D is for Democracy, Disfunction and Disorder

This post is being written as sort of a preface before I spend most of the coming year pointing out what I see is wrong with politics in New Zealand because it seems only fair that as bad as I may paint things to be here, they are far far worse elsewhere.

Currently two of the oldest and most established democracies in the world, the US and the UK (known from here on in as USUK) are in a bit of a state at the moment, and by “state” I mean the dumpster fire to end all dumpster fires.

In green and fragrant Aotearoa the biggest political bump on the horizon (at least for the chattering classes because child poverty, homelessness, the housing hernia, immigration issues, education and health and labor abuses don’t matter to them) is making sure that our cabinet has the right gender balance because god forbid we don’t have the right ratio of women and men.

In fact, I wouldn’t care if they were all women, if they were all competent, but when perennial incompetents like Clare Curran, and self-justifying bullies like Meka Whaitiri get in some how its clear that Labour is going to let the illusion take precedent over any particular reality.

So yes, they are gone but we still have Kelvin Davis, Phil Twyford and Ian Lees-Galloway despite their “problems” so the issue is that Labour (including Ardern herself) has a shortage of competent MPs/Ministers and is getting by on a combination of luck and half baked, piss poor, policy ideas which have deviated so much from their original intent (that being a re-set to NZs perilous state) to voter appeasing fiascos (like Kiwibuild) which are doing a lot to had an electoral cudgel to National.

But we are not here to take issue with these clowns, and the circus they now run, that will come later.

Right now, it’s time to point out that no matter how bad could be here, they are mucho worse over there. However, what we are seeing over there could very well happen here if we keep on the way we are going because the situation in USUK is just a more advanced symptom of the same disease we have here so its prudent to sound the warning, so to speak, lest we allow ourselves to succumb to the comfortable illusion that everything is alright here while we laugh at what’s happening over there.

And that’s just in whats left of the worlds functioning democracies, let alone what its like in corrupt and totalitarian s**tholes like Zimbabwe and China.

Currently Zimbabwe is experiencing killings in the street by security forces, a social media blackout an already fragile state teetering on the brink (again) of chaos as the new dictatorial government (lead by mass murdering monster “president” Emmerson Managawa* who was responsible for the murder of thousands as the head of Zimbabwe’s secret police) fails to bring the economy into any form of order after decades of mismanagement and corruption.

Meanwhile fun-loving China has decided to behave like the communist police state it really is by condemning a Canadian citizen to death for drug smuggling, after he was previously sentenced to 15 years jail, by re-trying him as a blatant means to bring pressure on Canada for arresting a top Huawei executive for extradition to the US which just shows what China will do if it does not get its way**.

But back to USUK, those at least are still democratic in form but not quite in function as both now have succumbed to infighting among political parties and the issues they face have no clear exit strategy and as such one may either say that this is simply the veneer of representative democracy fading away to expose the controlling elites bickering among themselves as their house of cards falls apart or (slightly less depressingly) our states shifting from true representative democracies to ones which are run by, and for, competing elites with elections as the legitimating mechanism and nothing else.

Either way its depressing but it seems that when faced by a crisis beyond their means to control (that crisis being that once you deal with the devil and start down the path to corruption and total power) you start to veer closer and closer to being a corrupt and failed state like Zimbabwe or a totalitarian nightmare like China and all the talk in the world can’t save you.

US: Go away, baiting!

Currently the US is now nearly a month into its government shutdown and I think Cracked.com has summed it up best with one of its many lists of things which show that people might grumble about “the government” but holly hell the alternative is a lot worse.

You know those far right, ACT party style, “minimal government” wet dreams that tools like David Seymour keeps on getting “excited” about? Well the US is now, in effect, in that state of affairs and it’s not pretty.

Seems all those government services that people take for granted, don’t know about or simply think are “not essential” are in fact very essential for a complex technological society like ours.

So, Seymour's ideological masturbation aside, the US is now locked into a paralytic state of stasis, in effect seeing how long it can hold its breath under water while Republicans and Democrats play chicken with each other over funding for Donald Trump’s wall.

