Incoherence is ineffective





I try not to write about what others are writing about because the others always write better than me. This makes it hard to write, though, since all I’m reading about is what others are writing about. So I guess it’s time for me to write about Trump. Sorry.

As I’ve gone over time and time again, my main complaint about academic liberalism is that it concerns itself almost exclusively with matters of affect, like mood and feeling, while diminishing more material concerns. And this sounds dismissive, I realize, like a caricature of academic discourse. But it’s not.

Let’s take a quick look at maybe the most execrable book I have ever read: Good White People by Sharon Sullivan. If you ever wondered what would happen if an anti-gluten bumper sticker became sentient and began writing social justice theory, this is the book for you. Sullivan’s basic point is that anti-black racism has nothing to do with outright racists, historical or otherwise: even slave owners weren’t that bad, she says. Racism is instead the product of well-meaning but misinformed white liberals, the negative energy of whom contaminates society as a whole (she never uses the word “Orgone,” but, man, she should).



According to Sullivan and her ilk, racism is not definable according to specific policies or effect, even when those are really fucking racist (like, seriously, literal slavery doesn’t really count, she says). Instead, racism is entirely a matter of mindsets. Racism will stop as soon as liberal whites stop trying to fix it and embrace spirituality and self-love.

This sounds like a caricature, but it’s not. This is the most generous reading I could possibly give the book.

And, okay, that seems like dumb nonsense, but so what? There’s dumb nonsense everywhere. But this has spilled over, man. People seem to actually believe it.

Let’s see what happened when some Black Lives Matter activists were granted a private audience with Hillary Clinton. That should have been a tremendous opportunity, as Douglas Williams points out at The South Lawn. When Hillary asked them what policy changes they would like to see enacted, however, the response was pointed refusal:

‘I stand here in your space and I say this as respectfully as I can, “If you don’t tell black people what we need to do, then we won’t tell you all what to do.”‘ Jones said. ‘What I mean to say is, this is and has always been a white problem of violence. There’s not much that we can do to stop the violence against us.’ ‘Respectfully,’ Clinton answered, ‘if that is your position, then I will only talk to white people about how we are going to deal with these very real problems.’ ‘That’s not what I mean,’ Jones said. He added, ‘But what you just said was a form of victim-blaming. You were saying what the Black Lives Matter movement needs to do to change white hearts is to …’ Clinton told them that she isn’t interested in changing hearts, but rather policy.





As Douglas Williams notes, the activist’s response was “stupefying.” There’s tons of worthwhile policy changes that could be implemented, many of them are fairly obvious (body cams, maybe? Or else working to take away the monetary incentives cops get for terrorizing black communities?) And yet when asked point blank by the presumptive 45th president what reforms should be enacted, all the activist could muster was some empty nonsense about changing hearts.

The activist’s semi-coherence was not accidental, and it certainly wasn’t a sign of a lack of intelligence or seriousness. The incoherence came from training, from exposure to an academic body of thought that mistrusts and rejects all inroads toward collective action. Collective action is bad, they say, because it presumes to speak for the needs of the many in just one (white, cis, male, etc.) voice. It blots out polyvocality, which is what Hitler and Stalin did.



In short, action is premised on judgement, which is always bad since judgement from a place of authority always seeks to diminish things that aren’t in a place of authority. Appealing to non-human mediators, be they obviously craven constructs like “the market” or even well-tested but flawed structures such as empiricism, is equally bad, as those mediators were constructed by authority and their results are always selectively interpreted by authority. Therefore, we cannot pass judgment. We cannot agitate for action. We can, at best, be mad, and then implore others to simply listen to our anger. We can try to smile more and regard one another more kindly, attempt to displace the blockages caused by negative affect with flows comprised of positivity.

This sounds like vague, poorly wrought mysticism because that’s precisely what it is.

