The Game We Are Playing

On the dominant paradigm

It’s been a while since I have published anything here, though it’s not for lack of material. My journal is bustling with scraps of ideas, some of which have made their way into drafts here. But I have been reflecting on questions around my purpose with this newsletter and wondering what I should do with it. I’ve put down some thoughts in the postscript at the bottom of this piece.

Rising fascism is on my mind a lot, and it’s one reason I am not watching the presidential debate, which is happening as I write this. It pains me that Donald Trump is even a candidate for president, given all that we have witnessed during the MAGA era, an era that has lasted fifty years, or so it feels. How is it that a man who was found civilly liable for rape, who bragged about groping women, who whipped a crowd into an insurrectionist frenzy, who was impeached twice, who has been convicted on 34 felony counts with many more (and much more serious) prosecutions to come, who on a daily basis spews things that are gratuitously cruel and other things so immensely stupid that satire can’t do them justice… how is it that this man is a candidate for the most powerful office in the world? I’m so tired of Donald Trump’s face and his voice and his followers. I’m exhausted by the space he takes up in my mind and in our culture.

Anyway, I’m not the target audience for the debate, which is aimed at… who exactly? Are there undecided voters who will be swayed by the debate? Or is it merely spectacle, two old men grotesquely flinging word salads in a media octagon? Biden at least is earnest. His word salads are good faith attempts to express relevant ideas. Trump just improvises.

I’m exceedingly tired of thinking about Donald Trump, but I am unable to let go of wanting to figure out what’s happening. Why are so many people drawn to Trump and Trumpism, so enthralled that they embellish him/it with all kinds of fantasies and projections? Why are fascist movements gaining ground around the world? And, related to this, why do progressives and progressive ideas have so much trouble breaking through and often face open hostility, despite enjoying broad appeal?

My hypothesis is that fascist ideologies exist within the same cultural and political paradigm as the status quo (the status quo being American-style capitalism), whereas progressivism as a political philosophy (and its economic corollary, socialism) require that we abandon the current paradigm and construct something entirely different. Fascism perverts the status quo, whereas progressivism annihilates it.

Another way to think about think about it is to imagine the current paradigm as a game that operates according to an established rule set, which happens to be rigged in ways that favor the wealthy and powerful. In fact, the wealthy and powerful largely wrote the rulebook and continue to revise it to tilt things ever more in their favor. As with any game, there are winners and losers. That’s just part of the game. Over the course of the last forty years or so, the public has come to resent their lot as non-winners of this game, and some have embraced a path—fascism—that seems to promise a seizure of the rules and the power to direct the winnings towards themselves. Importantly, they still embrace the idea of a game with winners and losers. They just want to be the ones to decide who will finish on top. Progressivism on the other hand would abandon the game entirely for new, egalitarian forms of cooperation and association. People naturally gravitate towards the familiar, while they fear the new and unknown (or at least resist the work involved in starting from a blank slate).

For the foreseeable future, I am thinking about using this newsletter mainly as a place to properly develop this thesis, based on established scholarship. And I want to explore paths forward into something new, gathering and amplifying the work of many courageous and creative thinkers and activists I keep learning about.

I say “mainly” because I am still prone to digressions into pop culture, parenting, and who can say what else.

If that sounds interesting to you, then give this a like! And that brings me to the postscript:

Beside the point…

Sometime ago, a friend of mine asked my why I publish here at all, given that I don’t spend much energy cultivating a readership. If I don’t care about growing an audience for my musings, he asked, then why don’t I just muse in my journal? Why put this stuff out there at all? It was a good question, and I didn’t have a good answer.

Some part of me, my ego I suppose, enjoys the idea that people are reading this and that I am contributing something positive to the discourse at large. But I don’t want to indulge my ego, so I have tried not to dwell on that idea. I’ve actively avoided putting any energy into it.

Well, now I’m revisiting the question. This newsletter has a pretty good subscriber base for something I don’t promote at all, and I’m grateful to you. But given that I still don’t have a job, and I really enjoy putting down my thoughts, I think it makes sense to try to develop this into something. To monetize it maybe?

Ugh, I can’t go there just yet, but I do want to ask you, my readers, for your help in putting me on the radar of the great algorithms, so to speak. For example, I often get your feedback and commentary via emails, which I love. But a click on the ‘like’ button would be fantastic, and your comments would look lovely here as well. A share would be a huge help too, either on your socials or just through good old word of mouth.

Dang it, I guess I’m trying to cultivate an audience now.