No More Fears, My Revolutionary Children
This story just came out, so I haven't yet caught the wave of paranoid mailing-list exposés about it. I can predict the interpretation my faithful rabble-rousers will attach: oh my god, the corporations have armies now, and are in bed with the CIA on assassinations. They will come for us next... oh my god. In this blessed interval, though, where I get to put my own spin on things, I would like to elaborate why this story is more positive than you think.
First, a summary- the CIA wanted to kill Al Qaeda leaders, and among other approaches (sending its own field agents, paying off locals, working with branches of the regular military) it has, we now know, contracts with Blackwater Security. So, Blackwater was hired to kill for the CIA. The story mentions a "constellation" or similar interlacings, presumably similar, but doesn't go into too much detail. Probably there isn't any.
I wrote, a long time ago, that we were entering the age of the non-state actor. The government no longer has a monopoly on violence. National borders no longer define allegiances. Supra-national and subnational armed movements, from drug-runners to Kurdistan, are more relevant than the actual titular heads of the "countries" in which they operate. Entire nations have become post-national, one thinks immediately of Lebanon (governed and defended by, essentially, an armed political party representing only a fraction of the populace) or Pakistan (in which the head of state is at most an annoyance to the security apparatus.) The US is at war ostensibly with terror but in actuality (as best as any formal definition can be placed on this clusterfuck) with Al Qaeda, a banking-and-training network that operates as an army without a country. On the unarmed side of things, NGOs like Amnesty International have more credibility than most of their supervisees, and while they can't actually vote at the UN can initiate and direct international action far more effectively than that august body. Cultural and religious movements within nations can provide much of the infrastructure of life, especially education, healthcare, childcare, employment and poverty services.
In a recent post, I talked about the decline of ideology, and the absence of any political allegiance to a "better future" that could motivate people to put their reputations (or their lives) on the line in America. We don't believe in a communist revolution. We don't believe in nationalist isolationism. We don't believe in democracy. We don't believe in the enlightenment or the coming rule of jesus. We, as a country, or as a political faction within the government of the country, don't believe in anything anymore, because we are no longer political factions in any real sense.
My smart friend and I were talking last week about the idea of a "poor people's movement." He wanted to see one, to see what would happen. I felt it wasn't likely. He isn't here so I can tell you my side of the discussion uncontradicted: I don't ever again expect to see a "poor people's movement" in America. Here's why:
We do not live in a globalized world, but we definitely live in a delocalized one. Although trade and mobility have done a lot to homogenize the idea of place, they lag a long way behind the ability of the internet to create customized information spaces for every single one of us. When the idea of a customized information-space was first floated, it was always on the terms of the individual- YOU can have YOUR favorite news about YOUR favorite topics, talk to people who believe what YOU believe, read about YOUR curiosities- and there are people who live like this no doubt. As in real life, however, the overwhelming majority (i.e. "all") of humans are profoundly social, and instead of facilitating the solipsistic individual, who lives in their own personalized world, we've seen the emergence of broadly-stroked information tribes, who roam shared spaces in coherent groups, talking always to each other, but never just to themselves.
If the health-care "debate" didn't make it obvious, different people's realities are fundamentally determined by the ideological and social affiliations in which they participate. For someone who watches Fox news, reads... some website I don't know by name... and circulates chain emails with their friends who believe similar precepts about the world, immigrants really are taking over the country. For someone who watches the Daily Show, reads... fuck I dunno, Derrick Jensen... and circulates other emails, this idea is pure, unsupportable crap. But there's no recourse to the objective world- there's no such thing. Never before in human history have we had such perfect evidence that no-one, not the blind ideologues in the next room, not the clear-sighted, informed person you think you are (but you're really just another kind of blind ideologue) has any actual lock on "real." We make reality with our eyes. Then we argue about it.
And, when we argue, we like to do it with our friends. And we feel close to them because they see the truth in the world, free of the distortions of dogmatism and false assumptions. And they are, in a way unmatched by any citizenship, our national allegiance.
Oh wait, am I talking about the internet? That only applies to the first world, right? Bullcrap. First, people in every nation, all over the world, regardless of material culture, suck up as much information about their world as they can. Second, all that information is shaded by the biases of the creators. Third, those biases are clear, if not necessarily named, by consumers. And in an urban world, there are always multiple sources- multiple churches, multiple meetings, multiple ongoing rant sessions in the bar, multiple schools to choose from. In a non-urban world? There are no non-urban nation-states. Leave the cities outside the first world, and you find yourself in an impenetrable thicket of tribes, conquered former-states, religious migrants, ethnicities... all the bases for non-nation-state nationality you could possibly want. The internet has only made it clear that these lines will always redraw themselves.
So I don't anticipate a poor people's movement, because being "poor" sucks. There are so many more flattering movements to be part of! If poor people mobilize for anything, it will be fragmentary and under the aegises (aeges?) of all the sub-tribes and tendencies of information space. We'll have the Ron Paul contingent again, we'll have the Toby Keith contingent, we'll have the Obama backers... but we'll never have "the poor" any more than we'll have "the uneducated" or "the not really sure what to do next."
