Heart of The American Darkness

I knew this day would come.

The day of the Shadow.

I felt it, ever so long ago, in that inexplicable and almost unthinkable way that picayune events in our daily life anticipate world-shaking catastrophes to come. One day, you will be able to read about my own personal discovery of the Shadow -- but the time for that is not yet.

On November 8, the Shadow came to America -- the Shadow that feeds on torment, on cruelty, on misery and violence. It is the Shadow which carved an empire out of the dungeons of the slave-castles and the prison-ships of the Middle Passage, which turned the Caribbean islands into a gigantic engine to convert cheap human blood into profitable sugar, and which transformed the broken bodies of those who picked cotton and who rolled tobacco into an ocean of annuities. It is the Shadow that rolled across an entire continent, which built a world-spanning military-industrial complex, and which neoliberalized the world after its own liberal image.

It is the Shadow of America's imperial capitalism. Yet its appearance in 2016 heralds no imperial rebirth, but only its own wanton self-destruction. No second American century slouches beastlike towards Bethlehem, but only the zombified parody of its former glory. Glenn Greenwald nailed this contradiction in his wonderful election postmortem, which describes in devastating detail how the Clinton machine, that hellspawn of neoliberal think-tankery and Wall Street crookery, opened the gates of revanchist hell. The forces of this revanchism are unable to produce anything new. Instead, they will commit fearsome violence on the electorate that gave them power. With typical perspicacity, the videogame artists saw it first: Id Software's famous third-person shooter, Doom, warned us of what was to come all the way back in 1993.

But that is a discussion for another day, or more precisely, for the book I'm writing on videogame culture.

Today, I want to talk about the Resistance to the Shadow.

It is a small thing. Infinitely small, infinitely precious. It is the sliver of non-identity we carry around with us, often unknowingly. It is the nugget of conscience which quivers in the direction of freedom like an iron filing in a magnetic field. Against this nugget, the flint of consciousness strikes sparks.

Theory is the light kindled by these sparks. Through it, we see further than the Shadow. We see that the American Shadow, seemingly all-engulfing, is but one among others. There is the Shadow of Putinism, that failed petro-colonial reboot of the collapsed core of the Soviet empire; there is the Shadow of Brexit, that xenophobic unraveling of the no-longer-United  Kingdom; there is the Shadow of Ottomanism, which has destroyed Turkey's fragile democracy; there is the Shadow of Minotaurism, which has destroyed Greece and now threatens all of Europe with perdition; there is the far smaller but no less deadly Shadow of the Daesh, the warlordists, and the Assadists of Syria -- the Assadaeshists. Shadows all, ravening towards destruction.

But the light of theory, the labor of collective cognition, allows us to see even further. The light of this small thing, Resistance, hums with unquenchable power. In it shines the power of the stars: eye-dazzling, steadfast, radiant. Through it we see the Resistances battling the Shadows. We see the activists and peacemakers, the healers and poets, the authors and remixers, the digital artists and fan communities. Against the American gangsterism, there is the scorching satire of Fallout 4, which accurately predicted not the atomic catastrophes which never happened, but the catastrophic revanchisms of 2016 which did. Against the geopolitical closure of euroliberal Minotaurism and Eastern European ordo-liberalism, there is the magnificent open world revolution of The Witcher 3. Against the Shadow of the Assadaeshists, there is the light of Rojava; against the Shadow of Putinism, the light called the Maidan.

For every Shadow, a Resistance. For every Resistance, a constellation of stars. And as the Shadows begin to congeal into a single monster, so too must the very constellations unite. Against the One Shadow, there can be only One Resistance. In the gloom of prehistory, the light of the stars shall guide us towards the first, faint glimmer of the Sun.

End of the Beginning

OK.

[Deep breath].

Time to decloak, as the Trekkies would say.

Been busy in the secret underground laboratory of Monkeybear Island for awhile now, cooking up various long-term projects. Decisions have been made, dilithium crystals retrofitted, space-time curvatures altered.

