“ Poverty and healthcare assume the appearance of individual responsibility, the state assumes the appearance of an obstruction to open market circulation flows, the commodity assumes the appearance of base survival, a satiated proletariat assumes the appearance of a good credit score, a redistribution of wealth assumes the appearance of socialism, a megalomaniac assumes t he appearance of fascism, culture assumes the appearance of a mechanism of empowerment, the struggle against racism assumes the appearance of democratic leaders taking the knee in kente cloth, a healthy economy assumes the appearance of a healthy population, ad nauseum. Whether in the aftermath of a Biden victory, riddled as it is with vacuous appeals for unity, or even in the more superficial 2019 pseudo-debate between Slavoj Žižek and Jordan Peterson, whose harmony of apparent disparities bespoke more about the spectacle than it did about political polarization—in all that surrounds
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.” —Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of the World Order, 1996, p. 51