[Graphic: Montage of Trump voters. Credit: James West.]

Andre Vltchek
Itinerant Philosopher and Journalist

Since the results of the latest Presidential elections were announced, I am longing for silence, while the overwhelming cacophony of deafening noises is assaulting my ears, and in fact all my senses.

Suddenly everyone around me wants to speak, to shout, and to declare. Lately, people who are surrounding me, as well as those who are far away from me are frantically watching the news, reading newspapers and browsing through countless political websites.

My friends and comrades all over the world are poking jokes at the US political establishment, or trembling in anticipation of something terrible, even apocalyptic. Many are just having fun. Even some thoughtful and educated individuals are behaving like obsessive football fans: analyzing, passing judgments, and spending countless hours on the couch, in front of their television screens.

Of course there are also many gigantic protests in countless American cities against the President-elect, Donald Trump, the 45^th leader of the mightiest nation on Earth. There are some massive protests, desperate protests, and hopeless protests. There are also personal protests, resigned shrugs of shoulders and downcast glances.

Overall there is a lot of noise. Everyone is speaking from the top of his or her lungs. Actually, people are shouting over each other. They want to be heard, desperately. While very few are listening. Very few also appear to be reflecting on what is being said by the others, on what is truly happening, on what has happened.

Despite millions of words and images assaulting our brains from all directions, I know that something is definitely missing, something important, even something essential.

It is not just my analytical mind that comprehends this; it is also my intuition.

As a result, I want to smash those television sets in my vicinity, I want to throw newspapers into the garbage bin, and I want to go away, far away, from all my politicizing friends and comrades. But what is it that is being omitted in the official and even in the alternative narrative? What is it that I want to hear, longing to hear so much … longing with such force, even with such desperation?

Am I desperate for some precise analyses, for exact numbers, for revealing facts? Am I yearning for one brilliant study, for a report? Do I want to hear from someone why on earth did the American people elect someone like him, like Donald Trump? Or is it all actually much more simple and selfish: do I expect those wise words to come from my own brain, typed into my computer with my own fingers?

How did it all really come to this? And why? What will happen now? What will happen to them (to the voters), what will happen to America, the country, which despite everything used to be my home for many years? What will happen to America which took so much, but which also gave me plenty? I kept asking, above all, what will happen to the world, to the entire world, which is now my true home, and which is also their true home (home of the American voters), although perhaps they do not fully comprehend it yet.

No, I did not want to hear the facts! I couldn’t care less about the numbers. I was not longing for analyses, and I felt absolutely no desire to speak!

Suddenly, there was only one longing left in me: to listen, to hear, to absorb the millions of voices of those who just recently went to the polls and stuck those pieces of paper into boxes, most likely changing the destiny of the world. And since I knew I wouldn’t be able to absorb millions of testimonies, I wanted to listen to at least a few hundred or even thousands of them if possible.

I wanted to hear the stories of those men and women from the Rustbelt states, from the Deep South, from isolated farms and exhausted mining towns. I wanted to put my glass of beer next to theirs, in some god-forsaken bar, and just nod and whisper what so many storytellers before me, have done for millennia, and what they will be saying for many centuries to come: “Please tell me your story…”

I want to hear their stories so I can collect them, arrange them, and pass them onto the world.

I want the people who voted for Donald Trump to speak to me, to explain, to let me into their thoughts and emotions. I want to understand what occurred through their stories.

I don’t want to judge. I am usually very judgmental, very political, and very ideological. This time I have no desire to be … This is too serious; too damn serious!

I owe America that much. That is the least I can do. To return there, to fly there all the way from Asia, to rent a car, and drive from coast to coast, for long weeks, and to finally listen to people, trying to understand who they are, what they did, and why?

“I am what I am because I am a passionate listener,” I was once told by one of the greatest Latin American writers, Eduardo Galeano. “People always know what goes on. All we have to do is to listen to them. And we have to lead them only when they ask us, when they order us to do so.”

There is no doubt in my mind that now is the time to attentively listen to the American people; to fill newspapers and websites with their words. But almost no one seems to be doing that.

All we hear is ‘why they voted as they did’. How they voted: women, minorities, particular classes or states … We read about numbers, but we don’t hear people speaking! We don’t hear them formulating the words. That is what I am longing for: to shut up, to be silent, and to listen, and I want other intellectuals to shut up and to humbly listen too, finally!

Not because I agree with what they, the voters, have done. Not because I want Donald Trump to lead the country and the Empire. Not because I suddenly ‘fell in love with the small people’. It is simply because the people of the most powerful country on Earth have spoken, because they made their choice. And because, if we don’t understand why that choice was made, we will all get fucked, soon, and not only in North America, but also all over the world!

