Zizek On This Wild Election...and His Interesting Point

[brekin]

The historical Middle Class (especially in the U.S.) never outgrew its desire to imitate nobility, nor has Trump: the ostentatious wealth display, the gaudy gold, the competition for status, bragging about how rich he is, the insecurities; he named his kid Baron. Being content with "owning your own home, having a family, running your own small business, being able to pay for your children's education, being able to afford quality food, live in a safe neighborhood, etc." is much more a working class mindset.

Wouldn't that be the upper class/ruling class wanting to imitate nobility?
The middle class was the working class that actually got to own and manage stuff or at least the shot at doing so.
Like a home, small business, etc.
The working class are workers who primarily work to live, pay rent, put food on the table, etc. Hourly wage service workers and low pay blue collar workers. And don't have the means/time/resources to own or manage much of anything other than maybe a car.
Yes, there are working class neighborhoods with homeowners, but the assumption is there are also many renters.
A middle class neighborhood it is assumed most people own their homes (along with the bank), you know suburbia.

But Middle Class probably depends on where you live:
http://money.cnn.com/interactive/econom ... alculator/

I'm just not seeing the middle class, even the upper middle class, being able to be completely ostentatious in wealth display at a Trump level. That would be more certain members of the upper class. Sure, I can seem them desiring to emulate that class. But then I can see every class desiring to emulate that class, but even a rich professional in the upper middle class is not going to get very far in Trump's Richistan. And families in the lower class can be just as status seeking, gaudy, etc. naming their kid Barron, Duke, Diamond, Prince, etc.
Unless we take "Every person a king of their castle" the dream of home ownership for the middle class as desiring to emulate nobility, I'm just not getting it. I get a lot of people who idolize Trump's possessions and riches seeking to emulate him, but it seemed like his freedom to tell people they were stupid was more of a deal clincher for them.

[Elvis]

The historical Middle Class (especially in the U.S.) never outgrew its desire to imitate nobility, nor has Trump: the ostentatious wealth display, the gaudy gold, the competition for status, bragging about how rich he is, the insecurities; he named his kid Baron. Being content with "owning your own home, having a family, running your own small business, being able to pay for your children's education, being able to afford quality food, live in a safe neighborhood, etc." is much more a working class mindset.

Wouldn't that be the upper class/ruling class wanting to imitate nobility?

No, the ruling class lacks such pretentions. The Kennedys don't display, and for a past moment "Camelot" reigned. The new American royalty is not Rockefeller, Soros, Buffet or Gates, it's the Kardashians and the Trumps—both clans grotesquely middle-class in their outlook and behavior. While the Rockfellers have passed enough generations to qualify as true aristocrats, Trump is still new money. He's still smarting over not being accepted by the real rich kids at the rich kids' school.

The middle class was the working class that actually got to own and manage stuff or at least the shot at doing so.
Like a home, small business, etc.
The working class are workers who primarily work to live, pay rent, put food on the table, etc. Hourly wage service workers and low pay blue collar workers. And don't have the means/time/resources to own or manage much of anything other than maybe a car.
Yes, there are working class neighborhoods with homeowners, but the assumption is there are also many renters.
A middle class neighborhood it is assumed most people own their homes (along with the bank), you know suburbia.

And the highest status homes have white columns. Archie Bunker (working class) would never want classical columns in his "portico."

But Middle Class probably depends on where you live:
http://money.cnn.com/interactive/econom ... alculator/

What CNN means is middle income; middle class is a state of mind.

I'm just not seeing the middle class, even the upper middle class, being able to be completely ostentatious in wealth display at a Trump level. That would be more certain members of the upper class.

Of course the middle class can't afford gold elevators or a luxury jet with their name on it. It's all about aspiration, longing and envy. To his supporters and to many of the simply confused, Trump is an exemplar of the American Dream, which ultimately is to "make a name for yourself" by having a shit-ton of money and accumulated property.

