This will be a short post, but there is one conclusion that I have come to over the weeks that I've been writing this blog: despite all assertions to the contrary, the republican party has prioritized the conservative agenda above all else. We have entered into an era of one party politics. It is not the one party politics of communism, nor is it the one party politics of national socialism, but it is a single party, and by most estimates, a minority party, and it has seized control of the US government through non-democratic means. Both the liberal opposition and the people have allowed it to happen. The explanation for this largess are complex, and there is no single factor, but the predominant explanation might be as simple as this: both the conservative party and the liberal opposition rely on the largess of the mega-donor to run a modern campaign, and if there is a single most important factor, it is the unmistakable trend toward policy that benefits this class of mega-donors. The proof is in the pudding -- the rising inequality of wealth and the concentration of power in fewer and fewer hands.
There are two or three characteristics of this class -- for the sake of brevity, we can call them the plutocrats -- that are of significance. Although there seems to be a rising tide of nationalist and populist sentiment rising throughout the west, the plutocrats are neither nationalist nor are they populist. The plutocrat in the US and Britain have much more in common with the plutocrat in Saudi Arabia and China, than their own people, and their focus is on their global interests, not national interests. As a single piece of evidence, one need only cite the so-called tax inversions, or an American company's ability to "legally become foreign companies, while retaining their US headquarters and operations, in order to avoid US corporate income tax." As the writer's for Vox put it, "it’s the globalism of Goldman Sachs, which wants light-touch regulation of the financial sector, plenty of room for multinational corporations to engage in tax chicanery, and no major trade wars that would threaten US-based financial services companies’ abilities to compete for market share internationally." Although there is a cultural divide between the peoples of the US and Britain and the peoples of Saudi Arabia and China, the sorts of nationalist sentiment that lead to various forms of hate crime and terror attack are tolerable, especially if they legitimize an "anti-government" sentiment that can be translated into "light-touch regulation" and tax relief, but a balancing act must be maintained. Nationalist sentiment cannot be so virulent as to threaten the ability of large-scale corporations to compete internationally for market share. Populist demagogues, along with third world dictators, are fine, in other words, insofar as they facilitate the interests of the international plutocrats. At the moment, it is the US role to promote "stability" -- that is to say, provide the military "policing" of those rogue states that threaten the interests of the international plutocrats.
One should not mistake the global plutocrat with the political class. The former do not want, and even actively avoid the political lime light. The disclosure laws surrounding campaign finance are a case in point. Although diligent and conspiracy minded reporters can usually ferret out the contributions, they clearly would rather make their contributions with complete anonymity and the money trail remains murky enough to discourage quid pro quo allegations. If the global plutocrat craves publicity, it is the sort provided by the Forbes profile, the hagiographic account of their business acumen and superb leadership. Not unlike athletes and entertainers, the plutocrat "employs" the politician, and they are to serve a particular function. Although they tend to prefer the GOP over the Democrats, the party affiliation matters less than the function -- within national politics, protecting the legal structures that allow for the accumulation and retention of wealth -- and within foreign affairs, policing rogue states. In the last presidential election cycle, Clinton understood her role. She would have been a bit annoying -- like a non-profit CEO she would have been dunning them for "charitable contributions" to accommodate a social agenda -- but nothing in her behavior suggests she would have been "anti-Goldman Sacs," or hesitant in her "policing" role. If the plutocrats hesitated with Trump, it's because he gave the appearance of a populist demagogue, too much under the sway of the likes of Steve Bannon, too much a Putin wanna-be. The "alt-right" attitude is, I believe, a real aspect of his personality, but there is another aspect that supersedes the racism, the xenophobia, the misogyny -- a messianic narcissism. If, as Vox suggests, he "threw Steve Bannon under the bus and back it up over him," it's not because he has seen the light, it is because Bannon over-stepped his bounds and "Trump’s first two and a half months in office [were] disastrous, with his popularity sinking and his agenda mired in Congress and the courts." The messianic narcissist needs his apostles, and unlike Bannon, the coterie of publicity adverse plutocratic advisors and his immediate family, will not relegate him to a supporting role. They are content to continue as "executive producers" while Trump strtuts and postures.
