Sorry, I hit reply a while ago & didn't see your edits before replying. Why did you edit out the bit about Hegel if I may ask?
Politics becomes PR and managing perceptions tied to the media. the result is people don't trust politicians or what they say, increasingly don't trust the media, and even the democratic system.
I was just talking about this at a party the other day. Despite what all reasons everyone else came up with for the election, I'm convinced Hillary lost the PR war. A friend once said the Queen of England was basically Mickey Mouse - as in there's no real political agency with the crown. (But in a way doesn't 'Mickey' dictate the way Disney should be Disney? - it's at this point I can't think about this shit anymore, haha.) I'm afraid the function of the presidency will be entertainment & appeasement as well. We saw a bit of performance with Clinton, a lot more with Bush, Obama.. I don't know what Trump is & I suppose no one really will until after his presidency, I guess.
You don't juts filter out bad information and then arrive at Truth or understanding of the social totality.
But being able to filter it would be a start, I think.
the extreme difficulty, of doing immanent critique is that we have to use the tools that are the subject of our critique, so the critique always has to turn back on itself as an ongoing process.
This occurred to me as I was posting it here on Reddit, which is why I used a Reddit example in the post.. but I agree that the goal is to obtain an understanding of a social totality with which to contrast the hyperreal.
And, I really do think thought & criticism is important. I think radical thought is needed. Somewhere else I actually make the plea for more pure thought - tldr; Marx's communism was a failed experiment of the 20th century, Weber argues our fate is to die in the iron cage, we need more ideas/alternatives for the 21st century if we are to avoid that fate (Zizek).
In a way I guess I'm asking for some of these ideas in this subreddit, too...
That being said, I think critique will only take us so far.. Like that joke about 3 guys & the fire:
A physicist, an engineer and a mathematician were all in a hotel sleeping when a fire broke out in their respective rooms.
The physicist woke up, saw the fire, ran over to his desk, pulled out his CRC, and began working out all sorts of fluid dynamics equations. After a couple minutes, he threw down his pencil, got a graduated cylinder out of his suitcase, and measured out a precise amount of water. He threw it on the fire, extinguishing it, with not a drop wasted, and went back to sleep.
The engineer woke up, saw the fire, ran into the bathroom, turned on the faucets full-blast, flooding out the entire apartment, which put out the fire, and went back to sleep.
The mathematician woke up, saw the fire, ran over to his desk, began working through theorems, lemmas, hypotheses , you-name-it, and after a few minutes, put down his pencil triumphantly and exclaimed, "I have proven that I can put the fire out!" He then went back to sleep.
This kind of philosophy sometimes takes it one level further in pondering the exact destructive nature of the fire - or is it destructive? Is there a fire? And, in the meantime, assuming there's a fire I'd like to know some of the different (despite imperfection) ideas on what to do about it - which typically manifest in the language of political policy (communal) & psychology (individual) rather than philosophy, I think.
after all doesn't this moment represent a deep failure of 'the left' and its practices and ideas. I don't think we can just turn to some ready-made bag of concepts or thoughts or practices as if to solve a situation and history that marks their limits.
It's interesting you mention this because for the past few years I've been kind of put off by modern/post-modern thought in my private life & been more interested in mythology. I wish there were more accessible documentation of ancient, almost primordial thought.. but I think a lot of the means to access those metaphors are lost & we have to reinvent them again.
I'm contradicting myself. I agree that there needs to be some kind of comprehensive thought before there can be action in the long term. But like you mentioned surviving capitalism we can't reject means I'm acting regardless so why not small thoughts, and small rebellions?