John Michael Greer sees this election as the hint about the coming of the postliberal (post-Transcendentalist liberalism of Emerson, Thoreau, Brook Farm and that “Golden Day” of the 1830s).
John Michael Greer, The Archdruid Report: The Coming of the Postliberal Era
Over the decades ahead, in other words, we can expect the emergence of a postliberal politics in the United States, England, and quite possibly some other countries as well. The shape of the political landscape in the short term is fairly easy to guess. Watch the way the professional politicians in the Republican Party have flocked to Hillary Clinton’s banner, and you can see the genesis of a party of the affluent demanding the prolongation of free trade, American intervention in the Middle East, and the rest of the waning bipartisan consensus that supports its interests. Listen to the roars of enthusiasm for Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump–or better still, talk to the not inconsiderable number of Sanders supporters who will be voting for Trump this November–and you can sense the emergence of a populist party seeking the abandonment of that consensus in defense of its very different interests.
What names those parties will have is by no means certain yet, and a vast number of other details still have to be worked out. One way or another, though, it’s going to be a wild ride.
Greer argues that the politics of principles was split by the religious right’s alignment with modern conservatism into two moral spheres. The gridlock between those moral spheres now has frustrated voters to the point that they are returning to a pure politics of interests. It won’t be totally accomplished in this election, but the cracks in the way business as usual is done are definitely there.
It is worth consideration if only to move the political philosophy conversation forward after this election. And it is going to be a very dangerous time going forward for those people who have benefited from 180 years or so of American political liberalism.
For Boomers who came of political age in the 1960s, it is going to seem like the end of our world. And it shakes the foundations of both New Deal liberalism (and its rearguard movements) and modern conservatism (and its rearguard movements like the Tea Party).
That trend likely will be there after the election no matter what happens. It will erase what is looked upon as a unique American heritage likely even as it clings tighter to the superficial symbols of patriotism.
Another view of the same phenomenon.
Yoni Appelbaum, The Atlantic: America’s First Post-Christian Debate
Expect some more of this “the reason for the collapse of both parties” style of analysis.
The US primarily always exists in a postliberal era. Liberalism rises up in response to complete messes capitalists and regressives create. Rides in to save the day, but only partially and squelched as soon as the majority of the public begins to feel better.
There appears to have been one consistent economic aspect for people in the US from its beginning through the early 1970s and that is they workers shared in productivity gains. So, postliberalism could be seen as beginning with that split. What has followed is legislation to protect and advance that split.
Nancy Isenberg’s recent White Trash: the 400-year Untold History of Class in America looks at that very point of the consistent economic aspect for people in North America that became the US.
I think that both of those articles have some different (and different from each other) in mind.
John Michael Greer is saying the very notion of “civics” that has been common in public schools is now contested and that folks are tired of the educated liberals lording over them. It’s a little more subtle than that, but it is a 1%-10% versus 90% sort of argument.
Appelbaum’s point is that Trump is not laying out markers for the Christian America civil relgion that has been emphasized by the Christian right since 1980 nor is Clinton laying out a Christian left position from the Civil Rights era, and neither are laying out a civil religion view of one nation, under God that so dominated the 19th century and was resurrected during the McCarthy and Civil Rights era as a nationalistic defense against “godless Communism (with a cap-C).
I only have one question about all of this:
If this sort of movement actually begins to threaten the status quo in any sort of serious way, will the owners of that status quo…the Permanent Government, for short, the Permanent Government and its prime beneficiaries/controllers/owners/call them what you will…allow it to happen?
I seriously doubt it, myself. They are not “devoted” to what we laughingly call democracy here in the U.S., it’s just a convenient…and so far quite effective…control mechanism. Suppose that said control mechanism works once again, Clinton II is elected and when the next real chance for a contested election arises some coalition of the dissatisfied appears under a strong and qualified leader. A coalition that cannot be media-ed away as was Bernie Sanders and as is now apparently happening to Mr. Trumph. (Finally!!!)
What mechanisms are truly in place to stop them from dropping the pretense of “democracy” for some other sort of control mechanism? Given the ongoing proliferation of quasi-military police agencies at the national and local levels, why not just stage some sort of Kristallnacht event and crack down on all remnants of a democracy?
