The Spectacle of Trump Hatred

The simulacra of political hatred marks the beginning of the end of the society of control, and the emergence of a new society that is yet to emerge.

Source: SkyNews

The Shooting of Former President Donald Trump

When a significant event happens, like the attempted assassination of a presidential candidate, I don’t immediately react. I listen, watch, observe changes in mood and perspective, and then begin to discern what the real story may be.

The security detail surrounding former President Trump exhibited a failure of planning, coordination, and execution. Watching the various video clips in the hours after the shooting, without any definitive knowledge of what actually happened, it was clear to me, having spent decades analyzing organizational functioning, that this shooting should have never happened.

Tim Kennedy, a former Green Beret, Spec Ops officer, and occasional contract member of Secret Service security units, analyzes the event.

Mission execution becomes compromised when there is uncertainty about purpose. The uncertainty can be a product of confusion or a perception of purpose that is not part of the organization’s design. Were the various local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies unified for the common purpose of protecting the former president? Were they there to act as a physical deterrent (presence) to violence or remove all threats without prejudice? Were all the law enforcement personnel clear about what the protocols for actively taking out threats were?

The situation reminds me of the failure of leadership during the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, in 2022.

Police were ordered to stand by. The situation suggested that it was more important to protect the police than the children. I am certain that is not the story, but the image of police standing by out of harm’s way lent that impression.

This how something that seems obvious, like presidents, elected officials, and children should have the highest level of protection, becomes confused because the rules and values that are the foundation of the organization are abandoned or at least ignored, for other considerations that organizational leaders determine as of equal or of greater importance. I have seen this pattern of behavior throughout my life. It is how I came to identify the culture that inhabits most organizations and communities as “the persistent, residual culture of values that persists because it resides in the relationships of the people.” Leaders who either cannot see this culture or believe that they are the creators of the organization’s culture will ultimately fail to win the loyalty and confidence of the people.

The Long Decline of Institutional Responsibility

Thirty years ago, I saw a shift in the way leaders understood their purpose and role in an organization. The trend had begun decades before.

The final straw for me was seeing the political parties shifting their interest from serving the nation to their own interest. In effect, they became influence cartels trafficking in the corruption of money paid to be close to power. This isn’t an American problem, but a global one. The effect was the abandonment of the value systems that gave the institution its rationale and purpose.

I describe this change in my post As The Center Does Not Hold, The Periphery Grows

“We tend to think of society as this mix of groups, institutions, and political and social ideologies. Modern society has become a mix of competing beliefs claiming to define the whole of society. Instead, society is divided, fragmented, and ordered increasingly around our individual preferences.”

This is how highly centralized institutions manage the diversity of people who exist within society. Every decision is presented as a personal choice that aligns the person as a social mechanism of control. Ideologies replace consumer products. The value of consumer products becomes aligned for a socially beneficial purpose. When I was a child, your purchase of a particular automobile aligned with your favorite NASCAR driver. Today, identity accrues to political ideology.

The Center of society lost its unifying purpose. The Center, like the political parties described above, reoriented society to serve their interest in extracting power, prestige, and wealth from the Periphery.

The conservative-liberal distinction functioned as a convenient binary perspective throughout most of the 20th century. Today, this orientation is quickly becoming irrelevant. Neither political philosophies of the left and right transcend the self-interest of their leadership. They have accomplished this by emptying the Center of its historic principles of meaning to make self-interest politically acceptable.

Another way of understanding the breakdown of society's unity and cohesiveness is through distinctions made by Michel Foucault. He described a historical progression from a society of sovereignty in medieval times to a society of discipline during the Industrial Revolution and then to a society of control today.

Gilles Deleuze, in his essay Postscript on the Societies of Control, describes Foucault’s perspective.

“Foucault located the disciplinary societies in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; they reach their height at the outset of the twentieth. They initiate the organization of vast spaces of enclosure. The individual never ceases passing from one closed environment to another, each having its own laws: first, the family; then the school ("you are no longer in your family"); then the barracks ("you are no longer at school"); then the factory; from time to time the hospital; possibly the prison, the preeminent instance of the enclosed environment.”

