Politics Minus Infinity

American politics as theatre of the absurd, Bruce Lee, Funko Pops, more.

It has become increasingly difficult to describe the politics of the two American political parties without resorting to abstraction.  Certainly, the words “liberal” and “conservative” no longer fit the bill, if they ever did; both Republicans and Democrats are conservative parties, and “liberal” has never meant the same thing in America that it does in, say, Europe. Indeed, it’s fair to say that both are now parties of reaction, with the main difference being that the Republicans want to return to the Gilded Age and the Democrats want to return to the mid-1990s. Neither fights for anything other than a slightly variant status quo. Ideologically, both are capitalist parties that favor elitism, credentialism, meritocracy, and austerity; the Republicans are far-right nationalists and the Democrats are center-right nationalists.  Both are parties of empire and parties of authority. Neither has a profound commitment to democracy.

So, from an ideological viewpoint, it’s more or less a wash; what about from other perspectives?  Neither is a labor party or a party of the working class; the Republicans never were aside from some limp white-supremacist cultural signaling, and the Democrats gave up that claim decades ago to embrace technocracy and act as a sort of job placement service for the properly certified.  Both are parties of the rich and answer largely to the same set of corporate donors, who often deploy their lobbyist henchmen to write legislation first for one party and then for the other. One could make the argument that the most profound difference between the parties is a racial one:  Due to largely historical factors, it is extremely rare to find black people who will vote for a Republican.  But even this analysis falters under close examination.  Other minority blocs (Asians and Latinx people in particular) are far more likely to cross party lines, a fact deeply tied to their class status; and more importantly, the perception that Democrats do little to help black Americans and take their votes for granted—one not often taken seriously because it is frequently made in bad faith by conservatives—can be clearly seen in declining voter turnout among that cohort. At this point, the best you can say about the party differences from an identity-politics perspective is that the Democrats wish to be seen as a party that cares about women, nonwhites, LGBTQ people, etc., while not actually doing anything for them, while the Republicans have reverted to straightforward white supremacy.

We should strive to keep this in mind, especially in this post-Reagan era of politics as perception management. There is a tremendous amount of pushback against any attempt to get the parties to focus on their actual policies and visions, or even to admit what they are; Republicans have their hands full trying to deny that racism is at the heart of all of their legislative priorities, while Democrats have settled on “people should be nice to each other” as a political philosophy and “reward our cronies by putting them in charge of make-work consultancy gigs” as a policy goal. Both parties have become truly reactionary in the purest sense; the G.O.P. has become a decades-long reaction to the whole of the 1960s, while the Democrats have become a newer-but not-new-enough reaction to even the possibility that someone might criticize them for taking a stand.

One of the problems with trying to point out that there is little political difference between the two parties is that so much is tacitly agreed on by partisans of both sides before the conversation even starts—that we should have an imperialist military, that capitalism is a natural and irreducible force, that American exceptionalism and individualism are of paramount importance, that it presumptuous to expect the government to help its citizens—and you’re left with two parties who are in the habit of denying they believe in anything at all.

Perhaps one of the few useful distinctions left, given that no one is willing to take their foot off the accelerator for even a second, is that the Republican Party is the party of denying anything obviously wrong is wrong so that they can focus on the egregiousness of something completely imaginary, while the Democratic Party is the party of admitting the obviously wrong things are wrong but not doing anything useful about them. For the former example, consider that the G.O.P. denies there is any such thing as a global climate crisis, but is extremely concerned about something called “crisis actors”.  Consider that they believe there is no such thing as racism in America (or, if there is, that it is entirely directed at white people), but that there is such a thing as FEMA internment camps, and that it is white people who will be put in them.  Consider that they either deny that law enforcement agents are brutalizing and killing their fellow citizens or openly support it, but also think there is an actual ‘antifa army’ roaming the country and stirring up trouble in urban areas.  Having realized long ago that you cannot govern simply by an appeal to tradition, they have decided to create entirely fictional threats to that tradition.

Take, on the other hand, the Democratic Party, and its reaction to just a few contemporary issues.  They recognize that we are in the middle of the biggest public health crisis in a century, and that the opposition has greatly mishandled it; but they nonetheless decided that universal health care would not be an option for their voters.  They recognize that marijuana prohibition has been a pointless, destructive policy that has caused untold misery, and that the opposition has used it as a tool to oppress black and brown people; but they nonetheless decided that decriminalization would be taken off the table.  They recognize that America is facing a wave of massive unemployment, poverty, and homelessness as a result of an unprecedented economic collapse, and that the opposition is fine with letting it happen; but they nonetheless decided that direct aid, extended unemployment benefits, and eviction bans would not be offered, and would be replaced instead with means-tested half-measures that benefit no one but their administrators.