Idiots or the naive might say its all Trumps fault but it takes two to tango and this is not the first-time politicians have played the brinkmanship game with government shutdowns. Yes, Trump has dialed it up to 11 but given that this was the core of his election policy (as limited as that was) he can’t be blamed for wanting to enact that for his voter base.

What he can be blamed for is the fact that building a wall around the US might make good sense ideologically and appeal to his supporters but it’s not going to actually solve any problems unless the problems are how to keep employed an army of wall builders and border guards.

And with the debate now down to the level of a high school feud as Nancy Pelosi and Trump are sniping at and c**k-blocking each other (as Pelosi blocks Trumps state ofthe Union speech so Trump cuts of Pelosi's travel to Afghanistan*3) you’re not looking at anything which we could call “representative” or even a functional democracy this is two spoilt rich kids fighting over a toy at day-care.

Its assumed that eventually a compromise will be reached but the damage will have been done and given that congress polls lower than the President its difficult to see the US going on for much longer because as the song says “somethings got to give”*4 and going without pay (or public services) for a month plus is going to do a  lot for arguments of political populists like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez who will happily take over if given a chance.

Could they do better? Probably not but at this point I don’t think the public is interested in that and is more interested in the cathartic effect of watching the rich elites having the heads lopped off via the guillotine ala the French Revolution, which interestingly enough was brought about by circumstances similar to those we face today (political deadlock and the parasitic rich sponging off everyone else) than getting their government back up and running.

So, on a democratic scale of one to ten, one being all’s good functioning democracy and 10 being holly s**t-balls democratic failure, the US is now about a 7 or 8 with a nine not far off the longer the shutdown goes on. And even when its ends, because it will eventually, or if Trump gets impeached or removed (because that’s also a possibility) it’s hard to imagine the US going back to normal because what’s happening now is the new normal.

The US is not going to suddenly discover good behavior and responsible politics just because the shutdown ends or Trump is no longer President but instead this is it for them and living with it is the only option. Suddenly films like Idiocracy no longer seem like satirical comedy but rather as a documentary warning from the future.

UK: No democracy please, we're British*5

Meanwhile, if you have not been reading the news (and possibly living in a hole), you would, only marginally, be forgiven for thinking in jolly old England all was sunshine, lollipops and rainbows compared to its transatlantic cousin the US.

But nope, if you thought the UK was doing better then guess again sucker because if the state of the US could be described as a dumpster fire then the Brexit crisis is Dumpster Fire Deluxe.

Consider this, article 50, the clause that triggers the UK from the EU, has already been invoked and is now in progress. All that the UK can do now is negotiate the terms of the exit and its clear that the EU does not want the UK to leave because if they do it not only makes the EU weaker but could give other members ideas as well and no supranational state wants parts of its empire falling off as it weakens the whole enterprise, let alone major members of it (as the UK is).

Sure, the UK could go back to the drawing board but as CNN points out none of the four options that could develop under article 50 are really going to solve things so in the end the choices are: Brexit, crashing out of the EU (also known a s hard Brexit), having a second referendum or changing the government. Choose wisely young Padawan.

If the UK takes the Brexit path, it’s out of the EU come mind 2019, what happens after is anyone’s guess but there are disaster stories both ways if the UK does or it does not and having a second referendum may reverse the vote but that sets an incredibly dangerous precedent because if you can reverse one vote you can reverse any vote and what’s to say that it could go around again and again once that Pandora's box is opened.

But if there is a second vote and the Britain decide to stay in the EU then those who voted leave are unlikely to go quietly and this sets up something close to a civil war scenario with an intractable position and no clear middle ground.

What is clear is that the UK can’t be both in and out and like the US, political revolutionaries are getting ready to pounce, as Jeremy Corbyn has already forced the issue by calling for a general election to break the deadlock.

Of course Corbyn, once PM, may also want to bring other parts of his manifesto to the table which is fine by me but with an emphasis on massive wealth redistribution from the richest to the poorest I cant see many of London’s wealthy bankers being down with that but Brexit, like the government shutdown in the US, is just a symptom  and not the real cause of the disease that’s eating the UK from the inside out and so reversing the vote will be nothing but a cosmetic fix and simply split things even further.

