Hurricanrana

The kayfabe of empowerment.

This is a small appendix for my upcoming post on Israel, nationalism and war. With a splash of something that could be called anti-female empowerment, but is simply reality.

If you are an American, you’ve probably seen this move in action movies performed by female stars. It’s one of the strange directions that ‘the future is female’ ideas have gone in order to ‘empower’.

One of the reasons that Game of Thrones was so very successful to my way of thinking was that lots of people died in search of power. That was until it became obvious in the infamous days of the Starbucks cup on set that John Snow could not die. Even so, some different aspects of feminine power were given stage.

In the following scene there is a bracing reversal of type in which the female character displays the blunt force of military command, and the male character threatens with the stiletto of gossip. Yet it works perfectly.

As a Peasant, I’m not accustomed to studying the ways and means of power. It’s one of the reasons, even today, I am not interested in elections. I ignore with disdain such things like the annual shutdown of government rather in the same way others ignore the World Series. Me, I’m much more interested in competence. I simply don’t believe that competence delivers power.

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So as I am thinking about the rude, impertinent and ghastly displays of power that fascinate film and election audiences, I am always drawn - like a spoiler in a Scooby Doo story, about whether or not any of it makes plausible sense. Moreover, under the dictates of Hollywood postmodern narratives, are any of the fight scenes realistic. There’s always room for dramatic special effects, but sometimes a bit too much disbelief is suspended.

This is my assessment, on this day of the death of Dick Cheney, of how Americans sometimes for the better, often think about the kinetic engagement of hostilities. I use that turn of phrase in order to evade such stock phrases as ‘the brutality of war’. That is because I am convinced there is a righteous sword of violent action we must always keep sharp. Whether or not Cheney was correct, America is correct to support its troops, even in their fruitless missions. Yet and still, we want to avoid war. But war and peace are not such a clear cut binary.

I am convinced with reasonable doubts that significant cadres of American elites behave like Littlefinger. Scruffy, immoral and conniving, always seducing their idle, wealthy and bored associates into the thrill of transgression. Right, Puff Daddy? I remember hearing such things about the head of Victoria’s Secret. We all learned such things about the head of American Apparel. Remember that guy from American Apparel? Enron, Theranos, Miramax, FTX, Boeing, Lehman Brothers. All demonstrate the mechanisms of a conspiracy of silence. This is how power is used for immoral purposes. Where, on the other hand, are Americans reminded that power is not exploitive by its very nature? We need charts like this, even though it demonstrates a clear cut binary.

Since I am a Peasant, I don’t have a list of academic experiences that might insulate me from the miasma of the interwebz. I needed charts like this when I was in my late teens. The educations we get in the schools, fields and office building of hard knocks don’t prepare us for the subtle but important distinctions of power. We want to live like lords and kings, but we don’t understand their actual ways and means. As it has been said, Donald Trump’s behavior is a poor person’s projection of a rich person. We think that women should be able to punch like men. We engage such fantasy with fervor, so fantasy is what is bankrolled in our democracy.

What I hope to demonstrate here is that we need to be a bit more dismissive of the happy talk and melodrama of empowerment. It doesn’t scale. It is not so often met with the special effects of Black Widow and excellent dialog Game of Thrones. In the universities and interwebz we often don’t know who is chanting for our side, grass roots, robots or paid operatives. We don’t often ingest the proper histories. More often than not we being seduced in our idle boredom with the thrill of transgression.

A hurricanrana is but one move in an orchestrated kayfabe. So is geopolitical propaganda. For whom are you cheering?