I am quite serious here.
Do y’all really think that the public is in a state of readiness to resist such a thing?
I don’t.
Those with arms are no match whatsoever for the professional military. Hell, they’re not even a match for small groups of federal/local police, witness the several confrontations in the west over the past year or so. The only even partially serious threats to resist are rural working class people and armed criminal gangs in the cities. The rural folk are outnumbered and outgunned, and the city gangs are a for-profit system They can be bought off. Those that can’t be bought off can be eliminated, Iraq style. Door to door and damn the consequences.
I live 4 blocks away from where that marijuana grow house/meth lab/whatever blew up a couple of days ago. One probably quite extraordinary young fire chief died in the explosion…a 2nd generation Irish fireman w/a law degree from NYU. That neighborhood is now essentially a war zone…a quiet, working class/middle class, multi-ethnic neighborhood of mostly three-story brick private homes/apartments only three blocks from the usually sleepy and generally incompetent local police precinct. I’ve been in the immediate neighborhood several times recently…either driving through or shopping at a great non-chain grocery store n Broadway…and I am seeing a huge influx of police agencies of all kinds. In the stores, walking the streets, wailing sirens/flashing through the streets, blockading one street in every direction, etc.
All this because of some stupid drug dealer’s murderous fuckup…or at least that’s what we have been told.
Whatever…
Imagine if some really serious shit went down!!!
Just sayin’…
Tarheel says in an above comment:
All of these lovely “postliberal” prognostications were written by members in good standing of the “educated liberal’ class…those wonderful “reality-based” folks of which people are plainly getting tired!!!
Meanwhile, back at the ranch:
Always keep this 2002 Rovian tidbit…only 14 years ago, folks… in mind. (Ron Suskind, NY Times Magazine, 2004.
There it is, folks.
This is what is really going down. We are always a step behind…”A day late and a dollar short” in NYC street language…because “they” are capable of producing new paradigms faster than we can figure out what the are, let alone how to deal with them.
I have no solutions to offer for this except to say this.
Trust not the spokespeople of the controller class.
None of them.
They all speak with virtual tongues.
This current problem will work out as it must. They too are deceiving themselves if they think that they can successfully defy the universal laws of karma.
Ain’t happening.
Never has; never will.
Eventually they all meet a Nero fiddling while Rome burns/Hitler in the bunker/Marie Antoinette on the guillotine moment.
Bet on it.
Our job?
To survive the karmic winds when they start to blow.
Peace.
It’s what’s for dinner.
Later…
AG
Now a standalone post:
The Permanent Government’s Ongoing Virtual Reality Show vs. Our Own Hopes and Dreams
Please comment there.
Thanks…
AG
The point both of these is that the cultural basis of so much political posturing over the life of the Republic is now missing in action.
The powers that be will not be resisted idealogically as a result.
In fact, folks might even cheer and authoritarian non-Christian regime.
It has happened before.
I think that’s called “the gloves coming off”.
Cynicism eventually has its consequences, and they are not pretty. Over a sufficiently long enough period of time, they can cause societal collapse.
You write:
First “the gloves come off” soon followed by “the chickens come home to roost,” I fear.
So it goes.
Whether Clinton II or Trumpf is elected.
So it goes.
Down like a motherfucker.
Watch.
AG
It depends on the full ticket that is elected, down to the soil and water commissioners as to whether the cynicism breaks.
We just can’t depend on the enlightenment thinkers and the proponents of the Social Gospel that got us through the 1960s. Those folks don’t set the academic tenor anymore.
Even the so-called proponents of Western Civilization’s canon don’t and didn’t exactly and precisely when they started griping about political correctness.
The new Greer’s designation of the motley market of religious, secular, optimistic/pessimistic movements, reform societies of the first half of the 18th century into the liberal (or not liberal) drifts looks quite random. The post-liberal America would likely look similarly.
Greer was more to a point with the observations that liberal, progressive ideologies tend to provoke powerful conservative backlashes in the US.
The Enlightenment – that certainly influenced formation of the US – can be seen as original liberalism as anything else. Was it Jefferson that predicted most Americans would soon be Deists or Unitarians? The first two Great Awakenings quite extinguished that Enlightenment spirit. Wealth disparity was not that great in the early US (apart from slavery). While Yankee entrepreneurism, Western land speculation took time to establish economic-financial authorities, the early American suspicion of authority was directed towards intellectualism and established religions.
