Where Id Was, Ego Will Be
What events in Chicago and Kansas City showed us over the weekend is that increasingly dangerous to protest these rallies. We start to wonder how long it will be before someone is killed. We haven’t any excuse for our surprise. As Freud put it, “where the id was, the ego will be”—we desire unconsciously, and then we craft justifications for our brutal actions. He likened the relationship to a rider (ego) struggling to control a much more powerful horse (id). At the moment, that horse is called rage and racism, paranoia and nostalgia. It doesn’t care whether you understand the world that is changing, just as it doesn’t care that you might have preferred a “reasonable” candidate,” and it scoffs as your vain attempts to rein it in.
Deleuze said this ravenous id is a machine that eats and breaths and heats. It is a desiring machine that can’t and won’t stop; it will drag the ego along with it, and the ego will search out excuses for wherever it is dragged. While many by November will equivocate and find clever ways to trick themselves into thinking there could be a morally coherent reason to support an implicitly fascist and overtly white supremacist candidate, he is only popular because he is their truth, their id. One could only cheer for this out of a lack of information or a poverty of morals, and the ignorance excuse is quickly fading.
When I think back over the political events that have shaped me during my graduate and doctoral studies, there have always been three that stood out: 1) the recession from which I wrongly assumed we would learn, 2) Occupy Wall Street, where the taboo against speaking ill of capitalism was broken, and, most importantly, 3) Black Lives Matter, where we found out just how controversial it could be to suggest we shouldn’t kill unarmed human beings. I’ve protested alongside both of the latter two movements, and I’ve watched friends in social media space openly talk about how protesters should be pepper sprayed, jailed, or worse. The “desire not to know” is an entrenched beast.
But I’ll finish my doctorate during a fourth event, one which scholars in my fields have discussed and expected for decades but which is now happening before our eyes. In each of these events, I’ve watched people who doubtlessly think themselves moral consistently take the easy, regressive, and brutal path, and those without “eyes to see” have armed themselves with every ounce of self-deception imaginable. As a privileged, straight, and white male, I haven't much to fear beyond the continuous assault on education (dire as that may be, it isn't even close to life-threatening). On the other hand, those without such privilege—especially those who are shamelessly called "thugs" and troublemakers—are living in dangerous times, and many were assaulted over the weekend. People of color, immigrants, and Muslims have legitimate concern for their safety right now, and their fears lie in those who (without any trace of irony) actually consider themselves Christian. This is an interesting time where nostalgia for imaginary pasts reigns, where paranoia over fantasized threats wins over any inconvenient barrage of reality, and where xenophobia expresses itself with open vengeance. When psychosis is the new normal and the “talking cure” won’t work, opposition has to be framed as a moral argument.