Part 2 of the "Meditations on Geopolitics", covering the period 1648 to 1775, is now up in PDF format and OpenOffice format. Future essays are coming, but I'm focusing on the book project for now.

A word on the present. I always have -- and always will -- follow the principle of nonviolence as a core political practice. But the degeneration of US national politics these days makes even me want to break things.

First, our plutocratic-auction-disguised-as-an-election. Christian Gabriel nails it. Yes, Clinton is the continuation of the neoliberalism we must struggle against, but Dumbass Donald, the Human Dumpster Fire, would be inconceivably worse (and no, I'm not going to dignify the brand name of that serial con artist with a fake university, a fake tan, fake hair, and fake billions with a searchable tag -- we digital debt slaves can play the attention-scarcity game, too). This schmuck won't even release his tax returns like any other candidate for any political office, ever. Bottom line: you don't fight the flu by chopping off your arm.

Second, the US Left is in a state of complete, utter disaster. Instead of a Green Party, we have a greenwashed Putinism pretending to run for office. Yes, Jill Stein actually wants to hand over 45 million Ukrainians over to the same Russian imperialism which murdered 5.5 million of them in 1931-1933. Read it and weep.

One of the most terrible ironies of imperial history is that the sins of empires weigh with special force on those who dissent from their empire. This curse bedeviled the 19th century abolitionists who were against slavery, but remained entrenched racists in all other ways. It also weighed on the 20th century opponents of the British and US empire who became enthusiastic supporters of post-1917 Soviet-Russophone and post-1949 Han-Chinese imperialism.

The paradox is that neoliberalism is in deep structural crisis. The world economy is just barely functional, Europe is in crisis, Brazil's entire political class is being arrested for corruption, China's export model has hit the wall, Ukraine is giving Russian imperialism the spanking it deserves, digital social movements are on the march in Indonesia, in the Philippines, in rural India and urban China -- heck, even NFL players are openly demanding racial justice.

Digital connectivity is growing at an exponential rate, and that means the potential for digital solidarity is growing exponentially too. It's up to all of us to help this solidarity out, with whatever tools we have, and in the context of whatever communities we engage with.

From the Digital Commons to the Digital Commonwealth

In 2001, fan media and modding first become a significant -- albeit still relatively minor -- source of innovation in videogame culture.  By 2008, fan media and modding had become linchpins of some leading franchises (e.g. player creation tools in LittleBigPlanet and, after 2009, Minecraft). By 2015, fan media and modding had become powerhouse institutions larger and more influential than most videogame studios, spawning works of art such as CD Projekt's The Witcher 3.

Today, videogame culture stands at a crossroads. The institutions of fan media and modding, whose sole motivation is fan happiness, are coming into open conflict with the corporate monopolies and digital companies whose sole motivation has always been profit. A prime case in point is Bethesda's announcement that Sony has refused to allow modding on the PS4 version of Fallout 4.

Sony's refusal is pure profiteering, of course. Microsoft's XboxOne already offers Fallout 4 mods, and there is no technical reason why the PS4 cannot offer mods as well. The real issue is that modders require access to a wide range of open source and freeware tools -- audio and video codecs and other minor pieces of software. For all of Microsoft's past and present sins, they understood the utility of allowing this software to run on their platform. Give users freedom, they will respect the commons.

Until Sony's policy changes, I personally will not be purchasing any further media content for the PS4. Nothing means nothing. No Bluray discs, no addons, no further videogame purchases. From now on, it's personal computers for me. I don't even own a game-capable machine just yet,  but will have to build one.

That's fine. It's time for us digital commoners to fight back against the monopolists, the corporate greedheads, the Wall Street swindlers, and the petro-colonialists who think they own digital culture.

They do not.

It's up to us to take back the Commonwealth -- mod at a time.

Open Source, Open Society, Open Academia

For your perusal, the Vienna Principles -- an intriguing proposal for transnational scholars, writers, artists and citizens.

The European Union Is At War

Yes, the European Union is at war.

