Remember a couple weeks ago when I described our historical conjuncture as worse than a polycrisis? Of course not; weeks ago might as well have been decades ago:
The fever of crisis did not break in the direction we might’ve hoped. The system has failed us, and the urgency of now is not about staving off a terrible future but rather responding to the terrible future we’re already living through.
It’s a weird time to be alive, but especially if you live in the US, you’re really going through it:
The rapidly increasing cost of living and prices of energy consumption;
The dramatic cuts to higher education;
The intense program of austerity starving the welfare state in conjunction with the largest corporate tax cut in history;
The US farmers who are getting crushed by tariffs;
The $20 billion bailout of the gonzo-libertarian Javier Milei government—which destroyed its economy with crypto-Reaganism in Argentina—rather than US farmers;
The ongoing ICE raids, which now primarily target people who have committed no crime, including US citizens; and
The deployment of the US military to cities run by Democratic Party politicians.
And this is only a partial list. You could say we’re watching the self-destruction of the US economy, or of US democracy. I wouldn’t quibble with that, though you should expect nothing less from an oligarchy facing an era of declining global growth.
America’s acceleration of its own imperial decline is uniquely difficult for Americans to cope with because the US is a country whose national myths disavow the predatory character of its own state apparatus. Americans know only the imperial mode of living, yet deny their imperium. What’s happening now is that America’s state apparatus, its national security state, is cannibalizing its body politic.
And this is maybe the terrifying thing that nobody wants to acknowledge: None of us are actually safe and it’s states that most threaten us. Do you live in fear of cartels, gangs, pirates, and immigrants? Or do you live in fear of police, surveillance states, paramilitary forces, and a life of economic insecurity?
The nation-states that siphon our resources also seem to have given up any pretense of protecting us. “National security” is an excuse to surveil, police, repress, and kill. That’s always been true, but two things feel different now.
One is that it feels like the repressive functions of the state are all that’s left; the state is at best indifferent to our physical security and is happy to make decisions that ignore our well-being or make war more likely.
The other thing that feels different now is that there is no stable demarcation between friend and enemy even as that distinction guides the use of state violence. The powers of the state are not just being directed toward the people who belong to other states that we’ve chosen to see as enemy; they are being directed at ourselves. Being a citizen or a veteran does not inoculate you from ICE detention. Being a part of the property-owning class does not guarantee your right to free speech, or your ability to vote in the next election. If you are in a place that the state decides should be policed or occupied, there are no exemptions for you no matter your status.
This troubling insight came up in the latest episode of the pod, above:
The state form is not looking after its citizens. It’s sucking up the resources of citizens and using them to repress citizens. It’s a violation of any social contract that justifies the way life is organized.
It’s impossible to look on at what’s happening in our world and draw any other conclusion:
The Gaza Sumud Flotilla;
The active suppression of free speech in the UK;
The austerity politics in the West being paired with surges in military spending;
The revolutionary uprisings in much of the global South—animated entirely by anti-corruption and widening inequality—met with either indifference or violence by their governments.
Everybody the state doesn’t like is now a terrorist or an insurrectionist or a subversive, literally:
