Confederate Coal

If then all organic instincts are conservative, historically acquired, and are directed towards regression, towards reinstatement of something earlier, we are obliged to place all the results of organic development to the credit of external, disturbing and distracting influences. The rudimentary creature would from its very beginning not have wanted to change, would, if circumstances had remained the same, have always merely repeated the same course of existence. But in the last resort it must have been the evolution of our earth, and its relation to the sun, that has left its imprint on the development of organisms. The conservative organic instincts have absorbed everyone of these enforced alterations in the course of life and have stored them for repetition; they thus present the delusive appearance of forces striving after change and progress, while they are merely endeavouring to reach an old goal by ways both old and new. This final goal of all organic striving can be stated too. It would be counter to the conservative nature of instinct if the goal of life were a state never hitherto reached. It must rather be an ancient starting point, which the living being left long ago, and to which it harks back again by all the circuitous paths of development. If we may assume as an experience admitting of no exception that everything living dies from causes within itself, and returns to the inorganic, we can only say ‘The goal of all life is death’, and, casting back, ‘The inanimate was there before the animate.’
Freud - Beyond the Pleasure Principle

"What a loser you are, ain't nothing wrong with rolling some confederate coal*," one person replied.
Conservatives Are Purposely Making Their Cars Spew Black Smoke To Protest Obama And Environmentalists

America has always dreamt of empire. As the centuries went by that empire grew in its imagination as it did in territory. With victory in WW2 and, in particular, with its grasp of the technical means to destroy anything on earth the attainment of a universal empire seemed to have been achieved. But the decades since have filled with reversals and the imperial dreams have become a twilight of anxiety.

Politically the war effort against the Axis was led by the Democratic Party which had taken the form of a truce between labor and capital. The Republican Party kept its own counsel throughout as representative of those who would refuse all compromise in the struggle against socialism. With the end of the war they were able to regain a political balance in a two party arrangement behind American military and economic domination of global capitalism.

Ideologically this domination was expressed as a liberal adherence to the ideals of human rights but also as a conservative adherence to the instruments and structures of imperial realpolitik. While American power enjoyed its ascendance this duality was maintained by both political parties. The points of debate between them were nearly interchangeable.

The political ecology of imperialism included a gentlemanly range of polite domination for, well understood, the good of the dominated as well as those methods which are unfortunate, are kept at arm's length, and are only discussed among friends. It is this long-standing accord to which the centrists of all parties still genuflect. But its hold on their mass base has slipped. While cracking can be seen in both the first casualty is the GOP. Throughout the 2016 campaign Trump proclaimed that this election would be the last chance for his voters to turn back their numberless enemies. Why?

The end of the world is always at hand. There is every indication that Trump was prepared to carry his campaign beyond the loss that was predicted rather than accept final defeat for the forces of reaction. Behind the trope of the end times, however, there is a reality of precariousness for the class position of his confederates.

The full maturity of global capitalism has not created the satisfaction of empire which its prophets foretold after the fall of the Soviet Union. It has, instead, raised the cost to the imperial homeland while distributing the benefits among nations more broadly. For the working class worldwide the result is the squeeze. And for the Republican base this has meant a difficult conversation with their leadership.

The enrollment of workers in the burden of empire requires a payoff for some and the whip for others. American politics is infused with the aura of the payoff. It is the dream, the frontier, the pie in the sky. In the 20th century it was real for many. In the 21st its disappearance must be explained. For the Democratic Party that requires a balancing act between the socialist aspirations of its voters and the party’s fealty to capital. That contradiction may be growing but it isn't unfamiliar to anyone in its ranks.

The Republican party has a new problem. Because they cannot allow that the diminishing returns from the empire are caused by anything structural to capitalism they must lay blame outside the happy fellowship between their right minded voters and their patriotic rulers. The entire apparatus of the American empire is found to be at fault along with its allies. And here the stories of antisemitism and white supremacy become not just privately allowed but necessary. The loss of status which is felt by the former favorites of the system does not arise because they are, at the end of the day, just another bunch of proletarians to be squeezed but because they have been betrayed by those who bear the mark of the outsider.

So the walls go up. But it's too late. The invading socialist society is everywhere. The ruling class has withdrawn within castles that are global even though they have room for very few. If you have been left outside but crave the inside you will be suffering a variety of breakdowns. And with the most fragile this will often manifest as an urge to return to the inorganic, the Todestrieb.

At the pinnacle of empire we have witnessed a president, frustrated to his core by the inability of American military forces to sufficiently subdue rebellion in Afghanistan, give vent to a genocidal level of wish fulfillment in proclaiming his repressed urge to exterminate the entire country. We are all far too familiar with this kind of involuntary thought process by now. As it is in the palace so it is in the countryside.

Historically both parties have shared in the criminal side of American politics. The post-war capture of the forces of the southern Lost Cause by the Republicans, however, established a carousel between the respectable faces at the heights of capital and the unmentionable associates of the Klan and Nazi right. What had been a voting block split between the parties is now a Republican stronghold.

But what began as reinforcement of Republican ranks has corroded the party’s connections to its own upper tier. In the acceleration of events in the 21st century the party’s base has come to mistrust those who would instruct them in the requirements for the proper management of empire; experience, credentials, and polish. Things may not be going well for it around the globe but the idiotic schemes, by which I mean those that are simply held privately with little or no vetting by the councils of state, those that are proclaimed on stage by a celebrity of little discernment, they will not right the ship.

With no evidence of progress in their lives all Trump’s audience knows is that they are surrounded by the “external, disturbing and distracting” and all they wish for is the “reinstatement of something earlier”. But repose is not in the cards and what existed earlier is no longer with us. Trump is lost and temporary shepherd of the lost. The numbers of the desperate who take the path to their own inorganic state are rising. As are the numbers of those who choose to first destroy at random before ending their own life or surrendering. Then there are the confederates who proclaim their loyalty to the dead by “rollin’ coal” or simply parading their private firepower. All are showing their readiness to volunteer for a militia of the clampdown when the time is ripe. And for most, at the end of their tether to life, that time is now.

Fascism, in embryo here, is also a wish to return to something earlier. An attempt to resolve the contradictions of the world with the blessings of the inorganic whether by war or by rapture. By the naming of the enemy the new GOP has, in its own way, shown us from which quarter the winds of change are blowing. No rally is complete without a ringing denunciation of the political program of the working class. Whenever they identify a specific target we can see they are wrapped in illusion. As socialists we have to admit that the workers are hardly prepared for the grand struggle which the right believes is already upon them. Our traditional organizations are at best bogged down and at worst arrayed against us. But, in their upside-down fashion, the Republicans recognize that we are, nevertheless, the reality of change and progress that they dread.


* Confederate coal, it should come as no surprise, was a southern technique of sabotage against Union railroads, explosives hidden in lumps of coal.