Getting Rid of Trump Doesn’t Treat the Pervasive Toxicity of ‘American Democracy’
Fat Mosquito
A mosquito was killed in my home yesterday. It was so stuffed with liquid that it struggled to fly, oscillating between strenuous ascension, and exhausted descent like a determined miniature ostrich. I was effortlessly able to squish it midair between my thumb and index finger. Its remains consisted mostly of my blood, arranged like the very last drops of a dull red spray-paint can on white tiles.
Trump, in its desperate attempt to remain in high office, indulged to the point where it became easier to destroy him. All that is left is his disoriented flock of followers, which operate as twitchy limbs with the muscle memory for combat, but not revolution. Combat, without the heavy hand of the State, is forlorn and doomed.
Their methods may, after all, not be as repulsive as their motivations. Political methods and motives are independent of each other; in this case, we can believe in both, neither, or either. We’ve been stirred towards condemning both, by people and entities who have their own methods and motives. But what are ours? Is destroying Trump paramount and do the ends justify the means?
The group who stormed the capitol this week are not anarchists, although some journalists enjoy saying that, thinking the word is a smarter synonym for ‘chaos.’ Those people weren’t protesting against the government, they were acting out in favor of their own. And, unfortunately, to denounce them has meant calling ‘American Democracy’ a sacred institution. It would be a terrible irony if Trump supporters succeeded in making anarchists and radical leftists safeguard that which we were motivated to destroy for so long.
As an anarchist, I’ve never worked towards destroying ‘American Democracy,’ only the nocive illusion of it. I’ve never worked to protect the symbols of corrupt, racist institutions, or the integrity of buildings that house a murderous elite. We mustn’t be seduced into sanctifying the institution we’ve known to have committed atrocities across the world for a century, just because, at the moment, it shares one motivation with us — to remove Trump from the presidency.
The drive to vote him out is fleeting, and we ought to remember our lasting goals, such as ending war, misery, and inequality. ‘American Democracy’ reproduces rather than prevents these, and the Biden administration does not guarantee significant changes other than perhaps minor ones to the latter. Inequality is addressed by appointing people of color and women to positions of power just as a fresh coat of paint addresses a mold problem. It may transform a room for the time being, but unless the cause of the problem is tackled, the environment will become unappealing and toxic again soon enough.
“Fidelity to the rule of law” may now be a sentiment that serves our fleeting motivation to get rid of Trump, but it will never rescue us from the pervasive toxicity of the global political landscape ‘American Democracy’ has devised.
Derailed Ants
While showering, I watched several tiny ants pace across the white tiles on the wall. Ants are rarely scattered; this is probably the most interesting method of their communities. Even more fascinating is how being well routed does not mean disclosing the location of their anthill. Nevertheless, I try tracing where they were coming from, where they were going, unsuccessfully.
‘Even the best communities can be disorderly,’ I thought as I watched some ants going off-trail towards a drain that would at any moment wash them away, quite literally into a dead end. Most came to their senses soon enough and turned around, returning through the exact path they came from, and rejoining the main artery. Others were a little more stubborn, going further and further, racing past the occasional corpse of a fellow ant stuck on a single droplet held in the space between the tiles. Eventually the loner would turn around barely soon enough to escape death.
That’s all it takes — one individual trailing off and creating a whole new path leading down the drain. Would a law against straying be a solution? What a tricky situation it is, to discourage a following while relying on it. The punishment of straying leaders is effective when the goal is to preserve a following in the mainstream; to question some leaders, but not all. Most importantly, to criticize the other, not ours.
Polarization is essentially that, a way to criticize individual leaders without damaging the concept of leadership. In this sense, polarization is in the interest of, and promoted by, the leaders themselves. Before adhering to and popularizing motivations and methods endorsed by captivating leaders, having a clearer understanding of our own situation, and what’s in our best interest, is indispensable.
More often than not, what is in the best interest of our leaders does not translate into what’s in our best interest (as individuals who vote because we feel the need to be represented by leadership). Since we are social beings, the interests of our community are our interests, and vice-versa. While, as we’ve seen so many times before, leadership has an interest in exerting power over the behavior of a community, steering them in whichever direction. Usually, it’s in the direction which maintains the bare minimum level of satisfaction to prevent a rebellion, or, better yet, to preserve those in positions of power.
In order to preserve this bare minimum level of satisfaction, it has been proven to be cheaper to influence people’s opinions, than to improve people’s material conditions and access to resources. This explains the astonishing power that social media has over elections, through polarizing content. The internet has become so intrinsic to how we access information, that it’s hard to imagine alternatives to accessing it. Books, for instance, are great, but even those we order over the internet nowadays.
If not the ‘rule of law’ or the internet, what can we rely on to be engaged politically?
As Jere Kuzmanić wrote in a recent article about mutual aid after the earthquake in Croatia, “Strong communities make politicians obsolete.” If there is one thing more effective as political engagement than voting, it is community building. There is much to be learned by listening to people in one’s own community. How well and safe are our friends and family? How are resources being shared in our immediate environment? An individual’s preeminent political tool is getting to know what community means to them. And it’s better to start small, than to not start at all, especially in these unsettling times.
MIRNA WABI-SABI
is site editor at Gods and Radicals, founding member of the Brazilian magazine Enemy of the Queen and of the Plataforma 9 media collective.