Full or partial entries of my blogs may be found at LatviansOnline + Forum Home + Open Forum – The-Not-Voter. If you copy this blog for your files, or copy to forward, or otherwise mention its content, please credit the author and http://the-not-voter.blogspot.com/  or to this bloggers main site at http://esoschronicles.blogspot.com/


I suggest you look at the links imbedded in these blogs or at the end of the blog as an integral part of my argument.



THE-NOT-VOTER
19 The Politics of Camp in Latvia

When the former president of Latvia (1993-99), Guntis Ulmanis, unexpectedly announced his support for the political camp which calls itself “For All That Is Good for Latvia” and justified his move with the statement that the politicians he had previously denounced had promised to become “better” (as in an improved product), politics in Latvia reached a new plateau of camp.

The question before the Latvian electorate now is how much political camp is it willing to take. Will the virgins persuade the electorate to continue to follow the knights and their arms bearers and, thus, provide them with accustomed pleasures? Or has the time come for the electorate to NOT-VOTE?

Camp “For All That Is Good for Latvia” is an aesthetic effort to put business interests under one roof. If the effort is successful (aesthetics is seamlessly blended with greed), the success will rescue the failing TP and LPP parties (with about 5% of the voters supporting them at this time) from naked defeat, and may even propel them into the ranks of Latvia’s so-called democratic political leadership. In short, the former president Guntis Ulmanis has joined those who believe that a union of business interests will be “Good for Latvia”. Interestingly, Mr. Ulmani’s reentry into politics appears to come with an implicit blanket declaration in favor of freedom to consume. Ulmanis is betting that the past will repeat itself and the rose will rise again from another mulch of lies.

This NOT-VOTER argues that the violent past of Latvian politics [violence understood not as an imposition of physical pain or death, but an imposition of (un)certainty, one pole of which is economic destitution, the other the dream of everyone becoming an oligarch] faces a challenge. As Walter Benjamin wrote in his “Zur Kritik der Gewalt”, p. 202, (cited by Giorgio Agamben in “Homo Sacer”) with regard to such violence: “The law of… oscillation [between the violence that posits law and the violence that preserves it] rests on the fact that all law-preserving violence, in its duration, indirectly weakens the lawmaking violence represented by it, through the suppression of hostile counterviolence…. This lasts until either new forces or those earlier suppressed triumph over the violence that had posited law until now and thus found a new law….”

Walter Benjamin continues: “In the interruption of this cycle, which is maintained by mythical forms of law, in the deposition of law and all the forces on which it depends (as they depend on it) and, therefore, finally in the deposition of State power, a new historical epoch is founded.”

Latvia desperately needs a new historical epoch, and if one is not provided by the world beyond Latvia’s borders (which also needs a new historical epoch), then if it is to survive, Latvia’s citizens must make the epoch themselves.

Mr. Ulmanis is apparently betting that the repression of hostile counterviolence will, given his support, prevail. The word “repression” is used here in the sense of prevailing over and silencing those who would become NOT-VOTERS. The NOT-VOTERS are especially important in this instance, because they represent the feared counterviolence. A simple way to repress the electorate of NOT-VOTERS is to bamboozle it with calls to a corrupt patriotism. While ideally speaking patriotism (roughly speaking, the love of place one is born and/or swears allegiance to) is not corruptible, repeated failure by leadership to lead without ever a real self-sacrifice, can no longer be hid by words it has made meaningless.

These blogs identify with and propose a NOT-VIOLENT solution to this government’s hostility to populism (see earlier blogs for a more detailed the discussion of populism). It is therefore a concern that Mr. Ulmanis has bet that THE-NOT-VOTER will not prevail even if NOT-VOTING is the only method to defeat government corruption by NOT-VIOLENT means. Ulmanis’ may win his bet, just as all previous Saeimas (plural of the Latvian legislative body) have won. However, let us remember Walter Benjamin’s warning that such a victory “weakens the lawmaking violence [of the government]”. If a NOT-VIOLENT NOT-VOTE with its implicit NOT-VIOLENT terror aimed at the political lie is not sufficient to cause the emergence of a new historical epoch, “divine violence” (Walter Benjamin) may take place. An outbreak of divine violence signifies the dissolution of the link between violence and the law on the present side of the threshold. If so, there is a good chance there will occur violence that risks pain, death, and unforeseeable consequences; and (alas!) a failure of NOT-VIOLENT terror to be and act as divine terror on behalf of and against the death of the community.

