It all matters

for tactics, against ideology

I once knew Vince Emanuele. He was a fellow member of Veterans For Peace, and if I recall correctly, he was also a member Iraq Veterans Against the War—a group I worked with closely during their formation as kind of an advisor between 2004-2006. The last time I saw him was at a Deep Green Resistance event in San Francisco, I wanna say around 2011-12, where Vince, Doug Zachary (another VFP guy), and I were there as the “radical veterans” or whatever the hell you want to call us.

I hope Vince is well and flourishing these days, and I’m not picking on him here where I’m about to use one of his recent Facebook posts to critique not him exactly—well yes, I am kinda picking on him, but not out of meanness. I’m really picking on my own former self.

Vince is a LOT younger than I am, 33 years younger; so it’s not surprising that I’d see my old self in a guy who is still doing the “radical veteran thing.”

So what is this thing of which I speak, this critique of Vince and once-upon-a-time me? I’ll give it a name that doesn’t hit it on the head, but which will evoke a tendency that many leftists and former leftists should recognize. I’ll call it the Trot-impulse—a kind of misaligned belligerence in the continued absence of The Revolution.

I didn’t become immersed in leftist politics until I was officially clear of the Army in early 1996, though I’d been flirting with it from afar since my first of 21 excursions into Haiti in 1994. From a distance, leftist politics, to the left-curious, looks bold, coherent, exciting, and attractive; but up close, its was and remains a monumental fucking mess.

It’s tiny, let’s just begin there, because size matters. But, as I wrote recently in an angry poem, it’s a “nymph fly, ready to run the dead world,” with its “revolutionary” aspirations. Grouplets everywhere who imagine they’re the reincarnation of early Bolsheviks. (I can’t help but remember The Onion’s “1917” spoof edition, with the headline, “Bearded Russian coffeeshop intellectuals take over the government.”)

The American left is comprised of tiny groups with grandiose—that word doesn’t really capture the uber-grandiosity—dreams. Visions of one day, when the magic petal is plucked, when history presents them with an open door—brought on by something called “contradictions”—the masses will see at last the transcendent revolutionary truth of what the grouplet says in their internal publications and external periodicals, and all will flock to their banner and usher in the glorious new future. And yet, they remain small, because something they are saying, or the way they are saying it, doesn’t connect in any politically efficacious way. Hasn’t since the 1930s really. This smallness elevates the priority of recruitment, but the potential recruitment pool itself is miniscule, and so these grouplets, each with its own gurus and ideological quirks, who couldn’t fill one stadium if all of them in the country showed up together, are in competition with one another for this limited potential pool.

Three things: (1) the pool is still mostly academic, or formerly academic, (2) the pool is comprised of people who, though preaching a collectivist ideology, are themselves highly individualistic (with shall we say assertive egos), and (3) the competition for this pool generates and sustains dozens of arcane, acrimonious, and too often highly personalized attacks, because the competition forces each group to emphasize its difference with all the others, and not what they might have in common. In no groups have I seen this dynamic form with greater intensity than various Trotskyists. ← I don’t pretend to know all the reasons why, but all one had to do, back when I was a baby Marxist, to see this discursive jungle war in action was spend some time on a listserve called Marxmail that was 50 percent Hatemail. It was there among others, too, don’t get me wrong—it’s the smallness dynamic; but I just call it the Trot-impulse, this belligerent hairsplitting over the correct fucking line, because the Trots were the loudest, meanest, and most obnoxious.

Confession: I displayed this more than once myself. For those on the receiving end of it, here’s my weak-ass, too-late apology.

Let’s get to Vince’s post, then:

I recently read a poll that shows a majority of Americans believe Trump launched a war against Iran to distract from the Epstein Scandal. Not only is that objectively false — it’s also quite silly and unhelpful.

First, the U.S. Empire maintains strategic interests in the region. As a result, the U.S. has been arming, bombing, and sanctioning Iran for over 70 years. The coup in 1953. The Shah. The Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), and so on. The latest attack on Iran is completely in line with decades of U.S. foreign policy (however misguided, brutal, and incoherent it may be). Trump’s war is not an aberration.

Second, Trump & Co. have moved past the Epstein Files. They couldn’t care less. Trump’s approval ratings haven’t fundamentally changed as a result of the Epstein Scandal. His support among GOP voters remains strong. Furthermore, why, exactly, would Trump personally worry about the controversy? Do people genuinely believe Congress will hold him accountable? No serious person believes Donald Trump will end up in jail. The government isn’t on the verge of collapse. The Epstein ‘crisis’ survives mostly in the online realm. It has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on the strategic military decisions of the empire.

