Until now Ael and I have been largely disagreeing in the comments. But our disagreement is so fundamental to the issues we're looking at now - and, particularly, looking at in the light of the coming U.S. election - that I think it's worth taking a post to discuss them.
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| Portrait of the Artist Losing His Dainty Freshness, John Day, Oregon, 8/18/20 |
Ael summed up his salient point well in this comment on the "Election Eve" thread:
"...a return to Obama style "Hope and Change rhetoric and fuck all else" won't cut it.
There is rising anti-elitist anti-corporate sentiment in the land.
If a populist insurgency fails in the Democratic party, I am afraid of what it might become in the GOP."
So, first; let me say that I couldn't agree more with his fundamental premise; that the social, economic, and political "playing field" in the current United States is viciously, irremediably skewed against anyone not in a two-yacht family.
The brutal fact is that we are effectively an oligarchy, or a plutocracy, if you will. The "people" - the mass of the citizens - do not, in fact, rule either in and by themselves, or through their elected representatives.
Things that the vast majority of the citizens of this nation like and want to be the things that shape their lives; equal opportunity, freedom from the terror of sudden illness or unemployment rendering them helpless, homeless, and hopeless...a more equitable society, in short...are always put aside in favor of the things that the wealthy citizens of the nation want and like.
The problem is that, right now, there's no way past or through or around that.
First, because the first-past-the-post electoral system always produces two large parties. Unless one of them is dying, as the Whigs did before the Civil War, a third (or more) parties simply splits the vote of that side of the political spectrum and allows the "other side" to win.
Second. because our electoral system is drowned, drenched, soaked in money. You cannot get elected in the U.S. without insanely huge amounts of money.
Which means that either you have to be insanely rich, or you have to court the insanely rich...or you have to mobilize literally millions of un-rich people to pay you and keep paying you.
The result?
The rich have access to political power in a way that everyone else does not.
That's why American politics never bothers to debate the value of tax cuts but has a conniption at the thought of using taxes to reduce inequity.
And that's baked in to the American political system.
Remember these guys?
None of them were poor. None of them were landless. None of them were Black or Asian or Latino or born to the tribes that had lived here before the Vikings (and, obviously, none were women).
They set the system up to over-represent rich white guys. And it's worked well that way ever since.
The story of this nation, the promise of the nation, was that although when they wrote that "all men are created equal" they didn't expect those other men - and women - to take them at their words. And that American history has been a long, hard, fight to make those lofty words reality for those "others".
For much of it's history, though, the United States has been what it is now; an open oligarchy.
Three periods were largely responsible to making some changes in that - the "Progressive" era, from roughly the turn of the 20th Century until the First World War, the New Deal era, from 1932 until the Second World War, and the Civil Rights era, from the 1950s to about 1980.
Right now we're embedded in a Second Gilded Age. The first one was disrupted - not ended, exactly, but broken up and forced to admit some of those "other" people - by the Progressives and the New Dealers. Those left outside by those movements - that is, non-white Americans - had to fight again in the second half of the Twentieth Century to try and gain some of that admission.
But the Empire struck back with the election of Reagan, and the country has been sliding back into economic and political feudalism ever since.
The coalition that frustrated the plutocrats in the first two eras - muckraking journalists, true Leftists - socialists and communists - and labor unions, and noblesse oblige aristos like the Roosevelts - is as gone as the Gibson Girl and the I.W.W.
Instead we're left with a dire dichotomy
The result of the hard graft of the wealthy to own one of the two parties has resulted in a GOP that is, frankly, irredeemable. Just lost. Gone. Entirely given over to everything from embryonic fascism to crony capitalism to really lunatic gabba-gooberosity, stuff like QAnon.
But the other big party is still largely in thrall to it's wealthy donors, and to the fear that if they move to hard to the left they will face the wrath of the now-massively-overpowered financial businesses, big banks, and corporate power.
And, frankly, the problem is that to dismantle the resurrected Gilded Age would, indeed, require what amounts to a revolution.
And that's not a metaphor. It would be, in fact, an economic and social (and political) overturn of the status quo.