And they won't march against the government, either. Oh sure, they might, but why? Government isn't where its at anymore. If you want a "better world" according to your own definition of the term, why not just make one? Homeschooling is easier than fighting the school board. Churches offer better childcare (and produce) than the government. Informal sharing among people who've learned to trust each other through discussions and community coexistence (community being informational, not geographic) is much more comfortable than a free market. Need work? Need a place to stay? Looking for a new date? Ask your friends! We've reached the point at which strengthening these resources unofficially has a higher rate of return than fighting city hall for the same things, so now this is what movements do. Hezbollah has an engineering department that rebuilds houses damaged in Hezbollah-involved conflict in a matter of months. Can you imagine how long it would take the Israeli, Palestinian, or Lebanese governments to accomplish the same trick?
And speaking of Hezbollah, some day some of those movements will be armed. What's Al Qaeda if not a tendency, an information-space position that views the world from a particular point, a network of "like minded individuals" who associate together to make their lives more coherent... armed? But that doesn't mean conflict is the inevitable end of information-nationalism in a post-state world. The warlord-state, where everybody is armed and nobody is legitimate, is only the most dystopian end of the dystopian end of the scale for the post-national future. Overlapping, cosmopolitan, mutually-bemused variants are also possible and, given the tendency people have for avoiding killing each other, more likely. And more hopeful. And, you might say, what anarchists were predicting all along.
So the CIA has slipped the bonds of government control and become a self-motivated, non-state actor with goals and weapons, and has contracted with, essentially, a mercenary faction that was never state-bonded in the first place. This is kind of to be expected, really. Look who they're fighting in Afghanistan! Look who their allies are! They can't play by the old rules anymore. The future is stateless.
And, really, so are you. You, and all your friends (people who read this blog?) are also members of a non-state actor. Not one that wants to go assassinate people (so far as I know or want to know) but one that has its own goals, exists across national boundaries, and takes care of its own. Quite possibly, that's how you came across my journal- you know me from some scene somewhere, or you found me through like-minded bloggers, or maybe there's an open link somewhere that points to me. Its also probable through these people that you decide where to live, what jobs are acceptable (cop? herbalist?), what side to take in open political disputes, and it is probably to these people that you would turn in a crisis. Embrace it- this is your new citizenship. We are all on various scales, exist in various combinations of allegiance, but aside from, say, me on my ambulance, or the public school teachers and public librarians, these are not related to the government of anything. Welcome, again, as ever, to the future.
[ETA: Check this out-
My RSS Feed Is Here]
First, a summary- the CIA wanted to kill Al Qaeda leaders, and among other approaches (sending its own field agents, paying off locals, working with branches of the regular military) it has, we now know, contracts with Blackwater Security. So, Blackwater was hired to kill for the CIA. The story mentions a "constellation" or similar interlacings, presumably similar, but doesn't go into too much detail. Probably there isn't any.
I wrote, a long time ago, that we were entering the age of the non-state actor. The government no longer has a monopoly on violence. National borders no longer define allegiances. Supra-national and subnational armed movements, from drug-runners to Kurdistan, are more relevant than the actual titular heads of the "countries" in which they operate. Entire nations have become post-national, one thinks immediately of Lebanon (governed and defended by, essentially, an armed political party representing only a fraction of the populace) or Pakistan (in which the head of state is at most an annoyance to the security apparatus.) The US is at war ostensibly with terror but in actuality (as best as any formal definition can be placed on this clusterfuck) with Al Qaeda, a banking-and-training network that operates as an army without a country. On the unarmed side of things, NGOs like Amnesty International have more credibility than most of their supervisees, and while they can't actually vote at the UN can initiate and direct international action far more effectively than that august body. Cultural and religious movements within nations can provide much of the infrastructure of life, especially education, healthcare, childcare, employment and poverty services.
In a recent post, I talked about the decline of ideology, and the absence of any political allegiance to a "better future" that could motivate people to put their reputations (or their lives) on the line in America. We don't believe in a communist revolution. We don't believe in nationalist isolationism. We don't believe in democracy. We don't believe in the enlightenment or the coming rule of jesus. We, as a country, or as a political faction within the government of the country, don't believe in anything anymore, because we are no longer political factions in any real sense.
My smart friend and I were talking last week about the idea of a "poor people's movement." He wanted to see one, to see what would happen. I felt it wasn't likely. He isn't here so I can tell you my side of the discussion uncontradicted: I don't ever again expect to see a "poor people's movement" in America. Here's why:
We do not live in a globalized world, but we definitely live in a delocalized one. Although trade and mobility have done a lot to homogenize the idea of place, they lag a long way behind the ability of the internet to create customized information spaces for every single one of us. When the idea of a customized information-space was first floated, it was always on the terms of the individual- YOU can have YOUR favorite news about YOUR favorite topics, talk to people who believe what YOU believe, read about YOUR curiosities- and there are people who live like this no doubt. As in real life, however, the overwhelming majority (i.e. "all") of humans are profoundly social, and instead of facilitating the solipsistic individual, who lives in their own personalized world, we've seen the emergence of broadly-stroked information tribes, who roam shared spaces in coherent groups, talking always to each other, but never just to themselves.