In the end, the Epstein Scandal simply highlights the depravity of a specific subsection of politicians, spooks, and billionaires. Bush, Cheney, Obama, and Biden are nowhere to be found in the Epstein emails. Yet, they’ve all supported illegal and immoral wars of aggression. They, too, have backed Israel’s apartheid regime (to varying degrees). The Epstein Scandal explains absolutely nothing about the U.S. Empire, its imperial ambitions, and the continuity of U.S. foreign policy, regardless of the party in power.

It is, however, a useful distraction for those in power. Elites in the U.S. would much rather Americans focus on pedophiles, sexual depravity and sensationalism than examine global capitalism, state institutions, and the history of U.S. Empire — subjects that, if analyzed and criticized, might help Americans better understand why they don’t have universal healthcare, stable housing, why and how the planet is being destroyed, or the dangers of creeping fascism.

I’m going to simultaneously show you what’s wrong here, unpack the Trot-impulse in it, and explain why it matters.

I recently read a poll that shows a majority of Americans believe Trump launched a war against Iran to distract from the Epstein Scandal. Not only is that objectively false — it’s also quite silly and unhelpful.

You know what? If the majority of Americans believe this, that is in itself too important to write off as “silly,” and too informative to be “unhelpful” (unhelpful for what exactly?). As to “objectively false,” Vince may have to explain to me how it is that he’s acquired an “objective” view into the psyche of Donald fucking Trump. Many of us, myself included, predicted that Trump would wage war as a distraction from the files as far back as last September (but I’m just a silly old man).

I can tell you what war with Iran is not. Objectively. It’s not a winning strategic proposition for the ‘imperial” United States. Even from the most cynical imperial perch, this was a really, totally, fantastically stupid fucking move (by a really, totally, fantastically stupid fucking man).

Trot-impulse: make bold assertion for which the boldness of the assertion stands in for actual evidence (“objectively false”); add a discursive gauntlet (“silly”) . . . no one wants to be considered silly. (“Bloody splitter,” Life of Brian)

First, the U.S. Empire maintains strategic interests in the region. As a result, the U.S. has been arming, bombing, and sanctioning Iran for over 70 years. The coup in 1953. The Shah. The Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), and so on. The latest attack on Iran is completely in line with decades of U.S. foreign policy (however misguided, brutal, and incoherent it may be). Trump’s war is not an aberration.

So what? “Strategic interests,” on its own, does not explain why at this particular moment the US (let’s say that Trump made this decision, for the sake of argument, and not the entire fucking country—not even Congress) would choose to start war that is actually diminishing US power abroad and exacerbating our most intractable domestic difficulties. Strategic interests can be pursued by rational actors, no matter how morally degraded, based on contingent circumstances. Sometimes, we have irrational actors, no?

Taking the actual history of US-Iran relations into account—circumstance by circumstance, and not using a transhistorical bulldozer—is what would demonstrate whether or not this particular war is “aberrant” (even for US imperial interests) or not. We had one of these dumb shit aberrations once before—Vince was there—during the Bush years. Even the most reptile-minded American politicos now largely agree that it was a military and political goat fuck that should never be repeated. You know who one of those reptile-minded motherfuckers was once? Donald J. Trump.

Trot-impulse: Explain everything, no matter how complex, as overdetermined by capitalism/imperialism. The details no longer matter.

Second, Trump & Co. have moved past the Epstein Files. They couldn’t care less. Trump’s approval ratings haven’t fundamentally changed as a result of the Epstein Scandal. His support among GOP voters remains strong. Furthermore, why, exactly, would Trump personally worry about the controversy? Do people genuinely believe Congress will hold him accountable? No serious person believes Donald Trump will end up in jail. The government isn’t on the verge of collapse. The Epstein ‘crisis’ survives mostly in the online realm. It has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on the strategic military decisions of the empire.

Whaaaat??? Dude! An actual law was passed demanding the files, and only two percent have been released. Apparently, they care a great deal. Trump’s approval ratings, in fact, while only dropping about five points among Republicans, have tanked with Independents. No, Congress won’t hold Trump legally accountable, but—in case folks haven’t noticed, Trump is a narcissistic child. He thrives on attention and craves constant approval. Moreover, he’s 79 years old with congestive heart failure, and there’s a dark angel scratching outside his door—he wants a fucking legacy. Trump isn’t worried (too much right now) about prison; he’s worried about becoming a historical joke—a clown-caricature for future generations to make fun of. And if, as Vince pointed out in his first paragraph, the majority of Americans believe he started an unpopular and self-destructive war on account of the Epstein scandal, then the “Epstein crisis” is more than some social media blip.

