I think the civic sphere still depends on the economy in some capacity (how marxist of me). Authoritarian capture of the civics in post-Soviet Russia and Hungary didn't happen all at once, but Putin and Orban harnessed genuinely improving material conditions of that moment in history. In the US, (unless we get to singularity) it is hard to imagine Trump's reign improving anything, and juxtaposing that with the dooming population conditioned to always think that "economy sucks", the right-wing hegemonic project faces some headwinds. Liberal prospects are even worse though, for the right-wing at least has the capacity to ignore the Constitution. Trench warfare it is.
This is so true- for all his charm, Trump is eviscerating the very institutions that prevent a large number of Americans from falling into dire poverty. This will very soon backfire and that is what the establishment democrats are waiting for.
The spectacle of the memorial service for Charlie Kirk was pretty scary to me. I was worried that my Republican neighbors (in this red county in a red state) would become even more hostile to elderly white hippies like me. But then I remembered that nobody can remember anything for more than a few days.
It's easy to take all the hand-wringing and martyr talk at face value (at least I tend to do that). And people may BELIEVE that they are genuinely grieving for their good Christian leader Charlie Kirk. But there are a lot of other factors at work, like the need for virtue signaling, proving tribal loyalty, etc. Most Republicans, even evangelicals, don't want to go to war really. It's the leadership that wants a war. But we may already be in a sort of low-grade civil war. There will probably be more political violence.
Are the Popper and Gramsci visions really in that much tension? It seems to me that you could sort of add a layer to the general Gramsci description (the context of political struggle is the balance of power in the prepolitical cultural realm) to say that in a functional democracy of the type Soros wants civil society is too multipolar to be rapidly moved in any direction, so an aspiring authoritarian hits a bunch of roadblocks.
I think you can question how independent those loci of power are (there was clearly a possible version of this administration where even more institutions than already have knuckle under without a fight, rendering their apparent independence meaningless), but it also seems clear that a spirit of popular resistance is more powerful if it has some preexisting effective institions to put backbone into.
Solid, realistic overview of our current muddle. What was not mentioned is significant for good reasons - The US Congress. 99% of that group are dullard grafters dependent on obedience to their DomoPublican party bosses.
That body is supposed to be the bulwark of restraining toxic political power. It frittered away that role to the office of the president. The result is-power addled grafters like Trump, Biden, etc. in charge of nuclear weapons with no check.
It seems to me that the more accurate framing of public & civil society is in John Dewey in The Public and its Problems and those who drew from him in reflecting on how democracies deal with public problems. Dewey's idea is that the state emerged as the way to deal with problems that affect all of the public (literally the res publica) ; and that state institutions are naturally biaised toward status quo and immobilism, so it's up to the public and civil society to point out the problems (widespread poverty, work abuses, crime, etc.) that will require public attention. Ideally, this is done by a wide, educated enough public which relies on acute social inquiries & investigations made by scholars & journalists. In practice, making problems emerge and bring them to public and state attention is a battlefield where the different forces in society & competing interests fight to apply their own framing to the description of facts and problems, in order to, as a result, apply the shape they wish to the state solutions that may be applied.
Even with your eyes on the road, and your hands upon the wheel, the future's uncertain, the end is quite surreal. Way too much appears to be scant more than street theater, organ grinders and their Monkees. The poultry feigning horror. Daddy was an actuary, so I learned early of the commonality of outcomes. I'm happy to experience them, howsoever they arrive, channeling my inner Winston. Oh, and thanks for your work. Helps a bunch with focus on any particular point of view. Let's hope we're a ways from where the Law really comes to get you when you don't think right.
In many ways, civil society seems to be, or is becoming, the *only* battlefield that counts. The only actors standing are the executive branch and its security apparatus on one side, and civil society on the other. The whole concept of legislation and elected officials arguing about policy is so irrelevant that, far as I could tell, Republicans couldn’t even be bothered to slander Sanders for declaring Gaza a genocide. Even legislators don’t care about legislators anymore.
The trench warfare analogy is interesting because, to me, the last year has felt very much like a Nazi blitzkrieg. Fast-moving, hyper-aggressive legal and political warfare leading to what is effectively a hostile occupation of the federal government. Torturing this analogy further, Kimmel may have been Trump's "Stalingrad" in that he has way overextended himself in vain pursuit of an objective he didn't actually need to take. It gives me hope to think that, like the Nazi regime, so too should this one be destined to fail. But at the same time a lot of that regime's worst abuses took place after defeat was already assured. To give just one example, the extermination of Hungary's Jews took place from May to July 1944. The question is how do you assure defeat and speed up its arrival while minimizing the inevitable harms that come from a caged animal lashing out? Surely at some point a much more aggressive push is needed and the forces of liberal democracy have not yet arrived at a cohesive answer.
“a robust civil society, full of independent NGOs … one must ask serious questions”
I hate to be the “true X has never been tried” guy, but I would ask questions less about the “robust civil society” part and more about the “independent” part. “leading teams in the fight to get grants from Soros/Ford” is simply a very different skill set from “leading the fight in the trenches”. The non-profit industrial complex was just as ill-prepared for this moment as every other American elite leadership class, but that’s an indictment of that complex much more than it’s an indictment of Popper.