As it is, Trump is Iago become president. For example, what is our national posture toward Russia. In the good old days, the USSR was clearly a pariah, a rogue state. The very nature of their government and economic system were antithetical to the interests of the global plutocrats, and if that isn't exactly the case today, it remains the case that Russia, unlike China, rivals (or wants to rival) the US global position as the pre-eminent super power, if not globally, then certainly in the middle east and Europe. When Mobile-Exon requested permission to resume drilling in Russia, the Trump administration declined. It might have been assumed that a Putin-friendly Trump and the ex-CEO of Mobile Exon as the Secretary of State might have greased the wheels, and that might have been the case had it not come to light that the Russian's were tampering with the US election. It may be in the particular interests of the plutocrats controlling Mobile Exon and their Russian partner Rosneft, but it conflicted with the more general interests of the plutocrats -- that is to say, they are now "invested" in the Trump presidency and have an "interest" in the stability of the US government, particularly insofar as it now a single party state dominated by the plutocrat friendly GOP. A too cozy relationship with Russian interests, along with the investigation of Russian election hacking, would have taken us one step closer to the demise of the Trump presidency. It is in their interests, in other words, that Trump continue to strut and posture, especially now that more traditional bellicose distractors are emerging with the sanctimonious missile attack in response to the second gas attack, and the more recent attacks in Paris just before their elections.
I am not sure what exactly voters saw coming when they elected Trump and gave the GOP monopoly power over government. In reality, I don't think they had a clear idea what to expect, though some, like Chomsky, might argue that Trump's messianic narcissism reflects a deep structure within the American governmental psyche -- a faith in manifest destiny and exceptionalism diminished to the excesses of a single and not particularly singular personality. Krugman asks, "What happened to us?" and suggests that "some of it surely has to do with ideology: When you’re committed to a fundamentally false narrative about government and the economy, as almost the whole Republican Party now is, facing up to facts becomes an act of political disloyalty," but he seems to underestimate the commitment, the faith, and how much the working class republican is willing, like Job, to suffer for their faith. It is not just an act of political disloyalty, but an act bordering on treason, -- an act bordering on atheism, if one believes, with one's whole heart, that the destiny of America is to be the shining city on the hill, that our exception is a special relationship with god who has graced us with great wealth, great power, and great responsibility. To borrow a phrase from David Brooks, if the enlightenment values underpinning our nation -- the importance of reasoned discourse, the importance of property rights, the need for a public square that was religiously informed but not theocratically dominated -- then he should realize that it is impossible to engage in "reasoned discourse" with faith, and there has been a second "great awakening," where vague notions of "biblical morality" and even cloudier notions "constitutional governance" have converged into a new and now dominant theocracy. Sandwiched between the two is the notion of "property rights," and this right has been elevated to a sacred value -- a value predicated on "work" and the working class sense that "property" flows from the "sweat of one's brow," and what one has a right to what one has worked so hard to attain -- that has set the plutocrat free.
At the core of the "false narrative" is a faith in "work," and the leap of faith required to believe that the invisible hand of god graces us with wealth and power when he sees we have done proper penance, when he sees the redeeming sweat on our brow. It takes another leap of faith to see "a land of opportunity," the new frontier looming on the horizon where one can prove one's mettle. The old agrarian frontier of the American west was displaced by the new frontier of American industrialism and extraction, and now the old American industrialism and extraction has been displaced by the new frontier of American technology and finance. If the conservatives seem to look back on the old agrarian and industrial frontiers, it is because the old frontiers greater opportunity for redemptive work. Neither myth has fully disappeared, and just yesterday, standing in Walmart talking with an acquaintance from town, he supported grazing on public lands because "that's what America is about, ranching and farming." Then too, there's Trump as king coal, promising to bring back mining jobs that, if one were to face facts, no one really wants, not even the coal miners' sons and daughters because they are dangerous, dirty, and demeaning. If the conservatives seem to stumble on the new frontier of technology, it's because its relationship to work is ambiguous. The robot displaces more jobs than it creates in the factory and mine, and though Facebook has created enormous wealth for a small coterie of people, it's not clear at all just how Facebook creates jobs, much less the sorts of redemptive labor of cowboys herding cattle or proletariats building Gran Torinos. As Jonathan Taplin put it, "in just 10 years, the world’s five largest companies by market capitalization have all changed, save for one: Microsoft. Exxon Mobil, General Electric, Citigroup and Shell Oil are out and Apple, Alphabet (the parent company of Google), Amazon and Facebook have taken their place." Nevertheless, those tech giants created wealth, and one can witness it behind the gated communities of silicon valley. There's just enough reality behind the false narrative of unlimited opportunity to say "see, see, see!" the new pioneers -- the Bill Gates, the Steve Jobs -- struck out to the new frontier and made their fortune. It is, of course, an exceptionalism of a different sort because those entrepreneurial pioneers are the vast exception to the rule, and for every exceptional man there are hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands struggling to just get by as health care aides and Walmart associates, and if economic trends continue, their children too will struggle even harder to just get by as even those jobs are subsumed by automated kiosks, spawning yet another generation's plaintive country songs remembering the good old days when momma worked hard to stock them shelves.
