Converting the Zeitgeist: Cornel West and the Fifth Republic
In this article, Roberts gives his attention to the presidential elections and notes there's a new game in town.
I love presidential elections. There is nothing more entertaining than this veritable circus we take so seriously. It has humor, it has suspense, it has lies and misdeeds. There are elephants and donkeys and clowns, while this or that person walks this or that tightrope--and I wait, rictus cutting across my cherub face, for the moment one of them takes a plunge. When I hear Julius Fucik's 'Entry of the Gladiators' (or, as some would call it, "campaign rally music"), my leg begins to bounce, and I spill my Crown Royal a little.
This year seems to have quite the list of members, no? It rivals anything any showman could have ever dreamt of; even the corpse of P.T. Barnum tosses and turns at the lost opportunity. There are the returning clowns, Joe Biden and Donald Trump; as is the case with all elephants, Trump is followed by other gray, xerotic creatures, all holding onto to his tail and stepping in his shit. Following the asses, we hear braying before we see the gnashing of teeth. Lost in their own euphoria, we watch them kick at the air, the whooshing sound commemorative of every punch that hits nothing--nothing but air. They are surrounded by this or that clown (we call them 'media personalities', the ghost of Barnum sternly reminds me), each one with a speaking part. They tell us their favorite animal, chasing each other on unicycles and throwing pies in their faces. What do you call a group of clowns? Turns out, you call them a 'middle class'; in smaller groups, they are called 'medias'; in their parents' basement, they are called 'podcasters'.
The advertisements for this year’s circus, which we call 'elections', are fabulous. We have an arrest with this showing! En mon avis du moins, it is quite odd, really, to have pigs at a circus, but we are in the age of attention seeking, and these are distracting times. They plan to have a kangaroo court established, and at its head will be the solemn mime Mrs. Aileen Cannon--with a side wumpus derby hat and empty eyes, we really are in for a performance!
And if that wasn't enough, we have been blessed with a surprise guest: Dr. Cornel West! A renowned philosopher, theologian, and personal owner of the patent for the phrase 'brothers and sisters' (formerly owned by Christopher Hitchens), many were surprised by his entrance. Who would have guessed that Dr. West would ride into here on the back of a slug? Look at the slime! Did he just jump from a slug to a house-sized potted plant? My oh my, we have been spoiled by having such an uproarious, interesting circus this year. One wonders if, perhaps, we will be able to surpass it next year…
But this last act caught my eye. There is something odd about it; so while the left half of the audience focuses on the slime which now lines the floor, I want to look at this last performance. Is it ridiculous? Yes. But perhaps there is something to this--or, perhaps, this is just bad CGI.
* *
It was Gore Vidal who once noted that the more well known someone is, the less power they have in this country. If you are, to borrow his wonderfully witty phrase, 'a part of the national furniture', you're not likely to be of much use, outside of being a place for the buttocks of power to take a rest. Cornel West is so interesting because he is one such piece of furniture; from being in Matrix and Law and Order to his very popular philosophical lectures and critically panned music career, Dr. West is well known. If he were furniture, he would be a beautiful Easton Power Reclining sofa one finds at La-Z-Boy; he has a comfortable personality, there is room for friends (or, if you must torture yourself, family), and is someone one you can relax with. Whether you are Gleen Greenwald, Russell Brand, or Bernie Sanders, he will call you 'brother' or 'sister', and you will find yourself lazily entranced.
But I digress, because I must: this La-Z-Boy chair is on the move. One might ask why it is moving? And, being that I live in America, one would get the nonsensical answer of 'ghosts!'--or its equivalent, that Dr. West is moved to achieve 'truth and justice' by 'another vehicle', to use his words. Like all ghost chasers, something seems awry with this moving furniture and the assumption is to look for the most ridiculous answer possible. While I do not doubt Dr. West believes in justice and truth, and I believe this because of his dedication of his life and works to Civil Rights, one wonders how you can reconcile this belief with the manner in which he has decided to pursue it.
One would be remiss, or stupid, not to notice that his initial choice of the People's Party was disastrous; even if you leave out the sexual misconduct allegations, the connection to the raging case of neurosyphilis masquerading as a comedian named Jimmy Dore, and its promotion of anti-vaccine positions (you might as well overlook a pandemic…oh, wait…), there is the practical aspect of this slug; they have ballot access in one state. What state? It is that bastion of liberalism and freedom, that state full of love and hope: Florida…oh wait, what is wrong with these cue cards…
Does that sound like the desire to win? No. Even as he hopped horses mid-stream to the Green Party a few days ago, if you had the Green Party win every state it has ballot access in, it would only have 231 electoral votes. It should also be obvious to anyone in this country that third parties are not designed to win, no matter what the fool hardy idealists say. The third party is designed to use presidential elections (as well as local elections) to build membership, with the hope of someday being able to be recognized as a major party. Every election is about getting more members and more funding. I can already hear the accusations of cynicism! I have offended those who believe in third parties, as well as those who fear them and their ability to 'steal votes' from the Property Party candidates.
The La-Z-Boy couch moves, and while we speculate and argue about whether it was ghosts, or aliens, or the force of Marianne Williamson's magic crystals, this couch will find itself in the back of a repo van, on its way to a storage garage. There it will wait and wait, its only hope will be that it gets its day in the sun; probably on an episode of Storage Wars.
The Green Party, with or without Cornel West, doesn't stand a chance of winning; and that is not the point of the whole scheme, anyway.