I want to listen and to understand so the course of action can be determined, so that we know where all this will lead … because this is not the end, just the beginning… of something… Because not only people in the United States, but also in Europe want something, and listening to the analysts from both parts of the world, and by just ‘reading facts and numbers’, I have absolutely no clue what it is!

Do voters want some new form of participatory democracy? Do they want neo-fascism? Are they thoroughly selfish or is there at least some internationalist essence in their souls?

We can only find out if we let them speak. And that is why I am longing for silence, and then for their voices to resonate, so we know, we know now, before the thunder and flames swallow our Planet, and before it is too late.

* Thanks to James West and Mother Jones for the montage and the video. There are more videos part of West’s project.

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Andre Vltchek

Philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist, Andre Vltchek has covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. Three of his latest books are revolutionary novel “Aurora” and two bestselling works of political non-fiction: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire” and  “Fighting Against Western Imperialism”. View his other books here. Andre is making films for teleSUR and Al-Mayadeen. After having lived in Latin America, Africa and Oceania, Vltchek presently resides in East Asia and the Middle East, and continues to work around the world. He can be reached through his website and his Twitter.

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Nauseated by the
vile corporate media?
Had enough of their lies, escapism,
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[Photo: Serbian American war memorial in Milwaukie, Wisconsin. Credit: American Serb History 101.]

=By= GH Eliason, Distinguished Collaborator

The reason Hillary Clinton was crushed in the electoral college during this election is because she lost Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania . The reason behind the unprecedented loss can be summed up in two sentences. “We will not forget. We will not forgive.”

These three states are home to large sections of the Serbian-American community. For most of them, their traditionally Democratic ticket vote turning Republican was a clear repudiation of Hillary Clinton’s role in the Balkan genocide.

“An American Serb generally doesn’t vote FOR anyone, but AGAINST a Biden, a Clinton, a McCain, against whoever Madeleine Albright supports, against whoever bombed Serbia, recognized Kosovo… Wait, was Dubya a friend to the Serbs? Didn’t his administration pounce to recognize Thaci’s Cartel State in 2008?

Didn’t the worst act of ethnic cleansing in the 21st century occur on his watch against the Kosovo Serbs in March 2004? All true, but in 2004, it was John Kerry, his opponent, who inexplicably promised to recognize Kosovo during the campaign, although Kosovo was far from being a foreign policy priority or a campaign issue. It was John Kerry who received more than half a million dollars in one evening from the Albanian-American community led by Florin Krasniqi, a well-known arms dealer, via the notorious Serb-haters Richard Holbrooke and Wesley Clark, who took the money over in the Cipriani ballroom in New York. Of course Serbs were going to vote for Kerry’s opponent.”

The loss of these three states was revenge exacted for supporting the Kosovo Liberation Army genocide against Serbians.  This was a clear repudiation of the Clinton dynasty and Hillary Clinton because she had callously destroyed so many of their families.

The Serbian-American vote in this election was the first time I have ever heard of racial genocide victims vote to end the political careers of people they hold responsible. Slobodan Milosevic was exonerated from genocide in Kosovo. In fact, he tried to stop it. At this point, as much as you want to, you can’t even call him an asshole.

“Not only was Milosevic not responsible for ethnic cleansing which took place in Bosnia, he actually spoke out against it. The ICTY noted Milosevic’s “repeated criticism and disapproval of the policies made by the Accused (Karadzic) and the Bosnian Serb leadership.” Milosevic, a man for whom all forms of racism were anathema, insisted that all ethnicities must be protected.”

It was Hillary Clinton that badgered then president Bill Clinton to start the bombing and support the genocidal terrorists, the KLA.“For me, my family and my fellow Americans (Albanians) this is more than a foreign policy issue, it is personal,” Clinton stressed. The bombing drove the victims into the waiting hands of the KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army).

And Kosovo is truly personal for Clinton. At this year’s Democratic National Convention, Hillary invited the speaker of the Kosovo National Assembly, Kadri Veseli as a special guest. Veseli, with longtime Clinton friend Kosovo president Hashim Thaci are going to be tried for crimes against humanity. Without Clinton in the White House protecting them, they will probably hang for organ stealing and mass murder. Kosovo is part of Albania’s greater Albania project.

“Less than a week before visiting Washington, Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama has said U.S. Republican candidate Donald Trump would be a threat to his country and to U.S.-Albanian bilateral ties if elected president… Rama was in neighboring Kosovo, two countries with the same ethnic Albanian majority population, to take part in a ceremony for new President Hashim Thaci Friday.”

In Kosovo today there were ISIS camps being set up on the hope of a Clinton win. Kosovars (Albanians) made a reputation for themselves as the white jihadis. They are ultra-nationalists who recruit for and support ISIS.

