[NetBehaviour] Trying Out the Waters

[Alan Sondheim]

Trying Out the Waters

I can't help thinking that if I had a chance I'd leave the U.S.
immediately; it no longer represents anything I believe in. I
can't be a traitor, I won't be a traitor, because this isn't my
country in the first place. It's running on data-bases which are
more or less autonomous, on swarms of authority, on poverty, on
an isolationism determined to enslave, by proxy and design,
almost everyone who doesn't fall into line. I'm sick of
discussion on these points, and no longer care; if I'm having
nothing more than a reaction, so be it. I can't help that. The
government is held hostage by a president who, at least for me
is evil incarnate, somatic, within the body. I wish he were
dead, were gone; the kind of evil he espouses is historically
shop-worn, but there's no way out. It's one thing to discuss
authoritarianisms of all sorts; it's another to feel them within
the body, even within the imaginary body, or the body which
might be wrong, or a whole way of thinking that might be wrong.
It doesn't feel wrong, but that's not a sign of anything except
being a sort of misfit in the world. Trump's evil is somatic;
it's clausterphobic, self-contained; it constantly corrects
itself; it's always internalized. Dictatorship loops into
dictatorship; it's a tight negative feedback mechanism that
absorbs the unabsorbable real through signs that inflate the
body that defines them. But this is all beside the point; the
point is that what I wish for, now, fondly, is violence against
these people who bring so much harm, who do not care if they
inflict harm on their own citizens, on the rest of the world, on
anything at all. What does not serve their purpose is beneath
communality, beneath communication, is of another ontology
altogether. The only thing they understand is violence and a
violent god they've generated from the beginning of time. So,
where is the violence that will contain them? Why am I a coward,
more likely to think of suicide than action involving the world
outside of me? And isn't this also a form of self-containment,
an ultimate solipsism, an internal churning permitting of no
entrance or exit, no schism? Isn't it a luxury to even
contemplate self-strangulation - on ideas, on the body, on the
somatic problematic of the world as one sees it? For the tired
fight and the wars that are coming are the wars that are
continuing, just as the sky is continuing, or a planet or star.
They inhere to the landscape, to the human psyche. One tires of
them, one is dead tired. For now, it's only a government shut-
down, and that will solve itself, one way or another. There will
be another and another, and if Trump goes, Trump will replace
him. This is fundamental, more fundamental than neoliberalism or
any other analytical take on the fast-forward global economic
restructuring. The planet itself is a limitation in this regard;
there are too many people, and even our apparent fecundity has a
carrying-capacity close to the limit now. This is different
apocalyptic talk than in the past; there's no god in it, but
there's analysis. Or rather there are too many gods in it, too
many desired apocalypses; let everything collapse and built out
of the ruins, which unfortunately just happen to be radioactive.
Now I'm writing on thought, now, and nothing else - the thought
that I'd like to leave this country, find somewhere that would
take us in, which I realize is yet another impossibility. I'm
sick of the struggle, of the daily violence; I honestly don't
believe elections are going to change anything in this regard -
there's too much inequality, too much hatred, too many guns, too
many easy ways to use the internet for mayhem, digital
catastrophe, fascist organizing beneath the radar. It's clear
that computer protocols are ultimately porous, ripe for takeover
on a global and still inconceivable scale. It can be a question
perhaps of whittling and nothing else; what happens online,
however, never stays online, but ultimately turns switches
somewhere or other with dire consequences. We may be able to
eliminate sexisms and the effects of racisms, but the
fundamental aegis of power and its deployments will remain in
place and expand no matter what the laws are, no matter how much
good will remains in the world. So I want to leave this to those
would might destroy the executive branch of government, who
might overturn a justice system that's become a travesty, who
might ensure fair elections down the line, ignoring the
databases robbing us of our very lifeblood, income, employment
and communality. Unions are quaint in the long run. A march is a
form of walking. Trump is a database; Trump databases. It's the
somatic parenthetical of the lisp programming language. It rules
without ruling, with displacement and eliminations, with
pre-positions and post-positions, with the internet of tubes, of
codes, protocols, and goods, down to the molecular level. It's
simultaneously the atomization of the world, and it's top-down
in/coherencies. The body inverts, the somatic becomes the memory
of a skin within and without a database, something expendable.
