Anti-Politics and the Plague of Disorientation: Welcome to the Age of Trump

What happens when politics turns into a form of entertainment that washes out all that matters? What happens to mainstream society when the dominant and more visible avenues of communication encourage and legitimate a mode of infantilism that becomes the modus operandi of newscasters, and trivia becomes the only acceptable mode of narration? What happens when compassion is treated as a pathology and the culture of cruelty becomes a source of humor and an object of veneration? What happens to a democracy when it loses all semblance of public memory and the welfare state and social contract are abandoned in order to fill the coffers of bankers, hedge fund managers and the corporate elite? What are the consequences of turning higher education into an “assets to debt swapping regime” that will burden students with paying back loans in many cases until they are in their 40s and 50s? What happens when disposable populations are brushed clean from our collective conscience, and are the object of unchecked humiliation and disdain by the financial elite? As Zygmunt Bauman points out in Babel: “How much capitalism can a democracy endure?”

What language and public spheres do we need to make hope realistic and a new politics possible? What will it take for progressives to move beyond a deep sense of political disorientation? What does politics mean in the face of an impending authoritarianism when the conversation among many liberals and some conservatives is dominated by a call to avoid electing an upfront demagogue by voting instead for Hillary Clinton, a warmonger and neoliberal hawk who denounces political authoritarianism while supporting a regime of financial tyranny? What does resistance mean when it is reduced to a call to participate in rigged elections that reproduce a descent into an updated form of oligarchy, and condemns millions to misery and no future, all the while emptying out politics of any substance?

Instead of tying the fortunes of democracy to rigged elections we need nonviolent, massive forms of civil disobedience. We need to read Howard Zinn, among others, once again to remind ourselves where change comes from, making clear that it does not come from the top but from organized social formations and collective struggles. It emerges out of an outrage that is organized, collective, fierce, embattled and willing to fight for a society that is never just enough. The established financial elites who control both parties have been exposed and the biggest problem Americans face is that the crisis of ideas needs to be matched by an informed politics that refuses the old orthodoxies, thinks outside of the box, and learns to act individually and collectively in ways that address the unthinkable, the improbable, the impossible — a new future.

As politics is reduced to a carnival of unbridled narcissism, deception, spectacle and overloaded sensation, an anti-politics emerges that unburdens people of any responsibility to challenge the fundamental precepts of a society drenched in corruption, inequality, racism and violence. This anti-politics also removes many individuals from the most relevant social, moral and political bonds. This is especially tragic at a historical moment marked by an endless chain of horrors and a kind of rootlessness that undermines all foundations and creates an uncertainty of unprecedented scale. Fear, insecurity and precarity now govern our lives, rendering even more widespread feelings of loneliness, powerlessness and existential dread.

Under such circumstances, established politics offers nothing but scorn, if not an immense disregard for the destruction of all viable bonds of solidarity, and the misery that accompanies such devastation. Zygmunt Bauman and Ezio Mauro are right in arguing, in their book Babel, that we live at a time in which feeling no responsibility means rejecting any sense of critical agency and refusing to recognize the bonds we have with others. Time is running out, and more progressives and people on the left need to wake up to the discourse of refusal, and join those who are advocating for radical social and structural transformation. This is not merely an empty abstraction, because it means thinking politics anew with young people, diverse social movements, unions, educators, environmentalists and others concerned about the fate of humanity.

It is crucial to acknowledge that we live in a historical conjuncture in which the present obliterates the past and can only think about the future in dystopian terms. It is time to unpack the ideological and structural mechanisms that keep the war machine of capitalism functioning. It is also time to recognize that there are no shortcuts to addressing the anti-democratic forces now wrecking havoc on US society. The ideologies, grammar and structures of domination can only be addressed as part of a long-term collective struggle.

The good news is that the contradictions and brutality of casino capitalism are no longer invisible, a new language about inequality is being popularized, poor Black and Brown youth are battling against state violence, and people are waking up to the danger of ecological devastation and the increased potential for a nuclear apocalypse. What is needed is a new democratic vision, a radical imaginary, short-term and long-term strategies, and a broad-based social movement to act on such a vision.

Such a vision is already being articulated in a variety of ways: Michael Lerner’s call for a new Marshall Plan; Stanley Aronowitz’s call for reviving a radical labor movement; my call for making education central to politics and the development of a broad-based social movement; Angela Davis’ call for abolishing capital punishment and the mass incarceration system; Nancy Fraser and Wendy Brown’s important work on dismantling neoliberalism; the ongoing work of Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi of the Black Lives Matter movement to develop a comprehensive politics that connects police violence with other forms of state violence; Gene Sharp’s strategies for civil disobedience against authoritarian states; and the progressive agendas for a radical democracy developed by Salvatore Babones are just a few of the theoretical and practical resources available to galvanize a new understanding of politics and collective resistance.

In light of the terror looming on the political horizon, let’s hope that radical thought and action will live up to their potential and not be reduced to a regressive and pale debate over electoral politics. Hope means living without illusions and being fully aware of the practical difficulties and risks involved in meaningful struggles for real change, while at the same time being radically optimistic.

Henry A. Giroux is the McMaster University Professor for Scholarship in the Public Interest and The Paulo Freire Distinguished Scholar in Critical Pedagogy. His most recent book is ?The Violence of Organized Forgetting,” out from City Lights.