Most of us over the age of 50 experienced the society of discipline. We were formed by the institutions of family, school, military service, social and service organizations, and, lastly, our place of work and the responsibilities of citizenship. From childhood through our careers, there was nothing beyond those places of involvement. We had no sense that there were large global organizations that had an interest in us. We moved from one social environment to the next. Each had their own rules and social values. Personal identity was less of a question because our sense of identity came from the institutions of society.

This changed with the advent of the digital age. Deleuze describes this change.

“The administrations in charge never cease announcing supposedly necessary reforms: to reform schools, to reform industries, hospitals, the armed forces, prisons. But everyone knows that these institutions are finished, whatever the length of their expiration periods. It's only a matter of administering their last rites and of keeping people employed until the installation of the new forces knocking at the door. These are the societies of control, which are in the process of replacing the disciplinary societies.”

…

“The different internments or spaces of the enclosure through which the individual passes are independent variables: each time one is supposed to start from zero, and although a common language for all these places exists, it is analogical. On the other hand, the different control mechanisms are inseparable variations, forming a system of variable geometry the language of which is numerical (which doesn't necessarily mean binary). Enclosures are molds, distinct castings, but controls are a modulation, like a self-deforming cast that will continuously change from one moment to the other, or like a sieve whose mesh will transmute from point to point.”

The COVID-19 pandemic is the most visible example of a society of control. The prospective implementation of vaccine passports and digital currency are precisely designed for control. In a society of discipline, a person could choose to exit their current enclosure and join a different one. This is not so with a society of control, whose mechanisms, if fully implemented, will control the behaviors and assets available to people.

See how far we have come from Edward Shils’ homogeneous society of the Center and the Periphery. Six and a half decades later, the Center is no longer the leaders who represent the whole of society and its values, but are practitioners of the mechanism of control who represent an ideology that is antithetical to human life as we have known it. The mechanisms of control are sources of financial value. Everything and everybody is just a commodity for exchange. The currency of control is data. As a result, human existence carries no inherent value beyond the data it produces.

I’m not saying anything new or what has not already been told by others. My point is that this idea of a society of control is not an abstract concept that intellectuals and media commentators like to discuss. It is rather exactly what we are also witnessing in the phenomenon of Donald J. Trump.

The Spectacle of Trump Hatred

Trump hatred is a mass hysteria phenomenon that is an expression of a society of control. I am non-partisan and apolitical. Yet, when I spoke with some people about Trump in the terms that I’ll describe below, I was accused of being a Trump fanatic, insane, and an enemy of democracy. The control mechanism is Trump hatred. It rationalizes all sorts of false claims and serves as the perfect vehicle for the implementation of other mechanisms of control.

Trump hatred could only exist in a world where The Spectacle of the Real defines the culture of media.

Politics has degenerated into an unreal media-driven spectacle of dissimulation and simulation. … we are given a simulacrum, a virtual story whose narrative appearance conceals a different purpose, enveloping the listener, the viewer, in an alternative world of meaning. Politics is a game of deflected attention, a sleight of hand, an allusion to the real that is an illusion. Get the public to focus on what inflames their passions, isolating them into their defensive enclaves, then we can go about the real purpose for which we were elected, to secure the next election and pass legislation that the public would not approve if they really knew. This is what the modern practice of politics has become.

I am not a Trump hater or lover. He does not live rent-free in my head. I see him for what he is as a New York City businessman, property developer, and media personality. His election in 2016 is a remarkable accomplishment. He took on the political establishment of both parties. He defeated 16 Republican candidates for president and then defeated Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton for the presidency. He did so as groups within the federal government weaponized their agencies against him. The opposition to Trump is the society of control representative of the final severing of Shil’s Center from its Periphery.

The society of control operates within a global context. During its tenure, the society of discipline was much more representative of local institutions.

A child could go to school, and the discipline of instruction was a product of the teacher’s pedagogy. It was the discipline (punishment) of copying pages out of the fourth-grade dictionary after school two days a week all year that my teacher, Millie Brown, forced me to do that instigated my love of words. The institutional structures of the society of discipline were the vehicles for creating the world we know today. This began to come to an end when The Center abandoned The Periphery to create a society of control.

