it really feels like, from the Epstein saga to police committing judicial murders to Barr's antics to Mnuchin's et al's corruption, to the horrid COVID response, a basic throughline of this moment is a particularly blatant combination of dynamics of illegitimacy and impunity 1/2
and bracketing any other considerations about their meaning or value (which run everywhere from urgent to far less) a lot of convulsions sweeping the public sphere - from tearing down statues (which is rigtheous and profound IMO!) to endless debates over "cancellation" 2/3
(which are often saturated with all kinds of bad faith) what we are also witnessing is a correlative desire for SOME kind of accountability, however symbolic, displaced, substitutive, whatever, and an urgent need for collectivities to form and enact it dramatically 3/4
again, and without flattening the status and stakes of all these different struggles, their outcome as yet is very unclear, and the key questions seems to be how they will or will not generate structural change, & also how they'll evolve if the system doubles down on impunity 4/5
especially in the mode of what would arguably be an exemplary perfect apogee of impunity/illegitimacy, from a guy whose story already embodies it: a successfully contested election or other scenario that sees Trump "win" a second term 5/5
