Somebody, Anybody, Everybody Scream

Marx had it right with his image of ideology as a camera obscura, a mirror that presents things upside down. 

The Specter of Whiteness 

Now that I'm not reading magazines, newspapers, listening to opinionating, watching it, and so on, hardly at all, I feel fresh and open and so was genuinely hurt and disturbed and angered by a piece Jamelle Bouie just brought to my attention in the Atlantic today--definitely never reading them again. 

It was about the response to the State of the Union address. The person who made the response (Slotkin) had decided to draw a line between "normal" (and therefore implicitly "abnormal") opposition thought and practice. To disavow the spectacular politics in the name of kitchen sink issues. 

It hit me so hard that THIS is the spectacular politics. THIS is the mirror world where "normal" "kitchen sink" "regular" issues and people equates to pure, deaf, blind, stupid whiteness. That appealing to this mythical whiteness in the name of not sounding "weird" (yes she used the word) or extreme was the spectacle. This image of a non-image, of a transparent being somehow hallucinated, conjured into existence by the knowing, cynical prose and the "no-nonsense" rhetoric. 

I got angry with Steve Schmidt, Republican operative turned Trump hater. He's great when he's hating on Trump. He's terrible when he's supporting this spectacular myth of the white specter of normal. Just terrible. He berated Al Green for standing up at the State of the Union, definitely the best thing about it. 

My attitude is like Tim Snyder's: at this point, whatever floats your boat, whatever makes you feel connected and warm and engaged and hopeful and awake and active and activist is good. All of it. Wear a pink blazer. Shout. Talk calmly. Anything. Somebody, anybody, everybody scream. 

This is FAR different from saying that the "center is evil" along with the boring old Trotskyists. You're going to read it and think that, aren't you, another way of deflecting from what's going on, another kind of mirror world. Ideology is a mirror world. 

Slotkin did nothing but create a terribly diluted specter of a white working class man, and talk to that specter. THIS is what is wrong.