The Dispossessed

Dan Carlin in his podcast, "The Gangrenous Finger," made a point similar to the one I have made in the past -- that our current political and economic system is creating a permanent under-class.  He pondered the question, in the wake of the Brexit decision in Britian, how large can this under-class, the dispossessed, become before it overthrows the status quo?  He didn't have an answer to that question, nor do I, but I do wonder what the world will be like for my granddaughter.

In the meantime, in my continuing attempt to understand my own thinking, let me confess that certain terms are a bit "loaded."  I have used the term status quo without really defining what I believe the current political and economic status quo to be.  I'm not sure that I can, but very generally speaking, it is a political system that "favors" capital.  I wrap "favors" in quotes, in part because, like a parent that "favors" one child over another, it should not imply a complete regard for the one over a complete disregard of the other.   I do not mean to imply that our political system completely favors "capital" in complete disregard of moral or ethical considerations.  Nevertheless, the favoritism is there, and when push comes to shove, it reveals itself.  On the larger stage, for example, the last recession and the banking practices that precipitated it are a case in point.  Whether the banks were too big to fail is a matter of dispute, but to suggest as much is to suggest that we are held hostage to their survival, and we acted accordingly, bailing out those who held the capital while doing little or nothing for the "homeowners" who were dispossessed of "their homes."  On a smaller more personal stage, just before the recession, we suffered a personal calamity -- our house went underwater, not in the figurative financial sense, but literally.  We were victims of what might be called a spot flood, the result of inadequate storm sewage infrastructure, but it was significant enough that we had to be rescued in boats.  The damage to our home was significant, but not to worry.  We had flood insurance, through FEMA.  When the waters receded, the claims adjuster came out, inspected, and went on his way.  Two things quickly became apparent.  His role was not to do a fair and impartial assessment of the damage, but to find ways to minimize the claim, and he did so.  Moreover, once the claim had been made, all payments went, not to us, but to our mortgage company, who promised to reimburse us for repairs.  They too were in a position to deny us payment, and for the most part, did so under the least pretense.

I could go on.  I could point out that our small stage was replicated on the larger stage during the aftermath of Katrina, but you gather my point.  The system makes gestures in the direction of moral and ethical considerations, doing the right thing by home owners and the victims of disasters, but in the end it "favors" those who hold and control the "capital."  When the neoliberal conservatives talk about "free markets," they are essentially talking about those systems that favor those who hold the capital.  Before I go on, I have to remind myself that the "free" in "free markets" is itself  a loaded term, a red-herring.  We tell ourselves we are a "free" people over and over again without really examining what we mean by "freedom."  Lora and I had thought, for example, by purchasing flood insurance, we had "freed" ourselves from "worry."  We did precisely what the "system" demanded of us, and it nevertheless turned out that our particular faith was naive.  The flood insurance did not protect us or our investment, it ultimately protected the investment of the mortgage company.  Consequently, I won't discuss "freedom," or relative degrees of "freedom," or the costs and consequences of "freedom."   Swimming after the red-herring of "freedom" will take you into the murky depths, but it won't lend clarity.  It isn't sexy.  It isn't the big idea.  It is the mundane consideration that we have an "economy," such as it is, right here, right now, and that "economy" is defined within the rules and laws of various governments who hold a monopoly of force.  When I talk about the status quo, it is the "right here, right now" set of rules and laws that govern our day-to-day lives, nothing more, nothing less, and the one fundamental question that we can ask of each rule and law, "who or what does it benefit and how?"  Considered in their aggregate, I would say they "favor" those who hold the capital over those who take other considerations into account.

Given the status quo, the current paradigm, what to do?  My thinking here is heavily influenced by Thomas Kuhn, whose thinking was directed at the history of science, but I would contend has broader historical implications.  His point, as I adopt and adapt it, is this: there is always a status quo, and there are always "problems" or "anomalies" within the status quo.  I would suggest that the "anomalies" tend to emerge when the "political" bumps up against the "economic" as it has recently within our own republican party.   Invoking another "neo," this time "neo-nationalism," the Brexit "neo-nationalism" of "Britain First," or the Trexit "neo-nationalism" of "America First," bumps up against the reality that most capital is held, not nationally, but internationally.  Nissan might be a Japanese company, headquartered in Yokahama, but my Titan was assembled in Canton, Mississippi, by non-union American workers.  My Japanese pickup was, quite literally, "made in America."  Go figure.   Ford might be a iconic American company, but has plants, or partnership with plants, in such places as Pluak Danag, Thiland and Hai Duong, Vietnam.  Vietnam, stained with the blood of American GIs, go figure.  In other words, the neo-liberal strain within the republican party that favors the movement of capital across national borders in search of higher returns through lower labor or logistic costs, a movement captured in any number of trade agreements, has bumped up against the neo-nationalist strain within the republican party that sees it as the export of American jobs.  I am not sure we can, or would really want, to build a wall around the American economy.  Not only would the shelves of Walmart empty out, but the price of what remains would go up considerably, and so "economically" at least Brexit or Trexit makes no sense in the short term, but the political problem remains.

