Here we are in a wasteland of netflix and home cooked meals. If I see one more post about resisting capitalism by not being productive then I am going to fucking kill myself. I mean, does capitalism own productivity? And what is so fucking radical about not doing anything for twelve fucking hours, what's so fucking radical about binge watching a series or sitting on your bed staring into the wall like a piece of mould, sad and thoughtless? (Or wearing track pants until they're discoloured and masturbating until your dick or clit falls off).
Also; I do not care if you are using this time to dig deep and learn how to cook, or acquire a second language. These are things that no one should be advocating or that no one needs to know about, not your friends or family or colleagues. People are literally dying.
What I am interested in is thinking about how life will 'carry on' on the other side of this fucking shit show, with respect to the fact that we have endured a pandemic and people have lost their lives. Anyone brazen enough to reduce this period of enforced isolation to an 'opportunity' to clean out their Tupperware drawer or spend quality time with their family is a brainless fuck-wit with the emotional intelligence of a mole-rat.
PEOPLE HAVE DIED. END OF DISCUSSION.
What matters now and what everyone currently identifying as human should be concerning themselves with is whether or not the previous capitalist status quo, comprised of collective human misery and socioeconomic uncertainty, is something we feel like resuming after this breather.
Important questions to ask oneself before we exit level-4 lockdown;
Does mindless consumption make you happy?
Does having an unthinking unfeeling complicity in systems of third-world exploitation and deliberate impoverishment bring you happiness? Are you content with this being the premise of our lifestyles, and the legacy of our generation?
Are you content with the bombastic inequality within our society, in which you can enjoy relative comfort while others struggle through subtle blocks of discrimination which disable them from attaining the same levels of basic subsistence?
I hate to bring 'discrimination' into it because it serves a bullshit identity politics which would like to think it is transcending the raced and gendered biases of history, but which uses history as it's ultimate signifier, has wrung cultural/social/cognitive capital from the late-capitalist model of immaterial currencies while masquerading as some kind of disruptive force. The truth is identity is never a disruptive force. Identity is a commodity and will NEVER have a radical influence on the way society organises itself because it is structurally identical with the commodity form. Identity is a product, whether you're gay or straight or white or non-white; it is all up for grabs in the metric of capitalist value. So even though I am firmly sided with the majority of Leftist values and crusades for re-distributive social justice, if you are someone who thinks that society can be renewed through this crusade then you are fucking deluded.
The only radicality available to us is yet to exist, will only come into existence when we find a means of extending beyond identity, the endgame of which I cannot see but an action towards which might be in acknowledging identity itself as a technology, as something akin to the avatar and it's systemic function of mobility through an existing matrix.
Right?
Fuck identity. Is what I'm saying. Alienating people on the basis of what they are has somehow become the Leftist argument du jour, and I refuse to participate beyond this point because the stakes are too fucking high.
So with that behind us, is there a possibility now of a more profound and spontaneous solidarity? If this crisis has any benefit at all perhaps it's in this, levelling the usual socioeconomic demarcations towards a unity of an elite billionaire ruling class versus everyone else. I'd like to think so but I'm also aware of how deftly capitalism has proven in the manipulating of it's own crises towards an even stronger position for itself. Look at the 2008 financial crisis for example, in which governments bailed out banks with tax-payers money, despite the low-income tax-payers being the obvious victims of deregulation and the double bind of systemic debt and credit. Instead of state power disciplining the recklessness of speculative value and it's corrosive effects on production, the most vulnerable were left footing the bill so that a toxic status quo could be maintained indefinitely. The end of the world is apparently a minor obstacle when it comes to the up-keep of executive lifestyles.
And it's those lifestyles and their ecologically devastating modes of production and consumption which have brought us to where we are, a pandemic symptomatic of an ideological manoeuvre pitted against the environment in service to capitalistic efficiency, an efficiency which tabulates human life itself as equal in value to the methods and materials of production; just another resource. And so this pause is a breath being taken by the world machine which has two options before it; either implement a more mindful model in which profits are distributed evenly, a reconfiguring of production to serve actual human welfare (including a more infinite-minded approach to environment-as-resource), or total barbarism.
Democracy and it's free-market mascot have always been heavily flawed but within them the symbolic value of a world order, allegedly pitted against exploitation and war, has kept total global barbarism at bay (if only selectively and in fits and starts). That symbolic order has just taken a heavy blow, and utopian thinking has all of a sudden become less of a fantasy and more of a viable solution. That is, compared to the alternatives.
An unpopular opinion; recently my IG feed has come up with anti-Jacinda sentiments which I find hard to swallow. Firstly because she's in a coalition government and so the logistical failures of a bipartisan cabinet, not to mention an eight year neoliberal legacy which there's no way one person can rectify in a four year term, are disconcertingly being lumped on Jacinda in the manner of scape-goating. This is something I would expect of alt-right agitators such as Mike Hosking, but never of mutual friends and acquaintances who I'd assumed fairly intelligent, or intelligent enough to recognise the reluctant value of 'lesser evils'. Secondly this sentiment, which apparently includes a failure to acknowledge or meet needs of Maori, is dividing the left all over again, which during an election year bodes ill for the ballot. Certainly, if I have anything positive to say about National it's that they efficiently managed Iwi reparations for which I am grateful (even if Nga Puhi couldn't organise themselves in time to get a decent slice of the pie). However, I wouldn't have them back in a million years even if it meant more money for Iwi's, because they're operating from distinct neoliberal premises which have otherwise destroyed the middle-class and created a terrifying new world of precarious working poor. The Left cannot afford to splinter now lest in our confusion we let National back in, which will surely mean a tipping of the scales towards barbarism.
A solution to Jacinda's allegedly sub-par approach to Maori (which admittedly includes neglecting to visit Ihumatao) is to vote double red, to give her full authority so she's not bound by anyone else's racist conservatism (Winston Peters, cough).
Ardern's competency and compassion cannot be understated. I know for a fact that she is in direct conversation with small business owners and renters, keeping herself informed on a grass-roots level which I can't imagine there's too much of a precedent for.
If you have an issue with how she's conducted herself to date, check yourself, repeat the words 'bipartisan government', and on Election Day tick red. Otherwise shut the fuck up, because the Left cannot afford to be divided right now.
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