The shock being experienced in Washington D.C. since January 20 is exposing gaping holes in the fantasies we told ourselves were rock-solid truths—lasting for whole (gasp) generations!. It is also important to admit that this is democracy working as intended: a popular majority said yes, and—let’s face it—might well do so again if a vote were held tomorrow.
Several of my recent posts have stressed the virtual reality aspects of modernity and our tendency to take refuge in flimsy mental models disconnected from biophysical and ecological reality. An earlier post cautioned against falling into the trap of aiming for fantasy political perfection. Here, we’ll look at the holes that are opening up.
As the Trump Administration rattles cages and turns things upside-down, I keep seeing headlines that effectively ask: “Is that even legal?”
Isn’t the mere fact that legal status is uncertain a glaring indicator that our legal system is little more than a bolus of small rocks held together by a few strands of spider web? No? Does that image fail to work for you: too random and specific? Whatever. You get the point.
Trumping Reality
On the question of legality, the Trump Administration attitude is: “If you have to ask, then we’ll just say: yes—it’s legal when we do it. While you’re spinning wheels in legal mud, we’ll just go about irreversibly changing the country. Have fun!” The point is: no one really knows, because it’s all make-believe. That’s how empty-shirt our house-of-cards, Potemkin village of an artificial system is. Unlike a richly-woven ecology, it came out of meat-brains, hasn’t stood the test of time, and is held together by spit. That’s what my dear uncle would say about the Ferris wheels and other attractions that would roll into his small Georgia town overnight and set up in a parking lot (basically: “No, I’m not going to let you ride them.”). Our legal system reminds me of Ptolemaic epicycles: byzantine patches on patches; contrivances upon contrivances.
Judges are meant to rule on the legality of a matter, as if unambiguous. Notice that a judge never has enough intellectual integrity to say: indeterminate; can’t be decided; beyond the limits of the law or our mental facilities to decide. We agree to pretend that correct decisions are not only possible, but legitimate—when they’re often rather arbitrary.
The United States Supreme Court illustrates this very well, because a panel of nine judges weighs in on a matter, frequently splitting very predictably along ideological lines. What does that tell us? Interpretations of a manifestly imperfect artificial system will itself be manifestly imperfect and artificial. It is easy enough for clever people to weave a veil of fancy language to obscure the naked emperor. That’s a skill honed by college experience. Two can play the “originalist” game of literal interpretation of the Constitution to come up with diametrically-opposed opinions. It’s an emptiness that we pretend to be solid.
Fiat Reality
This is a good example of what I have meant when I’ve said repeatedly that brain-derived constructs—grossly decontextualized from the myriad relationships comprising an ecology—will be essentially guaranteed to fail in the long term. Brain-farts rapidly lose their potency, on ecologically-relevant time scales.
In the present case, when a democratically-elected leader of the executive branch claims something is legal by fiat, and the legislative branch does not bother to clarify with new explicit band-aids (ahem, laws), and the court system rules—after many contradictory decisions, appeals, reversals, and delays—that the action is indeed declared to be legal, it shows that the whole system is one of fiat.
In fact, how could a currency, a nation-state, or a legal system be based on anything but fiat? These things were never anything more than rickety, notional constructs made strong only by collective agreement, acquiescence, or even apathy. We’re starting to learn how superficial and insubstantial the whole thing is (while being existentially destructive). We stand in a hall of mirrors, admiring distorted reflections of distorted reflections—our sight-lines to the real external world eclipsed and re-routed by our superficially-imposed layers that we mistake for reality.
The Pledge
I may as well use this space to offer a translation of the Pledge of Allegiance in the U.S. For those unfamiliar, many states in the U.S. require school children to recite the pledge daily—generally standing with hand over heart (at one point the accompanying gesture closely resembled a Nazi salute). The words are:
I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Now my translation:
I pledge fealty to a symbol of a fiction, and to the abstraction on which it floats, one notion under an imagined deity, indivisible because we say so, with detachment and unachievable ideals for select members of the human species only.
How we love a bit of theory! Delicious brain-work, without an iota of contact to ecological bedrock. Flyin’ high!
Ultimate Court
In any case, if a government arbitrates that something is legal, what higher authority is recognized by said government to tell it otherwise? Of course, I know of an ultimate authority that will eventually pass judgment. No amount of “but I thought…” will matter. Our misguided notions are irrelevant: inconsequential shoe-squeaks in the larger dance.