And Theresa May is damned if she does and damned if she does not, she has survived a no confidence vote but that matters little in the grander scheme when her plan for an exit is not palatable to anyone. All Brexit has really done is expose the divide in the UK, just like Trump has in the US, and in doing so presented having a hand cut off or an eye poked out as the only choice to voters.

So, at this point, the UK reminds me of England on the eve of the 1640s civil war which split the nation between Royalists and Parliamentarians, Catholics and Protestants and Cavaliers

 and Round-heads in which the decent, unlike the American Civil war in the 1860s, was not a supremely violent struggle to the death between two economic and political systems set inside a supposedly democratic state but rather a political schism between sides over a range of issues, magnified by religious difference and where the sides were emergent democracy vrs the older monarchical order.

Thus, at some point, something has to happen and when it does one side or another will not be happy and so another phase of the disease will kick in and further unrest ensues, making the situation in essence loose/loose.

Meanwhile in Godzone: Don’t say it can’t happen here!

If the political antics and chaos of USUK is not enough to make you wonder the we have our cousins across the ditch and their own political turmoil to consider.

Still NZ compared to USUK is a lot more viable at this time and if a cabinet reshuffle is all that gets into the media then we may be just a bit better off, for now that is as we shall soon see that being slightly further up the democratic anthill may protect us from the rising floodwaters of crappy politics and politician’s for a while but we also have to deal with the survivors from lower down scrabbling their way up trying to take over what’s left (I’m looking at you Peter Theil and China).

Democracy has its moments to be sure and it is having a bad day worldwide at this time but if USUK is anything to go by the alternatives to good government and real representative democracy (or even direct democracy) are rule by corrupt elites, genocidal maniacs and places that we don’t even want to visit let alone live in.

So consider this post a means of making sure that what’s follows on this blog is always with the perspective of what’s going on elsewhere lest I be accused of complaining about nothing because its not the state of NZ per se that’s the issue with me but the direction our own democracy is going in that has me blogging and it’s a lot better to sound the alarm before the whole mess goes off the cliff than pick up the pieces and rebuild (if such a thing is even possible) at the bottom or like USUK try and do so while free falling downwards.

Vootie!

*-Who has family happily living in NZ because reasons.

**-And people wonder why the National Party acting as a quisling for China is such a threat to democracy here.

*3-Why she needs to go to Afghanistan anyway is anyone’s business but I suppose she needs a holiday

*4- Yes Fitzgerald’s sentiment is upbeat and positive but the sentiment remains the same but if you need something more suitably dark then the Beastie Boys have you covered.

*5-with apologies to Messrs Foot and Marriot

Waiting for the Punchline: Donald Trump as the world’s greatest performance artist

This post comes out of the regular email chain between me and some friends which mostly revolve around US politics and Donald Trump*.

I recently figured out why I have been enjoying the Donald Trump presidency so much.

It is, in part the random unpredictability of the man himself BUT on a larger level it is because Trump is now operating at the level only a few avant-garde performance artists have managed to reach.

Just as avant-garde art pushes the boundaries of what we consider normal or acceptable so too does it often cross over the invisible lines that societies try to place around “art” to keep it from distorting, disturbing or just plain offending the cultural sensibilities that it is critiquing.

In fact avant-garde art and its artists often consciously seek to challenge norms and limits and do so with any and all tools at their disposal and it’s not unusual for the artist to not only be or become the art but for the “art” itself to also be not recognized as art.

An upside down urinal on a wall: its art.

The artist own excrement canned and sold to the public as “100% pure artist’s shit”: its art with a capital “A” baby!

Being crucified to the back of a VW beetle: Art, arT, Aert!

Attempting a coup of Japan and killing yourself when it fails: Screw you and your bourgeois values its art!

And in this light it’s easy to see Donald Trumps avant-garde sensibilities at work in his great performance art project that he has called “Donald Trump: President of the United States”.