So, again, given the status quo, the current paradigm with its inherent anomalies, what to do?  The first answer would be "do nothing." I have noted, in my past life, a certain pattern when confronted, as I put it, with disconfirming data.  It is similar to the "stages of grief."  The first step is always to "deny the data" and hence the very existence of the problem.  We see this around climate change, as an obvious current example, but it pertains throughout.  Because conservatism is, well, conservative, and sees value in the current status quo (or looks back nostalgically to an even better past status quo) they typically are the first to "deny the data" and the very existence of the problem.  The difficulty with denial is the obvious one.  Eventually, one must face reality.  On climate change, we're not there yet and denial holds some sway.  Perhaps when the ice caps have melted, when Hawaii and Florida and much of California are under water, we might admit that it's a bit warmer on average, but in the meantime the conservatives are being confronted with another challenge, this one related to the global economy.  The conservatives would "deny the data," the evidence that the neo-liberal globalism has resulted in a set of "losers," a group of dispossessed, the under-educated white males that make up a portion of their base.  The denial takes the form of blame, something along this line: "we live in a meritocracy.  If they are losers, it's their own damn fault.  They are either too stupid to get the education or too feckless to succeed in the emergent global economy."  It is one thing, however, to say this (or imply this) characterizing our traditionally dispossessed, our minority populations.  They tend to vote democratic regardless.  It is, however, quite another thing to say it characterizing a portion of the republican base.  Brexit and Trexit  are simply indications that the "problem" can no longer be ignored.

Leading us to the second step, anger.  The question, of course, is where does a grieving conservatism direct the anger?  One cannot quite direct it at the democrats.  If there was anything that resembled a bi-partisan effort in congress, it was international trade.  NAFTA passed the house with 132 republicans and 102 democrats in support.  It passed the Senate with similar margins, with 34 republicans and 27 democrats in support.  About the worst one can do is attach the "flip-flop" label  to Clinton for her past support of the TPP, calling it the "gold standard" of trade deals, but after the populist challenges of Trump and Sanders, showing more hesitation, claiming to have "absorbed new information."  Moreover, while support for free trade is slipping some on the progressive side of the isle, it is entrenched on the conservative side.  As the Washington Post headlined, "Donald Trump Starts and Trade War -- with the Republican Party."  They go to say, "The rift  [between Trump and the Party] deepened on Thursday when Trump called out the U.S. Chamber of Commerce by name for the second straight day and pilloried the North American Free Trade Agreement and the ­Trans-Pacific Partnership, two landmark trade agreements broadly supported by Republicans."  One suspects (I suspect) the panic in the back offices of the RNC has more to do with trade and the "protection" of a now irretrievable global capital than protection of the American working class.  If one is going to disparage Trump, better to do it on other matters, because the issue of trade has resonated with a core republican constituency, the dispossessed white voter.  Trump has obliged on a number of fronts, but the befuddlement remains.

Leading us to the third stage, bargaining.  To paraphrase the Psych Central web site on the five stages of grief, "the normal reaction to feelings of helplessness and vulnerability is often a need to regain control," and while it might be too late, the continuing effort to "unseat" Trump as the nominee at the convention and install a more dogma friendly individual, a more RNC compliant individual to serve as THE candidate representing TRUE conservatism.  Yet it simply begs another question, what exactly then IS true conservatism?  One simply heaps irony upon irony.  The republican Senator from Utah, Mike Lee, for example, is not in a good position to disparage Trump's tabloid conspiracy theorizing accusing his "best friend's father of conspiring to kill JFK," when  "a Cruz-run panel on Islamic terrorism features a fringe character accusing two congressmen of dark dealings."   He is likewise not in a good position to single out Trump's "religious intolerance," when his best friend's Senate panel and the prevailing republican rhetoric insists on emphasizing the islam in "radical islamic terrorism" while ignoring "radical right wing terrorism" both equally intent on destroying our way of life.  The republican party reminds me of a coterie of submissives who have climbed in bed with a sado-masochistic dominatrix -- one who "enthusiastically endorse[s] tactics now widely regarded as torture, and has discounted recent criticism from Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who said the interrogation technique was not the American way.'"  They have climbed in bed with a dominatrix, but failed to agree first on a "safe word."   Whether the efforts to unseat Trump can or will succeed will be determined in a few weeks, but if they are unsuccessful, then inevitably will follow the final two stages, resignation and acceptance.

