On Victory Christian Steckler University of New Hampshire The lefts ability to gain electoral ground is beyond question the

enthusiasm with which Barack Obama ascended to the presidency, on a wave of Democrat gains in both the House and the Senate, testifies to the lefts enduring appeal. Nor is the left inflicted by the impossibility of achieving legislative ends once exercising power; although the Obama agenda was dissolved, diluted, and reconstituted in various forms far more amenable to conservative interests, its ultimate triumph over Republican opposition has materially improved the lives of millions. There is a sense, however, in which these victories are not won, but cededgranted in exchange for the Democratic Partys silence on issues closer to the heart of capital. The everyday performance of authentic domestic politics betrays the spectacular character of US foreign policy, staging the division between domestic and global such that Americas international involvement remains insulated from criticism. The Republican strategy of anti-governancetotal opposition to the progressive agendademonstrates that political success can no longer be measured in positive, linear terms like political capital, but is better expressed in the language of thermodynamics. What if we were to regard the stubborn spoken resistance of conservative representatives not as partisan bickering, but as a concerted effort to raise the stakes? Gaining an inch suddenly requires the mobilization commensurate to entire warsand this is precisely what we get. The media capitalizes competing events on the marketplace of images. This is not quite right: we already know that before the broadcast there are no events, and after there are no images. The amorphous attitudinal line taken by the masses is called the political climate because it cannot be forecasted as a meteorologist might forecast the weather. Who writes the news? Politics is the dissolution of events into their pure energetic form, the making equivalent of conflicts such that they can be resolved with words. Antagonism deferred. Whenever the left crusades against a particular excess of the status quo, the right shifts their investments to raise the exchange value of the issue under consideration and limit contestation to these high-profile, invariably domestic struggles. The failure to challenge the geopolitical interests that precede and frame so-called social or civil issues can be held responsible for the historical inability of liberalism to resist the appeal of national exceptionalism. A viable anti-war movement has yet to emerge in the United States, the nervous center of global militarism. The assassination of Osama Bin Laden confirms that our society is still of the order of the spectacle, or at least some order not very different. The nationwide celebration of Bin Ladens deathannounced on the anniversary of Bushs Mission Accomplished debacle penetrated sporting arenas and left-leaning college campuses alike, testifying to the manifest brutality when Empire subsists beyond politics. The product of the Special Forces victory turned out to be none other than that achieved on September 11: consensus over the role the American military plays in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. The Libyan rebels advance into Tripoli no doubt buttresses this global conglomeration of violent affects.