Ten Years Gone
Field notes from the tipping point
I have consciously used social media for political and professional purposes, posting “field notes” of current events and how I contextualized them. Ten years ago, on this date, I took note of Donald Trump’s rising poll numbers, though party Republicans were not welcoming him. He was running a well-trod path for mainstream party hopefuls, but went harder on the politics of division, months before the first 2016 primary vote.
December 8, 2015
It’s a task to hold the moral high ground when someone runs your [Republicans’] political strategy of division and exclusion to its logical end for you. You cultivated a base of ignorance and fear, you can’t tell them that you were just playing them, all along. You have to take command of the discourse — have your current Sith Lord [John McCain? Mitt Romney?] remind folks that even he isn’t willing to go full-blown Islamophobe. Problem is, just like trying to pin women’s health clinic shootings on leftists, there’s no depth to the puddle [Blaming the Left for violence by the Right is longtime SOP]. You got no track record of doing otherwise, over the past 40 years.
Who was the last Republican candidate for President who did not: 1. Visit the John Birch Society; 2. Visit Bob Jones University; 3. Run a campaign ad that portrayed Blacks, welfare recipients, “the takers,” illegal immigrants, or other stereotypes of people as threats from within? Jerry Ford? They don’t do a politics of inclusion.
Ronald Reagan: “Welfare Queen”
GHW Bush: Willie Horton ad
Bob Dole: John Birch Society visit
GW Bush: Bob Jones University visit
John McCain: Called Obama “redistributionist”
Mitt Romney: “The Takers “
December 8, 2015
Godwin’s Rule of Nazi Analogies: As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.
The unstated corollary being: No comparison involving Nazis or Hitler is actually applicable to the discussion.
I can’t wait until we see the bump in the polls. It’s why the party leadership is crying out in unison, if they don’t try to put the kibosh on the whole thing right now, he might actually BE their candidate.
December 8, 2015
They know that if Trump wins the ignorant and frightened base they have cultivated so carefully, they are FUCKED.
Live by the hatred, die by the hatred.
Donald Trump did not invent 21st century American politics of division. While the Republican party’s inability (or unwillingness) to hold their base from more overtly fascist appeals materialized over the next months, less apparent at the time was the Democrats corresponding loss of their base to overtly progressive appeals.
In late 2015, Bernie Sanders career-long critique of social class injustice, from the distribution of wealth to wages to tax rates, along with social policy matters such as the costs of health care, housing, and education, fit all the nooks and crannies of Liberalism, but without the abeyance to Capital. Most all rising national Democrats who have gained office since Bernie’s first incursion are of a more progressive stripe than the corporatists. The corporatists still fight them all, despite the progressives showing they hold growing popular appeal.
The people had been having the shit kicked out of them for over 40 years by Bernie’s first run (now 50 years)—as productivity kept rising, wages stayed flat. The more they worked, the less the earned, the worse their quality of life became. The only solution we had been offering—work harder—stopped working itself.
We stopped talking about hard work being a means of mobility many, many years after it had stopped being so. Now, we understand social class mobility is very much a matter of luck—perhaps accompanied by hard work, but just as likely through winning another form of lottery.
One reason gambling is attractive to the working class is that, unlike selling labor-power, it offers the chance for substantial gain (You have just over a 47% chance to double your money or more on a decisive hand of Blackjack). One reason gambling is attractive to capital is that, as owners, they set casino odds so that they always gain (You have close to a 53% chance to lose it all). The risk of losing a single laborer to a windfall jackpot (The American Dream is to have enough capital that one no longer has to sell labor-power) is offset by the steady income, beyond the amount of every jackpot.
At the same time we have seen the myth of hard work itself producing wealth, the American ruling class is no longer promising their inventions will make life easier. AI is going to force a restructuring of the job market, they promise, and this will be experienced as a crisis.
Where I come from, someone saying they plan to eliminate the value of my labor-power is a deadly threat.
As long as the ruling class can keep the people divided against each other, they will hold their rule, but ten years later we’re past another tipping point it seems—where the old hegemony is starting to fall, and unification becomes a means of survival. Sanders tried coming at the hegemony from the left. Instead, it is suffering by having been taken to its extreme by an outsider candidate, who fought the class war openly and directly, in a way the old Republicans dared not.