* *
In America, national politics is a middle class game. From among themselves, these philistines with their hustle and grind sets, their girl bosses and alpha males, their positivity and vibes, will pick among themselves any number of people to present to elite and plebeian alike. To the elite, they are strippers; they spin around the polls and attempt to appear alluring to gentlemen donors as they both share in the illusion they agree to promote. To the plebes, they are televangelists; for every candidate, every other candidate is a false prophet (or funded by false profits), a devil, and a charlatan--and you are urged to 'help' them with 'a few dollars' in the offering plate (nevermind that they don't pay taxes) and you both share the same illusion about elections. The only difference is from the perspective this illusion is peered at from; from the pulpit or with your head bowed.
It is a game. And to some, anything that is called a game is empty, useless, or an obfuscation of some dearly held truth. But games are at the heart of life; everything is a game, it just depends on what you decide to take seriously. And, if you ever want the truth on anything, the best way to find it is to play games--or watch them. And our elections are a game that reveal a great deal.
For example, our ruling class is no longer in control, but rather turning on itself, using the candidates it promotes to go after each other. The culture wars that we have all taken part in are the parfum de fracas of a ruling class in discord with itself. The rise of extreme bigotry, the way the Democrats funded Trumpist candidates, the near transparent partnership between Republicans and fascist groups like the Proud Boys and this facilitation by the police--the rise of this chaos is an absolute consequence of internal imperial politics. These are internal hornets nests, which have been kicked to distract--and, if not distracted, then harm--the populace.
This ruling class discord is a sign, to me, that our Republic is headed for a major shift. When I look upon our Republic and its history, I instinctively borrow from the French (and, yet again, Gore Vidal) here, and state: the Fifth Republic is coming our way. You see, our first Republic existed before our Constitution, our second Republic was born of the Constitution, the third was heralded by the Civil War and the fourth one came in with the cue cards of the Reagan Administration. It is the one we have been stuck with, for now; a neoliberal, commercial empire that has hollowed itself out. Our republic is the kind that was described (some might say predicted) by John Gray in his book False Dawn as "a divided society, in which an anxious majority is wedged between an underclass that has no hope and an overclass that denies any civic obligation". This is the divide currently at play in this election, and it is the divide that our fifth Republic will be built on.
And so, the game of this election is about a choice between a continuation of neoliberalism, differing in reality as the government becomes a beacon safety from the winds and storms of global capitalism (just ask Elon Musk), or a government that offers an authoritarian government aimed at protecting the populace--so long as you are of a certain race, gender orientation, sexuality and…well, let us say that the ‘who’ gets much smaller until the only thing that can fit in there is the money made by the elite. Both will play on the anxieties of the middle class, who offer their ideas, articles, podcasts, and blog posts the way a hostage will say anything just to make sure they live. This anxiety produces the populism we are seeing manifest everywhere, never more clearly than in the announcement of Dr. Cornel West of the People's--oh, I am sorry, I mean of the Green Party. Or has this changed? Whatever horse he rides into battle, West's vague platform and use of celebrity as a crutch is in line with appealing to the middle class while speaking the language of 'the People'. And that has always been the central contradiction of populism.
This populism will lose this election, but it will also win; in the aftermath of neoliberalism, the many major Supreme Court rulings that have knocked out the last of the protections once offered by the Third Republic that had survived the Fourth Republic (from the likes of presidents like Franklin Roosevelt, who Biden reminds us of…right?), and the triangulation of the Clinton Administration, America is now a police state. Its remaining institutions are the police, the military, and the prisons; all else is toothless and heeds the decrees of these institutions. With such a thin hold (when one is on the ledge, one digs their nails in) and a discordant ruling class, authoritarian action is all that the Fifth Republic will have, be it Biden or Trump, DeSantis or, or…and therefore, populism is crucial to the authoritarian regime.
* *
This effect is already in place; it is ubiquitous in our media environments. With no authority and no money, 'the people' have learned to look to the government and the corporations it shields from the cruelties of global capitalism. They have learned to lobby the government with the 'outrage' it has used against corporations with increasing success, illusory or otherwise. When the populace wants something, don't organize, but instead tweet at your representative and get a hashtag 'campaign' going to 'convince them'. When the populace is abused, do not organize to protect yourselves, but rather protest for a few hours a day for a week, have a few podcast episodes about it, and move on. In the face of economic inequalities, or accidental (or purposeful) revelations of bad conditions, demand that the CEO of this or that company be removed, or go after its employees. Violence is not meant to scare the government, but meant to make your fellow citizens fall in line with whatever you believe.
But I digress, because I must: Dr. Cornel West represents the zeitgeist of the coming political calamity: activism that looks for advocates, the reliance upon celebrity rather than organization, populism by popularity; the exercise of meaningless gestures to obscure complete dependence. And, far from differing Dr. West from Biden or Trump, it is his one similarity; they all indulge in populism, because it is the politics of the future.
H.L. Mencken made a prediction, back in the 1920's, where he said of America the following:
"It would surprise no impartial observer if the motto, In God we trust, were one day expunged from the coins of the republic by the Junkers at Washington, and the far more appropriate word, Verboten, substituted. Nor would it astound any save the most romantic if, at the same time, the goddess of liberty were taken off the silver dollars to make room for a bas relief of a policeman in a spiked helmet."
I cannot say much else, and I cannot add much else; this is where we are headed. All I can do is welcome you to the Fifth Republic: of the people, against the people, with the people.
Enjoy the show.
The police state illustrated: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/graphs/pie2022.html
A fabulous piece which surveys our chaotic situation with humor (but also, an acknowledgement of implications).