Wealth would have to be massively taxed. Capital flight - the ability of large corporate organizations to move their wealth out of the U.S. - would have to first be viciously crushed and then policed with a savage intensity. Financial crimes would have to be investigated and punished with the dispatch and ruthlessness we now use on selling weed or sticking up gas stations. Prisons would have to bulge with banksters and grifters and other financial fraudsters.
In other words, the American public would have to start seeing the wealthy and "business" the way they now see government; as a large, unaccountable, dangerous threat.
And this would have to be done by a million tiny uprisings, tens of thousands of pamphlates, YouTube video after YouTube video, in classrooms and townhalls and community groups. The danger, frankly, is that a "populist" uprising is a fantastic risk of becoming either a dictatorship of the proletariat or a Man on Horseback. There's a reason that the French Revolution produced Napoleon and the Russian, Lenin.
The optimist in me wants to believe that there's a way this can be done. That there's a genuine way for the American people to reclaim those high-flown words written back at the close of the 18th Century.
The realist in me looks around and sees nothing but ignorant armies clashing by night. I don't see the American public as capable of that sort of patient, remorseless, brutally focused action, or as willing to make the sort of sacrifices that action would demand.
And, thus, I'm reminded again why I don't want to write about American politics. The way to political hell is already before us, broad and smooth; a descent into madness on the Right, a timidity and fear of violent revolt on the Left.
The way up is hard and narrow, and requires not simply one person but millions to be willing to walk it, to be willing to work and fight and suffer and, yes, perhaps, die, in that journey.
That's an immense ask.
And I'm not sure - not just if the American people are willing to answer, but - whether I even want to ask if of them for my dread that my worst fears will be horribly confirmed.
For me?
I'll fight.
That's what as a citizen I have to do.
But I fight without much hope.
9 comments:
In my opinion, there really is only one "party", but there are two "brands".
Consumers, er .. voters get a choice for red or blue or nothing.
And every choice leads to the same outcome: The oligarchs rule.
There are no important differences between democrats and republicans.
Look at any policy which has broad bipartisan support (eg. defense bills, spying bills).
They always are the *worst* laws.
However, I think there is hope that things can actually change. Let's talk about beer.
Not so long ago, there was only one kind of beer widely available.
There were lots of different labels on the one kind of beer, but it was all the same dreck.
However, in the last two decades there has been a change and now there is a real choice of Ales, Lagers, wheat beers, etc. Micro-breweries have flourished (even though a lot of the "micro-breweries" end up being owned by the big beer companies.
There are a lot of reasons why this happened, but it is clear that the big brewing companies lost a lot of market power. It also didn't happen overnight.
A big part of the reason is that once a person had real choice to make, they ended up making different choices, but they had to also think a bit about the choice.
As with beer, so too with politics.
With the Internet, you no longer have a monopoly of information flow to the voters.
Plus, people are more aware of the process, so you can have some interesting primaries (where often the real choices are being made).
Look at the Tea Party, or the Democratic Socialists.
You can knock off an old fat fucker a lot easier today.
Finally, you can actually do real things with ordinary people funded campaigns.
Bernie Sanders ran a very competitive primary and his outreach to Latinos will be studied for years. (especially by the Republicans).
What you need to do is to get people used to the idea that politics matters and that they should kick in a sawbuck or two for the candidate of their choice.
Chief, you nailed what appears on the political short and long range sensors. Particularly good was daylighting how the revolution of the common man can be perverted into new and even more oppressive shackles, as per the French and Russian revolutions. A lesson for us for sure. How to attempt to navigate that course and have the best chance to stay off those particular rocks is key. Even our three gently Lefty periods (Progressive, New Deal, Civil Rights) were essentially incremental compared to out-and-out revolution. Rather than the rudder hard-over, a long period of incremental course change seems to suit our overall possibilities. And doing that would of course involve some counter-course corrections, making the overall journey even longer. But it would have the best chance of keeping us off those rocks. It would be a bitter irony if the US became an authoritarian one-party State through the actions of 'people power'.
Thank you for your lucid layout of the situation.
Walt.
"There are no important differences between democrats and republicans.
Look at any policy which has broad bipartisan support (eg. defense bills, spying bills)."
Nonsense.
If you want to see the "important difference" look no further than The Plague.
