In post 52 of 100, I ended it talking about how the liberal left (as opposed to the radical left) in the US tends to argue a position of “we can harness the authority of the state to protect vulnerable people from the violences of authoritarian ideologies like patriarchal misogyny (PM)” and that argument often ends up feeling convincing to many folks who have become disillusioned with seeing anarchist/anti-authoritarian communities fall apart and fail to protect vulnerable people, even within their own communities, much less in the communities around them. I have even seen this argued online by relatively hierarchical communist and socialist organizations as “the reason why anarchists will always fail.” Almost every time a Democrat gets elected to president (or someone with liberal/progressive ideas becomes head of a large institution), it feels like many on the left shift from wanting to wanting to attack the authoritarian structures of the state (that were so scary under conservative leadership), and instead harness those authoritarian structures to push through liberal policies. A very common argument in defense of this is that “the people” expect results, and if the new “good” leadership can’t quickly show their policy progress, then “the people” are going to stop supporting them.
This is a progression that nationally has been going on at least since Obama took over from a W. Bush who saw the powers of the presidency and the executive branch absolutely balloon after 9/11, and carried over after Biden took over from Trump. It is tempting to believe that Trumpism 2.0 has gotten so out of control with its authoritarian power grabbing that there really cannot be a democratic United States after Trump is removed from office without completely readdressing the position of the presidency and stripping it of massive amounts of its authority, but I have a gross, sinking feeling in my stomach that that isn’t likely to happen, at least not if the next person to assume the position of president of the United States does so through the current electoral process. My understanding of US history suggests that it is extremely rare for either congress or the Supreme Court to ever take powers away from the position of the presidency, but if any US history scholars want to give me reasons to be more hopeful, I am willing to listen.
Left or right, Nationally, locally, or confined even to a specific organization or institution, the more authority a leadership position offers, the more susceptible to abuse and corruption it becomes, and the more attractive the position becomes to people who want to abuse authority. This is a reality that has always left me very uncomfortable holding positions of authority within the academic organizations and institutions I have chosen to work within, and the extent of corruption and abuse at the national level is making it very difficult to imagine being able to return to academia within the current political climate of the United States, if I would even be able to get hired, but that is not really the point of this post.
The point of this post is supposed to be that I think there are a lot of older folks like me, who strongly believe that we are all better off when we share power with each other than try to horde it and use it over each other, that have gotten out of the practice of putting that belief into action. I think many of us are starting to see that the organizations and institutions that we eventually gave up some of our own personal power to…for the sake of expediency and access to resources that let us do the work that we felt was the most productive use of our abilities….are pretty impotent in the face of people willing to utilize the structures of our nation much more violently and authoritarianly than we ever were, and that the safe guards we thought were going to protect us turned out to be dependent upon the people taking that power still willing to treat us like human beings and equals. The institutions and organizations we gave part of our power over to, under the guise of promoting ideas or taking actions that we didn’t know how to make happen without their authority, are quickly crumbling away or conceding to authoritarian bullies, and the only people that are really effectively standing up to this wave of authoritarianism that is really fairly global, even if it feels concentrated in the US from a US citizen’s perspective, are the people and groups that are standing up autonomously and collectively, without having leaders that can be threatened, bribed and pacified.
This isn’t me trying to hate on people doing hard work with other people that they trust, that are utilizing resources and knowledge banks that have taken a lot of specialization to create and operate, I promise! But it is me urging folks I know that are in those kind of positions to think very carefully about how vulnerable those institutions and organizations are to authoritarian attack and to consider whether trying to decentralize and share resources and knowledge right now, as broadly as possible isn’t going to end up being the more effective long term strategy than expecting some kind of hero to step in and save the day/ prevent all that work from being destroyed or corrupted for use by people who will use those resources and information to cause harm. I think it has probably never been more important in my life time to stop looking for organizations and institutions that are going to protect me from the things that I already see them failing to protect others from in the world and nation and communities around me, and start looking to build up my communities of friends, family, and neighbors so that we can collectively be ready to stand up and protect each other.
I will talk more in future posts about what that could possibly look like, and especially how important it is to recognize how desperately Trumpism 2.0 is hoping that its enemies fall into easily controlled and manipulated authoritarian practices of organizing and distributing power, because that is Trump’s bread and butter of political power: turning allies against each other and offering gilt, poisoned bribes to those willing to be the first to put on his collar of shame. I will also talk more about how difficult it is not to turn to Patriarchal Misogynistic ways of communicating and organizing resistance when those are the ways that we have been raised to wield power, but how that difficulty doesn’t have to stop us from trying and succeeding to do better than any of us have ever done before.