"Boundary Pendulum" Chapter 7 Balance

They were back to their glue-like state.

Love is like this, as long as there is one party who can tolerate enough, has enough acting skills, and enough to deceive himself, then a delicate balance can be maintained. What's more, the two people are in full swing now, and they only need to take a small step back and put up a flag to imply that "this is taboo, don't touch it". Xu Zhirun was not the Governor-General. As Yeshua said, he lost confidence in people and placed his heart on dogs. Just being a dog won't make their love walk on thin ice. When Xu Zhirun was ready to go back, he asked his roommate to read "1 Corinthians" a few times to himself—to bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, endure all things*.

Soon, the general election hurried to come.

Even people like Zhuang Chu who are indifferent to politics have begun to pay attention. For no other reason, Trump is too funny. His existence even makes people wonder if the Republican establishment went to sleep on its back during the party's election, or whether it chose such a bizarre "happy comedian" as its opponent in order to continue the results of the Democratic Party's ruling. Of course, this belongs to the mentality of the audience who do not care about American politics and purely watch a piece of music.

California belongs to the dark blue warehouse, coupled with colleges and universities where the "blue on top" elites gather, the students around Xu Zhirun are extremely relaxed before the election, as if the Democratic Party has already secured victory in the general election. The results of the polls are also quite gratifying. When people talk about the general election, they occasionally remind each other to vote, and they will say, "Oh, whether you vote or not is a result." However, the month leading up to the election was a bit bumpy: Hillary's email address and health situation became the target of Trump's pursuit, and Trump's repeated sex scandals and tax evasion tricks also Not spared by the Democrats.

On the day of the general election, the school's Price Center opened a small hall, which broadcasted the live broadcast of the general election counting news, and also provided free refreshments and coffee. Ha, pick up the wool of capitalism!

Xu Zhirun returned home early that day, turned on the TV, and waited for the result. The results of the Rust Belt came out one after the other, and everyone was in an uproar—Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, etc. all sided with Trump. Xu Zhirun can feel that the world has changed-opening FB, the students are enthusiastically accusing the election of possible fraud. At two o'clock in the morning, enthusiastic students marched around the school, protesting against the results of the general election and calling for a "recount". Although the weather in California was still the same the next day, it seemed that everything was overshadowed.

Xu Zhirun got up early to go to class and found that the march had turned into a sit-in protest in front of the library. "Ding Dong—" At the same time, he received an email from the school on his mobile phone, and the school's psychological counseling is open for appointments—any classmate who is depressed and depressed because of the election result can come to make an appointment for a conversation.

In the morning, it was the teaching assistant's class. In the end, the assistant left 20 minutes for the students to vent their bad mood after the election. Another boy in the class said tearfully that he had given up on lining up to vote because the polling station was far away. Although this will not have much impact on the dark blue warehouse in California, he believes that there are many people in the same situation as him in the swing state. "Every vote matters" was deeply imprinted in Xu Zhirun's mind.

The boy said firmly with red eyes: "If you don't cast this vote and choose to be indifferent to politics, then you are actually giving up your rights and handing over the world to the people you hate." That year was also the lowest total voter turnout over the years. Back in the day, in 1819, when the United States suffered its first economic collapse, many debtors who were once apathetic to politics entered the political arena, pursuing measures such as debt forgiveness and reforming the tax code to protect their own interests. At that time, many people seemed to have a new understanding of the country, and politics, a seemingly distant matter, was actually closely related to everyone's vital interests.

In the afternoon, there were only a few people left in the sociology class that could fill the entire 100-person amphitheater, and there were also a few international students like Xu Zhirun. The professor offered condolences to the students who did not come to class before the class, and said that he could understand the behavior of everyone not coming to class at this time, because he did not want to appear here. At present, this is the biggest influence left to Xu Zhirun in the general election. He didn't understand at the time that it heralded an increasingly fragmented world at hand.

In a seminar three years later, an American professor would talk to them about politics, culture, economics, and more. Because some theorists write papers that are really hard to read, their way of having fun before class is to watch and critique the Trump news this week. At that time, a classmate asked the professor that Trump's sex scandal was so conclusive that there were even more than one. (After all, in 2018, it was also revealed that there was a scandal involving Trump and an AV woman before the 16-year election, but the matter was sealed up by Trump's lawyers with money.) So, what are women embracing? The mentality to vote for the misogynistic and sex scandal-ridden president?

