A few months ago, in a delphic stupor, or maybe I was having lunch, I saw, clear as I see you now, America being just a movie stage, a mock town made of cardboard and only the facades of buildings. The people would walk into the buildings and vanish, they were in its interior, but not.
Then those same people walked the other way thru the fake door, out to the streets, all carrying signs, marching in lockstep precision.
The signs said #Resistance and #WeAreTheResistance
Any good oracle must make sense of strange things. The word resistance is useless without definition. Resistance must target a specific problem, issue, or system to be called resistance at all. Real resistance includes tangible goals and objectives that materially benefit the people. What was this?
Perhaps this immersive vision was protest against #NotMyPresident Trump? But this cannot be! One cannot separate the rise of Trump from the failures of the Democratic Party. It was the Democratic Party, not Trump, that pushed the political trajectory of the US even further rightward through its incessant collaboration with capital. Since the 1980s, the Democrats have led the way in the projects of austerity, mass incarceration, and war. Policies that bred cynicism among more left-leaning Democrats, and thus requiring the intervention of the first Black President to keep “hope” for the party alive.
Think man think! What is a “movement” these days. Maybe movements nowadays are really brands, to be evoked and stoked by marketers and creators when needed. But it’s hard to imagine a brand transferring the power from the wealthy to the poor. It’s hard to imagine a brand being accountable to its membership. My gosh! Can a person be a member of a brand!
And yet, in this vision, there were no core demands. How can resistance have no core demands!
Had this mob presented their demands to me I would say thank you, offer some self-reflection, “ah” and then, as I am rather bourgeois, if the demands are as illusory as their homes, I would negotiate down to some nice marketing material, a couple of dollars and one or two can come to my birthday party. In my dream I am experienced at these things!
Oh yeah, one of the signs read #MiddleAndUpperClassAndWellEducated and his companion’s sign read #WeAreTheVirulentlyBoredRevolutionaries
In this state, somewhere between sleep and wake, maybe caused by that big meal, I ask a marcher-by (wearing a strange pink hat!) To whom are #VBR leaders accountable, and just where are they taking their “movement”? Doesn’t every marketing campaign says it’s a movement? What are its policies? Who are the leaders and where are they taking us? What specifically does it want enacted? When will we know we have won?
Then she calls me all sorts of vile things, only some of which are true. But she doesn’t know me, does she? Have we met in some earlier concoction of mine. I ask her, why all the hatred to me?
Then in this thing of mine I am drowning in her spittle, I try to swim up to the surface but I can’t, her booming voice is upsetting the water and its violent and unswimmable. Finally she stops, the spittle calms, I don’t have the energy to make it to shore. I am tired, my arms are heavy. Suddenly, when I had just about given up hope itself. I hear a voice, it is Daffy Duck! I say I love you to him, and I do, I always have:  “Be calm, swim slowly thru the putrid seas. You will get to shore. Do not ask her questions, her hatred is more important than truth, reason, or kindness. Her hatred is her identity, without it she is lost.”
I get to shore and a large group of the inflamed are there also, signs high up in the air, they are screaming. But, their words were also a facade, imagine if you will, something more concerned with seeming good than with doing good and abounding in symbols  that are loud and express concern, and are deliberately, rhetorically, pointless. (it’s my dream and its hard to translate these visions into words)
And then, as they continue their phalanx,  I hear a loudspeaker (its Shirley Temple) “When enough people are employed to solve a problem, means become ends. It becomes more important to be forever solving the problem, which provides jobs, than to have solved the problem, which would result in dismissals.”
And then a waiter brings me dessert, vanilla ice cream, yay! and I pay the check and for all his hard work, going back and forth that grueling 15 feet from there to here with my food and then away with my empty plates, I give him 20% tip. He says “thank you for your generosity, my tip to you is: Equality of opportunity without equality of education is a cruel joke: giving an illiterate the right to apply to Harvard isn’t giving him much” He’s rude and I take back my whole tip! But then I also make sure I don’t leave anything at my table, so as to avoid coming back and grovelling for what I lost to be found!
Outside the facade of this diner is another placard bearer, and in my dream state I take out a yellow legal pad, because I cannot keep track of all the trademarked ‘movements’
I say “may I buy you a coffee and learn more” And they reply “no, I am busy and have no time” they then say “When your sense of self depends on being oppressed, you cannot afford to run out of oppression.” and then leap away, beautiful huge jumps, joining the rest of the marching ensemble.
Then in my delphic bliss, Freud appears, he is smoking a cigar “They are neurotic anger looking for targets. The vitriol of an extremist without having yet found its cause and the intolerance of Scientology.” He blows his sweet tobacco in my face and fades away.
Then, I wrote a big sign and I chased after them, never catching up, we trekked thousands of miles! My sign says:
The U.S. does need a social democratic party, but it must be anti-war, otherwise it commits a fraud on social democracy. The United States is the imperial superpower, the main military aggressor on the planet. Its rulers must be deprived of the political ability to spend trillions on war, and to kill millions, or they will always use the “necessity” of war to enforce austerity. The “left” domestic project will fail.