Fake threats vs. a near total lack of response to real threats:  America, choose your fighter.

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In one of the odd and tragic rhymes of history, last week saw the death of actor John Saxon—a good-natured and open-minded man who had a brief moment of leading-man status but was largely relegated to B pictures—and the release of a tremendous Criterion Collection box set of the films of Bruce Lee.  Saxon co-starred with Lee in his most successful film, Enter the Dragon, in the role of a roguish gambler who is the last man standing (alongside Lee, of course) after a brutal martial arts tournament on a remote island. Packed with terrific design which captures both the aesthetic beauty of Lee’s work and the low-rent grindhouse-culture nature of his films, the set is a major triumph; full digital restorations of his five starring roles, a great essay by cultural historian Jeff Chang, and two bonus DVDs with an absolute feast of interviews, featurettes, and other materials.

Watching them today, it’s hard to believe that even in the waning days of racist Hollywood, anyone could have believed that Lee could not have become a huge international superstar; even when his real voice, with its gentleness and curious lilt, was used, he came across better than the mumbling lunkheads who superseded him in the 1980s.  He not only possessed an almost superhuman dedication to his craft, and may have been one of the most fit people who ever lived (making his death at the age of 32 even more staggering a loss), but he has such energy, such emotional power, and such undeniable charm in every one of these roles, it serves as an illustration of just how blinded by prejudiced the studio bosses must have been to have not seen his obvious potential.

To say Lee was an exceptional talent who strove for excellence in everything he put his hands (and feet, and mind) to is an understatement; to say he was a pop culture phenomenon is an even greater one. (One of the reasons I was so rankled by the treatment of him in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is that there is plentiful footage of Lee manhandling trained fighters bigger and stronger—and younger—than Brad Pitt.). He’s one of the rare pup cultural figures who becomes even more interesting the more you read about him; he wasn’t just a product of his times, he was a creator of them, a public figure who reached across race and class lines through the sheer power of his dedication to his art and the electrifying way in which he practiced it.Lee never got the chance to gain creative control of his work; his daughter finally realized, with the period series Warrior, to bring one of his passion projects to television, but while it’s enjoyable enough on its own merits, it never manages to rise above mere genre entertainment without Lee’s philosophical insight and superhuman physical gifts to elevate it. I hope it does not diminish the pain and loss his death caused to imagine him not just as a man, but as the spirit of a time; what the ‘60s gave us, 1973 took away. The box is a bit spendy, but if you can afford it, it’s an incredible and comprehensive re-visitation of one of the most incredible cultural breakthroughs of the last century, and a stunning introduction for those too young to remember Lee but who have grown up in the world he helped make.

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One of the great things about getting older is the one-two punch of being extremely out of touch with what is happening in the popular culture and not caring.  I can’t deny that there’s a certain reactionary ‘if I haven’t heard about it then it must not matter’ quality to this phenomenon, and it’s certainly cost me a lot in real money; no sane editor would hire me to write about music anymore, because any attempt I might make to guess what performers have been in the Top 40 since around 2015 would be similar to an attempt by my octogenarian mother to explain how an iPhone works. But there’s something liberating about seeing a Tweet, reading the cover of an entertainment magazine, or listening to a podcast in passing and realizing that you have no idea who’s being discussed and that you’re perfectly find with that.

Apparently, for example, there is a thing called Funko Pops. Perhaps they are actually called something else; I don’t know, I don’t care to know, and—I cannot stress this enough—I don’t care. They seem to be large-headed dolls made out of vinyl, representing everyone who has ever appeared on television. Are they limited-release sneakers for nerds?  Are they Beanie Babies for even bigger nerds?  Do they have anything to do with Supreme, another thing people seem to spend a lot of money on but that I don’t know what it is? Is there a Supreme Funko Pop, or, for that matter, a Supremes Funko Pop?  Is there a World Famous Supreme Team Funko Pop collection, with a big-headed See Devine and a little vinyl Malcolm McLaren?  These are the questions that fail to keep me up at night, and I must once again emphasize that if you explain any of this to me, I hate you.

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This week’s links: For more on how 1973 marked the start of the short, weird era that linked the radical ‘60s to the reactionary ‘80s, read Andreas Killen’s 1973 Nervous Breakdown. For more from some of the best people currently using this Substack thing, subscribe to Discontents. For more from your favorite Deadspin writers who got shitcanned by the company’s shithead private-equity bosses, subscribe to Defector. The Peoples’ Policy Project discusses the nature of unemployment insurance and why it’s a very bad mistake to not extend it in the current crisis. And here’s a short piece on Sitarane, the notorious turn-of-the-century thief and killer on the French territorial island of Réunion around whom a curious cult has emerged.