While today Latvia stands this side of the threshold that separates law from violence, twenty years of bare life politics that suffers an exodus of 200,000 of Latvia’s people (potentially more) makes high camp of nationhood. As the link (above) to Wiki states: “Camp is an aesthetic sensibility wherein something is appealing because of its bad taste and ironic value.” Guntis Ulmanis, together with TP (The Folk Party) and LPP (The First Party of Latvia) edge ever closer to the threshold where the absurd and lawlessness becomes blurred. It is upon stepping past this threshold, this no-man’s-land, that we meet violence, which is expressed as self-extinction by demographic death spiral and a disintegrating and terminal society as well.

Do Latvians wish this on themselves? What does the other side, THE-NOT-VOTER bring?

If we take Walter Benjamin’s “divine violence” to heart, there will be some (Slavoj Zizek for one) who identify it with Jacobin violence [you either do or don’t (kill)]. However, a NOT-VOTE—if successful—is one of the few ways by which “the people”, the Populists, the true state of IS may reassert the peoples sovereignty over a government, certainly over parliamentary government, peacefully. Of course, the risk is great, which is why one wonders if Mr. Ulmanis is going to be an existential leader or go with the flow of neo-capitalism.

In favor of the camp of neo-capitalist “For All That Is Good for Latvia” [and the less incisive camp “Unity” (Vienotība)] is the fact that as yet they are on the side of sobriety. On this blogger’s side is the tilt (quite sober) toward anxiety that stems from the conviction that we will trip if the threshold before us is not the focus of our attentions. If Mr. Ulmanis wishes to prove how “good” he, the TP, and the LPP are for Latvia, he has to do it existentially or history will judge that he has fudged.

Bzzz,bzzz, ladybug, your house is afire! Go vote the NOT-VOTE if your children are to survive.

Asterisks & Other Readings
Compulsory voting in the EU Parliamentary elections
http://www.ceps.eu/files/book/1886.pdf
The abstentionist elephant
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/8783/
Electronic polls
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/10102126.stm
On the Meaning of Voting
http://www.strike-the-root.com/92/bylund/bylund1.html
British Government Attempts to Bracket the Constitution
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/election_2010/8681624.stml
Ground Zero for Thought
http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/146989
Why Forced Positive Thinking Is A Lot Of Crock?
http://www.alternet.org/story/146940/barbara_ehrenreich%3A_why_forced_positive_thinking_is_a_total_crock?page=2

If you copy this blog for your files, or copy to forward or otherwise mention its content, please credit the author and http://esoschronicles.blogspot.com/  or http://the-not-voter.blogspot.com/  or http://melnaysjanis.blogspot.com/.

Full or partial entries of my blogs may be found at LatviansOnline  + Forum Home + Open Forum – The-Not-Voter. If you copy this blog for your files, or copy to forward, or otherwise mention its content, please credit the author and http://the-not-voter.blogspot.com/  or to this bloggers main site at http://esoschronicles.blogspot.com/  


I suggest you look at the links imbedded in these blogs or at the end of the blog as an integral part of my argument.

THE-NOT-VOTER
15 Populists Ought to Consider...

There appear to be three main opponents that a great many Latvians like to dwell on in the media: 1. Populism; 2. (R)other; and 3. their own past.

The groups that dislike “populism” are three: a) people related to the Latvian government; b) the Latvian media; c) the populists themselves. The reason that government dislikes populists (whether of Latvian or (R)other origin) to the point where they have replaced the Jews as the internal enemy of Latvia is well summed up in an article by Professor Sergei Kruks called “The Paradigm of Culture and Civilization" . According to the article

“In the political discourse, culture gained the function of ideological homogenization—the nation defined itself and existed as a cultural nation.” This of course is the German Bildung model or way of raising a child (audzināšana). According to Kruks, the Latvian poet Imants Ziedonis advocates “’a small group of experts’ making an inventory of Latvian culture, defining a benchmark, and creating a static Latvianness. Of course, this was done in the 1920s, and to an even greater extent by the ‘soft’ authoritarian President Karlis Ulmanis in the 1930s. However, to try this in the 21st century, with 43% of the population being of Russian or Slavic origin and preferring to speak Russian at home makes for a question mark. And the answer is “mission impossible”—unless the government can find an enemy to which the label will stick. Since anti-Semitism is passé, and modernism demands that the whole world (Russians including) be on one’s friendly list, the enemy has become “Populism”.