Greer specifically is talking about the reformist liberalism that sprung out of Massachusetts transcendentalism and shaped the public school curriculum for a hundred years or so. How many students these days associate Emerson with “Self=Reliance” or Whitman with “Democratic Vistas”?
Wealth disparity in America was much greater from the beginning than is recognized with the mythology of the “yeoman farmer”, which was a Jeffersonian ideal, not a reality. The land policies of Jefferson and Jackson aimed to provide the land basis for yeoman farmers, but they never succeeded. See Nancy Isenberg, White Trash The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America for a survey of what is out there about this aspect of American history. Squatters, crackers, mudsills, hillbillies, rednecks, and all.
Emma Lazarus’s “the refuse of thy teeming shore” played ironically on one of the earliest vies of settlers in Ameerica, on the goes back to the Richard Hakluyts.
Transcendentalism was a romanticist reaction to Scotish Realism (and other Enlightenment Reason traces). As such, transcendentalism fits the pattern of reaction to intellectualism – though not much conservative.
Transcendentalism carried the abolitionist movement, the feminist movement, the pacifist movement, a strand of American utopianism and spawned the reform movement as a consequence. By standing for public education, that strain of liberalism earned its place in the curriculum as a way of valuing education. Conversatism can be highly besotten with intellectualism, especially in its insistence on European thinkers as being better than the New England bunch. The New England bunch set about self-consciously to create an American civilization, and they did–until they dropped out of the college canon to make way for earlier professional training and more modern literature.
I don’t think we can go back to the way it used to be, but there needs to be a better conversation about what exactly the academics mean about American exceptionalism and an American civilization.
Will minorities stick with the financial elites? Who will be the new veal pen? Or do they simply rig elections ad infinitum?
You act as if there is a way to avoid financial elites camping out in political parties. Minorities stuck with the railroad men in the 19th century because the rejiggered planters-into-new-South-capitalists sought to disenfranchize them.
Trump is not without backing of financial elites. It is just a different economic sector of elites that include a part of private equity capital, casionos, resource extracters, and lots of real estate.
And then there are the financial elites who do the straddle of both parties (and if other parties became strong enough, they would hedge bets with them.
I don’t second=guess minorities; they have generally good reasons for voting as they do.
Well, I’d say the Republican veal pen is in revolt. They have no home in either party. You do know that racism is at its least in the very poorest and in the highest economic deciles. Economic strain increases it linearly, otherwise.
Minority votes anchor the DNC in their sweet spot and seal the left out of influence. They re-elected Rahm Emanuel, fgs.
Chicago has its own unique politics, which is less a matter of ideology or opinion or even interest, and more a matter of patronage and neighborhood. Rahm’s gentrification is beginning to turn that upside-down but for now he still benefits from the machine that Richard J. Daley, the elder, built and his son reinvigorated.
It’s really not about race except for the fact that it is by neighborhood all about race and ethnicity.
I read the entire, rather interesting essay by Greer. Then I started to read the comments and rather quickly came upon someone who had set up a sort of dialectic conversation in which the naive party was being made to understand by the sophisticated party that the American Civil War really was The War of Northern Aggression fought essentially to subjugate the South and force it to sell its cotton to New England manufacturers instead of to England. Because, you see, values don’t actually mean a damn thing in politics.
I gave up there.
My comments are not to reject the possibility that we really are going through a political realignment, with shifting allegiances of particular class- and demographic groups. We’ll only know that in retrospect, of course.
There were some aspects of Greer’s argument that I found internally contradictory. Back to the causes of the American Civil War, Greer himself basically argued that it was The War of Northern Aggression to subjugate the South economically, and that the moral argument for abolishing slavery was a ruse. Yet he had previously argued that abolitionism was rooted in moral values. Well, which is it?
But my biggest problem with Greer is when he writes that “the standard liberal response to criticism…is to insist that the only reason anyone might possibly object to a liberal policy is because they have hateful values.” That’s a silly claim that itself seems intended to dismiss defenders of liberalism. I’ve had perfectly respectful disagreements with conservatives without resorting to name calling and denunciations of their allegedly hateful values.
