<nettime> Ocular fictions

[Dan S Wang via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

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On Thursday, July 11th, 2024 at 3:16 AM, Felix Stalder via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org> wrote:

>
> On 6/30/24 23:09, Brian Holmes via nettime-l wrote:
>
> > Why do the centrist parties fail?
>
>
> I think we all know the basic outlines of the answer, but at the risk of
> mansplaining, here is my version of it. (. . .)



> I think any alternative must turn the new conditions of "expensive
> nature" and "end of fossil fuels" into a source of agency. And there are
> plenty of examples, we all know that too. Do they form a coherent
> program? Not yet. Will they? It's hard to say. What we know from complex
> system science, in stable circumstances, change is either impossible,
> or, retrospectively, inevitable.
>
> And, if anything is clear, we are not in a very stable system-state.
> Thus, nothing is impossible or inevitable.


Dear Felix,

You've gone a step beyond mansplaining and entered the realm of prophecy. I love it. 

That said, who among us saw this coming, and at this moment: 

Trump was shot. 
Or, rather, his ear was shot. 
By somebody. Somebody who is now dead.

Tonight the information war begins--oh wait, you thought we'd already been in one? Nope. Not compared to what's coming.

We'll be flooded with so-called eyewitness stories by Sunday night. Differing and contradictory testimonials will fuel the distrust, the specters of conspiracy, and, ultimately, the impossibility of an authoritative account. Fake accounts, AI-assisted accounts (and therefore disbelieved), too, will inevitably proliferate. Plus all the foreign social media interference we can eat.

Info about the shooter will be twisted and doubled back on itself, a Labyrinth of agenda-laden suppositions without an Ariadne's thread by which to find our way into the clear. Attendee videos are already circulating. The only truth contained as far as the dozens of clips I've seen is: total chaos (in the moment and writ large). 

Conventional wisdom would have the culprit be drawn from standard contemporary scary leftists: BLM, pro-Palestinian students, "antifa," immigrants, and whoever else the Right chooses to hate today. But today's lefty US activists--the vast majority of them, anyway--are exactly who the Right wing says they are. College-educated woke snowflakes quick to call out the misgendering of an elite individual but who have zero to say to or about the dwindling coal miners of America, and, btw, who have never shot a gun. 

The shots were fired from the roof of a large shed-like out building, the weapon used, apparently, was an AR-15. The distance was 125yrds/115m away. These basic details eliminate probably 99% of the country's Trump haters as realistic suspects, though Trump and Co will try to blame precisely that 99%. The typical individual identified with the grassroots American left couldn't for the life them pull off such a stunt even when dearly wanting to.

Further, how did a guy get himself up there toting a long gun, with tons of people around and presumably through standard Secret Service perimeter sweeps, not to mention have the nerve to do it deep in Trump Country? The incredulity belied by the question speaks to today's always-present niggling thought in America, a belief-poison distributed most infamously by Trump himself: fake news. And if some facts are simply too heavy to be denied, then the next phase of paranoia comes into play: the shooting was planned, a false flag (whatever that means at this point), a convenient Reichstag fire ruse, a design to inflate Trump's image of invincibility (shot through the ear?? how perfect; stills of the defiant, bloody Trump couldn't be more appealingly warrior-like) and an excuse to release calls for vengeance. My bet is that the most ambitious of Trump's proxies will be screeching for leftwing heads and full investigations of Dems within 24 hours. 

Spinning the assassination attempt as a Secret Service failure also opens the door for the anti-government crazies near to Trump's sphere. No official report is to be believed and no federal law enforcement action will be trusted--unless directed squarely at Trump's political enemies. The stakes of the November election instantly grew 20-fold, just as runaway speculation and two billion opinions occlude the already fraught political landscape by an equally drastic factor. 

>From the perspective of those calling for Biden to step down, the shooting is not good. On Sunday morning Biden's campaign was on life support; the only question being when to pull the plug. Now, what could have been controlled timing is suddenly out the window. 

The next few weeks will be crucial to any possible change in the Dem ticket. One terribly plausible development is more violence. I can very well imagine some right wing "vengeance" attacks going down, bald-faced provocations, a beginnings of the feared modern civil war--different from the 19th century War Between the States for its citizen-powered, dispersed and decentralized flash points. Exactly the kind of gun-phile wet dream of a purported conflict in fact playing out as a low level lawless American war of all-against-all. And when there's a war, you don't change horses in the middle of it. Or so goes, once again, the conventional wisdom--which may work only for conventional wars.

Speaking of conventional, the two summer political conventions at which the candidates are formally nominated, set for the neighboring Great Lakes cities Milwaukee and Chicago, will be anything but conventional now. At this point in our national devolution no shots fired would be a win.

How to cope as the nation convulses? I generally don't go to comedy for my news and op-eds. The times are dire, nothing is funny, Jon Stewart annoys. But I somehow found the instant jokes on the r/GenX subreddit freakin' hilarious. Maybe because the reality is dawning on us--we American GenXers are about to be really and truly passed over, politically--what seems in bad taste to the Boomers and less than earnest to the GenZs, is just the right flavor for me tonight.

"Dude had one job."
"He was the best guy DeSantis could afford."
"Trump got his right ear pierced. Gen X knows what that means."
"Nobody has been this disappointed by three inches since Stormy Daniels."
"Can't shoot. Must've been Antifa." 

In the (legal) weeds with no hope but plenty of cheer,

Dan W.
--

Resident Artist, 18th Street Arts Center
@type_rounds_1968
@nowtime_asianamerica
danswang.xyz


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