To quote Ernesto Laclau from his well known book “On Populist Reason”, (Ch 1, Sent. 1) “Populism, as a category of political analysis, confronts us with rather idiosyncratic problems”. Among the idiosyncratic problems are the “ambiguities and paradoxes” of populism. Professor Laclau then devotes his book on how to make sense of the “apparently intractable question of populism”. Among his conclusions there is this interesting sentence: “While the task of political philosophy traditionally has been to reduce politics to police, truly political thought and practice would consist in liberating the political moment from its enthrallment to policed societal frameworks”. Is this not about the same what Sergei Kruks above calls creating “[a clarified] static Latvianess”? That is, Is this not policed politics and a corpse in a static culture? We can, thus, start to look for Populism among those who in the 21st century are in opposition to Christian imposed German Romanticism from the 19th century. If Professor Kruks is right that the policies of the elites of Latvia are attempting to impose a “ready-made identity” on all Latvians, few will not know in their mind’s eye who the populists are likely to be.

Next to the Latvian government, it is the Latvian media that knows least about Populists. The media is mesmerized by the mud balls slung by government officials at Populists and has been pitching in to help for some time. In fact, the media itself is a good example of what a ready-made universal identity, the so-called Latvianism, does to people and their institutions. There is a vision of anarchists running about the fields of Latvia-Anarchia, and Populists are applauding them.

We pretty much know that the 200,000 Latvians, most of who were once known as the proletariat class—mostly composed of countryside people finding the countryside destroyed by a catastrophic loss of jobs and many, far too many of the educated class looking for jobs abroad as well. [According to former Saeima member Ilga Kreituse, few if any of the 90 students graduating with a degree in Chemistry from the LU are staying in Latvia.] If one assumes that the emigrants left home because there was no other choice other than stay and become demoralized, then most of the emigrants are quality candidates for Populists.

Add to the Populists already mentioned yet others behind those trees there and we get some idea of who in the post-anti-Semitic age is the replacement of. IPopulism is not by any means only a problem for the Latvian elites who from the President on down define themselves as anti-Populists. The government of the EU is also infected by the pox of prejudice. The European Commission President, Jose Manuel Barroso in a keynote address to the Jean Monnet Conference warned of the danger of "populism". He said: "there are sometimes occasions when we see populism, xenophobia, chauvinism in Europe". This tells who the President of the EC sees as the spectre and spectres are in the wake of which follows chaos.

Thus, Populism is a danger even if Populists are not only anonymous Latvian emigrants, but university graduates without jobs, former government employees dismissed by economizing measures due to overspending. The policing of culture during the time of social duress continues as the police interrogation of Professor Kruks shows. No doubt, there is still some Populist sympathy or, rather, indifference to such repressive acts. Even so, Populists who are to be found among the economically worst off, once vociferous in their “fundamentalism” (over whatever), are shutting down and reemerging under the umbra of Populism in the Shadows.

This is a time when foundations are being shaken. As another blogger said about the Bilderberg Group conference “No, they are not having ‘fun’ at all. They are scared to death.” For all the present government of Latvia knows, the Populists in Latvia may decide to not-vote come October 2 elections.

Why NOT-VOTE? There is no other choice. Though raised as a Latvian with the meme of “[clarified] static Latvianess” printed on the brain, troubled times is not passing anyone, not even the Bilderbergers as we just read. NOT(-to)-VOTE means to not cast a ballot because only a Populist NOT-VOTE will prove to the elite manning the status-quo barricades that the troubles are not going away and must be dealt with right away.

A NOT-VOTE means that so few will vote that the elected will not call the police to protect them. Both elitiste and populiste will be on equal footing and, wishing no violence, the most populist solution will be the one most earnest and useful.

Asterisks & Other Readings
Compulsory voting in the EU Parliamentary elections
http://www.ceps.eu/files/book/1886.pdf
The abstentionist elephant
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/8783/
Electronic polls
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/10102126.stm
On the Meaning of Voting
http://www.strike-the-root.com/92/bylund/bylund1.html
British Government Attempts to Bracket the Constitution
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/election_2010/8681624.stml
Ground Zero for Thought
http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/146989
Why Forced Positive Thinking Is A Lot Of Crock?
http://www.alternet.org/story/146940/barbara_ehrenreich%3A_why_forced_positive_thinking_is_a_total_crock?page=2  

If you copy this blog for your files, or copy to forward, or otherwise mention its content, please credit the author and http://esoschronicles.blogspot.com or http://the-not-voter.blogspot.com