I read an article not too long ago where the author suggested that the Democratic Party was essentially evolving into a market-oriented party representing the urban archipelago (and demographically largely holding on to the Obama coalition) and the Republican Party was essentially evolving into a populist workers’ party – a process likely to be completed by mid 2020s. Perhaps. Realignments happen periodically, and we are probably due for one. There are also historical precedents for political parties collapsing in the US as we are both aware, although the consequences have been catastrophic. Worth bringing up only because the collapse of established political parties in various European nations is occurring as of this writing. Their replacements have varied in quality, and not without turmoil. The theme seems to be populism of one sort or another. Sometimes it has an internationalist flavor to it (as is the case with Syriza and Podemos), and sometimes strictly nationalist. Something similar seems to be playing out in Asia and in South America (either collapse of established parties or rebranding of some sort in a populist direction). How this all plays out, I honestly have no idea. The only thing I can say with any certainty is that we live in interesting times.
As long as you understand “populist workers party” to be equally likely to be an authoritarian right-wing “workers” party nominally represented by a tyrant (in the classical sense of the term, a demagogue).
That’s been my understanding. Seems plausible that the GOP is evolving (or perhaps more accurately to say devolving) in that direction.
Greer’s view of the Civil War is a little more nuanced than typical “War of Northern Aggression” types.
In fact, the South Carolina Secession Ordinance was driven by the concern for new states in the West becoming slave states instead of the abolition of slavery. What the Confederate planters understood is that at some point, they would be outnumbered in Congress or they would outnumber the free states in Congress. It couldn’t be both ways. And the country had just elected Abraham Lincoln. What kind of a Congress came in in the 1860 election? Where would the next annexations be made? The then slaveholder hopes of the Gadsden Purchase were not granted statehood until 1912. The difference in visions and economic interests are what drove the conflict intensely from the Nat Turner rebellion in 1830 until the defeat in 1865.
On the arrogance of liberalism, for that is what Greer is charging, here is the key point:
I agree; Greer needs more specifics about the “didn’t necesssarily square with what liberals wanted to do for them” part of his criticism. And he gives it with the “family values” rightwing religious ethics that formed in the aftermath of the ‘sexual revolution”. The further rippling out of this in the LGBTQ movement and the continued pressure on maintaining the legality of abortion seems to be another part of it. And then he said that in the 1960s both left and right could make values arguments in defense or support of their policies — about sexuality and its regulation[?] So you have a conflict of values buried in the “culture war”. And abstract values cannot be easily compromised, in part because they are not tied to interests and in part because they are irresolvable abstractly.
And then he pops the statement that got you.
IMO, he must make the argument as to how specific criticisms are not motivated by the hateful values that liberals charge.
Then he makes an argument that the 1% implement their interest through the 10%.
And so he argues implicitly that the Trump reaction is a more widespread revolt of the 99% than was Occupy Wall Street. I don’t see it that way because I saw lots of police repression going on.
But this is the point to consider seriously:
As a Sanders supporter, I fully understand this criticism, and I hope that the Clinton campaign wakes up to it before the election is complete:
Just to hit a real sore point, what exactly does supporting “Black Lives Matter” mean when nothing is actually being done to stop the impunity of police who kill unarmed civilians, often mentally ill whose families have called the police for help?
And just what other than a sly campaign attack is the fixation on Putin about?
Here’s the very nub of the argument:
Put succinctly, are your interests those of Goldman Sachs, Pete Peterson, the wide array of national security “experts”, and other high-profile Hillary Clinton supporters? Or are your interests with the 99% who need relief from student debt, higher wages, increased Social Security, a further revision of healthcare reform to single payer, and actual dealing with the mess that the drug war has made of the criminal justice and mental health services in this country?
As I have said, the best solution for this election is the complete disappearance of the Republican Party, the establishment Democrats become the center-right party, and a populist pacifist party forms as a strong center-left party. The alternative is for the alternative party to Democrats to be an Alt-Right party in leageue with Geert Wilders, UKIP, the French National Front, the German AfD, Ukrainian Right Sector, and Putin’s One Russia.