Don’t believe me? I’m not alone in this conclusion and it’s a damn sight easier to classify Trump and his art as commentary on the US politics, society and its economy than desperately attempting to apply standard political, sociological or even economic logic to the man and his actions when he can change his mind and views in a single tweet or lurch off in some random direction in his behavior.

Just as grade B actor and “artist” Shia LeBouf can try** to comment on President Trump with his “art pieces” so too can Trump turn his whole presidency into a spectacular piece of art which is bigger, better and larger than ever before.

You want to challenge the unfair system of the US economy; Trump has you covered. Vapid US celebrities as bastions of wisdom and possible candidates for political office; he has you there as well. Worried about the sickly and anemic US democracy; the answer is… wait for it… Donald Trump.

No matter where you turn Trump and his amazing art has shone the light on many of the ills in our society, you might not like it, you might even hate it but that’s not the point of the cutting edge of the avant-garde my little moppet.

If you want something safe, clean and neat, go subscribe to Netflix, watch Mike Hosking read from his cue cards or even (dare I say it?*3) check out the Spinoff*4.

In this light it’s easy to see why an artist such as Kanye West loves Trump because its takes one to know one and West is definitely one.

The Donald Trump presidency is the political equivalent of having unprotected sex with a stranger you just met. Its the ultimate frisson; that mix of pleasure and danger, just rolling around, all caught up in the passion of the moment, knowing you should play safe but doing it bareback anyway.

Its the lower lizard brain running its long wet tongue down the cheek of the higher consciousness and the convulsive shudder that it engenders in both parties.

So where will this immense artist and his stupendous performance art end up?

That’s the joke, we just don’t know and neither does he.

Trump has invited us to be part of his Art but so far we have timidly watched from the side lines or been too shocked or “offended” to respond which in some ways is understandable as Trump has harnessed the powers of the Theatre of the Absurd to such a degree that most people are unable to comprehend what it is he is doing.

And if we won’t join him in his art we are then just along for the ride, whether we like it or not, hoping, waiting and wondering when this end and what will come of it. Strapped to the hood of the Trumpmobile (like Zoe Bell in Deathproof), screaming wildly as the speed sucks the air out of our lungs and we flail in terror as the madman behind the wheel does his thing.

But if you want an idea of what Trumps plan is you need only look at the fate of another golden haired person oblivious to the danger of dancing on the edge; The Fool from the Tarot.

And that is the punchline, that is the final, possibly killing, joke that we have played on ourselves as we desperately try to rationalize what we are seeing as our higher brain screams "what is he doing?" in near incoherence while the primordial mind beneath, unfazed by our desperate attempts to impose rationality on the irrational, simply waits for punchline.

Vootie!

*-with only occasional twists into other topics or flame wars

**-and fail spectacularly with both his he will not divide us and Flag Project piece

*3-inner voice says “dare, dare!”

*4-just kidding guys, love your stuff. Specially as you are now taking over mainstream political news coverage in NZ

A day’s pay on the wild side: Iran, Trump and 4D Chess

So Trump, with the urging and most certainly the gleeful support of Israel, has pulled out of the 2015 deal with Iran to suspend its nuclear program for the lifting of US sanctions in what has been described by his detractors as stupidity and praised by his supporters as another example of Trumps 4-dimensional chess game.

And as someone who used to get paid to pay attention to what was happening in Iran I am of two minds about this, less than unexpected, move from the US.

On one hand it was known right from the start that Trump and many Republicans were not down with the deal brokered under Obama and that it was always up for review if Trump got elected.

On the other hand Europe, Iran and the rest of the parties to the deal want the deal to continue and may very well keep the deal in place and allow the US to throw its toys out of the crib while keeping things going just sans the US.

On the third hand Israel has long sought* to protect its nuclear advantage (yes the have nuclear weapons) and were never going to be cool with anything which took the pressure of its primary enemy in the Middle East: Iran.

On the fourth hand Iran, or more correctly the average person in Iran, will definitely suffer if the financial restraints are put back on and the moderates now in power will possibly have their position weakened which could lead to a new government taking over but if anyone (including Israel) thinks this will lead to a collapse of the Iranian state then they have a rude surprise awaiting them.

