Tipping Points
Were any of my readers in Berlin in late 1989?
In September of that year, neither the East German government, the Soviets, nor the cadre of U.S. intelligence assets stationed in East Berlin had any inkling they were less than two months from the beginning of a reunited Germany.
While the percentage of the population who will outright reject government authority is, by necessity, low (see the “Sovereign Citizens” or various cults in the U.S.), officials are comfortable with significantly larger portions of the population constantly being dissatisfied with the status quo. The better hegemonic structures will build loyalties from this dissatisfaction in others, portraying such attitudes as “un-patriotic,” and calling on adherents to openly demonstrate loyalty.
Thus hegemony contextualizes actions and responses in a self-reinforcing manner. The attack legitimizes the authority that is being attacked. Addressing acts of deviance makes the rules that have been violated real and legitimizes the rule-makers’ and rule-enforcers’ authority. When the deviant act is unaddressed, however, the authority of the rules and the institutions supported by those rules lose legitimacy. This is where we are.
Give the incoming administration any title you wish: Plutocracy, autocracy, kakistocracy, kleptocracy, whatever. The coup that commenced in 2020 is nearly completed. The deviant acts and leading actors were never brought to justice. The state has lost legitimacy from #MAGA and a large portion of its non-MAGA population, and the goal of the coup leadership is to revolutionize the state such that it exists solely as a disciplinary tool for the ruling class.
To succeed, they must reframe discourses, but at the same time protect the power they have. It is a very dangerous game for them because in order to establish their own hegemony, they have to undo the prior era’s hegemonic constructs. Conspiracy theories serve this purpose for them, undermining trust in authority structures while diverting causality from empirical social class interactions to an nameless, faceless “they” in the less prejudiced versions, or a secret cabal of Jews in traditional ones.
The South African immigrant who worked illegally in the U.S. before becoming a citizen wants everyone to know he is the wealthiest person in the world (and the smartest, by his own estimation). He’s not hiding. If we are to follow the reasoning, it will be his responsibility to “take back” social order from existing, secret authority structures; which he is doing on a “volunteer” basis.
When you or I volunteer, we offer our labor to others with no expectation of return. It is not possible to become the biggest owner in the world by looking out for others. You might not make any money from selling labor, but you certainly don’t become wealthier by giving it away. When all of one’s labors serve the purpose of increasing personal capital: THAT is the American Dream. To hold such wealth that one is spared from exploitation.
The new social structure these revolutionaries are working toward will ensure that the American Dream (not citizenship) is determined through birthright. It will all depend on which side of the divide one’s ancestors were on at this very time in history: owner or worker? At least that’s what they are designing. Their first steps this time around will be to dismantle the state’s support and protections, justified through claims to “efficiency.”
It is worthy of a dozen essays, but for the time being, I will simply point out a few facts:
—”Efficiency” presumes a goal and a method, and can only be measured in comparison.
—Buying a nation more time through greater efficiency does not result in more leisure for the population.
—Spending less money through greater efficiency does not result in more money for the population.
—The state is not a business and attempts to treat it as such will cause it to fail as a state.
Those state institutions that offer public support will be deemed most inefficient: education, Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare, due process, and voting. We’ve seen the attacks on social support programs; we are about to see due process and voting face challenges like they never have before.
Due process takes too long, requires too many legal motions and court appointments, and ends up letting guilty people go free. On top of that, the poorest defendants (which are many of them) cost the state public defender fees. Then there are the immigrants, who we have to pay attorneys to represent at their deportation hearings, when all of them are going to be deported, anyway. If we simply flip the presumption of innocence into a presumption of guilt, then defendants would only have to prove it was not them, and if they cannot do that we have a conviction. The presumption of guilt will do wonders for speeding cases through the courts as people will gladly take plea agreements, because they know they are guilty and cannot prove otherwise.
Juries are another horribly inefficient way to determine justice. Does anyone know how difficult it is for a group of 12 people to come to a unanimous decision? Again, the presumption of guilt will make those few cases that go to trial happen much more efficiently. The only witnesses that would be called would be those who could establish the defendant did not do what they have been accused of. Under the presumption of guilt the prosecution would need only make the charge. Algorithms can be employed to weigh the likelihood defense testimony is valid, whether the accused has a likelihood of future offenses, and what the ideal sentence would be (the A.I. will sentence all to labor for private corporations).
Remember, the U.S. Supreme Court has already ruled they can offer no real check on the Executive, aside from a silly determination whether an action was “official,” which it will always be. We’ve been told the leaders of the coup will never be held to the old form of justice (thanks to the inefficiency of due process—and the inaction of the DoJ), and those foot soldiers who were convicted will be pardoned by the coup leader. It should surprise no one when the Court rules presumptive guilt is a viable legal theory.
No one anticipated the Berlin Wall coming down and a massive popular uprising deposing the old government and installing their own just months before it happened. Revolutionaries should keep in mind that when they destroy the old social order, they no longer hold the purchase that order afforded them. Those who have suffered from the old social order have nothing to lose so Peoples’ Revolutions, like the one in East Berlin, rise via demolition. I'm not sure history has an example of a ruling class that revolutionized a society and came out on the other side, still ruling.
I guess the smartest, richest guy on the planet is about to either make history, or become it.