I think the civic sphere still depends on the economy in some capacity (how marxist of me). Authoritarian capture of the civics in post-Soviet Russia and Hungary didn't happen all at once, but Putin and Orban harnessed genuinely improving material conditions of that moment in history. In the US, (unless we get to singularity) it is hard to imagine Trump's reign improving anything, and juxtaposing that with the dooming population conditioned to always think that "economy sucks", the right-wing hegemonic project faces some headwinds. Liberal prospects are even worse though, for the right-wing at least has the capacity to ignore the Constitution. Trench warfare it is.
This is so true- for all his charm, Trump is eviscerating the very institutions that prevent a large number of Americans from falling into dire poverty. This will very soon backfire and that is what the establishment democrats are waiting for.
Very appreciative of your blog etc. turning me onto Garmsci; marxism talking about equilibria is the kind I (econ-brained) can get into
The spectacle of the memorial service for Charlie Kirk was pretty scary to me. I was worried that my Republican neighbors (in this red county in a red state) would become even more hostile to elderly white hippies like me. But then I remembered that nobody can remember anything for more than a few days.
It's easy to take all the hand-wringing and martyr talk at face value (at least I tend to do that). And people may BELIEVE that they are genuinely grieving for their good Christian leader Charlie Kirk. But there are a lot of other factors at work, like the need for virtue signaling, proving tribal loyalty, etc. Most Republicans, even evangelicals, don't want to go to war really. It's the leadership that wants a war. But we may already be in a sort of low-grade civil war. There will probably be more political violence.
Are the Popper and Gramsci visions really in that much tension? It seems to me that you could sort of add a layer to the general Gramsci description (the context of political struggle is the balance of power in the prepolitical cultural realm) to say that in a functional democracy of the type Soros wants civil society is too multipolar to be rapidly moved in any direction, so an aspiring authoritarian hits a bunch of roadblocks.
I think you can question how independent those loci of power are (there was clearly a possible version of this administration where even more institutions than already have knuckle under without a fight, rendering their apparent independence meaningless), but it also seems clear that a spirit of popular resistance is more powerful if it has some preexisting effective institions to put backbone into.
Solid, realistic overview of our current muddle. What was not mentioned is significant for good reasons - The US Congress. 99% of that group are dullard grafters dependent on obedience to their DomoPublican party bosses.
That body is supposed to be the bulwark of restraining toxic political power. It frittered away that role to the office of the president. The result is-power addled grafters like Trump, Biden, etc. in charge of nuclear weapons with no check.
It seems to me that the more accurate framing of public & civil society is in John Dewey in The Public and its Problems and those who drew from him in reflecting on how democracies deal with public problems. Dewey's idea is that the state emerged as the way to deal with problems that affect all of the public (literally the res publica) ; and that state institutions are naturally biaised toward status quo and immobilism, so it's up to the public and civil society to point out the problems (widespread poverty, work abuses, crime, etc.) that will require public attention. Ideally, this is done by a wide, educated enough public which relies on acute social inquiries & investigations made by scholars & journalists. In practice, making problems emerge and bring them to public and state attention is a battlefield where the different forces in society & competing interests fight to apply their own framing to the description of facts and problems, in order to, as a result, apply the shape they wish to the state solutions that may be applied.
Even with your eyes on the road, and your hands upon the wheel, the future's uncertain, the end is quite surreal. Way too much appears to be scant more than street theater, organ grinders and their Monkees. The poultry feigning horror. Daddy was an actuary, so I learned early of the commonality of outcomes. I'm happy to experience them, howsoever they arrive, channeling my inner Winston. Oh, and thanks for your work. Helps a bunch with focus on any particular point of view. Let's hope we're a ways from where the Law really comes to get you when you don't think right.
In many ways, civil society seems to be, or is becoming, the *only* battlefield that counts. The only actors standing are the executive branch and its security apparatus on one side, and civil society on the other. The whole concept of legislation and elected officials arguing about policy is so irrelevant that, far as I could tell, Republicans couldn’t even be bothered to slander Sanders for declaring Gaza a genocide. Even legislators don’t care about legislators anymore.
The hegemonic crisis will continue because no one has the social base sufficiently powerful to grapple with material foundations of that crisis.
The trench warfare analogy is interesting because, to me, the last year has felt very much like a Nazi blitzkrieg. Fast-moving, hyper-aggressive legal and political warfare leading to what is effectively a hostile occupation of the federal government. Torturing this analogy further, Kimmel may have been Trump's "Stalingrad" in that he has way overextended himself in vain pursuit of an objective he didn't actually need to take. It gives me hope to think that, like the Nazi regime, so too should this one be destined to fail. But at the same time a lot of that regime's worst abuses took place after defeat was already assured. To give just one example, the extermination of Hungary's Jews took place from May to July 1944. The question is how do you assure defeat and speed up its arrival while minimizing the inevitable harms that come from a caged animal lashing out? Surely at some point a much more aggressive push is needed and the forces of liberal democracy have not yet arrived at a cohesive answer.
Well, that's what I meant by the war of maneuver.
For sure - I guess I sort of glossed over that. Point is I agree and think it's a useful way to think of where we are now
“a robust civil society, full of independent NGOs … one must ask serious questions”
I hate to be the “true X has never been tried” guy, but I would ask questions less about the “robust civil society” part and more about the “independent” part. “leading teams in the fight to get grants from Soros/Ford” is simply a very different skill set from “leading the fight in the trenches”. The non-profit industrial complex was just as ill-prepared for this moment as every other American elite leadership class, but that’s an indictment of that complex much more than it’s an indictment of Popper.