And for those happily celebrating the pending reunification of the Korean peninsula they might want to take a moment to reflect on the capriciousness of the US under Trump as it’s clear that just because a deal is made does not mean it’s done.

However the real issue here is not one of ideology or politics per se but one of simply the US and Israel (both nations with nuclear arsenals) not wanting any hostile nations to get such weapons themselves which from a strategic view makes sense but ignores the fact that that both Iran and even more North Korea have the means to develop and make nuclear weapons and in the case of North Korea have already done so.

Can the nuclear genie be put back in the bottle? The answer is yes but the only nations I can think of off the top of my head to willingly give up their nuclear weapons (or research) programs are Apartheid era South Africa, Libya and South Korea (who did so under guarantees that the US would place it under its own nuclear umbrella) and of the three only South Korea has come out better for it.

Of course a nation can dismantle the buildings and shut down the research facilities but the requisite knowledge will remain and in the case of Iran there is the potential that this move will provoke them to starting up their research programmes again while in the case of North Korea it’s would do little to assuage any fears that once they get rid of their own nuclear weapons they would not be subject to US military power with little or no ability to hit back.

However in the case of North Korea the jury remains out as the North has talked the talk many times without walking the walk and its history of using such tactics to stall and get concessions is known standard practice.

But to be fair this move by Trump is not going to reassure the North that any deal they do make will be honoured and the fate of the Libyan dictator Momar Gadhafi (whose body was found in a ditch) will certainly be on their minds.

Also if Iran starts up its nuclear programme expect Saudi Arabia to consider doing the same as there is little way it will want to lose in an arms race with its peer competitor in the region.

So instead of actually creating security this move may actually have the effect of worsening the security situation by driving Iran back to its research programme (possibly even clandestinely if the EU and others can’t compensate for the US slapping the sanctions back on), which in turn will place more pressure on the Saudis to consider doing the same.

Meanwhile a potential Korean peace deal could be jeopardized or even worse scuppered by the concern that the US will act in bad faith (but again I will believe the sincerity of the North Koreans when I see it) and leave the situation back to the old, tense and trigger happy status quo but with the one possible opportunity for a genuine breakthrough on one of the most intractable conflicts in the world today being thrown away for no real gain.

And while I said to a friend yesterday that I enjoyed watching Trump as he careens around like a political pinball from situation to situation with no clear rational except the most limited of short term ideological goals even I have my doubts about his game plan beyond his next Happy-meal and have the feeling that the only logic Trump operates under is that of pure power and bluff (read: bullying) rather than any reverse Machiavellian zen master.

Even Israel is going to find it hard to rationalise things outside of any short term tactical gains (but then that has always been Israel’s problem) given that it remains an enemy in the minds of many in the Middle East and its nukes have yet to solve any of its security issues except at the most extreme level. So if Iran starts up its nuclear programme again this is not going to make Israel any more secure (good job Bibi!**)

So is Trump playing some meta game with the world and we are just not smart enough to figure it out?

The answer lies in the most basic of Trumpisims, “Make America Great Again” and Trumps career as a real-estate tycoon.

Despite all the odds (even his own) Trump got elected President of the United States and similarly he worked his way up from wealthy heir with a silver spoon in his mouth to real-estate mogul and then reality TV star in a manner which has all the hall marks of a gambler and opportunist and not some master strategist with a diabolical scheme to fool us all.

Trump is doing what he is doing because, in his mind, he believes that his projection of power will return America to its previous status as the undisputed power in the world but while much of the US politics of old was pure bullying or coercion backed by the immense military and economic power that the US had the US today is much weaker and increasingly out of step with the rest of the world and previous US foreign policy was much more coherent while today US foreign policy is whatever Trump tweets that morning.

So maybe not 4D chess but perhaps 4D checkers, played in the dark, with your feet while under attack from an outraged Orangatang.

Note: the title refers to a lyric from the Motley Crue song Wildside

*-including bombing other nations nuclear research facilities while actively making their own nukes

**-Netayahu’s nickname

Plumbing the Depths Part III: It's the end of history (as we know it)

So it’s time for part three in this series of posts which a) explores and unpacks my nihilistic views of politics and people and b) highlights that these ideas are not just my own but formed and shared by others as well.

