The Black Hole & the Patient Revolution
Part 1: After 10 Years of Trump, Can the Left Name the Real Crisis?
The US-Israeli bombing of Iran and the rise of Zohran Mamdani seem to represent opposing tendencies in American politics: neoconservative imperialism abroad, and insurgent democratic socialism at home. Yet despite the endless drama this opposition generates for the news cycle, a closer look reveals them as two sides of the same crisis: a politics of immediacy and historical repetition, with no viable exit strategy.
After 10 years of Trump, I fear the American left is as lost as ever. Mamdani’s victory over the Democratic establishment in the NYC mayoral primary is exciting, and credit is due to the DSA and the campaign’s 50,000 volunteers. But if we can’t understand the root causes of Trumpism, imperial wars, and the left’s repeated strategic failures—most recently of Bernie, the squad, and the DSA—then we’ll never build the kind of power it takes to change U.S. foreign policy or realize the true potential represented by Mamdani and his campaign.
Most Americans outside MAGA seem to agree that Trump is a symptom, not the cause. But this is hardly a point of unity when the diagnoses differ so widely. If we want to achieve real freedom, equality, and democracy for working people, we need at least four things:
The right diagnosis
A real solution
A long-term strategy to achieve it
A network of independent institutions capable of scaling power and coordinating mass action
Right now, I think we have none of them.
And it’s not because of stupidity or bad faith—though, we are apes, so there’s always going to be some of that. And it’s not like we just need to log off, protest, and organize more, though that’s certainly part of it. I think we face a wicked problem, terrifying in scope and scale, that has long prevented us from securing a single one of those foundations, let alone all four.
The problem we face—the thing driving our division and demoralization—is the very same thing that prevents us from understanding it. It is the black hole of our social order, sucking everything into itself, devouring meaning, breaking bonds, distorting communication, and warping all logic into one vile maxim. All shortcuts inevitably spiral into it. And like quicksand, the more we frantically resist, the deeper we sink. No one even controls the damn thing, and no one can fully understand it. But it’s like the parable of the elephant and the blind men. Each of us touches different parts and calls it:
capitalism
oligarchy
neoliberalism
imperialism
controlled opposition
managed democracy
elite capture
the nonprofit industrial complex
manufactured consent
the society of the spectacle
the culture of narcissism
systemic racism
cisheteronormativity
technocratic rationality
I call it the capitalist culture war industry. And I’ve come to believe there is only one way to escape its gravitational pull.
The only way to freedom is to play the long game, which all forces conspire against—political, economic, cultural, interpersonal, psychological. It is the greatest tragedy, born of the nightmare of the 20th century. And yet we have to do it. The patient revolution is the only way.
There’s an ongoing discussion about the strategy of revolutionary patience, but it’s often quite dense and insular. While I’ve learned a lot from this discussion, I approach things differently in a variety of ways. Later in this series, I’ll say more about the culture war industry, the long game, and what a patient revolution might look like. But before we can chart a path forward, we need to understand the terrain, distorted as it may appear. To get a sense of where we are now, let’s quickly survey the diagnostic discourse from recent years.
If Trumpism is the symptom, what is the cause?
Is the real problem our addiction to celebrity culture and reality TV? Or the backlash of the “deplorables” who are hopelessly racist, sexist, heteronormative, and provincial? Is it the deranging effects of social media and “the algorithm” that sorts us into cults with gang psychology? Or is it the left’s failure to produce masterful performers and motormouths for the attention economy? Maybe our leaders just need to smile more? Or have more rizz?
Or maybe it’s something deeper in the unfolding of history—the return of fascism, perhaps? The unlikely triumph of postmodern conservatism after the death of god? Maybe America has lost its soul? Maybe it’s the inevitable result of the slaveholder’s counter-revolution of 1776 or the original sin of 1619? Or perhaps Trump is just the latest face of Bonapartism, the authoritarian form of state power that arose in 1848 to manage the crisis of bourgeois society brought on by industrial capitalism?