“I am accused that I cut off one man’s head? I did nothing less nor more than the soldiers of the KLA during the war. I placed the photos of those deeds by the KLA on Facebook,” Muhaxheri is quoted as saying.”

Was Hillary Clinton in violation of federal election law for knowingly taking election donations from these Islamist radicals when it’s illegal for foreign nationals to contribute?

Today, the emigres who supported the KLA genocide are among the groups behind some of the protests aimed at overthrowing the election. It’s easy to see why.

The Serbian-Americans were the only emigre group behind Donald Trump that I have been able to find. For the emigre series I went as far as interviewing a member of the Serbian Radical Party in Belgrade for that section. I am hoping to add it in later.

More than 20 other exponentially larger and politically powerful ultra-nationalist groups were backing Hillary Clinton. In this election, they were situated in the wrong districts and states.

The two noticeably absent ethnic blocs in the emigre series I wrote before the election are the Serbian-Americans and the Ukrainian-Americans. Each played an important part in Donald Trump’s rout of a self-destructing Hillary Clinton. The Ukrainian-Americans thought Clinton was going to win after spitting out so much money and media spots. They believed their own story line and got complacent in Pennsylvania.

When I saw enough evidence of IIO (Inform & Influence Operations), I dropped the series to follow that. It is still going on, and a danger to the republic. I am following up with an article on the shape of the IIO shortly.

Whether it is an election decider or caustic and toxic foreign policy, this type of voting-bloc intervention needs to end. Currently, the only remedy is high voter turnout.

The problem with the emigre-voting-blocs which is evident in this election cycle are not as obvious at the congressional level. It is in congress that you have less representation when you should have more.

Because of the tremendous amount of money and political activism that the emigres bring to bear for congress, their caustic politics are destroying traditional American government and society. America needs to set term limits on Congress as part of this.

One of the points in Donald Trump’s first 100 day plan is to make sure emigre and foreign lobby influence on US elections is cut back if not barred legally altogether. Let’s make this happen.

As you can see the bloc-vote of one small emigre bloc can and did decide an election. It decided THIS ELECTION. When those three deciding states are looked at, it was the Serbian vote that decided it. For progressives, take heart that racial genocide did have a cost.

Because progressives, conservatives, and liberals stood by when it happened, the victims took it on themselves to find a legal remedy. This is a small step toward ending genocide in a world that doesn’t want to see it. Don’t you think?

<strong>GH Eliason</strong>

Mr. Eliason lives in Ukraine. He writes content and optimizes web based businesses across the globe for organic search results, technical issues, and design strategies. He is also a large project construction specialist. When Fukushima happened it became known that he was a locked high rad specialist with a penchant for climbing. He was paid to climb a reactor at a sister plant to Fukushima 3 because of a "million dollar mistake". His now works in  project safety.

[Photo: Baby penguin with parent. credits.]

=By= Nadia Prupis

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Nauseated by the
vile corporate media?
Had enough of their lies, escapism,
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Henry A. Giroux
Cultural Critic and Public Intellectual

In the face of a putrid and poisonous election cycle that ended with Trump’s presidential victory, liberals and conservatives are quick to argue that Americans have fallen prey to a culture of incivility.

It’s true that in the run-up to the presidential election, Donald Trump strategically showcased incivility in his public appearances as a mark of solidarity with many of his white male followers. However, it is a mistake to lump the racism, bigotry, misogyny and ultra-nationalism that Trump has played upon under an obscuring and euphemistic notion of “incivility.” And it is simultaneously a mistake to delegitimize the anger that oppressed people feel about racism, sexism or class exploitation by categorizing protests over these injuries as merely “incivility.”

Understanding the ramifications of current discourses of incivility will be one key to understanding the results of the presidential election and Trump’s ascension. Clearly, Trump’s embrace of incivility (in addition to his embrace of racism and xenophobia) was a winning strategy, one that not only signaled the degree to which the politics of extremism has moved from the fringes to the center of American politics, but also one that turned politics into a spectacle that fed the rating machines of the mainstream media.

The incivility machine Trump resurrected as tool of resistance against establishment politicians played a major role in gaining him the presidency. Moreover, it turned politics into what Guy Debord once called a “perpetual motion machine” built on fear, anxiety, the war on terror and a full-fledged attack on women, the welfare state and people of color.

Too often during this election season, a discourse of “bad manners” has paraded as insight while working to hide the effects of power, politics, racial injustice and other forms of oppression.

