Ephors in consultation with their ethereal gods and those by the Supreme Court in appealing to their abstract political and legal principles?  And again, Leonidas' rejection of the Ephors' restriction on going to war shares a similar character as Bush's disregard for the Court's ruling that Military Tribunals outside of U.S. legal jurisdiction are against U.S. law. 

The message?  Laws and principles have no place in a battle for civilization!

The important point here is that the decision is not between restrictive principles and necessary, practical action, but between viewing reality from two types of principled systems.  The first, and the one I would endorse, gauges all actions in relation to a principle (such as equality) and thus occasionally requires deep analysis to understand how each grand action taken will best realize this principle (In moral theory, this perspective is called "deontological").  The other viewpoint (one loosely associated with moral theory's "consequentialist" perspective) judges actions only by their end-result.  Thus, linking this with a religiously-flavoured, crusades ideology that believes it is America's God-given duty to export "God's principle" (freedom) to the world leaves us with a foreign policy that is reckless, because its advocators truly believes that the progress of western freedom is inevitable and that the entirety of the world will inevitibly come to appreciate it.

The superiority of the former over the latter lies in the fact that there is no inevitable future, because the future is random (progress being a myth), and the only principled control we can have is that of our immediate actions and how they resonate and impact others now, not in relation to some hoped-for dynamic of the future.  Such a standpoint has been found in all of the most horrendous totalitarian regimes in history.

And what about the brilliantly subtle use of women in this movie to legitimize this jock ideology?  It is the women of Sparta who are to be the most praised, preaches the heroine of 300, for "only we give birth to 'real men'."  How progressive!  Women's reproductive capacity (the only real capacity of women) has been glorified as the true cause of Spartan success.  If any woman in the audience had been unsettled by the fairly traditional status of woman as child-bearing, handmaiden of man, they certainly will be relieved to witness such appreciation.

And it was again this heroine who was the voice of that statement which is arguably the centerpiece of 300 and, indeed, our present neoconservative foreign policy: "freedom isn't free".  In this common rhetorical device of the far right, we find first that pattern, outlined above, of decriminalizing criminal actions by appealing to a concept without any inherent meaning, and second we find a "freedom" that is infused with capitalist values, as a principle (along with every other aspect of existence, soon including air) now is presented as having a price tag.  Is it not the economy that should succumb to the principle rather than the principle to the economy? Not in a society where capitalism has been normalized as the only thinkable form of existence.

Adding to this obscene tableau the war against Persians (monstrous, inhuman creatures donning garb of middle-eastern origin, led by a bejeweled, flamboyant, pretty-boy), and we encounter the ideological weapon that is 300, its objective to deform long-standing American principles and replace them with ones that give a nod to a criminal foreign policy.

Hollywood has never been so abhorrent.  Of course, many will retort, "its just a movie", but to underestimate the power that film and media have to shape the social sunglasses through which people view the world is a grave error indeed.

Blogged with Flock

It has taken me an embarrassing amount of time to decide which candidate I endorse for the 2008 presidency.  For a bloke as politically intense as myself, this will no doubt be surprising, so I try to excuse my unacceptable behavior by calling attention to the ground-breaking nature of the current democratic primary.  Certainly, were it either a woman or an African-American gunning against a white dude, my support would go to the "minority" by default.  However, with both candidates being from these two under-represented groups, I have found myself a bit lazy in deciphering which one actually coincides with my principles.  After much thought, I have arrived at my belated endorsement.

I support Barack Obama for the democratic candidacy.

Let's be honest: the man is hot.  If you vote for Barack, you are electing to have one of the best looking men in history staring at the wallpaper of the oval office.  A close second would, of course, be our dear JFK.  America needs better looking people in politics.  After all, aren't we all tired of the big-eared satirical comics of George W. Bush?  Put Barack in office, and I DARE those comic artists to make that man a minger!

And now that I've tickled your interest through ridiculous jesting, I will tell you the real reasons why I support Mr. Obama.

Firstly, let me address Hillary Clinton.  Now most of you know that I am a militant feminist and certainly acknowledge the issues associated with patriarchy, however I have recently come to believe that taking an individual and associating an entire social group's interests with his/her presence in the political system is naive at best.  Thus, voting Hillary into office is not a victory for "women", in my view, just as voting Barack in is not one for "African-Americans".  The interests of these groups are not served by proportionate representation, but by the effective mobilization of political movements.  Proportion in politics is merely an opiate to mask the inequalities that remain.

Hillary Clinton is not a "woman" in the political sense.  No, she is just as much a neo-liberal patriarch as her would-be predecessor.  Fortune Magazine recently stated that "Clinton has assembled what is probably the broadest CEO support among the candidates, ranging from Wall Street to Hollywood."  Another business magazine recently announced Hillary as "business's candidate", and I find this to be in fundamental antithesis to the interests of the American people.  The more big business lines the pockets of Hillary Clinton, the less she is capable of escaping their influence to address the needs of less privileged Americans.  And it doesn't take an economist to know that corporate victories are grave defeats for the less-earning members of society.

Secondly, Hillary reproduces the same republican/democratic dynamic that has been in existence for decades now.  Hillary is greatly supported by older voters, and this is because she is an old-fashioned democrat.  She brings nothing new to the table but rather provides us with a feminine-coated version of the same "lesser than two evils" reactionary politics that we are used to seeing from this, our "liberal" party.  Hillary has no capacity to be radically creative with her politics, because she is completely a pawn of the status quo.

