THE 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION WILL BE AN INFLECTION POINT IN THE (GLOBAL) HISTORY OF WHITE AMERICA.
The processes involving decision-making have become perhaps the least understood and yet the most crucial in the recent developments of postmodern warfare. It is enough to follow Joe Biden as he is portrayed in media to grasp that he is being the target of constant cognitive attacks. This is not an apology for the decisions and behaviors that he has been projecting onto the cyberspace and, more broadly, throughout the cybersphere. He must be held accountable for his political decisions and alliances. Even though the comeback of Donald Trump to the White House appears in my imagination as the final scene of Dr. Strangelove (1964) by Stanley Kubrick.
So far, the twenty first century has been the eloquent stage of the radical transformation of our political spectatorship. If during the turn-of-the-century period and the wake of the New Millennium we were still convinced that individuals working as a community were going to transform the political status-quo, those late-modern ideological aspirations are all gone. As we keep furthering into this new century (and we are about to reach the completion of the first quarter), we become more and more convinced that real community-driven transformation can be achieved without the consent of the political status-quo. The recent protests in Kenya are an open-ended example of the radical push that community-organized groups (despite its cognitive or cyber origins) can enact over the political status-quo. Moreover, we are not far from witnessing the radical consequences that social organization can bring upon political institutions, as it will become possible to force heads of state to step down due to the pressures embodied by socialized groups.
It is indeed ironic that when any national leader feels the public pressure of the masses’ disapproval, s(he) appeals to an attack to democracy as the main culprit of our global public discontent.
Despite the overwhelming set of realities that the irreversible launching of cognitive warfare has brought upon all the “connected” human beings living today on this planet, the Presidential Election of the United States still purports to be a globally crucial process in which, however, only American citizens can participate. We are wrong about this assumption, though. This election will be without a doubt the most globally weaponized in U.S. history and not even the intellectual resurrection of reverend MLK Jr. could placate the Western anxieties that another round of Trump versus Biden places ahead of all of us Westerners. More so as the so-called Far-Right keeps gaining cognitive domain throughout Europe and even Latin American and African nations.
There is not any good reason to be afraid of the Far-Right or the Trump-Biden clash of 2024. Not at all. Instead, the current configuration of the global political and ideological set of spectrums is the inevitable call to either disengage or practice the art of total immersion in the crucial tasks inherent to the design of the cognitive realm. We are witnessing with various degrees of awe and disdain how our ontologies are unfolding, mirroring, magnifying, shrinking, multiplying, and becoming virtual through our constant participation, either passive or active, in the cyberspace and the cybersphere. No other time like ours has projected at the global scale such an active cognitive participation as the times we are currently living.
Therefore, it is not surprising that this year’s U.S. Presidential Election will appear as the corollary of a global electoral year that has witnessed the election of the first president woman in Mexico and the imminent ascension of the Far-Right in global France.
Due to this inexorable global political scenario, after the first “debate” between Trump and Biden, conservative democrats have aggressively called for a replacement of Joe Biden as their presidential candidate. It is unlikely that this will happen, despite the fact that Biden is evidently a constant target of cognitive attacks for which he is not well-equipped to swiftly counteract. It has been already well-established why China and Russia, literally without moving a military finger, are battling to have Trump back at the White House. It is not only about the erosion of democracy and democratic values in the United States and throughout Western societies. It is about global cognition. Democratic erosion is indeed more subtle and deploys forms of soft-power that most of the time pass unnoticed among civilians, however, these are as incisive and powerful as any other military weapon.
Some may say that we are living very confusing times, but instead I would prefer to signal towards a radical shift in the ways we understand cognition and its impact in the transformation of national citizens into global ones.
It is too late to blame education for the ascension of Trumpism not only in the United States, but also at the global scale, manifesting in specific forms and adapting to the demands of the Western cohorts that articulate the status-quo in their respective societies.
The United States concentrates the highest percentage of college-educated individuals across Western societies, but, still, it is not enough to guarantee that most of the electorate (and global supporters) will approach this year’s Presidential Election without a short-sighted global understanding of the long-lasting implications of re-electing either Trump or Biden. The fact that Trump is again the underdog makes him (and his active supporters) even more competitive than the prowess that Biden (and his nostalgic supporters, more susceptible to tragic reactions and thus more inactive) could project onto the global stage.
This year’s presidential election, therefore, is indeed a crucial inflection point in the (global) history of White America. While historical and new so-called minorities seem to be unwilling to cast a vote for neither of the candidates, and some are even reluctant to cast a vote for Biden again, the exchanges and cultural negotiations of white Americans will play a crucial strategic game as to what it would mean to be white in the United States (and globally) after November 2024.
It is not a time to feel ashamed or blame your neighbor for having hipster bumper stickers on the back of their car or for hanging confederate flags in their porch. Or for being an uneducated redneck or a pompous PhD person too good to shop at the Red Lion, WinCo, or Fred Meyer.
Those are exactly the reasons that have placed ahead of the entire Western world another round between Trump and Biden. In order to be prepared for the cognitive battles that are already throbbing in the imminent future, White America needs to come into terms with its own present. There will be time to work towards social restitution. Humans are more competitive than ever before. Nevertheless, cognition is crucially demanding our most vital and honest efforts. There is nothing more dangerous that being unable to realize that we keep furthering into a cognitive process of not knowing and, in consequence, of a continuous lack of understanding.