Trot-impulse: (Admittedly, even Trots would spot that last contradiction.) One can assert (there’s that assertion as auto-probative thing again, buttressed by an emphatic “whatsoever”) that it has no bearing on “strategic military decisions of the empire”; but as we’ve already pointed out, imperial leaders can and do fuck up in ways that don’t serve the all-explanatory-empire. Trump doesn’t want to be remembered as a malignant goof; but he also doesn’t want to be remembered as the guy who tried to stick his nasty dick into a thirteen-year-old’s mouth, then slapped her when she bit him. If the Epstein files show evidence of this (and apparently they do), and if Epstein was working for Mossad (which he was), and if Israel now has blackmail shit on Donald Trump (they probably do), and if Netanyahu is willing to use that blackmail shit to pressure Trump into fighting the Iranians for “Greater Israel” (he is), and if attacking Iran further distracts from Trump’s other crises—not just Epstein, which polls show is a crisis, but impending stagflation, a dollar-asset sell-off, the collapse of private credit markets, the AI bubble, the tariff blunders, etc. (the one he’s missing is critical depletion of arms inventories ← Ukraine, Israel, Iran war, yo! . . . then yeah, he’d start World War III. Because this is Trump we’re talking about, the guy who overthrew the (imperial) Republican party, and still a dimwitted Duce with no impulse control. The fucker sits up all night and posts on social media for his IV drip of attention!

In the end, the Epstein Scandal simply highlights the depravity of a specific subsection of politicians, spooks, and billionaires. Bush, Cheney, Obama, and Biden are nowhere to be found in the Epstein emails. Yet, they’ve all supported illegal and immoral wars of aggression. They, too, have backed Israel’s apartheid regime (to varying degrees). The Epstein Scandal explains absolutely nothing about the U.S. Empire, its imperial ambitions, and the continuity of U.S. foreign policy, regardless of the party in power.

“Simply,” the scandal reveals something, which is a lot more than simple. It reveals a form of depravity that hits a lot closer to home for most people than foreign policy—whether leftists like that or not. The use of the term “Epstein class,” politically speaking, is tactical genius.

If this is the first and most effective way for regular people to question the credibility of elites, then hip-hip-fucking-hooray! If this is what it takes for the US to lose its Zionism, yippy-yi-yo-ki-ay!

Wanna hear about another poll? This one is really fucking important, The majority of Americans now question our support for Israel. This is something new, the first time since Israel was hatched on the mass graves of Palestine.

The Epstein thing doesn’t explain particle physics or the social structure of parasol ants either—there’s a lot it doesn’t “explain”—but it apparently does things. A hell of a lot of people think we’re fighting a war for Israel, and they’re very fucking unhappy about it. That’s a win, dammit, and a lot of us rubes—even the ones who’ve been studying imperialism for decades—happen to think it’s true.

There is no straight-line “continuity of US foreign policy,” because foreign policy, like everything else in the world, has to adapt to non-linear reality; and because in the US, we have retail elections every four years that stand a 75 percent chance of putting a complete fuck-up into office.

Trot-impulse: Everyone is equally bad, so the details don’t matter. We, the enlightened, are smarter than you rubes (← this is a Democrat thing, too, and it’s lost them elections). Fallacy that because a position doesn’t explain what you think is important, then it must be invalid. ← Related to “Explain everything, no matter how complex, as overdetermined by capitalism/imperialism. The details no longer matter.”

It is, however, a useful distraction for those in power. Elites in the U.S. would much rather Americans focus on pedophiles, sexual depravity and sensationalism than examine global capitalism, state institutions, and the history of U.S. Empire — subjects that, if analyzed and criticized, might help Americans better understand why they don’t have universal healthcare, stable housing, why and how the planet is being destroyed, or the dangers of creeping fascism.

If it’s a “distraction” for some “in power” (we need specifics, which ones?), why are even the Democrats who want to make hay with it trying so hard to contain it to Trump? Why such an effort to aim it away from Israel and at Russia (smfh)? Opportunism and spin are not synonymous with “distraction.” Because there are opportunists doesn’t mean the scandal is either meaningless or tactically useful for those out of power.

As to its sensationalism, I refer readers back to ^^^ it’s instrumental revelation (for the poor fucks who haven’t the time, resources, or inclination to study Lenin’s theses on imperialism). You know who, besides the Trump administration find this Epstein-Iran poll discomfiting? Most of the Democratic Party establishment, because it’s a step closer to an Epstein-Israel-Iran connection. That’s a Pandora’s box they don’t want opened.

Trot-impulse: revolutionary fallacy—everything is an error that “distracts” from the “big problems” that leftists think they or we have the power to stop, if only we—the enlightened “coffeehouse intellectuals” (beards optional)—could teach them—the rubes who have been taken in by lesser matters—the right way to think.

Epstein matters. Israel matters. The public who oppose the war, for whatever reason matters. It may not comport with the priorities of “nymph flies, ready to run the dead world,” but to the rest of us, it most emphatically does. The Revolution isn’t coming. It’s never coming. Down here in the rube-trenches, we’re just doing damage control with what we have.

Peace.