In part one I looked at the obvious failure of western civilization in general which boiled down to the fact that our elites were not doing their jobs but rather sitting round and getting obscenely rich.

Part two explored the breakdown in the consensual reality (that of Western Civilizations superiority under the guise of modernism and scientific/military dominance) which those elites had built up over the last 500 years, but especially in the wake of World War Two, and charted the rise of post truth movements and ideas.

And to really get the feel of this post it’s advised to read the two previous posts as I will be building on the foundations laid in those posts for this post without any further reference here.

In part three we pass under the golden arches that heralded the coming of the brave new world we are now entering as Western Civilization grapples with the horrid reality of Late Stage Capitalism, the trumping* of rationality by emotion in politics, public discourse and the media and endless Mobius strip of pop culture references that modern culture, art and entertainment has become by exploring the various discourses which identified and heralded our new and toxic age.

However before we strap on the googles and dive in headfirst into the toxic future some disclosure is required.

First, it’s important to note that unlike the previous posts where we were dealing with past events, ideas or theories which were comfortably backed up and proven by time, history or just general common sense, the realm we will be entering today discussed mostly the future from the vantage point of 1990s America and terms and topics like post-modernism, late stage capitalism and the end of history are just as nebulous to pin down today, or remain up for debate, as they were then so click on the links but keep your own critical facilities in gear.

Second, the state of things today, with the screaming obviousness of environmental decline, political decay and economic collapse, began to emerge from the ideological hangover of the 80's in the 1990's but was then shouted down by the monolithic stranglehold of a pre-internet mainstream media (run by those elites mentioned previously) which then wielded near absolute control of what we saw, read and heard so the themes discussed below are not always new, despite seeming so, but instead are part of a narrative stretching back at least 30 years (and longer for environmentalism) which has only come into their own as the factors described in the previous posts began to be felt.

So, take a deep breath and let’s plunge in shall we.

I was in my last years of high school when the Berlin wall came down and like many other young guys my age I had grown up under the shadow of the nuclear assault (the concept of the world being destroyed by nuclear bombs not the thrash metal band from New York), the apocalyptic imagery of the Mad Max movies and dual narratives of the Cold War (Capitalistic good vrs Communist bad) which had all merged into a rather doom struck narrative for a young man in his late teens.

The 80s had been a time of Reagan excess, bloated military build-ups, pastel colors, big shoulders, the films of John Hughes and Michael J Fox and corporate ascendancy under the then mantra of “trickle-down economics” (now identified as the criminal Ponzi scheme known as Neo-Liberalism) which had officially ended with Black Monday in 1987 but in reality is still with us today (as we shall see below).

And with the collapse of the Berlin Wall in late 1989 and the subsequent end of Communism, and the breakup of the USSR, the US had finally become the dominant nation, economic system and ideology in the world.

Cue the 1990s which saw me alternating between vagrancy (read hitchhiking, rock climbing and unemployment), the military and university study while wearing ripped denim, listening to Grunge, House music or Drum N Bass and reaching for the lasers many Friday and Saturday nights. It was an exciting time (as it is for anyone starting to explore their life) and in the beginning I spent little time doing anything but getting the most fun out of it.

But outside of my own life big changes were afoot as the world reacted to the end of the bi-polar system under the US and USSR by hoping for peace but settling for coming to grips with a uni-polar world under a smugly triumphant US, which was not as easy as it sounded when the United States, under Bush Senior, celebrated by launching the First Gulf War and then sat back while places like the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda and Somalia (along with others) slid into chaos, anarchy and mass bloodshed as ethnicity and tribalism trumped nationalism and political debate.

Academically one of the big ideas of this period was that of Post-Modernism which seemed less an academic discipline and more a strange merging of US pop culture, globalist ideas and art theory all wrapped together as some sort of critique of rising corporate dominance with lashing of Jazz music and episodes of the Simpsons thrown in for contextual analysis.

