Re: <nettime> What is the meaning of Trump's victory?

[Vincent Van Uffelen <novazembla@gmail.com>]

   One way to go forward would be to clearly define a moral compass and do
   our best to propagate it. After all, Brexit got barely voted yes, Trump
   got barely voted in (at least in popular vote), the progressive are not
   a small minority but constitute probably in many countries the majority
   (how many of the ones that didn't go to vote are just appalled by the
   lack of real options and would be happy to engage with a more
   progressive side?).
   However, neoliberalism corroded the political caste and our minds. And,
   the egalitarian society failed to manifest economically in the last
   centuries - it's one thing to give someone voting rights and a totally
   different thing to share your bounty of capitalism.
   Furthermore, the left failed to provide a strong narrative that people
   can use as stepping stones to be guided through uncertain times. The
   fragmented struggles for *-rights and anti-* movements never reached
   the coherence needed to be a platform of projection for the majority.
   Additionally, too many convinced of the egalitarian movement have been
   lulled into the comfort of gained freedom and forgot that it is just
   the harvest of continuous toil. As humans (in their full complexity of
   beings in becoming) are having flaws (buzzword! cognitive biases) and
   society nurtures further misalignment with the communitarian worldview
   I believe that the future beholds the need for continuous reminding of
   egalitarian values and their advantages. Humans bad sides will not go
   away by implementing a utopian society but a strong and morally just
   society can weaken their impact and therefore weaken potential
   exploitation.
   We are living in very interesting times, change is in the air, we all
   can feel it and this is with all it's potential dangers (WW3, fashism,
   ...) a good thing as the old way of living proves not to be working
   (socially, economically, and environmentally). The right is taking the
   chance and trolls tribal minds with memes and (breathtakingly
   effective) gibberish, to drum the old drums that people kept dusty but
   ready in their basements. In their usual way they close rank around a
   vague outlines of shared values and promises to disrupt societies (and
   to only wonder after disruption what comes next). I think that the left
   needed a few strong wake up calls (in big countries - who cared about
   Hungary, Austria, or the Philippines - UK Brexit, Trump's US, 5-Stars
   in Italy, AFD in Germany, an upcoming neo-Thatcherite president in
   France should be doing it) as painful as they are. The brittle
   situation of our global society is providing danger and opportunity and
   I hope to be involved in seizing opportunity.
   I think it's time to define the problem as a holistic one. It's not
   only racism, misogyny, patriarchy, capitalism, or extractivism it's all
   of it. This makes things way more complicated, what is it worth to push
   a little towards racial equality if this is just a drip in the ocean,
   why plant a few tomatoes in the backyard, or to petition for divestment
   of my pension fund? How to make sense of these micro-scale
   reconfigurations that most of the time seem to affect nothing? Finding
   answers on questions like this, creating a new narrative, that allows
   all of these little actions to slot into a larger movement this is in
   my eyes the challenge of the times. Taking climate change by the horns
   and fleshing out the contributions of each *-right and anti-* movements
   to mitigate this global crisis might be a good direction to go. Many of
   the swing voters could maybe caught via a strong narrative around
   climate change's risks and their possible mitigation.
   I'm still struggling how to tackle a holistic crisis. How can you go
   for all ends at the same time but without burning yourself? Maybe, a
   global society is of help. If I know that other people are going for
   other loosed ends I might find it easy enough to pick one of it and
   give a good tuck. We might need some way of communicating the
   collective division of change labor and its effect. I certainly, need
   to feel effect of my actions to be able to sustain pressure, probably
   many others need to see effect too. Granted, I know, many of these
   changes are slow, long term, this makes things difficult but maybe
   there is a solution.
   Lastly, I believe in democracy, so I've to believe in politics (as
   corrupted it currently might and ever will be). So any politician/party
   who dares to tell me something like the following might get my vote.
   1. We believe in equality (of race, gender, sex, human/nature,
   economically), and will fight for it (yes, really fight for it)
   2. We are aware that we are not perfect, we strive to do good, but we
   are flawed but open to critique.
   3. We'll be governing as transparent as possible.
   4. As a national politician we are in the hands of many external
   forces. We will tell you when our arms have been twisted so you and
   your global friends can demand corrections.
   5. Governing is a push and pull between the best for society and the
   individual. Some things we decide on might not be popular with you.
   6. We don't know how to get there, all we can provide you with the
   promise that I will adhere to our guiding principles and strive to
   implement them as good as we can.
   7. We believe in incremental change, in a spiral-circular movement of
   analysis, implementation, evaluation. [I know it's the lean startup but
   it's also how evolution works and it might be the best method to bridge
   the gap between the current situation and any real utopias]
   8. We know that we are dealing with a tremendously complex system.
   Bigger than we will ever to be able to understand. The exercise of
   power should be therefore as small and as local as possible. This will
   allow us to be able to be sensitive to the local context and implement
   best fitting solutions.
   9. Diverse, redundant, and regenerative systems are to be preferred.
   10. We will try to abolish any global institutions that have to power
   to challenge any national or local institutions (too big too fail we're
   coming after you). International contracts that are able to intervene
   with any local policies that positive for small-scale, environmental
   friendly communities will be renegotiated or terminated. (World-trade
   contracts that allow to torpedo climate-change contracts we are coming
   after you)
   11. Science is a very useful tool but also has it's flaws as it always
   also embeds a certain world view. So we will use it with caution. We
   will prefer advice of interdisciplinary teams and strictly review the
   commercial relations of any team members.
   12. We strive to not implement changes that are having potential for
   unforeseen consequences (black swans). However, in a transitory phase,
   we will run test cases that might cause wild fluctuations (how else
   would we quickly realign money between house holds).
   13. Most likely you will have to share some of your cash, assets, or
   land. We're now you or your ancestors worked hard for it but the
   balance does not level out otherwise (and yes, we will go after the
   oversea accounts).
   This list is by far not exhaustive, more of a stream of consciousness.
   Please fill in, correct, dismiss, I've still got a lot to learn.
   Peace and harmony!
   \\vincent

   On 20/11/2016 18:45, Michael Gurstein wrote:

The emerging explanation for Trump seems be of the misogyny or racism of
a significant portion of the US population.  That may or may not be true
(I rather think that a portion of those voting for Trump were
racist/misogynist but by no means all).
 <...>

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[4]http://vincentvanuffelen.com
[5]http://transmit-interfere.com
[6]http://deepmediaresearch.org

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