The rhetoric of “incivility” often functions as a conservative ideological tool, working to silence critics by describing them as ill-tempered, rude and uncivilized. Politics, in this sense, shifts from a focus on substance to style — reworking the notion of critical thinking and action through a rulebook of alleged collegiality — which becomes code for the elevated character and manners of the privileged classes. Within this rhetoric, the wealthy, noble and rich are usually deemed to possess admirable character and to engage in civil behavior. At the same time, those who are poor, unemployed, homeless or subject to police violence are not seen as victims of larger political, social and economic forces. On the contrary, their problems are reduced to the depoliticizing discourse of bad character, defined as an individual pathology, and whatever resistance they present is dismissed as rude and uncivil.

As a rich white man who has intentionally embraced an “uncivil” persona, Trump has related to this discourse in unpredictable ways. By claiming he loves the uneducated and appealing to the crudest instincts of the mob, Trump elevates incivility to a performance — a pedagogy of righteous indignation — while removing it as a platform for a substantial political critique. The uncivil persona becomes a threat, a signpost for misdirected anger and a symbol of a mass in need of a savior.

There is more at issue here than ideological obfuscation and a flight from social responsibility on the part of the dominant classes; there is also a language of violence that serves to reproduce existing modes of domination and concentrated relations of power. In this instance, argument, evidence and informed judgment — when they hold power accountable or display a strong response to injustice — are subordinated to the category of unchecked emotions, a politics that embraces rude behavior and a propensity for violence. When deployed in a way that obfuscates the injuries of class, racism, sexism, among other issues, the discourse of incivility reduces politics to the realm of the personal and affective while cancelling out broader political issues such as the underlying conditions that produce anger, the effects of misguided resentment, and a passion that connects the body and mind.

As Benjamin DeMott has pointed out, the discourse of incivility does not raise the crucial question of why American society is tipping over into the dark politics of authoritarianism. On the contrary, the question now asked is “Why has civility declined?” Tied to the privatized orbits of neoliberalism, this is a discourse that trades chiefly in good manners, the virtues of moral uplift and praiseworthy character, all the while refusing to raise private troubles to the level of public issues. The call to civility confuses the relationship between anger and resentment, dismissing both as instances of faulty character and bad manners.

What happens to a democracy when incivility becomes a central organizing principle of politics? What happens to rational debate, culture and justice?

The US has become a country motivated less by anger, which can be used to address the underlying social, political and economic causes of social discontent, than by a galloping culture of individualized resentment, which personalizes problems and tends to seek vengeance on those individuals and groups viewed as a threat to American society. One can argue that the call to civility and condemnation of incivility in public life by the ruling elite no longer registers favorably among individuals and groups who are less interested in mimicking the discourse and manners of the financial elite than in expressing their resentment as they struggle for power, however rude such expressions might appear to the mainstream media and rich and powerful. Rather than an expression of a historic if not dangerous politics of unchecked personal resentment (as seen among many Trump supporters), we are witnessing a legitimate and desperately needed politics of outrage and anger — one that privileges the struggle for justice over an empty call for civility and acceptable manners.

Difference Between Anger and Resentment

[dropcap]A[/dropcap]nger is connected with injustice, while resentment is more about personalized pettiness.

We see elements of crucial anger among the many supporters of Bernie Sanders, as well as the Black Lives Matter movement and the Indigenous-led movement to stop the Dakota Access pipeline. Anger can be a disruption that offers the possibility for critical analysis, calling out the social forces of oppression and violence in which so many current injustices are rooted.

Meanwhile, resentment operates out of a friend/enemy distinction that produces convenient scapegoats. It is the stuff of loathing, racism and spontaneous violence that often gives rise to the spectacle of fear-mongering and implied threats of state repression. In this instance, ideas lose their grip on reality and critical thought falls by the wayside. Echoes of such scapegoat-driven animosity can be heard in Trump’s “rhetorical cluster bombs,” in which he stated publicly that he would like to punch protesters in the face, punish women who have abortions, bring back state-sanctioned torture and, of course, much more. Genuine civic attachments are now cancelled out in the bombast of vileness and shame, which has been made into a national pastime and central to a spectacularized politics.

Reflection no longer challenges a poisonous appeal to commonsense or the signposts of racism, hatred and bigotry. Manufactured ignorance opens the door to an unapologetic culture of bullying and violence aimed at Muslims, immigrants, Blacks and others who do not fit into Trump’s notion of “America.” This is not about the breakdown of civility in US politics or the bemoaned growth of incivility. Throughout its history, US society has been inundated by a toxic, racist ideology that oppresses and marginalizes Black people, Indigenous people and immigrants of color, and particularly since 9/11, has singled out Muslims as targets. It is a market-driven ideology that enshrines greed and self-interest, and a sustained attack on public values and the common good, fueled by the policies of a financial elite — much of it coded by both the Republican and Democratic political establishment.