It is a war with three main fronts: the eastern front, the southern front, and the western front.

Eastern front. In 2014, Putinism -- the cultural, political and social logic of a 21st century Russo-imperialism (a.k.a. a revanchist Eurasian petro-colonialism based on unsustainable energy-rents, comparable to theocratic Iran and monarchical Saudi Arabia) which had frittered away $2 trillion of oil and gas revenues on Olympic circuses and massive insider corruption -- launched a revanchist imperial war against the people of Ukraine. It quickly seized the Ukrainian district of Crimea, and hatched plans to occupy fully one half of Ukraine's territory (the lunatic notion of a "Novorossiya" or "New Russia", extending from Rostov to Transniestria). The Ukrainians fought back, eventually retaking two-thirds of the Donbas. Timothy Snyder has pointed out, correctly, Putinism's goal was never to destroy Ukraine, but to destroy the transnational organization the people of Ukraine, by a vast majority, wished to join: the democracies of the European Union. Why were the Putinists so angry? Because if Ukraine had joined the EU, it would have been a successful economy and role model for Belarus and Russia, much as Poland's success was a model for the rest of Eastern Europe.

Southern front. In 2015, Minotaurism -- Yanis Varoufakis' wonderful term for the ideology of permanent financial austerity incarnated by the euro, a common financial currency without a common fiscal union  -- occupied Greece. Since 2008, the people of Greece have suffered from a catastrophic 25% fall in their GDP due to the fundamental design flaws of the euro (read Varoufakis for the details). In any sane economy, a common currency means a common fiscal policy -- here in the US, if Nevada gets into trouble, the other states bail it out via Federal subsidies until a recovery takes hold. Not so in Europe, where the structure of the euro means no nation gets the help it needs. When the weakest nation sinks, it takes down the next weakest, i.e. Portugal and Spain. When they sink, they will take down Italy, and then France, etc. The eurozone since 2008 is exactly like a group of mountain climbers tied by a rope, each one going over a cliff. Instead of pulling together, each lets the last climber fall -- and eventually everyone goes over the cliff. Why were the Minotaurists were so angry? Because if Greece had succeeded in stopping austerity, Europe's wealthy elites would have had to pay a bit more in taxes and gamble less on Goldman Sachs derivatives.

Western front. In 2016, the Brexit campaign blamed Britain's homegrown problems -- four decades of Thatcherite austerity, which inflicted Dickensian squalor on the public while making a few plutocrats obscenely rich -- on immigrants, refugees, people of color and the European Union. The "Leave" campaign cooked up a stewpot of the most outrageous lies, claiming Eurocrats were fleecing the people of Britain and bankrupting the National Health Service. This, to employ British slang, is complete and utter bollocks. Britain pays a tiny amount to the EU, but gets most of its contribution back in the form of rebates and investment. All in all, Britain pays a net amount of 8.5 billion pounds ($12.5 billion in 2015 US dollars) into the EU every year -- a microscopic 0.4% of GDP. That's right, the UK literally spends more on paper clips than on the EU. It's still well worth the investment, because in return British citizens get the advantages of visa-free travel, the right to live and work in all EU countries, and advanced social and environmental protections, while British businesses get to enjoy the rule of law and unlimited access to the single largest market in the world. But the Brexit campaign was never about facts, but about revanchist rage at British and European elites. Satirical cartoonist Bruce MacKinnon had the best take on the psychology of the "Leave" vote:

Exactly so. There is a cruel irony in the fact that Brexit's greatest victim will be Great Britain itself. If the results of the referendum stand, a vast majority of Scottish voters (59% according to the latest polls) will vote for independence from Britain and subsequent re-membership in the European Union, this time as an independent state. Brexit will not solve even the smallest of Britain's problems, but it will succeed in destroying the 308-year-old union of the United Kingdom, while cutting off Britain's young generation from the opportunities of the single market. It will also crush Britain's economy, which runs vast current account deficits, i.e. imports money from nations who want to access EU markets. In short, Brexit is that extremely rare breed of economic, political and social disaster which happens once in a generation: the kind which has absolutely no redeeming features.

