El Dorado

i. Long-Shadowed Sun

I remember..
The enchanted English walled garden
Days of summer air and honey-suckled nights
The capricious dance of lavenders and cabbage-whites
Made more than 3D, glowing in the evening long-shadowed sun
Nowhere better. But in England, although nothing really changes, the weather always does…

The thunder approaches
The heavy sighing of the monster…
  - El Dorado, Marillion (2016)


In video game design the Green Hill Zone is the initial, idyllic landscape from which the player begins their journey, an area of relative safety which allows the player to ease into their virtual existence before encountering serious conflict.

Born into American culture of the later part of the twentieth-century, specifically in the Mid-west, life existed in a world of a Green Hill Zone.  The only existential danger were those economic downturns which particularly devastated rural livelihoods.  But, in these cases the worst outcome was far better than the world's poor classes and farther above the historic peasantry.  World-War II was now a receded nightmare, the result of an antiquated historic period.  We were finally enlightened, modernized and civilized.  Even living under the nuclear threat, the economic golden age of the 50s and 60s were the prologue to the utopian future.  After the Fall of Communism and the ostensible end of the nuclear threat of the Cold War, the future really was now.  War, still never too far away, and in many ways now an omnipresent, ongoing campaign to maintain safe order, was at least clean. Genocide, holocaust, and the mass destruction of function society were unthinkable (without the final push of a button). Of course Sarajevo happened quickly, an actual siege of a modern city.  But that was a one-off, an exercise, something to show how well the new Western-led international community could respond.  Rwanda, Cambodia, Darfur, Myanmar, these were and are all so far away.  By the time of the Syrian war post-2011, it was no longer possible to say that the horrors of mass warfare were impossible. Now, the Green Zone, that safe zone, may not remain outside of the action and the resulting horrors.  Mid-America may not witness destruction, ignoring it even as it helps to sustain the mechanisms that create it. But it is no longer causally separated from such events and it is no longer insulated from the damaging effects.  In the process of making America "great" (again?) it is an active part of the center of history, susceptible to engagement and consequence.

This week David Lynch suggested Trump "could go down as one of the greatest presidents in history because he has disrupted the thing so much." I cant agree with Lynch's logical position, as he claims that "No one is able to counter this guy in an intelligent way."  Of course, everything Trump does can be countered by an intelligent (an exponentially more intelligent) response.  But he is right in the sense that Trump and his supporters are not operating on the cognitive and intelligent level. You can't have an intelligent negotiation because they don't care, they are solely functioning on a reptilian-response level.  For whatever reason, Lynch is coming from a similar perspective to Zizek, seeing the positive result of Trump tearing down the old Order. I wouldn't in any case look to Lynch for rationality, in fact his artistic expression has its own genius precisely because it is irrational, it embodies the Real, the inarticulate-able, primordial, pre-symbolic aspects of existence. Lynch is the auteur of the Real, just as Zizek is the philosopher of the Real.  But, there is an extreme danger when these views collide with the practical world, and the idealistic vision to build something new from the ground up allows for a path to catastrophe. Lynch did follow up, adding “Unfortunately, if you continue as you have been, you will not have a chance to go down in history as a great president ... You are causing suffering and division.”  He is at least not oblivious.

At this point, when the government is literally torturing and abusing children (as young as a few months old) by separating them from parents and throwing them into detention camps (as sick, twisted, supporters are cheering it on), it is certainly safe to say that we will longer be able to avoid the storm unscathed.  Innocent people will suffer at the hands of a tyrant and his evil supporters.  Those ready to take their ideological fight to the front-lines may suffer, but they are not the measure of history.  It is the innocent, those who are trying to flee, avoid conflict, ans simply live (and who likely don't have a say in global politics) who will be caught under the machinery which manifests the Storm. [1]

As Tobias Stone wrote:

At a local level in time, people think things are fine — then things rapidly spiral out of control until they become unstoppable, and we wreak massive destruction on ourselves. For the people living in the midst of this, it is hard to see happening and hard to understand. To historians later, it all makes sense and we see clearly how one thing led to another . . .  We should be asking ourselves what our Archduke Ferdinand moment will be. How will an apparently small event trigger another period of massive destruction . . .  It will come in ways we can’t see coming, and will spin out of control so fast people won’t be able to stop it. Historians will look back and make sense of it all and wonder how we could all have been so naïve. . . . The people who see that open societies, being nice to other people, not being racist, not fighting wars, is a better way to live, they generally end up losing these fights . . . we are entering a bad phase. It will be unpleasant for those living through it, maybe even will unravel into being hellish and beyond imagination. Humans will come out the other side, recover and move on. The human race will be fine, changed, maybe better. But for those at the sharp end . . . for those yet to fall, this will be their Somme.

We are already seeing those at the sharp end.  For many, white Americans not near the faultlines, things will go on, possibly without disruption. But for many it won't - those trapped in between the faults, those that are crushed by America (the New American Direction) and can't be defended by their own governments, and maybe those who try to stop it. The Storm is coming, It can now be seen and heard on the horizon.

As Sartre argued there is no non-choice, any war is our war, everyone's war.  Each individual must make a moral choice, and stand on the moral side of the war.  For those of us in the culture creating this conflict, it is our responsibility. History will judge those who allowed evil things to happen.

[1] What i call The Storm (or Trump's Storm) is not to be confused with any ridiculous conspiracy theories, although I think they a apt name.