Trump did not invent these forces; he simply brought them to the surface and made them the centerpiece of his campaign. As anti-democratic pressures mount, the commanding institutions of capital are divorced from matters of politics, ethics and responsibility. The goal of making the world a better place has been replaced by dystopian narratives about how to survive alone in a world whose destruction is just a matter of time. The lure of a better and more just future has given way under the influence of neoliberalism to questions of mere survival. As Zygmunt Bauman has argued in his books Wasted Lives and Consuming Life, entire populations once protected by the social contract are now considered disposable, dispatched to the garbage dump of a society that equates one’s humanity exclusively with their ability to consume.

The not-so-subtle signs of the culture of resentment and cruelty are everywhere, and not just in the proliferation of extremist talking heads, belligerent nihilists and right-wing conspiracy types blathering over the airways, on talk radio, and across various registers of screen culture. Young children, especially those whose parents are being targeted by Trump’s rhetoric, report being bullied more. Hate crimes are on the rise. And state-sanctioned violence is accelerating against Native Americans, Black youth, and others now deemed unworthy and disposable in Trump’s America.

In the mainstream media, the endless and unapologetic proliferation of lies become fodder for higher ratings, informed by a suffocating pastiche of talking heads, all of whom surrender to “the incontestable demands of quiet acceptance,” as Brad Evans and Julien Reid have argued in Truthout. Politics has been reduced to the cult of the spectacle and a performative register of shock, but not merely, as Neal Gabler observes, “in the name of entertainment.” The framing mechanism that drives the mainstream media is a sink-or-swim individualism and a shark-like notion of competition that accentuates and accelerates hostility, insults and the politics of humiliation.

Capitalism’s New Age of Bullying

[dropcap]C[/dropcap]harles Derber and Yale Magrass are right in arguing in Bully Nation that “Capitalism breeds competition and teaches that losers deserve their fate.” But capitalism also does more. It creates an unbridled individualism that embodies a pathological disdain for community, produces a cruel indifference to the social contract, disdains the larger social good, and creates a predatory culture that replaces compassion, sharing and a concern for the other. As the discourse of the common good and compassion withers, the only vocabulary left is that of the bully — one that takes pride in the civic-enervating binary of winners and losers. What has been on full display in the presidential election of 2016 is the merging of the culture of cruelty, the logic of egregious self-interest, a deadly anti-intellectualism, a ravaging unbridled anger, a politics of disposability, and a toxic fear of others. Jessica Lustig captures this organized culture of violence, grudges and resentment in The New York Times Magazine with the following comments:

Grievance is the animating theme of this election and the natural state of at least one of the candidates; Trump is a public figure whose ideology, such as it is, essentially amounts to a politics of the personal grudge. It has drawn to him throngs of disaffected citizens all too glad to reclaim the epithet “deplorable.” But beyond these aggrieved hordes, it can seem at times as if nearly everyone in the country is nursing wounds, cringing over slights and embarrassments, inveighing against enemies and wishing for retribution. Everyone has someone, or something, to resent.

It gets worse. In the age of a bullying internet culture, the trolling community has elected one of its own as president of the United States. Criticizing the pernicious trolling produced by political extremists should not suggest a generalized indictment of the internet and social media, since the latter have also been key tools in pushing back against Trump’s egregiousness. As the apostle of publicity for publicity’s sake, Trump has adopted the practices of reality TV, building his reputation on insults, humiliations, and a discourse of provocation and hate.

According to The New York Times, since announcing his candidacy, Trump used Twitter to insult at least 282 people, places and things. Not only has he honed the technique of trolling, he has also made it a crucial resource in upping the ratings for the mainstream media who, it seems, are insatiable when it comes to covering Trump’s insults. Trump has done more than bring a vicious online harassment culture into the mainstream, he has also legitimated the worst dimensions of politics and brought out of the shadows white nationalists, racist militia types, social media trolls, overt misogynists and a variety of reactionaries who have turned their hate-filled discourse into a weaponized element of political culture. This was all the more obvious when Trump hired Stephen K. Bannon to run his campaign. The former executive chairman of Breitbart News is well known for his extremist views and for his unwavering support for the political alt-right. One of his more controversial headlines on Breitbart read, “Would you rather have feminism or cancer?” He is also considered one of the more prominent advocates of the right-wing trolling mill that is fiercely loyal to Trump. Jared Keller in The Village Voice captures perfectly the essence of Trump’s politics of trolling. He writes:

From the start, the Trump campaign has offered a tsunami of trolling, waves of provocative tweets and soundbites — from “build the wall” to “lock her up” — designed to provoke maximum outrage, followed, when the resulting heat felt a bit too hot, by the classic schoolyard bully’s excuse: that it was merely “sarcasm” or a “joke.” In a way, it is. It’s just a joke with victims and consequences…. Trump’s behavior has normalized trolling as an accepted staple of daily political discourse.

