Macaes - History has Begun

Tags: books

Polemic argument about how america was shaped by television and gives onto it’s own unreality

Preface

• “Revolutionaries who have lost faith in the revolution” -> Bayat - Revolution without Revolutionaries
• Poses the question “can the chinese economy master technology?” Assumptions of neoliberal frame is that the democratic/western/liberal was the king of technology
• Argues that the US is more addicted to global primacy than liberal values

One

• Cycles of government (ibn khaldun)
• American constiutional triumpalism as a marker of decline - ben ackerman
• Does a broad stroke comparison of UK/Europe/American as Romans/Greeks
  • Incredibly orientialist and draws upon lots of bad history
• US affirmed global primacy against europe more oftan than with it

Two

• past looms large in the american mind
• Frontier lands and the notions of settler colonialism
  • More and more americans migrated towards “the west”, where “the east” was seen as an extension of europe
    • Is this why the “real” american is stereotyped as this conception of midwestern american
• Toqville comments on how future improvements in america are aimed to make life slightly more convient
  • pg 36
• Talks about how the united states has blended religion and democracy
  • Soper, Fetzer - Religion and Nationalism in Global Perspective
• “echoes of vast asian despotic states”
  • pg 39
  • oddly shallow in meaning

Three

• “Once a relative distribution of power no longer favors the west…the search for a new foreign policy begins”
  • Once freed of european shackles, the US can search for a new future
• Babitt
• American society as a theme park, no longer as a home

Four

• Americans were the first visual culture with tv
• starts to be the appearance of things that matter, rather than the things themselves
  • aesthtics matter more than the actual thing
• “reality and unreality briged together”
  • pg 71
• concept that things had become fiction
  • US exports unreality and imports reality
    • arms exports are the ultimate fiction, they largely are for show and not meant to be used
• “On the one hand,. the unmasking of the bourgious belief in objective reality that any meaningful struggle against reality has become absurd”
• American life continously emphasizes its own artificiality
  • show that you know how to have fun, not just having fun
  • job interviews show more than that you just know the job, you also know how to interview
  • elements with strong narrative structures
• Reality is experienced through the fictionalized enactment of the opposite
  • kurt anderson
• memes as a fictionalized structure
  • before you had to conceptualize the story, now you just have to look at the meme
  • the meme makes complex topics legible and simple topics complex
  • content collapse
  • allows you to avert your eyes from the reality
• political correctness stands for the shift whereby social actors become increasingly concerned less with the way they live and more with the way they are portrayed in the narrative

Five

• Changing presidents is now changing the TV channel
• We are larping through the events
• society is performative, online spaces
  • you need to generate content to be “alive” in the digital space
• Hannah Arendt -> hitler and stalin generated lies
• socialism became rehabitiated in this manner
• trump offers the virtual experiences of a nationalist regime without the real world consequences of one for privilaged people
  • As reality moves on, enchanted by mammon, macheviallan tech workers, authoritarian regimes
• AOC is inventing a relatiy

Six

• Concept of overlapping circles of religion, freedom, artists, etc
  • With liberalism encompassing everything else
• Makes the argument aht we miss the promise of unreality, that now that there are no shackles, we can truly explore alternative system
• Old american: freedom is fine as long as you don’t harm someone
• New american: freedom is fine as long as you don’t impose your realities on someone
• Memes as a storytelling experiments without being reminded of their flaws and incomptetncies
  • Amish/Hasidics as experiecing a different reality?
  • boogaloo boys blog post?
• “overbearing concern with fostering skeptical attitude prevents us from actually engaging with life”
  • if we are skpetical towards everything (like anti-vaccers) do we reatreat into our own realities?
• amusing that macaes talks about americanism and TV while constantly referencing westworld
• American populism is freedom in its own way, foretting the truth
  • alt-right rail against political correctness not b/c they are racist, but because the political correctness esposes a single truth
• democracy is less the incorporation of values but appealing to values now
  • need to turn out voters instead of growing the tent
• states do not shape reality anymore, they are mere actors again
  • the twin insurgency
  • “plundering of states” theory
• The religious question is a dead one
• reconcilation of technoly and political values need to happen
• paradox of stopping the historical clock looks bad in a progressive society
  • historical clock looks less attractive for those who feel like they are living in a fundalmentally just society
• liberals like to pretend to fight against the establishment or the oligarchy, but they are fighting religion and technology
  • do whatever you want, but you can’t shake the mighty edifice of freedom
• finance takes on a specific role if the future is indefinite
  • peter theil
  • money as a means to an end vs money as optionality
• tech VC’s and Braben - Scientific Freedom: The Elixir of Civilization

Seven

• Action creates reality, liberally manifesting destiny
  • western settlers have shown the way
    • settler colonialism
• vietnam was where the logs breaks down adn the pathos took over
  • kennan’s “total withdraw, followed by silence”
  • american amnesia
• Massive force only works in a few circumstances where the risk of escalation is low
  • lebanon in 1958
  • dominican republic
• Power projection fantasy
  • technology changes in light of desert storm, first televised war
  • war is now santizied, removed from the death for the domestic audienc e
• kosovo
  • mobilized nato citizens as spectators
  • israel mobilizes citizens to a new level?
• one belt one road
  • macaes suggests obor is a geopolitical quest
    • even though it’s largely patchwork
  • peripheral and absent from all global questions
    • peripheralization
  • US & Chaina are moving closer as a they move ideaologically apart