CATACLYSMIC ART
So: We come to what’s at stake: the inevitable collapse of the database, as a binary-mechanical (numerical-nominal) replacement for history; but more to the point, the failure of predictability and novelty as a cyclic container for fear of the vast for now not-known and unknowable. Essentially, this failure is the failure of counting-machines and -ismic or -istic narrative to create a useful, practicable fiction that is more potently “real” than the Real, as a cosmic function affecting each of us in particular, often painfully, unexpectedly. Consider the billions invested by the tech industry in VR systems, and their current yield of “popular” novelty gadgets... The fiction that “Time heals all wounds” is rooted in an urge to synthesize the confusing ontology of mortality cohabiting space with the infinite-thing into an application, a remedy for the human condition in its most unpleasant aspects. VR goggles will not adequately solve the real problem, which is not a problem per se. IT is just life. And death, plus more.
So it comes to this. At least no one serious is claiming the catastrophe was unimaginable or unforeseeable. Most of the horrible management that exacerbates the ongoing human suffering is being washed away in waves of prevarication by the bully pulpit. In general the features of the current Corona Virus crisis are predictable. It is revealing that Bill Gates, that menace to all, is surfacing to lend his dangerous mind to solving everything with macro-gestures. The trend of billionaires like Gates, Bezos and Musk providing superficial fixes and bits of charity to alleviate the global clusterfuck is itself predictable and onerous. Celebrity cases of infection are not entertaining, nor are they a boon to popularity. The details of the outbreak and the frantic, disorganized responses are practically impossible to assemble into a cogent narrative, because journalism is no longer functional in its public service capacity. The tittering demonization of the mob (e.g., toilet paper hoarding) by talking heads of every stripe rings hollow, as the oligarchs profiteer madly. What is the structural difference between toilet paper and cash at a time like this? The market shit show unfolds to clarify the outrageously rigged nature of the biggest racket on earth. As soon as the DOW dipped below 19000 and the gambling capital of the super rich was tapped, we witnessed heaven and earth moved to stop the bleeding. The bailout outperformed the 2008 one by magnitudes of ten at least. The relentless hectoring of Bernie and Liz over how they would pay for universal health care should be a punchline now. Liquidity is the new Liberty! The insider trading in Congress was and is overt. The collaborators don’t bother to pretend anymore. To repeat: This is what “Running the Country (or anything worthwhile) More Like a Business” is all about. The corruption is rampant. The rats have thrown the crew overboard, and no one at the top cares as long as the party on-deck rages on. The notion that anyone will be held accountable is laughable. De-regulation is another term for avoiding indictment, much less conviction. The real mob is in the middle of a fire sale of America, although our nation is hardly the only one being gutted for parts. We are all Greece, now. So many of the valuable assets of our commonwealth have been privatized, serving the interests of the exploiters, the speculators, the command-control managers, as wealth and power machines. The corporate medical industrial complex is revealed as the mess it is. Admit it! The Senator from Vermont has been right all along. Bernie Sanders is the only politician who has consistently confronted the danger to democracy posed by out-of-control inequality. He is poised to lead us out of this plague, but he and his candidacy have been effectively disappeared. The DNC and RNC are hell-bent on a Presidential Coronation, and it’s down - as far as the hacks are concerned - to two horribly flawed creatures (Biden and Trump). But it isn’t just a political or economic or social cataclysm we face. The republic is dissolving in real time. Can you believe that our leaders were floating the idea of occupying our nation with soldiers? But try to get any of these despot-chicken-littles to utter a word about nationalizing health care, banks, communications infrastructure. Is it only Putin the Terrible who can push a wealth tax? Why won’t anyone point out that the technology for safe and fair elections is available in time for 2020 elections? Or that the Iowa episode was pure ratfuckery, which applies to pretty much the entire primary season. Will no one notice that for-profit prison practice is now a societal hazard, drifting toward heinous crime against humanity. Amazon is not the solution, during the lock-down. It is a symptom of the worst problem the United States faces, far worse in its implications than Corona Virus. Amazon is a soul-sickness, not a monopoly. I can again, like Chris Hedges or Sean Hannity for that matter, bundle a list of grievances to crush any disputing argument, true or false, by grinding the arguer to discursive dust. Such tactics lose their edge in times of terror and systemic breakdown. The presence of history has the effect of muting the exhortation and the howl. Those responsible for the crash of everything scuttle into their bunkers and enjoy the bounty ripped from the world’s and people’s guts. Are the rumors true? Is this bio-warfare? Eugenics? A War of the Worlds (1938) psy-op? World War III? Is China behind it? Is Russia? The Deep State? Or is this the endgame in a master plan hatched decades ago by monsters like David Rockefeller? COVID-19 appears as an event, and its timing IS worth scrutinizing. We have the perfect soundtrack: Bob Dylan’s new, epic JFK elegy; although Radiohead will more than suffice. Does one have something other to do? We are all in quarantine together, anyway. LOL. Really, “quarantine” is insufficient to describe the circumstances of half the population, who are being tended, one assumes. The test being run right now: how well have the decades of brain-freeze conditioning worked? What does it take, these days, to suspend the lives of millions or billions of people at the behest of authority? To what extent has our concept of liberty been erased, like Bernie’s candidacy?
