Gustavs Klucis (Klutsis):
Turn Your Weapons Against the Soviet Bourgeoisie
Original Language Title:
ПОВЕРНИТЕ ОРУЖИЕ ПРОТИВ СВОЕИ БУРЖУАЗИИ
(c. 1924)

"We might as well believe ourselves blessed to have elected
just this sort of incumbent to remind us who we always were."

The sickly scent of true desperation accompanies our incumbent's every official action. They seem overly staged, as if the production assistant feared not being noticed. Their content often proves incomprehensible, much like the campaign "rallies" that preceded this presidency. The pronouncements do not properly parse and resolve to the fundamentally incomprehensible, though a deep sense of anger inevitably shows through the cheap, glitzy veneer. One finally concludes that he thinks he’s exacting revenge from an earlier assault to mend some essentially unhealable wound. These staged performances amount to elaborate defensive stances. It might seem as though he's actively assaulting much of what we hold dear, but he's more likely frantically shoring up a defensive perimeter he deeply fears has already failed him. The more outrageous the messages, the less convincing they seem. He's already throwing the kitchen sink into action, a sure and certain confirmation that he deeply fears he's losing, that he's likely already lost.

He accuses his predecessors of "Weaponizing" our government, but it's he who's engaged in weaponization, whatever that might mean. He's the one who dredges up obscure justifications to explain his actions. He's the one who began overstepping his formal authority from the first moment of his incumbency. He's been setting his own world on its head to retain his tenuous sense of balance. He consequently appears continually off-balance. To compensate, or to try to compensate, he blames every innocent party he can imagine. Nobody's above his critical eye. Cripes, he even accuses the Pope of leading a not-all-that-secret conspiracy against his good name, except his name stopped being associated with goodness before he was elected. He was apparently not elected to do good in the world, but to dismantle. "We tried goodness," his subcontext screamed! "Time to take off the gloves!"

It's all propaganda, and a hackneyed version of it at that, more than merely reminiscent of twenties Stalinist stuff. This weary world has seen this movie so many times before that it no longer carries much impact on its audience. If we now live in an attention economy, it seems foolhardy to so reliably bore the audience members when your policies utterly depend upon their support. Our incumbent has become an equal opportunity offender. No matter how loyal the supporter, he will eventually find some way to chase them far, far away. Those most enthralled become the most dedicated opponent after their devotion goes unacknowledged once too often. Worse, he turns on his partisans with remarkable frequency. He changes positions more often than he changes his disposable underpants, which, admittedly, he really ought to change more often. These actions scream defensive engagement. They have at times been mischaracterized as clever strategies, but defensive reaction much better describes them.

Living in a defensive crouch would render anyone paranoid, and this incumbent's administration is the most paranoid on record. Their continuing assertions that the wolves are slathering around their door confirm this diagnosis. Wolves do not slather around any door for long. If you inhabit a house of straw or sticks, the wolves quickly dispatch the defenders and move on to their dessert course. If the defender lives in a house of bricks, the wolves quickly catch on that slathering will likely buy them nothing and move on to harass defenseless rabbits or something more reliably supper. Those who broadcast, who, indeed, cast their entire existence as focusing upon vanquishing some apparently eternal enemy, are not vanquishing at all, but defensively crouching, making up unlikely stories about their vigilance and bravery while assuming the most cowardly possible stance. Nothing seems beneath the truly defensive. Slander seems their constant weapon, and honor was never even invited into their engagements.

The best any defense might achieve could be a continuation of some tenuous status quo. Nobody wins any engagement by the clever application of defense. They might convince their opponent to give up and go home, though no decisive conclusion ever comes through fearfully poking sticks out into imagined darkness. I predict that we'll see no brilliant strategy move against the decency even the least of us has grown accustomed to, if only because mustering a strategy against decency could not rise to brilliance but would be stupid instead, the sort of scheme only someone knotted in a losing defense might try to concoct; another distraction. While our incumbent continues distracting himself, more of his former base have grown more than impatient. As the bills come due and his fever dreams come to sour fruition, it becomes clear that the result does not very closely resemble anybody's definition of winning. Those who live in defense ultimately lose the contest. We might as well believe ourselves blessed to have elected just this sort of incumbent to remind us who we always were.

©2025 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

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