The nipples of mother hope have run dry

I’ve become clearer on my position regarding economic politics. I no longer have to squirm with guilt over uncertainties about “where I really stand”, or what I would fight for. I’m a leftist, but I’m not an absolutist. I’m not “ideologically pure”. Neither am I the eternally compromising middle. I have ideals. Hopefully without too much of the ology. And though I hope for utopia, I don’t expect it.

I think that although capitalism, particularly with regards to the market mechanism, is odious and cruel in its design, given enough checks and balances, it could theoretically be reasonably okay for people to live under. Not that it has a very good track record. But I’ll concede that for long stretches of the 20th century, in certain parts of the capitalist world, majorities of the people have lived unprecedented qualities of life. Nevermind whose suffering that might be based on. It does “work” in the sense of allowing the conditions for an insanely wealthy upper crust that is a small fraction of the people, an exploited middle class which also gets to do a little bit of exploiting itself, and an entirely exploited lower class. It’s enough for people who get through the day with prozac, bud light, and american idol to fall for Margaret Thatcher’s con that There Is No Alternative.

One thing I do know, though, is that there’s a lot of shit I don’t know. Maybe markets are the only way to go. So I don’t reject capitalism outright, I don’t blacklist capitalist “sympathizers”, and I could stomach voting for capitalist politicians.

But I also think that socialism, even if it has its own naïve or over-regulating approach to human nature, can also be reasonably okay for people to live under. Especially if it’s employed in the absence of totalitarian bullshit. It has a horrible track record with totalitarian governments, but pretty good results with democracies. So I can call myself a socialist, support lefties that are considered extreme by the “sensible liberals”, and sure, I’d vote for socialist candidates if I thought it could do some good.

For the foreseeable future we’ve got to run the world, or at least our nation, on an imperfect, ad hoc set of conventions clumsily fitted to antiquated load bearing structures. Whatever the system, there are serious social problems in the world that need serious consideration, and absolutism gets in the way of that. I don’t demand that capitalism is antithetical to a starving man in Tanzania being able to afford the fish he catches for European supermarkets. If some mechanism could be found within the existing clusterfuck, great. But when the clusterfuck of war, famine, and exploitation is allowed to continue for as long as it has, running down generations of people who end up knowing nothing but poverty, too downtrodden to fight back, with no ideal to fight FOR… then I think it’s time to look BEYOND the fucking system. It’s certainly time to look beyond fevered ego pop stars and their benefit concerts.

I don’t feel as radical living in Canada as I would in the states. The changes I’m in favor of are more incremental than they would be in America, because my country is marginally closer to my ideals. But in the plutocrat-worshipping conservative climate of a lot of America, I’d be some kind of radical for my opinions and prescriptions. Or perhaps I would only be “radical” in the template that defines the somnambulistic media discourse. A lot of people have noticed that on almost every issue, from social spending to foreign policy, the American public’s actual polling lies considerably to the left of what’s on the menu offered by the politicians of either major party.

So I’m for just about any change that will move the society I live in to what I view as a more socially just arrangement, given it doesn’t have too many negative side effects. I also value pragmatism and sustainability. The solution has to be workable, ecological, and it shouldn’t loot the future. And the more world events sink in for me, and the more I see the ramifications of imperial powers playing around with armies, proxies, and populations, the more I’m coming to embrace isolationism. I’m not banking on rosy futures anymore – I don’t see the trajectories I used to when my consciousness was contracted. Yes, this is the information age. But for those who try to control global demographic trends… information overflow can lead to paralysis.

Yes, isolationism. Leave it the fuck alone. Cut the fear-mongering militaristic bullshit. And stop comparing foreign leaders to Hitler until they start actually acting like Hitler. Like invading countries for petroleum. Oh wait.