Gaslight Empire

United States: As the circus formally moves into the White House, the Women’s March protests fill the streets, and Trump stands in front of the CIA’s Memorial Wall to argue about crowd sizes and fake news, one could be forgiven for thinking something just has to give. There’s not enough elasticity in any system to endure this level of dissonance. The sense of distrust is bordering on hysteria. Are Trump and his team gaslighting the nation? More than just plain old lying, gaslighting involves the perpetrator actively trying to make their victim question their own grip on reality, their own recollection of memories, their own internal narrative of the world. Truth is merely an instrument, and trust is a tool to be abused. Gaslighting is thus a powerful form of abuse, because trusting each other is what we humans do. Contrary to some accounts, trust is not a rational transaction. It presupposes being socially human.

But trust has always been the problem. In international relations, for example, its scarcity is the central conundrum. Perhaps the Trump phenomenon is merely forcing this structural weakness to its inevitable breaking point. We have been on this trajectory for some time. Trump’s supporters ordered a demolition job, and that is what we are getting. The subsequent building phase was always an afterthought. Three threads stand out as worthy of attention beneath this massive distraction as the building question is confronted. All can be considered in terms of supply and demand. On the demand side is, as above, the all-pervading sense of information insecurity, of which cyber security is merely a subset, which has been increasing since the beginning of the Trump candidature, and reaching its zenith with the spat over Russian hacks. A post-truth era or not, something fundamental has been happening with our relationships to information in the digital era. On the supply side is Trump’s pledge for wholesale, economy stimulating deregulation. These two threads provide a fertile environment for the emergence of the third: blockchain technology. As with any revolution, timing is everything.

Blockchain is not merely a technological fix to the myriad of problems associated with data integrity and information assurance in the digital age, though it is certainly that. Its applications will proliferate beyond supporting the crypto-currency Bitcoin, in many ways blockchain’s proof-of-concept, to almost anything in which a third-party verifier embodies the trust required for any transaction or process to take place (banks, governments, institutions). In other words, blockchain technology enables self-verifying contracts. The demand for trust between actors that normally creates the role for an authoritative third-party will simply be written out of the script. Trust is thus not strengthened nor quantified by blockchains. Trust is in fact made redundant. To place this in the bigger picture, the practical purpose of the State’s historical monopoly on the legitimate use of organised violence, its defining feature, is to enforce contracts between human beings. The Libertarians said it was so. When blockchains become mainstream, the State will likely continue its devolution into a de facto facilitator/broker between power and interests. Not that any of this will be linear or smooth.

Blockchain technology is already here, and market confidence is rising. Consider the confluence of factors. DARPA last year employed computer security company Galois to investigate the Estonian company Guardtime’sblockchain products and services with a view to the Pentagon’s engagement. Their work will likely conclude this year. Lockheed Martin and Ericsson are among a host of other major industry players involved. The Fintech industry has been courting this for longer. As these major actors employ the technology, others will follow for whom hesitancy regarding the technology has been a matter of confidence rather than a lack of demand. Who in the digital information age does not covert greater information security? Investment in this space is predicted to reach US$108 billion by 2019. Questions remain to be answered, but the forces of supply and demand at this point seem inexorable. A bipartisan Blockchain Caucus was formed last year in the US Congress that includes Trump’s pick for Director of Office of Management and Budget, a long time blockchain advocate, Rep. Mick Mulvaney.

The plummeting of institutional trust in the United States and elsewhere, of which the Trump Presidency and Brexit are both manifestation and driver, may not be anomalies over which some historical equilibrium will prevail. They could be pivotal, non-ergodic changes that exacerbate demand into which technology driven solutions will inevitably accrue. We may look back on blockchain in much the same way we see the pre-smart phone world. With tongue in cheek we question how we ever did without it. Trust in both formal and informal institutions has been driven to unplumbed depths, while at the same time information security is afflicted by both rational and perceptual threats. Blockchain’s promise is immutable data self-verification applicable across sectors. Trump’s gaslighting is driving our reactionary tendencies, which is usually not a great thing. Libertarians and de-centralizers should keep the champagne on ice. Blockchain may promise to erase trust from the script of some organised human interactions, but not for others. It will not be without cost, and we may see a deepening divide between the data-secure and the data-insecure. Power is immutable and will accrue elsewhere.

