Upstart socialist representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez taunts Democrats:
None of you understand.
I'm not locked up in here with YOU.
You're locked up in here with ME.
This is a literary reference to occultist Alan Moore's limited comic book series Watchmen, or the collected issues in graphic novel format, or the movie adaptation of the same name. Watchmen was the first comic book taken seriously as a literary work, and it is clearly intended to be serious literature.
For those unfamiliar with the work, the plot is this:
In an alternate history, vigilante cops started wearing masks to fight masked criminals, becoming the first costumed crimefighters. Then a tragic accident transforms a scientist into the first and only superhuman being. The government dubs him Dr. Manhattan and teams him up with the costumed crime fighters to win the war in Vietnam. As a result, Richard Nixon remains president into the 1980's when the main story takes place.
Superheroes have been outlawed, and former superheroes are being killed by assassins. Because some of those killed never revealed their identities, one particularly paranoid vigilante - who never stopped his violent crusade against society's filth - named Rorschach - suspects the government or some other sort of inside job. AOC's quote comes from a scene where Rorschach has been caught, arrested and thrown into prison, taking advantage of the opportunity to massacre some of the scum he couldn't reach from the outside.
Ultimately they discover that the assassins are working for Ozymandias, the smartest man alive and one time leader of the Watchmen, a group of superheroes. (The question "Who watches the Watchmen" is literally asked - darkly but without irony.) He has engineered a deadly hoax that will kill millions of people, tricking the Americans and Soviets into abandoning their nuclear arms race, saving humanity and ushering in a golden age of peace, prosperity and clean energy. Dr. Manhattan realizes that he has to go along with Ozymandias plan, even though it is evil and wrong, to save humanity, but Rorschach refuses to compromise his principles, forcing Dr. Manhattan to murder his former ally for an evil man's scheme. In the coda we see that Oxymandias's plan has indeed created a utopia, but a fringe news outlet discovers Rorschach's journal, so there is a possibility that the truth will come out, whatever the consequences.
One of the most disturbing and challenging things about Watchmen is that the story is told from a sophisticated, intellectual, liberal point of view, but villain turns out to be the most arrogant caricature of a progressive liberal, and the real hero turns out to be an unhinged reactionary. At the climax even detached, neutral, prescient and immortal Dr. Manhattan cannot resist Ozymandias's Machiavellian logic. Only the explicitly liberal-hating maniac Rorschach's suicide-by-superman leaves any hope for moral idealism, and even that hope is clouded in danger and shadows.
Watchmen can and should be read as an occult text, but my recent readings have turned up a concept that explains the real life political framework of Watchmen that makes the story relevant to our ongoing political situation. The conflict between Ozymandias and Rorschach is not a conflict between the ideology of the left or the culture of intellectuals, and the ideology of the right and the the culture of the paranoid fringe. It is a conflict between the instrumentalizing brutality of authoritarian High Modernism (HM) and the classically liberal (CL) moral ideals of the the Enlightenment or Western civilization.
Fashionable pomo-influenced thought conflates these two things as "modernism," Western" biases, or "scientism." But they are much more specific phenomena than modernity, Western culture or science in general. and they are different in a huge, fundamentally important way. HM is the authoritarian mentality of the World Wars and Cold War, distinct from anything that came before (Imperialism, colonialism, capitalism, Manifest Destiny...) and anything that came after (Reaganomics, neoliberalism, neoconservatism...) CL is a rational moral objection that had to be swept under the rug to justify HM.
When conservatives and libertarians say "authoritarianism," HM is usually the first thing on their mind. When liberals use the term, HM is also near the top of the list, but sometimes second after the religious right. HM is the purest kind of authoritarianism, which doesn't even depend on tribal traditions like nationalism or theocracy. Even communism had a certain amount of restraint in being rooted in the human politics of social class and rational inquiry of Marxism ... until Kruschev fell in love with and imported HM, setting his country on a course of social engineering that would parallel the US and Europe within the already authoritarian culture of Soviet Russia.
Ultimately HM failed - it had already failed when Watchmen was written - which is why the story is set in an alternate timeline where the HM society has actually succeeded in changing human nature, at least in one accidental case, bridging the gap between the human and divine and immanentizing the eschaton. Watchmen warns us against fetishizing HM, and reminds us that any central authority, no matter how benevolent their vision, and no matter how compatible with our own way of thinking or identity or personal loyalty - must still be held accountable.
Now ironically representative AOC, like most socialists and progressives today, fetishizes HM without realizing it. They want to raise the minimum wage to $15 (keeping the young and poor from finding work) and raise the top marginal tax rate to 70% (reducing government revenue, leaving unpaid bills that will eventually be charged to the poor.) HM was into these policies for reasons AOC probably wouldn't agree with if she were to discuss priorities with the architects of the Cold War welfare state instead of worshiping them as honored ancestors. The patriarchal single income household, The idle rich enjoying leisure time instead of being engaged in business or innovation. Tearing down old neighborhoods to build brick towers and stark, flat, empty plazas that housed the exact same number of people.