The Democratic House has a 3 trillion dollar relief bill that puts the money to keeping people solvent and housed until this fucking thing is closer to being solved. They're taking the appropriately-WW2-level-response to a WW2-level event.
The GOP has...nothing. Actually, worse than nothing; they want liability protection for dangerously reckless employers and a payroll tax holiday.
I agree that both parties are WAY too deep in the pockets of the rich. But that's NOT the same as saying they're the same.
"However, I think there is hope that things can actually change. Let's talk about beer.
Not so long ago, there was only one kind of beer widely available.
There were lots of different labels on the one kind of beer, but it was all the same dreck.
However, in the last two decades there has been a change and now there is a real choice of Ales, Lagers, wheat beers, etc. Micro-breweries have flourished (even though a lot of the "micro-breweries" end up being owned by the big beer companies.
There are a lot of reasons why this happened, but it is clear that the big brewing companies lost a lot of market power. It also didn't happen overnight.
A big part of the reason is that once a person had real choice to make, they ended up making different choices, but they had to also think a bit about the choice.
As with beer, so too with politics."
Soooo...let's talk beer;
Here's the top 10 selling brands in the US in 2918 and their percentage of the total beer sales;
Bud Light 15.4%
Coors Light 7.7%
Bud 6.2%
Miller Light 6.1%
Corona 4.1%
Michelob 3.6%
Modelo 3.3%
Natty Light 3.0%
Busch Light 3.0%
Busch 2.2%
So the market power of the Anheuser-Busch Corporation?
29.8% of ALL the beer sold in America.
The big brewers lost some sales, largely to big imports like Heineken, Corona, and Modelo. Those craft brewers? They have a tiny niche. That's great, that's a wonderful thing for beer lovers like me.
But that's not "market power".
That's the indulgence of the powerful. The big brewers - like the big banks and the big internet apps and the big corporations - are happy to let the little craft beers buzz around the money pile...so long as they still get almost all of it.
(con't)
(con't from above)
"With the Internet, you no longer have a monopoly of information flow to the voters. Plus, people are more aware of the process, so you can have some interesting primaries (where often the real choices are being made).
Look at the Tea Party, or the Democratic Socialists. You can knock off an old fat fucker a lot easier today."
True.
You can also misled, disinform, and trap millions of people with idiotic conspiracy theories, just like in the old days when the Birchers used to spam people with pamphlets warning about the UN and polio monkey serums.
The Internet is just a new tool for spreading stories, both true and false.
"Finally, you can actually do real things with ordinary people funded campaigns.
Bernie Sanders ran a very competitive primary and his outreach to Latinos will be studied for years. (especially by the Republicans)."
I was on the ground in Oregon, and I thought the Our Revolution people's primary was a shitshow. Bernie won because Oregon's Democrats - tired of decades of nonsensical GOP shenanagains - are deep, deep blue. But his actual ground game was a mess, and it showed in his inability to get traction this year - barely 20% of the primary vote - after winning outright in 2016. The "Our Revolution" people have NO influence in Oregon politics.
Bernie's people NEVER organized a local election. Never elected a downballot candidate.
And, as such, they're a complete nullity in the state they won for their guy in 2016.
"What you need to do is to get people used to the idea that politics matters and that they should kick in a sawbuck or two for the candidate of their choice."
That's not a bad idea...but that's not nearly enough. If you want what you say you want - a genuine popular government - that means just what it says; POPULAR. People, LOTS of people, have to actually get involved. Learn the issues. Actually inform themselves, get out the vote, go to meetings, speak up, get angry or excited or outraged. And then BECOME the candidates - because otherwise, the people who run will be the same people who have always run; the people who can suck up to the big donors.
And, like I said...that's insanely tough. That's painfully difficult to do for someone with a job and a life. That's why I'm pessimistic. I think that may well be beyond the majority of Americans.
Yes, it is going to be a long row to hoe.
Still, some points:
1) Overall Beer market down, craft beer up.. You are wrong if you don't think it is driving the traditional beer execs crazy.
2) The $3 trillion is purely performative politics. It was never meant to be passed.
Look at the bill that actually passed plus the ocean of money currently being spent to keep the stock market floating.