I don't know where the tipping point lies. Henry Giroux may be correct, "I don’t think we are tipping over into neofascism. I think we’ve tipped over. It’s just a more subtle form of neofascism than anything we’ve seen in the past. The argument that we have to have concentration camps to talk about fascism is nonsense. As any theorist of fascism will tell you, if it comes to America, it will come in different forms." There is some truth to the argument, but Giroux like many others seem to miss the point. The so-called alt-right is neofascist, and it seems disingenuous to call it anything but neo-fascist, and it did contribute significantly to the election of Donald Trump. Altogether too many Americans simply didn't care that his appeal was racist, misogynistic, xenophobic, but the word fascist conjures up images of storm troopers and concentration camps, and we're not quite there, at least not yet. If stereotypical fascism does come, it does come, it will come as "detention camps," not "concentration camps. The "detention camps" will have some respectability as the "rule of law," because they will detain for deportation "illegal aliens," who, as we all know, bring crime and terrorism.
If there is a "more subtle form of neofascism," the seeds have been present since the time of Jefferson, and it confuses a "free people" with "limited government." Just as "states rights" was appropriated as code for the American apartheid that arose from reconstruction to preserve a "sacred way of life" that oppressed and humiliated blacks, the very notion of "limited government" has been appropriated as code for plutocratic capitalism. They would, of course, actually limit government -- that is to say, they would systematically remove impediments to the acquisition and retention of capital -- but that is not to say we would have limited government. On the one hand, those aspects of government designed to protect property rights would grow stronger, and if current economic trends continue, such laws would clearly favor the rich over the poor, favor those who possess property over those who do not. On the other hand, like nature, power abhors a vacuum, and the abdication of government power -- e.g. its ability to create enforceable environmental restrictions on drilling -- simply transfers government power to "business." Business becomes, in effect, self-regulating, which is just another way of saying self-dealing. The plutocrats will be free to act in their self interest, but the people will not be free from the consequences of those acts. Moreover again, like nature, power abhors a vacuum, and the abdication of government power -- e.g. its ability to address capitalism's fatal flaw, the creation of monopolies -- the plutocrats will be free to acquire capital in the broadest possible sense, but here again the people will not be free from the monopoly itself. Jonathan Taplin, writing for the NY Times, can ask "is it time to break up Google?" As he notes, "Google has an 88 percent market share in search advertising," which means that anyone wishing to address the market MUST either deal with google or content themselves with addressing only the remaining 12 percent. It is a "choice" which is not really a "choice," and Taplin quotes Melvin Urofsky, the biographer of William Brandies, that “in a democratic society the existence of large centers of private power is dangerous to the continuing vitality of a free people,” then notes that "we need look no further than the conduct of the largest banks in the 2008 financial crisis or the role that Facebook and Google play in the 'fake news' business to know that Brandeis was right."