Sure, I can seem them desiring to emulate that class. But then I can see every class desiring to emulate that class, but even a rich professional in the upper middle class is not going to get very far in Trump's Richistan. And families in the lower class can be just as status seeking

Yes, to some degree, because all kids in America are conditioned to strive for status. But it's much more marked in the middle class. Middle class children, even preschoolers, behave more like royalty than do working class kids:

Emily asked me nearly every day I
was in the classroom to help her both put on the princess dress she wore around the
classroom, and then later to help her take it off. She asked for help putting on her snow
pants and zipping her winter coat. Erica, Derrick, and Henry (all upper-middle-class) also
regularly asked for help when putting on princess or animal costumes and preparing to go
outside. Yet, despite the fact that the working-class children also wore the dress up outfits,
snow pants, and winter coats, they rarely asked for help. They could accomplish tasks
independently more often, and when they could not, they stood near the teachers and waited
for the teachers to notice. So while generally the working-class children were more self-
sufficient, many of the upper-middle-class children received more adult attention because
they could not or would not do daily tasks on their own. Overall, upper-middle-class
children were much more prone to “take the floor.” In doing this, they both silenced
working-class children and acquired the bulk of teachers’ attention.

http://people.wku.edu/steve.groce/Class ... 20Olds.pdf

(An interesting paper in itself that demonstrates 'class performance' in preschoolers; middle class kids feel more entitled.)

I've written more precisely about the historical Middle Class elsewhere on this board; search it out for a fuller explanation and reply there if you like.


Anyways, about the OP...I don't like Zizek.

[brekin]

Elvis, I think we are mostly in alignment. I would just quibble with state of mind vs. realistic aspirations. Meaning it is harder to entertain certain aspirations when they are much harder out of reach. Granted, many lower class, working class, and even lower middle class have the mindset of keeping up unrealistic appearances and are willing to become debtor slaves for a pedigree that proves they are educated to a ruling class that sees getting a degree a formality or bonus, instead of a gateway to opportunity. Trump seems to cross all sectors because he is about the bling that all classes can understand as having power, and he has the freedom of vulgar obscenity only the very, very poor and disenfranchised, (whacked out street person yelling obscenities), and the very, very rich have.

I don't like Zizek very much either. But this piece actually has some things I found interesting. Such as I don't think it is right to hit a nazi just for being a nazi (or sympathizer). Unless they are carrying out a crime or atrocity or they attack you. I was reading Eichmann in my Hands and it was pretty heartening that the Mossad agents (many who lost some, most, or all of their family in the Holocaust, in which Eichmann was the efficiency over achieving master architect of The Final Solution) struggled with wanting to torture, hit, kill Eichmann once they grabbed him in Argentina. But they recognized that ultimately they were different than the Nazi's (cough, cough this is 1960, cough) because they were bringing a criminal to justice and it had to be carried out in front of the world in a court. Eichmann, himself could never come to believe that they wouldn't harm his family in retaliation because obviously he had no qualms sending 100's of children to gas chambers in retaliation for crimes committed by a person from the same village.



Zizek's logic for not hitting a nazi, though, is bizarre to me. Also, his big plan to deal with Trump, his preferred candidate? Read Hegel and watch LaLa Land. Not joking.

Philosopher Slavoj Žižek settles the “Is it OK to punch a Nazi?” question once and for all

“Is it OK to punch a Nazi?” is a question that has ricocheted around Twitter ever since Jan. 20, when “alt-right” provocateur and American white supremacist Richard Spencer got slugged on video by a masked protester during Donald Trump’s US presidential inauguration. Footage of the punch spread quickly around the internet, where it became a topic of much debate, a website and even a meme.

But while some people celebrated the punch, others wondered if, on a more philosophical level, sucker punching a neo-Nazi is ever acceptable behavior. Most respectable types said no, while others, including many on the so-called “Dirtbag Left,” pointed out that punching Nazis is a time-honored American tradition.

I asked controversial Slovenian philosopher and professor at the European Graduate School Slavoj Žižek what he thought. His answer might surprise you. (Editor’s note: the following transcript has been edited for clarity.)

Quartz: So, is it OK to punch a Nazi?

Žižek: No! If there is violence needed, I’m more for Gandhian, passive violence.
I once made a statement, maybe you know it, which cost me dearly. I said the problem with Hitler was that he wasn’t violent enough. Then I said, in the same statement, that Gandhi was more violent than Hitler. All Hitler’s violence was reactive violence. He killed millions, but the ultimate goal was basically to keep the system the way it was—German capitalism and so on—while Gandhi really wanted to bring down the British state. But his violence was symbolic: peaceful demonstrations, general strikes and so on.

