Eternal Emergency

Capitalism is a disaster all by itself, but "Disaster Capitalism" is a particular strand that deserves special attention. You see, states consolidate more and more power by declaring states of emergency, and we've come to a point where this state of emergency has become a mainstay in our daily lifes.

The 2007 book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein, describes how neoliberal western governments use national and international crises to push through policies while citizens are too preoccupied with the cause of the emergency to offer any resistance to those new laws and regulations; in many cases, especially when safety or the economy is at stake, governments declare such a national emergency with the explicit approval of the people. There's an immediate threat to the nation, so it's best to give the government the tools they ask for to make us or our economy safe again. I'll link the documentary, based on the book, at the end, and I recommend it to anyone who hasn't read the book and is interested to know how governments have used this strategy in the past.

Whether it's those pesky immigrants that need to be kept outside the national borders, a global pandemic, bankers tanking the economy or some hyped-up international terrorist threat, whether the reasons given are true or false, the ruling capitalist class will find ways to make the 99 percent forget about their own short term and long term interests by consenting to measures that amount to sacrificing freedom for perceived security. "Never waste a good crisis", and if there isn't one, we'll create one in the minds of the populace. Right wing parties are especially well trained in this sport, as they're the traditional guardians of the "natural order" with capitalists at the top of the heap.

What they're also good at, is to claim the exact opposite of their true goals in their rhetoric. They'll talk a bunch about freedom and contrast that with safety. You know, what I've just said: trading safety for freedom, as if they're polar opposites. That's a rhetorical trick, that's to keep things simple, black and white. What if I tell you that a great part of freedom is to be safe? Does that sound like a contradiction to you? I think not. It's good to have laws and regulations, it's what makes society work, and it's good to have an apparatus, the government, to enforce compliance to those rules and regulations. It's good to not be allowed to murder, right? It's when this natural longing for safety gets conflated with the interests of an absolute ruling class of, let's say capitalists, that we take a wrong turn and get governments who invent emergencies in order to cater to those capitalist interests. Where else did you think the military industrial complex or prison industrial complex came from?

Like almost everything else in our late stage capitalist societies, large scale emergencies are invented or abused for profits. This is the heart of the message in "The Shock Doctrine". This is even reported on by the mainstream media, as illustrated by this headline in The Atlantic: In 1995, the U.S. Declared a State of Emergency. It Never Ended.:

Clinton’s declaration is a case study in presidential powers, which, once activated, chief executives are often reluctant to roll back. The United States has roughly 30 ongoing national emergencies—one of them has been in place for four decades, having been issued by President Jimmy Carter during the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979.
_{source: The Atlantic}

That article's from January 2019; right now there are some 50 ongoing declared emergencies. Like I said; it's a constant thing now and it's all on top of the stresses of the daily life of your typical middle class and working class citizen who tries to keep their head above water in a world where inflation keeps going up and real wages keep going down.

Human minds don't function at their best when plagued by immediate emergencies; we don't call it a state of "shock" for no reason. In the immediate aftermath of a disaster, as well as in the anticipation of an immediate disaster, our brains switch to it's crisis-solving mode, pushing to the background all long term considerations when making the decisions necessary to solve the immediate problems. Right after 9/11 not only the Americans, but the whole world gathered behind George W. Bush's cry for revenge. And since then the threat of another sudden terrorist attack has been used by governments all over the world to push through laws and policies detrimental to our personal freedoms.

Nowadays I get the feeling that the state of shock, is becoming our default demeanor as we're constantly being reminded of multiple threats to our future well-being; if it's not the immigrants, it's the terrorists, or the climate, or, if you're gullible enough to believe Republicans, the transgenders coming after your kids or "woke" teachers teaching them Critical Race Theory to make them ashamed of their melanin-deprived skin. There are real solutions to most of these crises, except for the imagined ones of course, but they all need us to reconsider the capitalist paradigm. I'll leave you with That Shock Doctrine documentary; watch it if you haven't seen it yet.

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