I’m not sure that Greer clearly sees that alternative.
Greer will keep his Burkean arrogance against liberalism. He has a habit of seeing only standard liberal responses to criticism.
“As I have said, the best solution for this election is the complete disappearance of the Republican Party, the establishment Democrats become the center-right party, and a populist pacifist party forms as a strong center-left party.”
Yes, this.
No matter how much you despise the neoliberal neocons controlling a centrist Democratic party, as long as the Republican party has a shot at the White House and USSC, the first priority is to destroy the Republican party.
Strongman Trump will get at least 40% of the vote. Destroying the Democratic party does not help liberalism or progressivism outside of the vague notion that…something something mass social uprising, something something Social Democratic Utopia.
The Democratic party is perfect for a center-right conservative party rooted in objective, observable reality. But to get there, the neofascist radical reactionary Republican party has to lose all ability to run the executive branch and judicial branch. Do that, and the sane conservatives become Democrats, and progressives can continue to do what they always have to do – drag society and the politicians to the left.
That seemed to be my starting assumption prior to the start of the primaries. Whoever the GOP nominated was going to have a floor of about 40%. Francis the Talking Mule could be nominated and get that 40%. There’s a lot of frustration with the Democratic Party. I know. I’ve certainly experienced it. Certainly read enough explanation as to why the Democratic Party is in its current set of circumstances (David Harvey, whom few here probably would have interest in reading, offered a useful insight – the DP has dual loyalties to its traditional base and to its Wall Street supporters, which is a difficult balancing act at best). The advocacy of burning the Democratic Party down to “stick it the man” or whatever is misplaced. For that to work would presuppose having an infrastructure in place that could take its place and succeed in filling the vacuum once the DP was reduced to nothing. Where exactly is that infrastructure? If it’s there, I am not getting the memos. There have been very few leftist uprisings in modern history that have succeeded short term in gaining power. And arguably long term those ended in something far short of any utopian vision, much as it has always pained me to acknowledge that. But at least in those instances an infrastructure was already in place once there was some form of societal collapse.
So among the “burn it down” contingent, we’re left with the underpants gnome problem:
1. Keep HRC out of the White House and decimate the Democratic Party
2.????
3. The Glorious Social Democratic Uprising succeeds, spreading peace, love, and happiness to all.
Admittedly it’s a bit of an oversimplification, but it will do for now.
In the meantime, my hope is that we merely get through this cycle, build a firewall against what is clearly devolving into a fascist party/movement, and figure out how to build some legitimately progressive/left reforms from there. That last bit will take time, thought, and effort. It will be easier to accomplish and to have the needed dialog to make that happen if we’re dealing with what is effectively something of a third Obama term than what seems to be the second coming of Mussolini.
Where is the infrastructure?
It exists mostly as movemental politics on the edge between co-option and suppression. It can have not large form within the frame of electoral politics because the moment it tread on electoral politics outside the current frame, the institutional constraints come into play.
If the Republican Party (or the Democratic Party) collapses, the decisions of the party in control determine on which side of them the new opposition infrastructure forms.
Does a hegemonic Democratic Party suddenly swing hard toward labor? Do you really think so?
That’s precisely my question? Where is that infrastructure? I really wish someone had an answer. Do I have any idea what a hegemonic DP would do? Your guess is as good as mine. Not meaning to be curt, but I am just as uncertain about what political realignments might be coming around the corner as the next person.
I don’t see much need for a realignment, as much as the sane members of Congress and the Senate currently d.b.a Republicans just need a home to call their own.
The Democratic party, as a party for stability and sanity, can easily absorb sane Republicans. Hell, it’s already thoroughly riddled with neoliberal neocons.
The Democratic party could essentially just take out a calendar, circle a date – any date – and say, social progress is finished, y’all, and we like strong markets, and voila, it’s now the conservative party.
The infrastructure that needs to exist on the left is less intensive than the infrastructure that needs to exist for a centrist/conservative party, because economic and social ideas of “the left” are typically diverse and in flux. I mean, has “the left” spent much time coalescing around which would be better for workers – a UBI, or a 25 hour full-time work week with requisite raises? Because holy shit, isn’t it clearly obvious that the economy is unable to support as many workers as there are individuals who need a job to pay bills?