None of this, of course, advances one idea of what to actually do with the economically dispossessed white voter.  The conservative party has been adept at throwing them bones -- evangelical christianity with its resistance to abortion and gun rights with its resistance to common sense being perhaps the biggest bones of distraction.  RedState, for example, today has an article about abortion and an article about gun rights.  Then too there is also the whole "racist" and "xenophobic" thing, appealing to the lowest common denominator and the most radical fringe of the republican base.  Brietbart, for example, today has an article subtitled in bold "four Republican Senators have teamed up to push 'Sarah’s Law,' a new immigration enforcement bill that is named for the 21-year-old star graduate Sarah Root who was killed in January by an Honduran illegal alien who had been shipped into the interior by President Barack Obama’s orders."  If one reads no further than the headline, and looks no further than side by side mug shot a brown man and the selfie of a pretty white girl, one cannot escape hearing the echo of Trump's call for a wall along our southern border to keep out the murders, rapists and drug dealers.  If one reads further, one discovers that "illegal aliens driving drunk and without licenses have menaced American streets and neighborhoods for decades, since the U.S. political establishment refuses to enforce immigration laws."  No doubt, but one suspects that illegal aliens driving drunk is not the problem.  It's people driving drunk, and if MADDs FBI derived statistics are correct, over 1.4 million people were arrested for intoxicated driving in 2014, a group that probably includes some "white men" at the local bar drowning their anger at the influx of immigrants.  Throughout it all, there is the prevailing tone of conspiracy, the implication that democrats are in league with a dark (read that literally) force to dispossess white Americans of their way of life.

If every American took Jesus as their personal savior and we over-turned Roe vs Wade, if every American stocked up with an arsenal of guns and ammo, if every American had a white face and we were mono-cultural, the economically dispossessed would remain and their numbers would continue to grow.  The "problem" is not religion, guns, race, or even "trade" per se, but rather the economic status quo, the current economic paradigm, and the way in which it favors capital.  It is the "right here, right now" set of rules and laws that govern our day-to-day lives, nothing more, nothing less.  There really are only two ways of approaching "change."  The first is incremental, and constitutes what Thomas Kuhn might have called "normal politics."  As the anomalies emerge, one maintains the status quo by taking steps to fill the gaps and patch the problems.  This implies a "centrist" politics, a general acceptance of the status quo, a general recognition of the problem, with some relatively minor difference of opinion on how best to fix it.  It also implies that the system itself is basically sound and can be fixed.  What is it can't?  There are, perhaps, three fault lines within the current status quo that threaten to shake it apart, and portend a more "revolutionary politics:" 

(1) Thomas Picketty's basic argument -- when the rate of return on capital exceeds the rate of economic growth, wealth will tend to concentrate in the hands of a few.  As I've implied above and elsewhere, this portends an American ever more deeply divided between the economic elites who possess the capital.   

(2) The ineffectuality of existing "democratic processes" --  it perhaps goes without saying, but I will say it regardless, that the current disparity of wealth undermines democratic processes.  In “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens,” Martin Gilens of Princeton and Benjamin Page of Northwestern, researched a database of voters’ and interest groups’ positions on 1,779 issues between 1981 and 2002, and whether those positions were or weren’t reflected in policy decisions.  They found, quel surprise, that  “Not only do ordinary citizens not have uniquely substantial power over policy decisions, they have little or no independent influence on policy at all."  Or, as the journalists resource put it, without the double negatives, "Compared to economic elites, average voters have a low to nonexistent influence on public policies."  The SCOTUS decision, normally referred to as Citizens United, was simply the icing on the "let them eat cake."  It more or less opened the flood gate for economic elites to pour money into actual electoral politics.  It should not have been terribly surprising that the money seemed, after all, to have only marginal effects, but why?   The core systemic structures were in place that more or less guaranteed that economic elites could not only define what we perceived to be an "issue," but also how that "issue" would be resolved.  So far as defining an issue, mainstream media still has an enormous impact on what is perceived to be an issue, not only in the choice of what gets covered, but in how it gets covered.  Issues around religion, guns, race, immigration, and the like get "coverage," in part because they lend themselves to sanctimonious sensationalism, in part because they are, for the most part, red herrings, of only marginal interest to the economic elite.  Gilen's and Page's conclusions that "interest groups have a substantial impact on public policy. When mass-based and business-oriented interest groups oppose a policy, the probability of its being enacted is only 16%, rising to 47% when they’re strongly favorable."  While we might rejoice that "interest groups have a substantial impact," insofar as they are perceived "to aggregate and organize average citizens’ interests," the data contradicts such perceptions.  As they point out, "except for labor unions and the AARP, interest groups do not tend to favor the same policies as average citizens. In fact, some groups’ positions are negatively correlated with the opinion of the average American, as in the case of gun owners."  In the end, however, "business-oriented groups have almost twice the influence of mass-based groups." 