The enormous and impressive display of plate-spinning that modernity puts on is manifestly unsustainable and will not be permitted to continue indefinitely. The plates will not keep spinning. Now, I would prefer an approach that calmly and deliberately sets each plate gently down over the coming decades (or centuries) with words of gratitude (a hospice gesture). The Trump approach may be closer to charging the stage, body-checking the plate-spinners, and smirking as plates crash and shatter all around. I can’t say I’m a fan of the approach, but neither can I pretend that the show was capable of going much longer—given how unsustainably-elaborate the spinning arrangements had become.
So, I ask the newts and the nesting chickadees what they think about the current government shenanigans. They possess a wisdom beyond my own, and I take a page from their indifference. However destructive and threatening to all Life, modernity is a brief flash, perhaps best ignored by those who intend to stay for the long haul. Ride it out.
Talk about taking “refuge in flimsy mental models," how about “it is also important to admit that this is democracy working as intended: a popular majority said yes.” Of the total U.S. population 23% voted for Trump, not even a quarter of the people. Of eligible voters, 32% not even a third. And, of those eligible voters, more than a third voted “no confidence” in the political system. Put another way, more eligible voters didn’t even bother to show up than voted for Trump – no surprise given their alternatives. Perhaps you meant to say our “shamocracy” is working as intended? Shamocracy: something that is not what it purports to be; a spurious imitation, fraud or hoax; pretended, counterfeit; feigned; to assume the appearance of in order to deceive.
Maybe "intended" was a poor choice. Intent is never satisfied. To that point, I am not very interested in theoretical, idealized democracy of the kind we dream about when people are better at everything: participation, education, news discrimination, critical thinking, long-term focus, community-minded, or whatever. Democracy, as realized, is what matters, and it's not living up to the idealized mental model. Any system that relies on people being better than they actually are isn't a system that works well for actual people, as they are. Mental models fall short, as always.
The co-called founding fathers never intended for the U.S. to be a democracy. Fearing the democratic forces brought to the fore by the American Revolution, they created a social contract, aka Constitution of the U.S., designed to preserve the wealth, privilege and power of the rich. Things haven’t changed all that much in over two-hundred years, they are just much more obvious now. The problem is the system which is based on property not human rights, and not the intent of the oligarchic lackeys, corporate stooges and bankster shills who claim to “represent” the people.
Actually, there are no such things as human 'rights'. There are want-to-have's, but if our population is overshot, 'want' exceeds 'can'. This is an important point; half of the 17 UN SDGs, are not about sustainability; they're about feeling good about ourselves. And No8 is sheer bull–it. The legal system was about property-rights (commandeering of the Commons) and the woke adaption of that was 'for unlimited numbers of people'. Neither was going to be permanent.
To deny the existence of human rights, however imperfectly they are actualized, is nihilism. The U.S. is a good illustration of what happens when the social contract is based on property rights rather than human rights. And, the neo-fascist Trump regime is the logical end point. The father of fascism, Benito Mussolini, said it this way: "Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power."
P.S. Corporatism could also be called oligarchy, since corporations are the super-persona of the ultra rich.
Tom is right to point out the flimsiness of our cultural constructs. We are looking at what happens when an overshot species meets a being-depleted planet, something which may have happened anywhere – and perhaps everywhere – life has evolved.
Those who grasp exponential growth, will 'get' the apparently-bewildering pace of disintegration. I recall Dimitri Orlov pointing out that you could prepare for change, but that it's form would always surprise you.
The thing to remember is that Trump – and Farage/Brexit – is a symptom, not a cause. The question is: What of?
The Trump approach may be closer to charging the stage, body-checking the plate-spinners, and smirking as plates crash and shatter all around.
Yes, this is the silver lining in the dark cloud of authoritarianism and repression just starting to cover the sun. As you say, the plates can't stay up there much longer, so if the crash is inevitable, let it happen now before more people are affected and more of the natural world is destroyed.
And let it happen quickly, so that modernity is gone in a flash and nobody has a chance to start a nuclear war over who controls the spinning plates.
All animal species create mental models disconnected from biophysical and ecological reality. We are no exception. How else explain the male lion's killing of perfectly healthy cubs which aren't his, ants' highly organised social structure, etc? The only question is does it work…
Yes, our current system is on its last legs but tomorrow's new one is already long in the making. And yes, getting there will certainly not be easy. Darkest before dawn, all the more reason to enjoy their young positive energy > on YouTube "2025 EthSF '25 Week d/acc Day".
Inevitably some of them will succeed. The only question is whether you want to help 🙂