Covering postmodern ideas and concepts here is not possible but the basic ideas was that the society we (“we” being the West) were living in had exited the modernist phase of history, which started with the Age of Reason in the 17^th Century (think the rise of science, rationality, nation states etc) somewhere around the 1970s when corporate powers and globalization began to rise.

Driving this along were the ideas and theories of thinkers like Michael Foucault, Jacques Derrida and Neil Postman, the novels of Don Delio (whose novel White Noise would probably not get published today), William. S. Burroughs and (shudder!) Douglas Coupland and supported by a veritable army of postmodern scholars and academics; all hungrily mining this supposedly fresh new vein of critical thought like the crazed prospectors they were.

Defining this new approach were the collapse of the difference between high and low art and culture, the commercialization and commodification of all art and ideas and the ability of modernist elements like technology, economics and certain aspects of civilization (as we shall see below) to cross cultural boundaries without any major difference. Add in a large dollop of the afore mentioned corporate criticism (often focusing on niche areas like the hostility to the community that corporate architecture usually radiated) and you had an irresistible mix for young minds eager to learn (or be indoctrinated).

As an undergrad Pol Sci student in this heady time I was like the veritable stereotype of the willing revolutionary, ready to pull down the walls of white male authority figures with glee; spout all manner of PC dogma and attend whatever protests were going on no matter the cause but as I was living a double life as student radical on one hand and defender of the powers that be (as a soldier) on the other I often found myself torn between to competing and non-reconcilable poles.

To be honest the economic reforms of the 1980s under Labour (and continued into the 90s by National) and the First Gulf War had seriously damaged my faith in rational hegemony of the US and the NZ nation states to a large degree but it was not until I started reading what many of its postmodern detractors were saying that I really started to openly question the system that would willingly make slaves of us all just so a rare few could have more money than they would ever need or use.

But academia is never without countervailing views (and people willing to make a buck of them) and while many of us were getting high on the idea of revolution for revolutions sake books like The End of History and the Last Man by Francis Fukayama and the Clash of Civilizations by Samuel Huntington were setting out some different takes on what was happening.

In The End of History and the Last Man, Fukayama argued that with the end of communism human civilization had reached its apex, politically, culturally and economically (under liberal democracy and capitalism) and that, in short, the best system had won so we could all just stop trying to make a better society as the best possible one had arrived.

Fukuyama’s argument that history** had ended was absolute and total and in the 90s it was hard to refute seeing that the US had won the cold war and US economic dominance still existed as US corporations and military bases sprawled across the globe.

I am of course, paraphrasing the books argument, for sake of space but that was it in essence. The fact that it had happened under US hegemony was, per se, coincidental but still “yaaay, yaaay, USA!!!”

At the time the book was a slap in the face to a fervid young rebel like myself; here was this ivory tower academic (I was, of course, ignoring the fact that I was also in the ivory tower) daring to announce the ultimate victory of the very things we were trying to pull down and to make matters worse saying that these systems and structures were the very best that human civilisation could produce so we had better just shut up and take it.

So like any zealot struggling with something that was threatening to break open my carefully constructed reality and expose its foundation of dogma I blocked the book and its message out for many years until events forced me to reconsider my well-manicured views.

But I am getting ahead of myself because if Fukuyama was leading the cheering squad for the US victory in the Cold War then Samuel Huntington, in Clash of Civilizations, was sounding a more cautious note.

Huntington was in agreement with Fukuyama that the conflict of ideologies (Capitalism vs Communism) was indeed over and that US affairs, as they stood in the mid-90s, was at an apex (of sorts) but that just because the war of ideology was over did not mean that war itself was over or that the US would remain dominant forever. And if ideology had been behind many of the conflicts of the 19^th and 20^th centuries then culture was going to be behind the coming conflicts in the 21^st.

The criticism of the book at the time was immense and while some of it was valid others had the tone of someone upset at the spoiling their PC party (be that of the Fukuyama kind OR that of the “smash the system” kind) and again, like the little zealot that I then was, I stuck my fingers in my intellectual ears and chanted “Hey ho hey ho, western cultures gotta go!” until I felt better.