SATIRE BY CIRCUS BAZAAR SIDE SHOW

United States: As millions of American women marched the day after Trump’s inauguration to the US office, the now incumbant President turned out to be more than pleased with the record number of women who (in his very own words) “showed him affection”. “Everybody knows I love women,” he says. “I am grateful to have that love thrown back at me in such a powerful and united way, very important!”

The millions of women marching across the country claim President Trump’s treatment and view of women has motivated them to take a stand against the newly elected President. Yet, President Trump himself sees it in a very different light, and claims that the millions of women marching were clearly showing him their affection and gratitude for a lifetime of female mocking. Furthermore he expressed his amusement for the women’s somewhat aggressive approach, as evidence of the American woman’s spirit and claiming it was a result of the American woman’s “complete and spontanious understanding” of what he, the “newly elected leader of a great movement appreciates.”

Although criticised for his attitude towards women, both before and during his presidential campaign, President Trump denies ever meaning any harm with his behaviour. “Everybody knows that when a man mocks a woman, it’s because he likes her. How else would they know I liked them?” He claims that is how he got the girls to kiss him. “They all knew I pinched, pushed and threw things at them because I liked them. They would cry at first, but then their mothers would explain why boys do such things.” Further, he explains that the marches were exactly this, “nobody respects women more than I do, and these women have spoken to their mothers.”

However, the newly elected president is unsure of how he’s going to be able to return the kiss to all of the women due to their high number, but promises a resolution within the next few days. “I will be working closely with my team to come up with a solution.” He mentions competitions or a simple beauty pageant as possibilities, but emphasizes the importance of giving everyone a fair chance. When asked about how important this concern will be in the coming days. “It’s definitely on our list of highest priorities.” Earlier in the day President Trumps Chief of staff Reince Priebus had been seen meeting with the Chairman and CEO of Ferrero, the confectionary company that manufacturers Tic Tac’s, sparking speculation that the newly elected president was taking his rhetoric seriously. President Trump has said before that he has used Tic Tac’s in similar circumstances.

United States – In what has created one extended moment of surreal shock, the United States went ahead and elected Donald J. Trump to the Presidency, its highest and most prestigious office. The somewhat gruesome autopsy has already begun, even before the last votes are counted. Shock seems to have dulled the reactionary impulses for the moment, but they will come and with recrimination. Republicans must feel like the staggering drunk who has awoken, serendipitously, in his very own bed. They will control the House, the Senate, and the Executive. The media pathologists conducting the autopsy appear, however, to be stunningly clueless about where to even begin. Never mind. Expect the same people, pundits, pollsters, and experts, who knew precisely nothing about what the electorate was going to do, to clamber over each other to tell us now about why they did it. This author is no exception.

What seems unassailable is that this event marks the large scale repudiation of the progressive agenda, its economic, social, political, and ideological components. When the dust settles, that might not be all that difficult to understand, part of an unceasing historical pendulum. Obama-world did look a bit like, and act a bit like, a series of debates about the good and the right were settled, when they clearly were not. Not to the other half of the country. They may never be. The latent causes of faction are thus sown into the nature of man. And the American political system ensures that the other half will be heard before long, and that no faction, even a majority, will be able to impose its worldview. But this result represents far more than the return of an historical pendulum. It is non-ergodic. It won’t return to some pre-existing and recognisable state.

The changes underpinning this momentous event have already been with us for some time, but they are hard to locate and identify. It would be churlish to claim that we have been too busy checking our social media feeds, but the riposte contains the threads of an explanation. Its not just that progressivism has received its comeuppance. Its that the informal institutional foundations that support the agenda, any agenda, have been almost silently collapsing. Informal institutions are, essentially, the collection of social attributions we all apply, both individually and collectively, to the un-institutional or physical world. We give physical things statuses and functions, and when we agree, or our attributions at least overlap, we have what philosopher John Searle called social facts. They are the fabric of our social reality. When we make social facts as groups, when I act as we, we have collective social facts or what Searle called collective intentionality. Collective intentionality is the substance of our informal institutions, our agendas, and eventually our formal institutions, like the Republican Party for example. But it contains a surprisingly fragile component.