And I can't help thinking that if I had a chance I'd leave the
U.S. immediately; it no longer represents anything I believe in.
I can't be a traitor, I won't be a traitor, because this isn't
my country in the first place. It's running on data-bases which
are more or less autonomous, on swarms of authority, on poverty,
on an isolationism determined to enslave, by proxy and design,
almost everyone who doesn't fall into line. I'm sick of
discussion on these points, and no longer care; if I'm having
nothing more than a reaction, so be it. I can't help that. The
government is held hostage by a president who, at least for me
is evil incarnate, somatic, within the body. I wish he were
dead, were gone; the kind of evil he espouses is historically
shop-worn, but there's no way out. It's one thing to discuss
authoritarianisms of all sorts; it's another to feel them within
the body, even within the imaginary body, or the body which
might be wrong, or a whole way of thinking that might be wrong.
It doesn't feel wrong, but that's not a sign of anything except
being a sort of misfit in the world. Trump's evil is somatic;
it's clausterphobic, self-contained; it constantly corrects
itself; it's always internalized. Dictatorship loops into
dictatorship; it's a tight negative feedback mechanism that
absorbs the unabsorbable real through signs that inflate the
body that defines them. But this is all beside the point; the
point is that what I wish for, now, fondly, is violence against
these people who bring so much harm, who do not care if they
inflict harm on their own citizens, on the rest of the world, on
anything at all. What does not serve their purpose is beneath
communality, beneath communication, is of another ontology
altogether. The only thing they understand is violence and a
violent god they've generated from the beginning of time. So,
where is the violence that will contain them? Why am I a coward,
more likely to think of suicide than action involving the world
outside of me? And isn't this also a form of self-containment,
an ultimate solipsism, an internal churning permitting of no
entrance or exit, no schism? Isn't it a luxury to even
contemplate self-strangulation - on ideas, on the body, on the
somatic problematic of the world as one sees it? For the tired
fight and the wars that are coming are the wars that are
continuing, just as the sky is continuing, or a planet or star.
They inhere to the landscape, to the human psyche. One tires of
them, one is dead tired. For now, it's only a government shut-
down, and that will solve itself, one way or another. There will
be another and another, and if Trump goes, Trump will replace
him. This is fundamental, more fundamental than neoliberalism or
any other analytical take on the fast-forward global economic
restructuring. The planet itself is a limitation in this regard;
there are too many people, and even our apparent fecundity has a
carrying-capacity close to the limit now. This is different
apocalyptic talk than in the past; there's no god in it, but
there's analysis. Or rather there are too many gods in it, too
many desired apocalypses; let everything collapse and built out
of the ruins, which unfortunately just happen to be radioactive.
Now I'm writing on thought, now, and nothing else - the thought
that I'd like to leave this country, find somewhere that would
take us in, which I realize is yet another impossibility. I'm
sick of the struggle, of the daily violence; I honestly don't
believe elections are going to change anything in this regard -
there's too much inequality, too much hatred, too many guns, too
many easy ways to use the internet for mayhem, digital
catastrophe, fascist organizing beneath the radar. It's clear
that computer protocols are ultimately porous, ripe for takeover
on a global and still inconceivable scale. It can be a question
perhaps of whittling and nothing else; what happens online,
however, never stays online, but ultimately turns switches
somewhere or other with dire consequences. We may be able to
eliminate sexisms and the effects of racisms, but the
fundamental aegis of power and its deployments will remain in
place and expand no matter what the laws are, no matter how much
good will remains in the world. So I want to leave this to those
would might destroy the executive branch of government, who
might overturn a justice system that's become a travesty, who
might ensure fair elections down the line, ignoring the
databases robbing us of our very lifeblood, income, employment
and communality. Unions are quaint in the long run. A march is a
form of walking. Trump is a database; Trump databases. It's the
somatic parenthetical of the lisp programming language. It rules
without ruling, with displacement and eliminations, with
pre-positions and post-positions, with the internet of tubes, of
codes, protocols, and goods, down to the molecular level. It's
simultaneously the atomization of the world, and it's top-down
in/coherencies. The body inverts, the somatic becomes the memory
of a skin within and without a database, something expendable.
And I can't help thinking