(3) the central purpose of the economic status quo -- I could have said the central purpose of "capitalism," but I'm trying to avoid the terminology associated with the 20th century ideological divide between capitalism on the one side and socialism/communism on the other.  It is not an ideological issue, so much as a systemic issue, and he central purpose of the systemic economic status quo is to maximize the return on capital.  Insofar as "business oriented groups have almost twice the influence of mass based groups," policy will tend to favor the emergent interests of those who control capital, and this despite the interests of the people as a whole.  With the exception perhaps of a few sociopaths who would, if they could, control ALL the capital, there is no concerted push against economic growth.  Indeed, economic growth might be perceived as a secondary purpose, a system subroutine, of the economic status quo.  If the entire system is working correctly, it points to a virtuous cycle where the growing demand generated by economic growth is met with an investment of accumulated business capital that in turn creates the jobs that redistribute capital fueling even more demand generated by the growth, so on and so forth.  

There is, however, evidence that the system is not working correctly and perhaps hasn't been for some time.  The issue may well be "jobs" as the means of redistributing capital.  Several factors have worked against "jobs."  Globalization, of course, has worked against jobs, at least in the developed world of the US and UK.  As business interests seek the highest possible return on capital, they seek the lowest possible "costs," personnel costs, labor costs, being one of the largest deductions from the return on capital.  Globalization has made the reduction of personal costs across the traditional national political boundaries, which has benefited those workers in the developing world, fueling economic growth there, not so much those workers in the developed world, where growth has stagnated and a growing swath of the population has been dispossessed of their jobs.   The promise to bring jobs back to America, however appealing that might be to nationalist sentiments, is so much snake oil.  With the possible exceptions of the so-called service industries, labor intensive industries are increasingly a thing of the past as ever more productive technologies displace "labor" and the jobs associated with "labor," increasingly to include the intellectual labor.  Technology, of course, has fueled a growth of sorts, with the emergence of whole new industries and whole new ways of approaching old industries.  It has created new membership, so to speak, in the economic elite with the likes of Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos.  It has improved the productivity of the existing work force, but improved productivity might well be the enemy.  Again, with the possible exception of the so-called service industries, we can do more work with fewer people and a growing swath of the population has been dispossessed of their jobs as a consequence.   In short, instead of a virtuous cycle, we have a "vicious" cycle, where the stagnant demand of sluggish economic growth is met with retrenchment of business capital, increasing not only the disparity between the have's and the have not's, but also the despair of those who can no longer find meaningful work.

How many dispossessed can the US absorb until the "vicious" economic cycle becomes "vicious" in other ways?  It shouldn't be surprising that disparity and despair open the door to demagogues like Trump.   It shouldn't be surprising that people, feeling the malaise, tend to seek scapegoats.  On the one hand, it shouldn't be surprising that we get headlines  in Breitbart like "Another Previously Deported Sex Offender Caught in the US by Border," lending credence to Trump's assertion that Mexico is sending us their rapists.  On the other hand, it shouldn't be surprising that more liberal outlets like the Huffington Post excoriate Trump for his racism and xenophobia, and run headline stories like "One Of The Nation’s Poorest [School] Districts Has Found A Way To Help Immigrant Students."  I know which side of this argument I like best, and I will always side with those who attempt to fulfill the enlightenment promise of "justice for all," particularly children.  I know which side of this argument is most likely to turn "vicious" and resort to the sorts of ethnically inspired and religiously sanctified violence that we see throughout the world, and I will always side with those who suggest calm and reason.  It is difficult, however, to be calm and reasonable when under attack, and we may well be past a "centrist" politics where a common understanding of the problem could lead to solutions.  RedState also had a headline "There Is no Lesser of Two Evils," meaning of course Trump and Clinton, and it is a sentiment that I hear echoed over and over again by those who would be one standard deviation to the left or right of center.  It might come down to a competition between those who feel most strongly about the "never" in "never Trump" folks and the "never Clinton," a competition that will likely be decided on issues that have nothing what-so-ever to do with the core problem, the growing number of dispossessed.  If we are indeed beyond the compromises implicit to "normal politics," if we really can no long "fill the gaps and patch the holes" in the existing status quo, then we are ripe for a "political revolution."  What will emerge on the other side is anyone's guess, but getting there won't be pretty.