That component is comprised of the expectations people accommodate regarding the legitimate source and location of any authoritative truth claim. The fragility derives from the fact that authoritative truth claims are supported more from the bottom up than the top down. That is, their status and resilience depend much more heavily upon our expectations about them, than they do on their actual content. We have an evolutionary propensity as humans to posit a location and a source in the process of accepting the legitimacy of a truth claim. This means the flow of information, the way it moves around a society, is as important as the content of the information when it comes to authoritative truth claims.

For most of human history, hierarchical social structures have defined the flow of information. Hierarchies have been overwhelmingly superior forms of social organisation for a range of important activities, and they can be thought of as supporting inherently vertical information flows. Spacial, temporal, and technological limitations kept the network, an alternative social information structure in which information flows horizontally, subordinate to the hierarchy. This meant that the vertical flow of information, up and down hierarchical social structures, defined the location and source of authoritative truth claims for people, and their collective intentionality about those institutions reflected this. Support for any social, political, economic, or ideological agenda contained this structure, and the weakness or strength of any institution turned more on the capacity of the people who inhabit the institution’s upper echelons to regulate the flow of information. Think the State, the Church, and the professions, and their resilience as institutions. Expectations about the location and source of authority cannot change when people can only reach upwards through hierarchies for information. Yes, information is power. But it’s the flow, not the content. Nevertheless, this structure’s inherent fragility remained hidden.

Enter the digital information revolution. By which I simply mean ubiquitous access to the internet, Wi-Fi, and mobile portable devices. In the space of less than a generation; FAST; the way information moves around societies has been fundamentally transformed. Technology has enabled and facilitated the emergence of horizontally connected up, persistent information flows. Consequently, the latent fragility in the structure of informal social institutions has finally been exposed. The expectations in the minds of people, both individually and as collectives, about the location and source of authoritative truth claims via the flow of information, has shifted from the vertical to the horizontal plane. Massive institutional collapse is occurring, but we are left dumbfounded by its cause because we search for the answers in the content of information, the top down part. Elites, people whose power has transferred over generations at least partially because of the vertical social structures they inhabit, are equally confounded by the relative decline of their social power.

It is the structural flow of power via information that is so rapidly transforming society. The almost complete failure to predict why the American electorate did what it has done derives from our inability to spot the structural fragility tied up in social institutions. Talk of a post-truth world is only scratching the surface. Truth is merely an institution, held in place by the collective intentionality of people. We are entering a post-institutional world, where social facts will be derived from the peculiar, even alien power structures imposed by networked information flows. Want to win an election in this new world? Telemetry, real-time big data, artificial intelligence, and a quantum computer.

Cuba – One week ago today, Cubans woke up to the news that the 90-year old leader Fidel Castro had died. It was an event much expected and anticipated, given Fidel’s ailing health and advanced years, but it still took Cubans and the world by surprise. It was a particularly hard blow coming so soon on the heels of the election of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency. In some ways these events represent the waning of one era marked by wealth redistribution downwards, international solidarity with oppressed peoples, and pro-poor governance to another that signals an intensification of free market capitalism, wealth redistribution upwards, and a rhetoric of borders and walls that unleashes rampant xenophobia and racism.

The American mainstream media and hardliner Cubans in Miami have long presented the Cuban socialist system as entirely dependent on the iron fist leadership of Fidel Castro, with his much awaited death leading to celebrations in the streets and the downfall of the system. Yet this view is wrong on several counts. Fidel managed a transition in leadership to his brother Raúl ten years ago, when his health started to decline. In practical terms, Fidel’s death presents little to no challenge to the everyday functioning of the Cuban government. And when Raúl retires in two years, there will be a transition in leadership to Vice-President Miguel Díaz-Canel, ensuring a continuity with the Castro brothers’ policies and programs.