The Two Global Forces framework is a way of seeing this relationship.

It is from this context of global transition that Trump hatred found its expression as the weaponization of government against a private citizen who chose to run for presidential office. His opposition called for locking him up in prison, for him to be assassinated, and that he should be disqualified on moral grounds. I believe what lies behind these actions is the recognition that Trump has an insider’s understanding of the system with an outsider’s temperament. In this sense, he is a threat because he understands how the system works to benefit those in power.

As a former Democrat, I hear Trump saying things that a generation ago were standard Democrat talking points. His advocacy for American workers, jobs, and manufacturing was the standard Democrat perspective from the Depression era through the 1970s. Then, the political climate began to change. This is where the shift from the society of discipline to the society of control began to take place.

The Center of society today is made up of global institutions of government and business. Their political orientation is no longer that of representative government. But of what historically would be called an oligarchy. However, the society of control is a simulated reality that can only exist in a virtual, data-based form. To create a society that has a direct touch with people, communities, and their institutions requires an ability to function within a relationship context. If relationships do not matter, then calls for a presidential assassination have no meaning. This is what happens when the Center becomes isolated from the rest of society.

The Periphery today is found where people gather to share their stories of life. This is the world of The Eddy Network Podcast and the Global Impact Network. It is the world of local entrepreneurial support groups in communities all across the US. It takes place on Zoom calls and overseas mission trips. We find it in our homes, at work, and in all those third places where we gather for refreshment and conversation. This is the world where networks of relationships tie us together as people in our local communities. These networks can have a global reach while focusing on local concerns.

The benefits of global financialization do not trickle down but rather come as an increased cost to every aspect of life. The effect is the growing decentralization of society as the Center fades in relevance. Politicians lament a divided, fragmented society as they encourage its continued breaking apart. While large industries like banking, healthcare, and global manufacturing centralize through consolidation, it has not accrued to the upper-ward mobility of the average citizen.

Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and tenure as president (2017-2021) brought awareness of this reality. The videos of people calling Trump Hitler, a demagogue, and for his assassination are plentiful on the internet. The violent rhetoric of politicians of both parties creates a culture of hostility that the public picks up and mimics.

Over a decade ago, I wrote,

Fueled by a 24/7 news cycle, actual news - a statement of "facts" that an event, an accident, a death, an agreement, a visit or something has taken place, described in the traditional journalistic parlance of "who, what, when and where" - is transformed into a spectacle of opinion and virtual reality driven by the images of faces speaking words of crisis, fear, and self-righteous anger. Televised analysis - more important than the "facts" of the story- drives the news through the ambiguity of the visual image and is its source of validation. …

These televised events aren't conversations seeking truth, but, rather, people talking at and past one another in a game of leveraging images for social and political influence. We are drawn to the image on the screen of these "experts" having something to say that is meaningful, hoping that at some point some sense of the moment will be revealed, bringing reality into view.

This passage crossed my mind as I watched the coverage of the Trump shooting. After probably 50 YouTube videos, my sense was that we don’t know how and why this happened. Commentary spoken over the images lends a sense that we actually know something. The reality is that we know little and want to know more. Our questions, whether about how it happened or about who was behind the shooting, may never be fully answered.

As Guy Debord says,

The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images.

The shooting of former President Donald Trump is a spectacle event. Every media commentator spoke authoritatively about the shooting. Those with backgrounds in military and police surveillance and protection, like Tim Kennedy, spoke from direct experience. When they choose not to speculate, we have a more certain understanding of the known and unknown.

The Spectacle of the Real events are the perfect cocktail for cynicism. I am not a cynical person. I am an optimistic realist. However, if we sense that we are being lied to or being presented with a false picture of what took place, then doubt enters the picture. We need to ask the question, “What did happen?” We need to know from a comprehensive perspective. We need to discover that truth exists as a reality beyond manipulation. Future opportunities for success and advancement as a nation depend on recovering the institutions that thrived during the society of discipline.

