When "Civilizational Destruction" Isn't Enough: Where the Fuck do we Go from Here?
Only a few days after President Donald Trump called for the annihilation of an entire civilization with the implicit threat that he, as the Commander in Chief, would have unilateral authority to use nuclear weapons to do so, everything seemed to have somehow returned to a tense and surreal "normal." Normal, despite the continuing threats on energy and water infrastructure (war crimes!) that would overwhelmingly harm and kill civilians, only slightly more slowly than bombs dropped on them directly, while also prompting retaliation in kind against other nations' civilian infrastructure. Trump's thousandth impeachable act of the month fades into the background of the previous nine hundred and ninety-nine.
Meanwhile, consider what shamefully little was (and has been) done to stop him. Just over 70 members of congress (out of 535) called for a vote to use the 25th Amendment of the Constitution to remove him from office the day of the "civilization will die" deadline. Even in the (extremely unlikely) situation a vote were successful, removal would face many appeals, take time, and JD Vance would likely not change course at all. Congress could not even be bothered to rapidly re-convene from their vacations. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, forever failing to do even the bare minimum, planned to force a War Powers Act vote the week following this slew of threats, emphasizing working together with the Republicans who have ensured Trump has no guardrails for a decade. Five weeks into an illegal war, a week after a clear threat of genocide from a dementia-addled President, for a vote not to remove him, but simply to restrict his ability to conduct one specific war, via an act that has already failed to stop numerous acts of American violence around the globe. In the absence of a robust antiwar movement like during Vietnam, all we could do was yell outside the white house for a bit, or stay home hoping that someone, somewhere, might do something about this. (Of note, as of publishing, the house did pass a war powers resolution, in late May, far beyond the 60 day limit that Trump should legally have been able to engage in combat operations, but it is unclear how, if at all, this will affect the conduct of this war given, you know...how he is.)
And as I sit here in a library on my off-day writing this, you would never know the world nearly ended a few weeks ago. We all walked away as if it were a cliffhanger ending to a season of the newest political thriller on TV.
And What of Our Allies?
It is one thing to be embarrassed of your own government's actions. You at least had a part of voting for or against it, and its insistence on killing others in your name really should activate an empathetic reaction. It is somehow worse to watch others outside of your government grovel at the feet of a lunatic your own country refuses to rein in. After Trump's now decade or so of threats to leave NATO, the issue bubbles again to the surface. His track record of tossing aside anyone who is not fully compliant to his will hasn't given NATO anywhere near enough initiative to move on without an authoritarian-leaning US; now, his outright jeopardizing of the oh-so-precious oil-based economy has shaken NATO, but only slightly. Even as Trump's actions continue to endanger every nation on earth by cutting off one of the worlds key shipping routes and threatening to escalate this war beyond the Near East, NATO head Mark Rutte grovels at Trump's feet, praising his "ambition and vision," as if the US is not about to leave our NATO allies out in the cold, for real. That would, of course, require congressional approval. But...when has that stopped Trump from simply doing it, and hoping that by the time the existing systems catch up years later, its already too late?
NATO must recognize that the US is perhaps its greatest threat, at the moment. The US cannot, apparently, be relied upon for anything that doesn't involve collecting trillions of dollars from its people or producing weapons to bomb as many schools full of children as possible. That is what our system (capitalism) is designed to do. The US has functioned by extracting what it needed from anyone who got in its way from the very beginning, and, despite a few periods of being on the right side of history (regardless of the reasons why), will continue to do so until it collapses.
What's Next?
The past few weeks have shown our nation's constitutional crisis at its worst and demonstrated that our allies are holding on to a world that no longer exists; a world in which the US at least pretends to stand by the ideals and values we preach. Many Americans are vacillating between wanting to "restore our nation to its roots" (conveniently forgetting or erasing the fact that those roots are the mas graves of Native Americans, black and brown people, and the working class) and starting over entirely anew.
Many authors have argued that the state itself should remain the caretaker of institutions that protect their people. I think that, contrary to this point, any State that can undo hundreds of years of struggle in one fell swoop is an abject failure that clearly did not sufficiently protect these institutions or its people, and should be replaced with something that can prevent such an outcome entirely.
Imagine, instead, the strength of institutions without the tyranny of the State that controls them. Institutions replicate and externalize the values with which they are designed and can range in size and purpose: they can be as small as a mutual-aid group and as large as an international agreement concerning satellite frequency bands (though the latter is backed by a formalized state-adjacent institution, the UN, but decidedly not a “State” itself). States, however, have a single purpose, which is the accumulation of power upon themselves for the cutting up of land among “their own” against “outsiders.” Any organization that defines itself in opposition to others will inevitably do violence to them, and to its own.
State collapse is disastrous, but a change is coming to the US, and some group, likely armed and inimical, are going to be deciding what that looks like. By continuing to build webs of interlocking non-State backed institutions to guide our behavior, ensure our rights, and provide social safety, we can prevent the worst of the bloodletting. Your ICE watch group, your affinity group, your membership in a left-leaning organization all blend together and provide protection for everyone should violent change occur. A meshed system thus emerges in which one institution can pick up another’s slack. This is the same argument we have made here at The Beltway Breaker for a decentralized internet, but about society – remove the large, unnecessary, burdensome leeches from our systems.
Creating, and maintaining, non-State institutions, particularly in the current climate of increasingly harsh anti-left sentiment, as Capitalism heaves its last dying breaths, is decidedly harder and more complicated than simply voting every couple of years. But, we reckon that having a US President threatening a genocidal nuclear war without anyone in the way to stop him is the price we pay for the convenience of not paying attention.