While there have been mixed reactions in Cuba to Fidel’s death, there are no large celebrations on the streets. This is only partly due to fear of reprisal: for many Cubans, particularly of an older generation, Fidel still represents the idealism and hopes of an earlier generation that they could create an independent and equitable socialist system on an island under the yoke of the United States. For all of Fidel’s errors and flaws in leadership, and they were many, he pursued this dream single-mindedly for many decades. He survived numerous assassination attempts, outlived many U.S. presidents, and always sought to extend the outreach of the Cuban revolution abroad through solidarity with liberation struggles and medical and educational assistance, which will be some of his greatest legacies as leader of Cuba.

There will be no quick transition to a market society as a result of Fidel’s death. While the media has often presented Cubans as clamouring for market freedoms denied to them, the past few decades of experimentation with market reforms have resulted in widely increasing racial and economic divisions in Cuban society. Although the Cuban socialist system became dysfunctional after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Cuban leadership has had to tread carefully in their market reforms to preserve the most important and cherished aspects of Cuban socialism, including the health care and education systems. Cubans could see the vast inequalities that opened up in Russia and Eastern Europe after the collapse of communism, and that was not a model they wanted to emulate.

Fidel was beloved by many for his charismatic style of leadership that kept him close to the people and to their concerns. A Cuban friend of mine, now in her mid-40s, recalled the day that Fidel came to her elementary school. There was no formal visit announced and the children didn’t even realize he was coming until they saw him enter the schoolyard with a few of his guards. He sat with the children and asked them about their day, and what they were learning about in school. For my friend, that day forever marked her view of the president as someone who cared about the people and wanted to get their input.

At other times, he could be seen as a micro-manager who demanded people’s attention and allegiance. On the evening of September 11, 2001, Fidel reflected on the events of that day in a nationally broadcast address from a new elementary school that he was inaugurating. In front of a group of ten and eleven-year-olds, Fidel expressed sympathy for the American people, offered the resources of the country for treatment of the victims, and urged caution on the part of the American government. In the middle of a statement about why the United States should not be carried away in a fit of rage and start dropping bombs on innocent people, he paused to reprimand a young schoolgirl sitting at her desk: “Put down that pencil. Don’t doodle. Try to pay attention while I’m talking.”

Cuban musicians and artists tended to refrain from references to Fidel in their artistic productions partly in a bid to avoid censorship. They sometimes used veiled references to Fidel, such as Daniel Díaz Torres’ 1991 film Alicia en el pueblo de Maravillas (Alice in Wondertown). Alicia is a satirical comedy about a drama coach who goes to a small town called Maravillas for her obligatory year of community service. The director for the corrupt and mismanaged Sanatorium for Active Therapy and Neurology (SATAN) in Maravillas was rumored to be a caricature of Fidel, and the film was withdrawn from theatres after four days. In 1989, an exhibition at the Castillo de la Real Fuerza was closed when it was found to include a portrait of Fidel Castro in drag with large breasts and leading a political rally. This period was one of provocative political art and confrontations with the art establishment, but in the wake of censorship, artists again moved to safer topics.

Despite the lack of tolerance for anti-establishment art in Cuba, Fidel showed himself willing to engage with new cultural genres like rap music during the 1990s. At a National Championship baseball game in 1999, when the Cuban national team played the Baltimore Orioles, instead of the obligatory salsa song, before the game started they chose to play a song by the Cuban rap group Doble Filo. The whole stadium rapped along with the group, including Fidel Castro himself. American actor Danny Hoch, who was present at the game, called Fidel “the first world leader to embrace hip-hop.”

A much maligned figure seen by some as the Castro dictator, and loved by many others who referred to him endearingly as Fidel, he is remarkable for his very survival in a world that sought to eliminate young black, indigenous, and third world revolutionaries. Lumumba, Che, Sukarno, Malcolm, Allende, Anna Mae Aquash, Fred Hampton—all were gunned down before they could bring to fruition the visions of equality and justice to which they dedicated their lives. By sheer luck or ingenuity, Fidel and the Cuban revolution survived to provide an alternative model of a socialist society. In the current dystopian Trump era, it will be important to keep alive the memory of what Fidel Castro and others of his generation stood for.

This article is the first in a series of reflections on Fidel Castro’s passing—and his significance for Cuba, Latin America, and beyond first published by NACLA. 