The stated intent of this school of thought is to prevent actionable analysis from taking place. Naturally, this leads to us accepting the prevailing neoliberal economic dictates without criticism, as they are hereby thought to exist outside the purview of social justice analysis. This approach is ironic, seeing as it’s born of the realization that supposedly objective interpretive systems are rigged, but whatever. Acting upon realizations will always and without exception lead to further disempowerment, so our best course of action is to try and paint a smiley face upon the steel girders of our neoliberal oppressors.

As a consequence of this mindset we accept–and sometimes even champion–neoliberal nostrums. We praise charter schools that accomplish nothing other than the further dehumanization of students and economic devastation of teachers, for example. On the economic front, we assert that shipping jobs to China benefitted the American middle class, that NAFTA was something other than a pillaging, and that immigration has no effect on the economic standing of most Americans. The thing is, though, that these statements are all incorrect. They are lies. Obviously. Very, very obvious lies. And even people who aren’t that horribly informed can see that.

How does this connect to Trump’s appeal? Well, contrary to the prevailing theories, racism is not entirely a matter of feelings and affect. Racism often has a logic, however flawed. And even a person who’s blinded by hate can tell when he’s being lied to. That’s Trump’s appeal, in a nutshell: people are tired of being lied to, and all the fancy equivocations humanists and social scientists can muster ain’t gonna change that fact.

Trump’s rhetoric is obviously racist, but that racism still gives his supporters an economic narrative that is more plausible–and, sadly, more truthful–than the lies being offered by neoliberal shitheels like Jeb! and Hillary. (Two powerful and wealthy people who insist on being referred to by their first names, primarily as a means of obscuring the obviousness of the political dynasties they represent, but also as a quite savvy, quite liberal attempt to negate the horrors inherent in their politics by painting a smiley face upon their facades).

Again this isn’t to say that Trump’s logic isn’t hateful, because it is. It’s also incorrect in many important ways; most notably, immigrants are not the cause of the destruction of the American middle class. But the general basis of Trump’s schtick, the realization that economic globalization has harmed most Americans in seemingly irreparable ways, is true. And don’t trust me on this point: Paul Krugman and Liz Warren both agree.



Politics worldwide is now marked by an outright hatred and rejection of popular democracy. We moved over to a nominally democratic system of governance whose main order of business is to prop up finance (what Angela Merkel refers to as “Market-Conform Democracy”). In concept and in execution, the will of voters has been subordinated to the will of the “market,” broadly defined, resulting in widespread deleveraging and disenfranchisement and the destruction of all avenues of empowerment once enjoyed by a relatively broad spectrum of the population. The effects of this shift include the privatization of once-public services, the socialization of corporate and financial losses (even as the gains reaped by these entities are shared by fewer and fewer people), the erosion of privacy and free expression protections, hyper-aggressive policing, and the accelerated destruction of the earth.



Different groups are affected differently by each of these effects, and racism (affective or material) certainly worsens most of them for non-white people, but none of them harm non-whites exclusively. Almost everybody is getting fucked over, and almost everyone is aware of being fucked over, and many of these fucked over people seem to prefer politicians who base their message around plausible, hateful lies over those who spew implausible, slightly less hateful lies.

There are important social policy distinctions between the Democrats and Republicans. There are also less important, but still meaningful, economic distinctions between the two parties, and these splits are mirrored by left-right parties throughout the industrialized world. The larger context, however, is neoliberalism. Jeb! and Hillary are neoliberal champions, and semi-coherent academic theorizing has abetted the ascent of neoliberal policies since day one, be it through the Economist’s celebration of globalization, the Techno-Utopianist’s embrace of a “disruptive” economy, or the Humanist’s stalwart rejection of collective action. The clear message to academics of all stripes is that the old set of lies ain’t selling anymore. The people have begun to realize that we are full of shit.



Social justice will not win if it attaches itself to mealy mouthed new age posturing. That’s not nearly as appealing as outright fascism. Love is almost never as appealing as hate. And that’s doubly, triply true when the love-mongers tell you your problems can be overcome by, like, thinking positive and cutting gluten out of your life, while the hatemongers at least kinda sorta seem to have a plan of action that isn’t founded on obvious bullshit.