One example of such vitriol was noted by Andrew Marantz’s profile for The New Yorker on Mike Cernovich, a prominent internet troll. He writes:

His political analysis was nearly as crass as his dating advice (“Misogyny Gets You Laid”). In March, he tweeted, “Hillary’s face looks like a melting candle wax. Imagine what her brain looks like.” Next he tweeted a picture of Clinton winking, which he interpreted as “a mild stroke.” By August, he was declaring that she had both a seizure disorder and Parkinson’s disease.

In the age of trolls and the heartless regime of neoliberalism [which the Democrats also unwaveringly supported and the Clintons have been prominent in selling], politics has dissolved into a pit of performative narcissism, testifying to the distinctive power of a corporate-driven culture of consumerism and celebrity marketing, which reconfigures not just political discourse but the nature of power itself. In spite of the large-scale protests against economic injustice that ranged from Madison to Occupy Wall Street, the teacher strikes that have emerged since the 2008 Wall Street collapse, the ensuing political corruption and the consolidation of wealth and power, millions of Americans turned to the politics of resentment.

 Amid this turmoil, we cannot let our anger simply become an expression of misdirected resentment. It is time to wake up and repudiate the notion that capitalism and democracy are the same thing. We must use our anger to fight collectively for a politics that refuses to forget the crimes of the past, so it can imagine a different future. Such a struggle is not an act of incivility, but a call to educated hope, civic courage and the need to start organizing.

This totalitarian logic has been reinforced by the strange intersection of celebrity culture, manufactured ignorance and the cult of unbridled emotion, to inhabit a new register of resentment, which as Mark Danner points out in The New York Review of Books, takes “the shape of reality television politics.” Within such an environment, a personalized notion of resentment drives politics while misdirecting rage towards issues that reinforce totalitarian logic. Under such circumstances, the long-standing forces of nativism and demagoguery drive American politics and the truth of events is no longer open to public discussion or informed judgment. All that is left is the empty but dangerous performance of misguided hopes wrapped up in the fog of ignorance, the haze of political and moral indifference, and the looming specter of violence.

The rise of Donald Trump as a corporate-fueled celebrity troll represents the broader contempt for a politics of empathy and compassion. This contempt is the bedrock of a neoliberal formative culture that, as my colleague David Clark once remarked to me, “breeds horrors: the failures of conscience, the wars against thought, and the flirtations with irrationality that lie at the heart of the triumph of every-day aggression, the withering of political life, and the withdrawal into private obsessions.”

The issue is no longer whether politicians, such as Donald Trump, are about to lead us into a new age of authoritarianism and bigotry. Rather, we should be seeking to locate and challenge the forces that have produced these politicians. When individualized resentment and scapegoat-centered violence are normalized, we move closer to a police state and toward an age that forgets the totalitarian impulses that gave us Iraq, state-authorized torture, a carceral state, war crimes, a plundering of the planet, and much more. Trump is only a symptom, not the cause of our troubles. Global capitalism is the monster and Trump is its most dangerous, confused and hateful messenger.

Anger is a double-edged sword and can be transformed into various forms of productive resistance or it can be appropriated and manipulated as a breeding ground for resentment, hate, bigotry and racism. What is clear is that Trump knew how to turn such an odious appeal into both a performance and a spectacle — one that mimicked the darkest anti-democratic impulses.

The Struggle Continues

[dropcap]L[/dropcap]et’s hope the planet is around long enough to begin to rethink politics in light of this election of Donald Trump to the presidency, which ranks as one of the most sickening events in American political history. Democracy, however flawed, has now collapsed into Trump’s world, one led by a serial sexual groper, liar, nativist, racist and authoritarian. As my friend Bob Herbert mentioned to me recently, “Trump threatens everything we’re supposed to stand for. He’s the biggest crisis we’ve faced in this society in my lifetime. The Supreme Court is lost for decades to come. His insane tax cuts will only expand (and lock in) the extreme inequality we’re already facing. I don’t need to provide a laundry list for you. The irony of ironies, of course, is that the very idiots, racists, misogynists and outright fools who put him in the presidency will be among those hammered worst by his madness in office.”

The strategy of the left will be set back for years as a result of this election, given Trump’s propensity for vengeance, crushing dissent and sheer animosity toward anyone who disagrees with him. When he withdraws the US from the Paris Accords, goes after Black youth with his call for racial profiling, lowers taxes for the rich, deregulates business, sets back the Supreme Court for decades and expands the police state as he begins mass deportations, maybe we should rethink where the levers of power lie.

Amid this turmoil, we cannot let our anger simply become an expression of misdirected resentment. It is time to wake up and repudiate the notion that capitalism and democracy are the same thing. We must use our anger to fight collectively for a politics that refuses to forget the crimes of the past, so it can imagine a different future. Such a struggle is not an act of incivility, but a call to educated hope, civic courage and the need to start organizing.