So I am thrilled to see that AOC has the right attitude and heroes, but there are also deeper principles and inconvenient truths remaining for our future leaders to discover if we are going to move forward and avoid the mistakes of the past.
For those unfamiliar with the work, the plot is this:
In an alternate history, vigilante cops started wearing masks to fight masked criminals, becoming the first costumed crimefighters. Then a tragic accident transforms a scientist into the first and only superhuman being. The government dubs him Dr. Manhattan and teams him up with the costumed crime fighters to win the war in Vietnam. As a result, Richard Nixon remains president into the 1980's when the main story takes place.
Superheroes have been outlawed, and former superheroes are being killed by assassins. Because some of those killed never revealed their identities, one particularly paranoid vigilante - who never stopped his violent crusade against society's filth - named Rorschach - suspects the government or some other sort of inside job. AOC's quote comes from a scene where Rorschach has been caught, arrested and thrown into prison, taking advantage of the opportunity to massacre some of the scum he couldn't reach from the outside.
Ultimately they discover that the assassins are working for Ozymandias, the smartest man alive and one time leader of the Watchmen, a group of superheroes. (The question "Who watches the Watchmen" is literally asked - darkly but without irony.) He has engineered a deadly hoax that will kill millions of people, tricking the Americans and Soviets into abandoning their nuclear arms race, saving humanity and ushering in a golden age of peace, prosperity and clean energy. Dr. Manhattan realizes that he has to go along with Ozymandias plan, even though it is evil and wrong, to save humanity, but Rorschach refuses to compromise his principles, forcing Dr. Manhattan to murder his former ally for an evil man's scheme. In the coda we see that Oxymandias's plan has indeed created a utopia, but a fringe news outlet discovers Rorschach's journal, so there is a possibility that the truth will come out, whatever the consequences.
One of the most disturbing and challenging things about Watchmen is that the story is told from a sophisticated, intellectual, liberal point of view, but villain turns out to be the most arrogant caricature of a progressive liberal, and the real hero turns out to be an unhinged reactionary. At the climax even detached, neutral, prescient and immortal Dr. Manhattan cannot resist Ozymandias's Machiavellian logic. Only the explicitly liberal-hating maniac Rorschach's suicide-by-superman leaves any hope for moral idealism, and even that hope is clouded in danger and shadows.
Watchmen can and should be read as an occult text, but my recent readings have turned up a concept that explains the real life political framework of Watchmen that makes the story relevant to our ongoing political situation. The conflict between Ozymandias and Rorschach is not a conflict between the ideology of the left or the culture of intellectuals, and the ideology of the right and the the culture of the paranoid fringe. It is a conflict between the instrumentalizing brutality of authoritarian High Modernism (HM) and the classically liberal (CL) moral ideals of the the Enlightenment or Western civilization.
Fashionable pomo-influenced thought conflates these two things as "modernism," Western" biases, or "scientism." But they are much more specific phenomena than modernity, Western culture or science in general. and they are different in a huge, fundamentally important way. HM is the authoritarian mentality of the World Wars and Cold War, distinct from anything that came before (Imperialism, colonialism, capitalism, Manifest Destiny...) and anything that came after (Reaganomics, neoliberalism, neoconservatism...) CL is a rational moral objection that had to be swept under the rug to justify HM.
When conservatives and libertarians say "authoritarianism," HM is usually the first thing on their mind. When liberals use the term, HM is also near the top of the list, but sometimes second after the religious right. HM is the purest kind of authoritarianism, which doesn't even depend on tribal traditions like nationalism or theocracy. Even communism had a certain amount of restraint in being rooted in the human politics of social class and rational inquiry of Marxism ... until Kruschev fell in love with and imported HM, setting his country on a course of social engineering that would parallel the US and Europe within the already authoritarian culture of Soviet Russia.
Ultimately HM failed - it had already failed when Watchmen was written - which is why the story is set in an alternate timeline where the HM society has actually succeeded in changing human nature, at least in one accidental case, bridging the gap between the human and divine and immanentizing the eschaton. Watchmen warns us against fetishizing HM, and reminds us that any central authority, no matter how benevolent their vision, and no matter how compatible with our own way of thinking or identity or personal loyalty - must still be held accountable.
Now ironically representative AOC, like most socialists and progressives today, fetishizes HM without realizing it. They want to raise the minimum wage to $15 (keeping the young and poor from finding work) and raise the top marginal tax rate to 70% (reducing government revenue, leaving unpaid bills that will eventually be charged to the poor.) HM was into these policies for reasons AOC probably wouldn't agree with if she were to discuss priorities with the architects of the Cold War welfare state instead of worshiping them as honored ancestors. The patriarchal single income household, The idle rich enjoying leisure time instead of being engaged in business or innovation. Tearing down old neighborhoods to build brick towers and stark, flat, empty plazas that housed the exact same number of people.
So I am thrilled to see that AOC has the right attitude and heroes, but there are also deeper principles and inconvenient truths remaining for our future leaders to discover if we are going to move forward and avoid the mistakes of the past.
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