If a guy talks like that jerk [Richard Spencer], you should just ignore him. If he hits you, turn around. Don’t even acknowledge him as a person. That’s the type of violence I would call for. Not physical violence. Because, you know, people say symbolic violence can be even worse, but don’t underestimate physical violence. Something happens when you move to physical violence. I’m not saying we should greet everyone, embrace them. Be brutal at a different level. When you encounter a guy like the one who was punched, act in such a way that even hitting him, even slapping him is too much of a recognition. You should treat him or her or whoever as a nonperson, literally.

In other words, leftists should “go high?”

I remember when [Greek leftist party] Syriza was still competing for power in Greece. A representative of [far-right political party] Golden Dawn threw glasses full of water at his Syriza opponent at a TV round table. A couple of times, Syriza members of parliament were attacked in parliament, and so on. Today it’s these new alt-right people who are acting physically violent. They represent the decay of common morality and decency. And I use here the the very precise term, Hegel calls it Sittlichkeit. It’s not simple morality, it’s a set of thick unwritten rules which makes our social life bearable. And, paradoxically, I think that progressives should become the voice of common decency, politeness, good manners and so on.
Here I see also the failure of political correctness, because political correctness is, for me, a desperate reaction to this disintegration. But they are doing it in a suicidal way, by precise regulations, saying this word is forbidden and so on. If it has to proceed like this, the left has already lost.

But the “when they go low, we go high” strategy didn’t actually work for Democrats against Donald Trump in 2016.

It’s much more complex than that. I think that’s their biggest mistake. Isn’t is sad that the best left-liberal critique of Trump is political comedy? People like Jon Stewart, John Oliver and so on. It’s nice to make fun of him, but you laugh at him and he wins. My God! There is something terribly wrong with playing this game of ironically making fun of Trump. You know, in medicine they call it symptomatic healing, when you take some things, they just neutralize the effects, like you have this pain, but they don’t heal the disease itself. Criticizing Trump is just symptomatic healing. Trump is an effect of the failure of the liberal-left. Everybody knows this knows this now. The only way to really beat Trump is to radically rethink what does the left mean today. Otherwise he will be getting ordinary people’s votes.

What do you think Trump will do?

You know what my fear is? Not that Trump will fail and there will be chaos, but for some real period of time, what if he succeeds? You know what happened in Poland? The Law and Justice party, they did such a tremendous social transfer to the poor that no elected European government would dare to do it. They lowered retirement age, they made better conditions for health care, more help for mothers with children and so on. No wonder that people like them. My God! They did something that no left government dares to do. And for me this is the sad truth of Europe: it’s a paradox.

When I was young I remember when former US president Nixon went to China. The idea was that only a right-winger can do something like this. If a left-winger, or a Democratic president had done this, he would have been attacked as a traitor. The same paradox in France, you remember. Only De Gaulle was able to recognize an independent Algeria. A left-winger would have been considered a traitor. And we are at the end of this crazy logic. If you want better conditions for the working class, you have to be populist right wing.

What will you do?

The only way to survive such shitty times, if you ask me, is to write and read big, fat books, you know? And I’m writing now another book on Hegelian dialectics, subjectivity, ontology, quantum physics and so on. That’s the only way to survive. Like Lenin. I will use his example. You know what Lenin did, in 1915, when World War I exploded? He went to Switzerland and started to read Hegel.
In these desperate times, I’ve begun to look at old Hollywood musicals. Now everybody’s seen it, but I found a good pirate copy of La La Land. And then I saw one of the old musical masterpieces: [from 1935], Ginger Rogers, Fred Astaire. Top Hat. And it occurs to me, I want to write something in defense of these old musicals, where they tend to act without psychological depth. They just move like puppets. It’s too psychological for me, La La Land. I prefer the total puppets of Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. Maybe I will write something.

https://qz.com/896463/is-it-ok-to-punch ... ald-trump/

[Elvis]

Elvis, I think we are mostly in alignment.

Yes it's largely a semantic tussle, but I the middle class carries some heavy historical baggage that's been motivating people (perhaps a majority in the U.S.) to spend their lives pursuing goals that ultimately leave them holding what Ted Turner described as an "empty bag." All of that absolutely serves the PTB.

keeping up unrealistic appearances and are willing to become debtor slaves