The teacher sighed deeply and said, "Because people's identities are diverse. For example, you are a woman at this time, but at the same time you may also be an anti-abortion supporter, a gun freedom supporter, etc. This is actually It is when you vote, that some of your other interests are aligned with Trump, so that you can even cast aside your female identity at that moment and vote for him. When you are short-sighted enough, you will only care about his promises How to stimulate the economy, how to build walls to protect the interests of existing citizens, and do not care how to face choosing a misogynist to come to power, the malice that women will bear may be out of control in the future.”

This reason hit Xu Zhirun in an instant, God, that's how human nature is!

Zhuang Chu never cared who the president of this country was. In his opinion, it seemed like he had to pick out the one that wasn't rotten enough out of two rotten leaves. He doesn't care about the nice slogans of "liberal democracy", which are politicians' guise. From the moment the United States was founded, what they had was not "liberal democracy": those who formed the federal government did not believe in the people, but insisted that government must be based on the people; those who supported the constitution only wanted the freedom of property, and when the state Because these "valued people" who own property are stabilized they have negative freedom. * Not to mention that this "liberal democracy" excludes blacks, indigenous people, women, etc. from the beginning. But at the same time, the "Proud Boys" who lined up to cheer "Make America Greater" also disgusted him. This is an extreme, loud populist backlash. As an immigrant, Zhuang Chu has never completely belonged to this country. He lives in the middle of two cultures, so he simply doesn't think about it. He's more concerned about what's relevant to him in the state's referendum proposal, which determines which party he's on this year.

Xu Zhirun remembers that they rarely reached an agreement on the position on California Proposition 64 - allowing adults over the age of 21 to legally cultivate a certain amount of marijuana and use recreational marijuana. This may be due to the environment in which they grew up: if you read recent history, the humiliating Opium War and the disgust for its "culprit" opium have long been ingrained into the cultural DNA of the people of this country, and they both It is difficult to understand the decriminalization or legalization of drugs. There are countless unnamed police officers who sacrifice their lives every year because of the drug war. Is the entertainment that comes from stepping on other people's blood really so reassuring?

But when California passed this proposal, cheers resounded on FB again, and Xu Zhirun's classmates retweeted and liked it. They also point out that the high taxes received after the legalization of recreational marijuana can be used for drug education, reducing drug violence and so on.

There is also a very important issue on this topic, people's fear of biopolitics. This is no longer the stage of the feudal period when the monarch decides the power to kill a person, and human beings have become a "population prepared by social and political relations". Through indiscernible discipline and supervision, it governs every step of everyone from life to death. For example, policies aimed at the health of the people have actually penetrated and disciplined everyone’s body. The country attaches so much importance to the survival rate and mortality rate because one of the fundamentals for the continuation of national politics is the population. Even freedom, the life creed that many people, including Xu Zhirun, rely on to survive, in biopolitics, is produced by this discipline and governance skill. "The expression of liberalism can only be this: I will produce for you what you are free by, and I will make you free to be free." * This time, except for the negative path of the beat generation counterculture —I will waste my life and time without caring about the life and health of Lao Shizi; what can resist the ubiquitous admonition?

Of course not everyone is optimistic about legalizing recreational marijuana. There is an NGO called SAM (smart approaches to Marijuana) that insists that recreational marijuana should not be legalized so as to be commercialized, and is eager to find a third path between legalization and criminalization. But it goes back to the fundamental problem above: its rationale is that when recreational marijuana is commoditized, the profits of related interests always take precedence over public health. And the core it points to is public health, which is still included in the biopolitical discussion above.

This time, Xu Zhirun didn't talk about so much thinking with Zhuang Chu. In the past period of time, Xu Zhirun was even a little confused: he was occasionally extremely aggressive, poking at the relationship between them like holding a "knife". Knowing that there is a high probability of not getting a satisfactory answer, he insisted on asking Zhuang Chu to answer his own position. Because everything is tacit enough, it will only add disappointment to other things.

Now, they rarely agree on one issue. Even if this may be caused by the overlap of identity background and growth environment, so what? It's good to have a superficial agreement between lovers. Why bother with each person's thinking process and the reason for coming to this conclusion.

On closer inspection, their coherence may be broken.

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This chapter is very trivial to write, and will be revised after it is written.

*1 Corinthians 13:7 Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

*Refer to "Global Drug Situation and Related Challenges and Responses from the Perspective of the International Narcotics Control Board", authors Hao Wei, Li Jin, Li Jianhua. Part of the biopolitics comes from Foucault.