3) Yes, Bernie's people are very scattershot. In many ways they remind me of my high school drama class. Every individual knows better than the others and wants everyone else to do the work. Still we did put on an impressive show and we learned lots. I have hopes for the democratic socialists (or perhaps the People's Party).
4) Changing attitudes can be done, but it takes time. When I was growing up, drunk drivers were commonplace. Today, my kids really police each other and keep their buddies off the road if they have had a few. They also drink a lot more wine and when they do drink beer, it is almost always craft beer. :)
Again...the big beers are doing just fine; I don't think they're losing sleep over the tiny market share going to Stormbreaker or Dogfish Head. I think they ARE losing sleep over the loss of revenue that the Plague is hammering bars and restaurants with, as well they should be, and as the rest of us should be, too.
Krugman makes the point that the DJIA is being floated for two main reasons; 1) tech companies, making huge bank out of all of us working remotely, and 2) because there's literally nowhere else for the money to go.
And my point is that you say "there's no difference" between red and blue. Well, there's your difference right there; at least blue is willing to head-fake towards sanity (and it's not a fake - it's a genuine attempt to get money to people). Red? It's insane. It's Goldfinger Politics; "No, Mister Bond. I expect you to die!"
Learned lots? Maybe where you live, but not here. After taking the Democratic primary outright in 2016 the Berniecrats just went away in 2020; Bernie got barely a fifth of the primary vote. The downballot...well, there WAS no downballot. Our Revolution didn't run anyone. The Conventional Democrats are solidly in command, and Oregon's GOP is such a Trumpist shitshow that outside the places where the cows outnumber the people there IS no Oregon GOP, so that means that the CorporaDems run the state.
This isn't about changing attitudes. This is about changing ACTIONS. Even harder...it's about getting a people who have been subject to years of a push to change their attitudes into "politics is entertainment" to stop and start acting as if politics really IS a life-and-death issue.
that's hard. That's cruelly hard. Most Americans still don't even vote, the simplest, easiest form of action possible, especially here where we all vote through the mail.
So I want to be hopeful...but the ugly reality is that we have an utterly worthless press and about 40% of the public that is anything from full-on fascist to bull-goose looney. That would be a huge hill to climb if we still had the sort of structural support we had in 1906. But the muckrakers are gone, the socialists are gone, the activist unions are gone, the progressives are a mess and all over the place, without a concerted plan of action for taking the nation back to the Left.
That's not just a hill. That's fucking Lhotse Face.
And the latest in the "there's no difference between the parties": the GOP platform, 2020, which consists of "We pledge our lives to you, Dear Leader!".
I'm gonna keep hammering at this over and over again until it sinks in.
We have two choices.
Vote blue, and push the Democrats to the Left from the inside, the way the wingnuts did the GOP.
Or,
Split the left vote and make the Republicans our masters.
It's really just that simple.
Thanks for this post btw, timely and contained, it might not feel it to write it but it's some small measure of stability.
Probably too late to post but I'll see what happens.
I basically agree with the Chief with one important caveat. The first Gilded Age ended in financial ruin which gave the Progressives a chance to level the table a bit for a while. It was the Great Depression that really gave them their chance and FDR (one of the oligarchy by birth) made the most of it (even attempting to change the number of judges on the Supreme Court).
We are on the verge of another financial collapse again on two totally separate levels. First, as the Chief noted, Main Street America is hurting somewhere between a bit and really bad. They are also being completely ignored by the Republicans, which is scary stupid.
Second, as the Chief also noted, Wall Street has been driven to insane heights by a handful of tech companies. Officially the S&P 500 is up significantly for the year but over half of the companies in the S&P 500 are down significantly for the same time period.
This is creating an elite within the elite and is setting us up for economic wildfires like those surrounding Portland only much hotter and more destructive. I'm pretty sure the Fed is nervous about this situation but they do not have any tools that can address it. The rest of the government is ignoring it. Which is also scary stupid.
Depending on timing and the vagaries of Internet conspiracy theories, the 2020 election might be the craziest on record with very decisive and highly unpredictable outcomes. Assuming nothing blows up in 2020, the 2022 WILL be the craziest on record. It might also be the last. The current phase of the US is drawing to a close and I cannot see what comes next.
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