But valid criticisms of the book included that it was too rigid and simplistic and that it ignored the dynamism of other civilisations to adapt and change and while it minimised the levelling influence of globalisation (then less pronounced in the pre internet age) the essential core of the argument that there were fundamental aspects of all civilisations that, in a globalised world, could/would bring those civilisations into conflict remains highly valid as things like Islamic radicalism, the coming clash between China and the US, Brexit and yes even Trump have shown.

So the thrust of the big arguments in the early 90s often boiled down to choosing to celebrate the victory of capitalism (with democracy begrudgingly attached) over all other systems of thought (religion included) or prepare for the coming race war between the democratic west and the rest of the planet who want all our groovy stuff and will fight tooth and nail to get it.

Adding to this intellectual squeeze was a spicy side dish of postmodern self-loathing, because neither Fukayama nor Huntington was actually refuting capitalism (nor its toxic side effects), as the average postmodern critique of the capitalistic system was more rooted in that of art criticism (ie that of an observer and not a participant) than proposing actual solutions to the problems it attacked.

This left the average person interested in such matters trapped between two sides of the same system (Capitalism) and with a slow stream of commodified culture dripping on to their heads and sloshing around their feet for sad effect.

Of course if one wanted “real” radical discourse one could become a Marxist (and some did) although for all the value they provided to the debate they might as well have been the Marx Brothers or sign up for the ideologically pure, but politically impotent, environmental movement (and you only need to look at the Greens today to see where that ended).

However the friction between the positions of Fukuyama and Huntington was partially bridged in 1999 with Thomas Freidman’s The Lexus and the Olive Tree which posited the now infamous Golden Arches theory of Conflict Prevention which stated that countries with MacDonald’s did not go to war*3.

The core of the argument Freidman was making was to highlight the tension between the desire of people all over the world to have the access to the fruits of modernisation (cell phones, the internet etc) but also retain their own culture and identities. The book really does not resolve the tension brought about by Fukuyama and Huntington but in highlighting that globalisation was its own dynamic and not just an adjunct of the ideology or economics allowed people to escape the binary opposition argument they had been trapped in and open the space up for discussion in a way which post modernism had not been able to do.

Of course I am paraphrasing again but the book was an attempt to find a middle position between the last man and the civilisation clash by highlighting how the dynamic of globalisation is a new system that was not just relying on past paradigms alone.

Also emerging in 1999s was Naomi Klein’s seminal work No Logo which came from a different angle than Freidman but was in effect doing the same thing by wrestling the argument away from a triumphant Capitalism and towards the toxic waste which such a system was producing.

Thus the 1990s was not only a time when Neo-Liberal agenda was ascendant but also where the seeds of its demise were sown as while the position of Fukuyama seems almost quaint (if not also nauseating) today it seemed inevitable then and its only with time that the hypothesis of Huntington seems to have come closer to being true while Fukuyama’s seems to be a product of its time.

However Fukuyama may have had the last laugh as despite all the criticism today Liberal democracy with a well-regulated form of market capitalism attendant (and not the other way around as the economists would have you believe) still remains the greatest vehicle people have to live the best life possible and hold at bay the predatory creature known as Neo-Feudalism or deranged ideological throwbacks like China.

By the end of the 90s I had graduated university and was trying to figure out what to do with my life but my views of the world and my will to be a radical had evolved somewhat, no matter how appealing the Fight Club lifestyle seemed, and I was now aware that outside of my safe little group of islands was a great big world which I was about to get on a plane and go see for myself.

So with all that in mind let’s explore the blasted hellscape that awaits us in a world riven by environmental degradation, ruled by despots under Neo-Feudalism and where your passport won’t note a country or nation you belong to but what brands you support in part four (coming sooner not later).

Vootie!

*-pun fully intended? You bet it is! In fact I have used it a few times before so why stop a good thing.

**-this did not mean things would stop happening but these were “events” inside the gander narrative that had built to the conclusion of democracy and capitalism being proved the best the best systems in the world.

*3-Infamous because it was almost immediately proved wrong.