8/2/2019 On Victory

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On Victory

Christian Steckler

University of New Hampshire

The lefts ability to gain electoral ground is beyond question the enthusiasm with which

Barack Obama ascended to the presidency, on a wave of Democrat gains in both the House and theSenate, testifies to the lefts enduring appeal. Nor is the left inflicted by the impossibility of

achieving legislative ends once exercising power; although the Obama agenda was dissolved,

diluted, and reconstituted in various forms far more amenable to conservative interests, its ultimatetriumph over Republican opposition has materially improved the lives of millions.

There is a sense, however, in which these victories are not won, but cededgranted in

exchange for the Democratic Partys silence on issues closer to the heart of capital. The everyday

performance of authentic domestic politics betrays the spectacular character of US foreign policy,staging the division between domestic and global such that Americas international involvement

remains insulated from criticism. The Republican strategy of anti-governancetotal opposition to

the progressive agendademonstrates that political success can no longer be measured in positive,

linear terms like political capital, but is better expressed in the language of thermodynamics. Whatif we were to regard the stubborn spoken resistance of conservative representatives not as partisan

bickering, but as a concerted effort to raise the stakes? Gaining an inch suddenly requires themobilization commensurate to entire warsand this is precisely what we get.

The media capitalizes competing events on the marketplace of images. This is not quite

right: we already know that before the broadcast there are no events, and after there are no images.

The amorphous attitudinal line taken by the masses is called the political climate because it cannotbe forecasted as a meteorologist might forecast the weather. Who writes the news? Politics is the

dissolution of events into their pure energetic form, the making equivalent of conflicts such that

they can be resolved with words. Antagonism deferred. Whenever the left crusades against aparticular excess of the status quo, the right shifts their investments to raise the exchange value of

the issue under consideration and limit contestation to these high-profile, invariably domesticstruggles. The failure to challenge the geopolitical interests that precede and frame so-called socialor civil issues can be held responsible for the historical inability of liberalism to resist the appeal of

national exceptionalism.

A viable anti-war movement has yet to emerge in the United States, the nervous center ofglobal militarism. The assassination of Osama Bin Laden confirms that our society is still of the

order of the spectacle, or at least some order not very different. The nationwide celebration of Bin

Ladens deathannounced on the anniversary of Bushs Mission Accomplished debacle

penetrated sporting arenas and left-leaning college campuses alike, testifying to the manifestbrutality when Empire subsists beyond politics. The product of the Special Forces victory turned

out to be none other than that achieved on September 11: consensus over the role the American

military plays in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. The Libyan rebels advance into Tripoli nodoubt buttresses this global conglomeration of violent affects.