Venezuela – I am largely in favor of international institutions. Far from an orthodox realist, I consider myself a constructivist and even an idealist. However, with frustration I have seen how the international community turns its back on millions of Venezuelans with no access to food, energy, or basic medicine. Surely, Venezuela is far from a priority in the list of US strategic interests, and Europe is consumed with its own problems. Nevertheless, the international community is failing to condemn, and worse, to act against an illiterate leader that maintains his power by relying on coercion and political games.

It is clear that other governments in the region are scared of the fate of their own countries if Venezuela´s government were to fall, but that is not a valuable excuse to ignore massive violations against the core values of democracy. Through petro-dollars and manipulative Cuban-led foreign relations, other governments have failed to help the Venezuelan people and have allowed Maduro to continue with his regime of terror.

In desperate moves of the foreign affairs chessboard to benefit his domestic approval rates, Maduro intends to consolidate an external enemy to stimulate cohesion and support from its people; the delusional claims of a foreign government attacking and threatening Venezuela -an enemy that takes the form of a blurry Uncle Sam- are daily bread in the president´s podcasts. In a ridiculous clown show, the president recently put together military exercises to demonstrate the country´s readiness for war. Maduro has become a pathetic version of Kim Jon-Un, employing the diversionary theory to glue together the pieces of a broken system.

Colombia has been one of the direct victims of Maduro’s tactical games. Some time ago, for example, Maduro proclaimed martial law in the municipalities along most of the Colombia-Venezuela border. Through public addresses, he blamed officials within the Colombian government and its citizens for Venezuela’s scarcity and elevated crime rates. Was I the only one seeing that his true intentions were to isolate the country from a porous border that could turn into the breeding ground for protesters and antigovernment forces? The only one seeing his intentions of diverting attention away from Venezuela´s domestic issues by blaming a foreign actor for the problem he has created?

As expected, martial law caused a major humanitarian crisis. Though not to the scale of the Mediterranean refugee crisis or to the displacement camps after a civil war in Africa, Colombian citizens were mistreated and systematically deported from Venezuela. For weeks, people continuously arrived in Cucuta, a Colombian border city, looking for shelter. They were received in soccer stadiums while the world ignored the crisis. Violations of human rights were perpetrated, but the call for international actors was largely missed. Around October 2015, with Panama as a swing voter, Colombia lost its opportunity to bring the crisis to the international arena. The Organization of American States (OAS) again failed in its mission. Maduro looked in the eyes of the member states and walked away free of any remorse.

With the change of the OAS head from Insulza to Almagro and with Maduro´s constant insults and erratic behavior, the regional institution grew tired and responded accordingly. Recently, the OAS suggested the activation of the Democratic Charter, which states that only democratic governments can be part of the OAS. As a symbolic act as this might be, since it does not have binding power, it is a much-needed action that arrived late.

Small steps are being taken by the international community to intervene in Venezuela´s situation. A group of former presidents in the region, for example, signed a memorandum directed towards Maduro. It demanded protection of human rights and respect for the sacred institution of democracy. Furthermore, the European Union and, to a lesser extent, the United States have called out Maduro for the lack of access to basic medicine and food in the country. Ricardo Hausmann, from Harvard University, even compared Venezuela’s situation with a society in pre-famine stages. However, these actions seem insufficient in the face of the destitute civil society.

Without asking for an all-out intervention, there are diplomatic forces that can be activated and strategic negotiations with important economic and political leverage that can be used to move Venezuela from where it is. More international pressure will drive Maduro to the edge.

To predict the fate of Venezuela is a difficult endeavor. Many speculate an implosion of the government; others are waiting for the opposition to consolidate even more and represent an alternative government. Still others even consider the possibility of a military coup.

I do not foresee things changing anytime soon, but I see the beginning of an end. I see the four horseman of the apocalypse slowly riding over Maduro, with Capriles Radosky, opposition leader, at their command. There must be moments in time where the weak basis of a political regime such as the one built by Chavez and continued by Maduro has to fail. In the past months, Venezuelans filled the streets of Caracas and other cities pressuring the government for a referendum that will like change the course of Venezuela’s tragic present. Time is running against Venezuelans to reach a fair-deal and for the little democracy that is left to actually influence the status quo. It is no longer the time of a resilient dictator but of a fragile leader whose time is running out.