Common front. It is important for concerned citizens to understand that these three wars are part of a single struggle, the struggle for the destiny of the European Union.

It is a war between two forces.

On the one hand, there is the alliance of (1) the eurozone market fundamentalists who worship neoliberal austerity, (2) the Eurasian petro-colonial fundamentalists who worship energy-rents, and (3) Western European national fundamentalists who worship imperial nation-states. Their three respective programs are not just toxic, they are outright suicidal. Austerity is destroying Europe's economy from within and is driving the entire world economy into crisis. Petro-colonialism has no answer to the renewable energy/electric car boom and cannot stop the demise of the energy-rent economic model. For their part, the national fundamentalists fantasize about returning to the glory days of national empires, conveniently forgetting that these empires were grounded on murderous warfare, on Atlantic slavery, and on the famine-genocides of Congolese, Indian, Indonesian, Irish and Vietnamese peasants.

On the other hand, there are the approximately 507 million people of the European Union and the 277 million citizens of Eurasian nations located on the EU's borders (Belarus, Russia, Turkey and Ukraine) -- the staggering sum of three-quarters of a billion human beings, or 1 out of every 10 people on our planet.

The solution to neoliberal austerity, petro-colonial militarism and revanchist nationalism for the 784 million people of Europe and Eurasia is not retreating to delusions of national economies or national empires.

The only solution is to transform the anti-colonial premise of the European Union into a fulfilled promise. This means creating genuine transnational solidarity between all 28 European nations, as well as the four nations of Eurasia along the EU's borders.

We must dare to imagine a single free, neighborly, and economically fair Europe stretching from Reykjavik to Vladivostok. We must dare to dream of a Europe guided not by greedy plutocrats, psychopathic warlords or vengeful bigots, but by the infinite generosity, wisdom and creativity of its constituent peoples. We must fight to construct a Europe no longer at war with itself, but a Europe with peace, justice and prosperity for all.

We dare not fail.

We cannot fail.

We will not fail.

We resist!

(Closing pic courtesy of satirical feed Trumpton. As some famous person said, somewhere, humor is the very essence of a democratic society.)

Citizen Journalism Comes of Age

We said last year that the deepest significance of The Witcher 3 and Fallout 4 was that the greatest open world videogames of our era are the digital rehearsal of massive transnational class struggles to come.

The rehearsal is over.

The Panama Papers -- the biggest open source investigative journalism project, ever -- is now live. A massive cache of two terabytes of data, documenting some of the sleaziest offshore deals ever concocted by our transnational elites, is now in the hands of hundreds of reporters.

It's worth remembering that Wikileaks took down dozens of governments, despite being little more than diplomatic chatter. But the Panama Papers is going to ignite a much, much bigger firestorm: a raging debate on who owns what in the world-system.

You see, the transnational bourgeoisie has been waging a relentless class war against us workers for forty years now. The Wall Street plutocrats, the Euro-Minotaurists, the Eurasian petro-colonialists, and the bourgeoisies of Brazil, China, India, Indonesia and countless other nations have collectively  devastated the planet's real wages, plundered our pensions, ravaged our schools and hospitals, and now threaten to drive humanity to climate change-induced extinction.

Now comes the beginning of the payback. We live in epic times! 

Fallout 4 Ate My Book Project...

Fallout 4: The Bostopocalyspse

...and that's just fine. In fact, it's the highest honor a videogame critic could ever bestow on a game.

The original plan was to write a book on open world videogames, the preeminent genre of the preeminent art-form of the early 21st century. I had all the materials and source-texts lined up. And then Fallout 4 hit with megaton force.

Fortunately, all is not lost. Half the original project will go on as planned -- namely, there will be two chapters covering The Witcher 3, CD Projekt Red's stupendous achievement. But the other half of the book will be on Bethesda's open world masterpiece.

Will keep y'all updated.