<strong>Henry A. Giroux, Contributing Editor</strong>

Currently holds the Global TV Network Chair Professorship at McMaster University in the English and Cultural Studies Department and a Distinguished Visiting Professorship at Ryerson University. His books include: American at War with Itself,  Zombie Politics and Culture in the Age of Casino Capitalism (Peter Land 2011), On Critical Pedagogy (Continuum, 2011), Twilight of the Social: Resurgent Publics in the Age of Disposability (Paradigm 2012), Disposable Youth: Racialized Memories and the Culture of Cruelty (Routledge 2012), Youth in Revolt: Reclaiming a Democratic Future (Paradigm 2013). Giroux’s most recent books are America’s Education Deficit and the War on Youth (Monthly Review Press, 2013), are Neoliberalism’s War on Higher Education, America’s Disimagination Machine (City Lights) and Higher Education After Neoliberalism (Haymarket) will be published in 2014). He is also a Contributing Editor of Cyrano’s Journal Today / The Greanville Post, and member of Truthout’s Board of Directors and has his own page The Public Intellectual. His web site is www.henryagiroux.com.

[Photo: Putin and Valdia in 2016. Credit: Kremlin]

=By= Oleg Barabanov

President Vladimir Putin’s address at the 13^th Plenary Meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club in Sochi on October 27, 2016, was a significant event not only because it formulated Russia’s foreign policy agenda but also because it helped to understand the new long-term trends in the world’s evolution and the global social structure. Many Russian observers compared the address with the President’s famous speech at the Munich Security Conference in 2007. Interestingly, their analyses were of opposite nature. A number of experts declared that the Valdai address was an anti-Munich of sorts and that Russia’s readiness to normalize relations with the West and pursue a policy of peaceful coexistence was in contrast with the emphasis on the danger of a direct clash between the two superpowers that was manifest in Munich. Thus, the 2016 Valdai address was declared a sign of peace, with some experts, reminiscent of the old allegories, even referring to Vladimir Putin as “the only European in Russia.” Other analysts, on the contrary, discerned a “new Munich” and a clear signal that Russia would firmly defend its national interests rather than go against them. In their view, this was a consolidation and enlargement of Munich.

As I see it, the President’s address, for all the importance of its takes on the current world politics, goes far beyond the traditional analysis of the international balance of forces and focuses on new trends in the evolution of global society and their expected impact on world politics in the future. Therefore, the presidential address is neither anti-Munich, nor a new Munich; it is, if I may say so, above Munich, representing a higher level of world development conceptualization and emphasizing logic of the future rather than current problems.

The President’s analysis of irregularities in the globalization process is a keynote of his address. Earlier this term was invariably interpreted as a gap between the “golden billion” nations and the rest of the world, where the rich are growing richer and the poor poorer. Accordingly, overcoming the globalization irregularities was understood as the need to speed up the advance of the “rest of the world.” This encouraged BRICS to come up with the “three silver billion” concept, which became the ideological basis for its policies. The “middle stratum” of the modern world, according to the concept, has more rights to a global representation of humankind’s interests than the upper crust of the “golden billion” nations and the world financial and economic institutions it controls. To remove this country-to-country inequality, many ideological manifestos of the anti-globalist movement quite radically called for a “fair redistribution” of the world wealth and capital in favor of the poor countries.

However, the presidential address put the issue in a different perspective by shifting the focus from the cross-country and inter-civilizational aspect to internal contradictions in the Western countries themselves. (Let it be noted in the parenthesis that the BRICS countries’ political success in consolidating the efforts of the “rest of the world” for proper representation of its interests makes this shift quite logical and justified.) The President saw the growing alienation and contradictions between the elites and civil society in the West as the main problem at the current stage in globalization. It is this contradiction that forms the conceptual challenge to the status quo in the world economy and global politics. Formulating the problem so directly and clearly at the top political level is of extreme importance.

Vladimir Putin said: “Essentially, the entire globalization project is in crisis today […]. I think this situation is in many respects the result of mistaken, hasty and to some extent over-confident choices made by some countries’ elites a quarter-of-a-century ago. Back then, in the late 1980s-early 1990s, there was a chance not just to accelerate the globalization process but also to give it a different quality and make it more harmonious and sustainable in nature.” But the elites in the “golden billion” countries chose a different path of development intended to consolidate solely their own interests. “The result,” the President continued, “is that the system of international relations is in a feverish state and the global economy cannot extricate itself from systemic crisis. At the same time, rules and principles, in the economy and in politics, are constantly being distorted and we often see what only yesterday was taken as a truth and raised to dogma status reversed completely. If the powers that be today find some standard or norm to their advantage, they force everyone else to comply. But if tomorrow these same standards get in their way, they will be swift to throw them in the bin, declare them obsolete, and set or try to set new rules.”