And lastly in these criticisms is the dynastic nature of our presidency: Clinton, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Bush, Clinton.  There is nothing that further signifies the oligarchic state of our political system then the fact that four presidents in a row could potentially be from two different families.  Setting aside completely the content of Hillary's politics, the picture this portrays of the health of American democracy is a gravely diseased one.  Nothing can arise from this reality but further apathy, as Americans young and old starkly see how narrowly accessible our highest position in society actually is.

So, why is Barack Obama better?

Barack's superiority comes from his dynamism, his ability to build a broad base of support across a wide array of social groups.  Whereas Hillary is divisive (due to her old-style Democratic politics and the tortured Clinton history), Barack is unifying.  He has impressively mobilized previously unpolitical members of the US public, particularly young people, and if the United States is to have a progressive future, young people must be energized at all costs.  The apathy that has long ruled over the political sentiments of youth is being uprooted.

Why does Barack Obama excite people so much?  Because he is evental.  By this I mean that following the horrifying effects of the political system of the past eight years, Americans have become perfectly situated to accept profound social change.  The face of this change has to be fresh, and I'm sure we've already established the slick newness of the Obama persona.  His rhetoric is fresh as well, exceeding the normalized dynamic of Republican/Democrat politics.  He confuses people by sounding different, whereas most politicians have been stuck in the same ridiculous quarrels since the socio-political aftermath of the sixties.  The apathy then settled in, because people became aware that we were never moving beyond this impasse.

Now, do not get me wrong.  Barack Obama has certainly taken his share of contributions from Corporations, and he certainly is no socialist.  But what is often argued to be his weakness - namely, his lack of experience compared to Hillary - is, in my view, his strength, because he is a more conducive candidate to the influences of progressive social movements, being not yet fully entrenched in a decades-old, exhaustingly stifling social system like Hillary has.  For left-thinking people, Barack Obama is an opportunity to press for the equality-inspired change that we so feel is necessary, because he has already become the signifier of a new America, one not bogged down by the old battles that never do anything to address structures of oppression.  Hillary is merely the "back" of a back-and-forth political system that does little to accommodate a more egalitarian society.

It is important, of course, not to invest the entirety of our faith in Barack, because it is always problematic and politically disabling to perceive individual politicians as messiahs.  If Barack is to win the presidency, this would not mark the time to sit back, relax, and enjoy the progress.  Corporate and fundamentalist-conservative interests are too influential for people to afford to become lethargic.  With the event of Barack, a time has arrived to truly mobilize and create movements, to play our democratic hand in painting the portrait of a Barack USA.  It is an exciting opportunity, and it is up to us to take advantage of it.

As one Australian friend recently said to me, "the world needs Barack Obama."

Blogged with Flock

When one encounters racism in Britain today, whether it be towards eastern Europeans, people of Middle Eastern descent, African descent or otherwise, the political prescription is often for better policies of multiculturalism so that these targeted people are better “understood”. Indeed, multiculturalism has acquired a nearly uncontestable position as the answer to such racism, rising domestic fundamentalism and the migrating effects of globalization.

But perhaps this reaction is too quick; perhaps multiculturalism is part of the problem.

Now, it is important not to misunderstand this statement, for respecting and preserving other cultures is all well and good; however, directing our focus primarily on respect and preservation misses one fundamental part of the society-building process: forging the links between cultures that allow them some sense of unity.

The interesting switch in French politics with Sarkozy’s election was certainly due partly to the public’s concerns about rising immigration, and in a Europe that understands its particular national identities in relation to ethnic heritages, it is understandable why public sentiment easily shifted to the right. But if we are to accept the fact that rising immigration is an unchangeable counterpart to an increasingly interconnected Europe and World, we see that altering senses of national identity is necessary if we are to sidestep the often-violent effects of clashing ethnicities.

In the United States, we encounter a wholly different phenomenon than that which exists in Europe, for the foundation for national identity lies more in political principles, such as liberty and equality, than in some form of ethnic heritage. Now, setting aside the obvious criticism of what an ambiguous American “freedom” has meant for world politics, the domestic impact has been quite effective. Americans are some of the most patriotic people on the planet, and the label of “American” has nothing to do with your ethnic heritage or the color of your skin. There is one exception here, of course, with the Mexican migrant, but this is linked more to these immigrants being scapegoated for a rising economic disparity than to a lack of “American” identity that could potentially (and hopefully will) include them.

This should not be confused with advocating the U.S. as a model for the world; it is rather used to illustrate how countries with historically high levels of immigration are required to use a particular tactic to avoid domestic turmoil: they have to begin a political project of building an identity that lies above ethnic particularities. It should not seem unfeasible, then, to be French, but of Middle Eastern descent, or German with a family from Columbia.

Being “European” has certainly resembled such a project and should be continued, but there have proven to be certain limits to its success, exemplified by the failure of the constitution and the plethora of nasty things one hears from some British mouths regarding the rising Polish population. It seems that these different Europeans have little to no bond that would see a common interest in the constitution or that would allay such disparaging perceptions.

And why can’t multiculturalism fix this? Because it focuses more on respecting differences than on building similarities. It staples definitions on particular cultures and then attempts to preserve them, without simultaneously uniting them.

If Europe and the World are to survive these new migration trends, they must not only respect other peoples but create new emotional ties with them.