If the health-care "debate" didn't make it obvious, different people's realities are fundamentally determined by the ideological and social affiliations in which they participate. For someone who watches Fox news, reads... some website I don't know by name... and circulates chain emails with their friends who believe similar precepts about the world, immigrants really are taking over the country. For someone who watches the Daily Show, reads... fuck I dunno, Derrick Jensen... and circulates other emails, this idea is pure, unsupportable crap. But there's no recourse to the objective world- there's no such thing. Never before in human history have we had such perfect evidence that no-one, not the blind ideologues in the next room, not the clear-sighted, informed person you think you are (but you're really just another kind of blind ideologue) has any actual lock on "real." We make reality with our eyes. Then we argue about it.
And, when we argue, we like to do it with our friends. And we feel close to them because they see the truth in the world, free of the distortions of dogmatism and false assumptions. And they are, in a way unmatched by any citizenship, our national allegiance.
Oh wait, am I talking about the internet? That only applies to the first world, right? Bullcrap. First, people in every nation, all over the world, regardless of material culture, suck up as much information about their world as they can. Second, all that information is shaded by the biases of the creators. Third, those biases are clear, if not necessarily named, by consumers. And in an urban world, there are always multiple sources- multiple churches, multiple meetings, multiple ongoing rant sessions in the bar, multiple schools to choose from. In a non-urban world? There are no non-urban nation-states. Leave the cities outside the first world, and you find yourself in an impenetrable thicket of tribes, conquered former-states, religious migrants, ethnicities... all the bases for non-nation-state nationality you could possibly want. The internet has only made it clear that these lines will always redraw themselves.
So I don't anticipate a poor people's movement, because being "poor" sucks. There are so many more flattering movements to be part of! If poor people mobilize for anything, it will be fragmentary and under the aegises (aeges?) of all the sub-tribes and tendencies of information space. We'll have the Ron Paul contingent again, we'll have the Toby Keith contingent, we'll have the Obama backers... but we'll never have "the poor" any more than we'll have "the uneducated" or "the not really sure what to do next."
And they won't march against the government, either. Oh sure, they might, but why? Government isn't where its at anymore. If you want a "better world" according to your own definition of the term, why not just make one? Homeschooling is easier than fighting the school board. Churches offer better childcare (and produce) than the government. Informal sharing among people who've learned to trust each other through discussions and community coexistence (community being informational, not geographic) is much more comfortable than a free market. Need work? Need a place to stay? Looking for a new date? Ask your friends! We've reached the point at which strengthening these resources unofficially has a higher rate of return than fighting city hall for the same things, so now this is what movements do. Hezbollah has an engineering department that rebuilds houses damaged in Hezbollah-involved conflict in a matter of months. Can you imagine how long it would take the Israeli, Palestinian, or Lebanese governments to accomplish the same trick?
And speaking of Hezbollah, some day some of those movements will be armed. What's Al Qaeda if not a tendency, an information-space position that views the world from a particular point, a network of "like minded individuals" who associate together to make their lives more coherent... armed? But that doesn't mean conflict is the inevitable end of information-nationalism in a post-state world. The warlord-state, where everybody is armed and nobody is legitimate, is only the most dystopian end of the dystopian end of the scale for the post-national future. Overlapping, cosmopolitan, mutually-bemused variants are also possible and, given the tendency people have for avoiding killing each other, more likely. And more hopeful. And, you might say, what anarchists were predicting all along.
So the CIA has slipped the bonds of government control and become a self-motivated, non-state actor with goals and weapons, and has contracted with, essentially, a mercenary faction that was never state-bonded in the first place. This is kind of to be expected, really. Look who they're fighting in Afghanistan! Look who their allies are! They can't play by the old rules anymore. The future is stateless.
And, really, so are you. You, and all your friends (people who read this blog?) are also members of a non-state actor. Not one that wants to go assassinate people (so far as I know or want to know) but one that has its own goals, exists across national boundaries, and takes care of its own. Quite possibly, that's how you came across my journal- you know me from some scene somewhere, or you found me through like-minded bloggers, or maybe there's an open link somewhere that points to me. Its also probable through these people that you decide where to live, what jobs are acceptable (cop? herbalist?), what side to take in open political disputes, and it is probably to these people that you would turn in a crisis. Embrace it- this is your new citizenship. We are all on various scales, exist in various combinations of allegiance, but aside from, say, me on my ambulance, or the public school teachers and public librarians, these are not related to the government of anything. Welcome, again, as ever, to the future.
[ETA: Check this out-
My RSS Feed Is Here]