As a result, this approach has alienated the elites and civil society and this is what is calling into question the stability of global development. In this connection, President Putin says: “But it is very clear that there is a lack of strategy and ideas for the future. This creates a climate of uncertainty that has a direct impact on the public mood. Sociological studies conducted around the world show that people in different countries and on different continents tend to see the future as murky and bleak. This is sad. The future does not entice them, but frightens them. At the same time, people see no real opportunities or means for changing anything, influencing events and shaping policy.”

The key reason behind this, according to Vladimir Putin, is the emasculation of democracy in Western countries themselves and its reduction to sheer procedure aimed at perpetuating the establishment’s hold on power: “Yes, formally speaking, modern countries have all the attributes of democracy: Elections, freedom of speech, access to information, freedom of expression. But even in the most advanced democracies the majority of citizens have no real influence on the political process and no direct and real influence on power. People sense an ever-growing gap between their interests and the elite’s vision of the only correct course, a course the elite itself chooses. The result is that referendums and elections increasingly often create surprises for the authorities. People do not at all vote as the official and respectable media outlets advised them to, nor as the mainstream parties advised them to. Public movements that only recently were too far left or too far right are taking center stage and pushing the political heavyweights aside.” As demonstrated by the developments of recent years, these contradictions are only mounting: “It seems as if the elites do not see the deepening stratification in society and the erosion of the middle class, while at the same time, they implant ideological ideas that, in my opinion, are destructive to cultural and national identity. […]

“This begs the question: who is actually the fringe? The expanding class of the supranational oligarchy and bureaucracy, which is in fact often not elected and not controlled by society, or the majority of citizens, who want simple and plain things – stability, free development of their countries, prospects for their lives and the lives of their children, preserving their cultural identity, and, finally, basic security for themselves and their loved ones.”

In the end, the President comes to the conclusion that there is a conflict between “globalization for the chosen few” and “globalization for all,” which, in my opinion, is one of the key outcomes of his Valdai address. This growing antagonism is placing on the agenda an inevitable future transformation of the West. It is this transformation – the establishment’s attempts to immobilize it and the civic forces’ efforts to promote it – that will form the fulcrum of future politics.

Admittedly, this theme is not new in the context of modern culture. Scenes of over-regimented Western society and (seemingly hopeless) civic protests against the regimentation arise from “The Matrix,” the Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” (“We will rock you” musical), and many others. The civic activists say as much (Occupy Wall Street and Slavoj Žižek’s ideas). But this contradiction is not yet felt as acutely at the top political level. The historic importance of Vladimir Putin’s Valdai address is precisely in that it brings this warning across to the Western elites.

The specter of this imminent transformation that stalked the Valdai forum made certain Western experts say openly that the West is facing a revolutionary situation, where, to quote Lenin, “lower classes do not want to live in the old way and the upper classes cannot carry on in the old way.” Such a situation may culminate in a revolution.

In the context of the approaching 100^th anniversary of the October Revolution in Russia (1917), the post-Valdai discourse on the “new revolutionary situation” is particularly symbolic and indicative. As is only natural, these potential revolutions in the West will have little in common with the Leninist-type “proletarian revolution.” A more apt term is “civic revolutions,” or a protest by practically all social strata against the elites and their domination. Already now we can see the EU and US establishments challenged both from the left (Bernie Sanders, Alexis Tsipras) and from the right (Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen). In parallel, there are independent civic protest movements, such as Beppe Grillo’s Movimento Cinque Stelle in Italy.

But whether peaceful or revolutionary, the incipient transformation of the West is certain to change the world politics already in the middle term, making the ongoing debates on the balance of forces in international relations inspired by the Cold War tradition totally irrelevant. It is precisely the transformation of the West and the emergence of the new “post-revolutionary” West that was predicted in the context of the Valdai address that will make this issue outdated.

In this connection it is important to emphasize one more thing. We see many civic activists (left, right, and independent) focus on Russia. The values that it promotes (sovereign democracy, responsibility, spirituality) are perceived with a growing sympathy by the protesters in the West. In this context, as the Soviet Union was a symbol and example for the world national liberation and revolutionary movement in the 20^th century, so the new Russia can become a symbol for the future civic revolutionary movement in the West in the 21^st century. Therefore we in Russia face a new task of huge historic importance: we must be worthy of this symbol and example invested in us by the world progressive forces.

Transcript and video of Putin at Valdai available HERE.

Prof. Dr. Oleg Barabanov is Program Director of the Foundation of Development and Support of the Valdai Discussion Club, Professor of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Academic Director of the European Studies Institute at MGIMO University.

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