The more subtle form of neofascism deals in large abstractions. It asks, "are we a free society?" It is a cynical question, because anyone who asks it knows -- absolutely knows -- that we cannot meet our pledge of "liberty for all." Just as empowering the southern bigot's freedom to exercise their racial attitudes, held as sacred, meant oppression for the southern blacks (and today, empowering the evangelical's freedom to exercise their sexual attitudes, under the guise of religious freedom, means continued alienation and exclusion of gay and transgender people) so it will always be. In a world where power is not distributed equally, and power is never distributed equally, one person's freedom will always be another's oppression, and so neither can we meet our pledge of "justice for all." When the question is framed largely, in the abstract, the answer will always be "not only no, but hell no!" and it's infuriating. I think Mishra is right, that we have entered into an age of anger, and as anger intensifies, so too does cruelty. I think Giroux is right, that race is the great dilemma for American society. As he put it, "We know the anger that most of Trump’s voters were supposedly mobilized around was not against the rich. It was not about income inequality. It was about racism. It was about white supremacy. It was about inflicting pain on people. It was about taking away social provisions that even they would benefit from in the name of a false appeal to 'individual freedom' and 'liberty.'” The Trump supporter "voted to hurt someone," and their choice of target was the traditional target for American disappointment and anger -- the niggers, the spics, the towel heads, and always those bitches. I think Giroux is right too, "that people who look to liberals for some sort of salvation in this country are fooling themselves," in part because the anger of the Trump voter is directed at those with "liberal" (aka politically correct) views, in part because the anger is reciprocated. One need only listen long enough to the likes of Samantha Bee or Bill Mahar to know that the liberal's view of "trailer trash" and the "redneck nation" is perhaps as virulently bigoted as the bigotry they despise. It is not predicated on race, per se, nor is it predicated entirely on racial attitudes, per se, but on other markers of class distinction -- a lack of education, the sorts of "work" that follow on a lack of education, a lack of "urbanity" and "sophistication," and their "spiritual" attitudes. Take it as a mea culpa for my own liberal bigotries that I find them more funny than infuriating.
Giroux suggests that "we need a third party and we need to stop equating capitalism and democracy," and there is a false equivalence between laissez faire capitalism, which inevitably tends toward monopolistic and plutocratic capitalism, and democracy, broadly conceived. At the 18th century outset, the American experiment was predicated on a set of fortunate circumstances, the disjunction between acquiring and keeping wealth. The vast stretches of unclaimed land to the west made it seem possible for large numbers of people to acquire the preeminent marker of wealth, land, without necessarily taking it from the existing land holders. It is, of course, a staple of liberal victim studies to point out that the unclaimed land was not actually unclaimed, and its "settlement" required the subjugation and elimination of the indigenous peoples already present. Likewise, it disparages the richness of southern heritage and its sacred way of life to point out that the largest land holders, many of whom had a large hand in the creation of our government, required the subjugation of a race to maintain their vast estates, and even then many struggled to make them profitable. Nevertheless, the more federalist founders, the one's most responsible for the actual forms and practice of US constitutional government, had a healthy fear of too much "democracy" -- that is to say, investing too much political power in the hands of the masses, particularly those without property, because they feared a simple "majority rule" would threaten their ability to keep property, would demand a redistribution of their acquired wealth. It was not an entirely misplaced fear. At the end of the old frontier, as the new frontier of industrialization began maturing, there were increasing worker demands for a fair share of the wealth, a redistribution of the acquired wealth of the industrialists. Although it took a form the founders could not have anticipated, the labor movements embodied the fears of the founders, the demand for too much "democracy," the investment of collective political power in the masses, and true to their fears, they demanded a greater recognition of their labor and a redistribution of acquired wealth through wages. There is a "should have" in Giroux' call to end the equation of democracy and capitalism, at least for what passes as capitalism today -- that is to say, the anger of the Trump voter SHOULD HAVE been directed at the rich. It SHOULD HAVE been about income inequality. The people SHOULD HAVE directed their vote toward whom?
We did, in effect, have a third party candidate in Bernie Sanders. Though I didn't see him as a "fool," and the rumpled demeanor of everyone's favorite cranky professor did provide some alternative, he seemed to many, and I include myself, a warrior for yesterday's battles. We can lament the demise of union activism, and the democratic socialism of the labor parties, but it seemed quaintly out of focus in the age of Amazon, when every "disruptive" technical innovation decreases the need for actual human labor. Hillary Clinton? If the barely concealed white supremacist and misogynistic views of Trump represented the very apotheosis of liberal evil, the barely concealed purse lipped condescension of Clinton represented the very apotheosis of conservative evil. Although Trump won on a technicality, so to speak, neither candidate clearly won a mandate, and the anger, and the cruelty that follows on anger, continues to escalate. We do not have a third party candidate who can effectively address the latest frontier, the ascendent tech sector and the "financialization" of the economy, and one can only hope that the economy doesn't collapse under the weight of concentrated wealth, that the social fabric doesn't collapse into unrestrained violence.
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