I don’t believe that our thoughts change the character of reality. Instead, when we embrace the truth of reality, it changes us. We find greater integrity and realism. A politician can lie. That lie needs a series of lies to maintain the spectacle of truth. Their lie isn’t reality but a hyper-reality. This is the society of control. It is why Trump hatred robs us of our right to choose and our agency as citizens. It is not my purpose to advocate for a candidate. I believe that each of you must make your own decisions based on your own process of discernment.

This End is a Transition

We are at a transition point in human history. The future is uncertain. There is no progressive forward from the society of control. We are moving through an end that is an end. But this end is not final.

For decades, I’ve thought about this progression of changes that have marked Western society for two or three millennia. While time has moved forward as our watches and calendars tell us, the reality is that we have continued to enter moments of ending and beginning.

There are those who have thought that if the assassination of Donald Trump had been accomplished, a second Civil War would occur. I hear that but do not see that happening. I believe this perception of the American public as violent, offensive reactionaries is a simulacrum. What is a simulacra? Gary Genosko, in Baudrillard and Signs, writes of the science of signs in comparison to Plato’s perspective.

“Plato draws a distinction in the realm of image-making between an iconic likeness and a semblance. To the extent that the former image ‘participates’ in the Idea of the thing of which it is an icon or a copy, it is endowed with ‘resemblance’. The latter image does not resemble the Idea of the thing of which it is a semblance or a simulacrum because it does not participate in the Idea. A simulacrum only seems to be a likeness.”

I believe this explains the society of control and Trump hatred. These ‘ideas’ do not represent reality. But is just enough of a semblance of reality to seem to be real. The control is what we allow them to have. For those of us who are older, we were taught as children, in the institutions of the society of discipline, to be rule-followers. Some of us respected the institution but always questioned the rules. This is how being a rule follower within the society of control takes away our agency and responsibility for our lives and the lives of our family and communities.

When I hear someone express their hatred of Donald Trump, I ask them, “What do you know about him by direct experience? If not, where did you come to have this opinion of him?” If they tell me the source of their opinion, I then ask, ”Do they have a reason or motivation to hate him that is personal and prejudical towards him?” I believe we must ask these questions about everyone in the public eye. The simulacrum of political opinion is essentially propaganda, which is the establishment of a control mechanism.

I’m convinced that the forces of control will do themselves in. Their pattern of behavior is to overspend to control, to overplan to control, and to never allow accountability to interrupt their authority to control the outcomes of the world.

The message of control we receive is that the people live by violence and bloodshed. Instead, I see increasing indifference and resistance to being controlled. It is far simplerer to not wear a mask than abide by the order to wear one. It is far simpler to establish smaller economies of scale between friends and family where barter and shared responsibility become how we live. This localism has always existed in rural communities. It is time for the same behaviors to form in urban areas.

In one of the quotes above, Gilles Deleuze makes the point that with the society of control we find the end of the institutions of the society of discipline. It is the abandonment of many of these institutions to the simulacra of politics that first motivated me to begin this essay.

I see in Trump hatred, and in particular the attempted assassination, as disrespect for the institution of the presidency and that of the government representing the people. There is a sort of selfish interest in killing your political opponent. It seems childish and weak. This is also what I see behind the quest for control. Regardless of whatever noble apology for control is made, it is still a path to an end of an era.

I do not know what will happen between today and the election in November. However, I would like to suggest that you rid yourself of hatred of every sort. Do not even entertain the false notion of hating hate.

Instead, give thanks, even if your thanks is the most minimal sort. Hatred acts as cancer on the soul, and Trump hatred has become cancer on the soul of the American republic. With gratitude, hope and freedom will begin to be reborn.

Take time to talk with your family, friends, co-workers, and neighbors about what you are grateful for and where you find goodness in contributing. If you have no place to contribute, then go find a place. The relationships that you will form in service will be there when hard times deepen.

The society of control, like the societies of sovereignty and discipline, will come to an end. This transition is moving towards us now. It is up to us to decide what kind of society we want. Even the smallest little inclination can become an emergent energy for positive change.

If you would, please forward this post to your networks so that you can be in conversation about your shared interest in the future of the world.

If you’d like to host a group call, let me know. I’ll be glad to work with you on such event. Reach me here.