While some seek catharsis by roasting right wing celebrities, others think a little self-criticism might be useful. Maybe learning from mistakes is good?
Maybe the Boomer leaders of the Democratic Party were just too old, white, and straight, and we need a sassy gay man like Pete Buttigieg and a brave LatinX woman like AOC to put the fascists in their place in 2028? Or maybe Ezra Klein is right, and what we need is a technocratic vanguard to remake the Democratic Party in the image of Abundance, clearing out administrative barriers to supply-side progressivism?
Others enjoy roasting the likes of Klein and Yglesias as wimpy liberals and sycophants who sell the latest progressive cant to NYT readers and self-described policy wonks. These roasters might trace the problem back to the early 1970s and the rise of neoliberalism, when the Democrats abandoned the working class and joined the Republicans in globalizing, deindustrializing, and financializing the economy for 50 years, producing an upward transfer of $50 trillion from the lower to the upper classes. Might that have something to do with Trumpism?
Still others blame the mirror image of Trumpism, the movement that began to accelerate around 2014 and arguably peaked between 2020 and 2021. It’s been called identity politics, critical social justice, intersectionalism, Wokism, the Great Awokening, or, as Freddie deBoer memorably put it: “Please Just Fucking Tell Me What Term I Am Allowed to Use for the Sweeping Social and Political Changes You Demand.” Purveyors of this brand of progressive capitalist politics have been dubbed the Elect, the New Puritans, the Brahmin Left, the Clerisy, and Virtue Hoarders. The common charge is that the movement to fight identity-based oppression took on a sanctimonious, totalizing, authoritarian, and elitist character, a combination most Americans find repellent—especially when paired with hypocrisy.
But where did that come from? Is it the ideology of the professional-managerial class (PMC) under late capitalism? The corporate Democrats’ strategy to promote elite diversity in place of universal public goods? Did universities indoctrinate generations of upwardly mobile young people in “the school of resentment” and Cold War postmodern anti-Marxism? Does social justice fill the Protestant-shaped hole in the American psyche—the need to prove you are specially chosen by God through visible signs of virtue?
Maybe DEI and identity politics were good until they got captured by elites? Or maybe they’re total bullshit, and the only possible response is culturally conservative class politics? Because, you know, basic anti-discrimination and multicultural solidarity are obviously the same as unhinged essentialism and PMC class warfare…
Maybe absolutely nothing has changed in a century and Lenin and Trotsky have all the answers for 2025? Or maybe any use of them leads straight to the gulag and we need even more leaderless movements?
Fuck it, maybe Stalinism wasn’t so bad? Maybe it wasn’t the betrayal of revolutionary socialism? Maybe it was a theoretical advance over Marxism? Maybe all that stuff about purges, gulags, and millions killed is just… Western imperialist propaganda?
I’m tired, boss. Let’s just join a cult.
Okay, well, that was fun. Kind of. But I think you see the point.
Beneath the chaotic mess, there’s a kind of logic. Many of these perspectives contain powerful insights trapped in monocausal frames. Some turn important truths into emotionally satisfying cognitive distortions. Others are confused but for reasons that are revealing. Together, they clearly suggest a larger story. Yet somehow, it feels impossible for us to tell it. And that brings us back to the core of the problem—the black hole—which, among other things, pulls the DSA into the Democratic Party, even as some caucuses struggle to break free. If we want to get out of this mess, we need to understand what causes it and stop making the same mistakes.
In my next posts, I’ll step back from the chaos and start mapping the structure, functions, and history of the culture war industry. My new project aims to synthesize a set of critical concepts—Adorno and Horkheimer’s “culture industry,” controlled opposition, the PMC, the nonprofit industrial complex, and more—into one coherent, accessible framework situated in a critique of capitalism, a critical leftist history, and a modern scientific understanding of human nature and psychology.