What I said here years ago is that Clinton was likely going to be the Presidential candidate. No, it was not a crazily radical prediction, but I also said that progressives should have been lining up candidates for local, city and state elections. Because as much as you may hate Clinton, it was almost totally written in stone. And we need an infrastructure that isn’t just a top-down OneCandidate, whether Sanders, or Stein. Mostly because most governmentin’ gets done at the local level, but also because Sanders or Stein can’t do much if it doesn’t have subordinates at various levels of government.
I wanted progressives to be working for years getting progressive candidates into local elections, because then rather than worrying about a neoliberal neocon like Clinton, you’d just count it as Biden’ time while the progressive movement develops an infrastructure from within the system, that would be ready to take over after a Republican party implosion (in the years following 2016).
Had Sanders been the nominee, all bets are off as to what the polls would look like now, but I believe that a typical realignment would have been much likelier. Instead of Republicans moving to the Democratic party, it’d be centrist neoliberal neoconservative Democrats pulling the Republican party off the cliff and back into semi-sanity. But I don’t think that this would be nearly as effective as progressives getting into office around the country with Clinton as President…because infrastructure is important, and it shouldn’t just be OneCandidate at the very top. And had Sanders been the nominee and even the winner, he’d be a top-down leader without a whole lot of support throughout government.
I’m with you as far as recruiting and running candidates in state and local elections. Most of my concerns the last few years have had to do with who is on the city council or school board, where the real action is, or fielding plausible candidates in the state legislature – maybe a bit more Quixotic in my portion of the state, but still needed. Can do a lot of rebuilding that way. The ship has sailed in 2016 and any opportunities that could have been had are lost. So, the focus is on a firewall now to contain Trump & Trumpism and then what can be done in the short to medium term after this particular electoral cluster has run its course.
There are clearly issues that a left however defined could focus on and build a following for. I like the workweek idea, in large part because we’re heading into an age of automation to an extent not seen before. Would rather get ahead of the problems that will have in displacing workers than behind the curve. Climate seems to be another, as the data that keep coming in each year look just a bit more unnerving than that of the previous year. Getting ahead of the curve on how to deal with the masses of people who will be displaced (both within and outside our borders) as a result of a warming climate would be far preferable to the reactionary piecemeal approach that is currently considered acceptable. I know – stating the obvious. Personally, I got disillusioned with a lot of left activism many moons ago. Got sick of the sectarianism more than anything – when various factions have ridiculous amounts in common but cannot and will not work with one another because of some arcane difference, well it just gets frustrating as hell. Tried to say whenever and wherever I could that we could stand together or fall separately. Falling separately seems to be the default choice. Before I get to a rant that will go on forever, I think I’ll stop. We’re probably more in agreement than not. Let’s leave it at that.
There are salvageable conservatives, i.e. people who are nominally Republican, and just don’t pay attention. Those are the first people who you steal away from the Republican party.
And you steal these people away not by explaining how liberalism/progressivism is correct, but by finding a narrative that allows them to get to seeing the liberal/progressive idea to begin with. Because these people are nominally Republican, they’ve been trained to turn off whenever anything to the left is brought up.
I say this because you sell nominal Republicans on Republican ideals, and skip over the liberal/progressive reasoning and logic.
Cheap energy = Wealth: Renewables (hidden in this is lowering CO2 emissions and mothballing coal/oil/fracking, etc.)
25 Hour Full-Time Work Week = Entrepreneurism (hidden in this are the tens of millions of unemployed who don’t have jobs because: there are no jobs. Free time equals business creation = JobCreationTM)
The progressive left needs to put down the powerpoints and sell a narrative that gets people to see themselves in a progressive society, without telling the same people that they need to upend their own values and kick their traditions to the curb, in order to be a decent human being (see P.C. backlash).
And we need candidates down ballot who can argue this narrative and win office. People talk about how there are no young progressives/liberals waiting in the wings to take over after Clinton/Trump. Well, part and parcel of that is the whole Sanders/Stein cult of personality. It’s why Stein’s candidacy is a joke. She isn’t offering anyone an ethical candidate to vote for. She’s offering people a way to pretend that their vote means anything. Protip: voting for Stein is the same as staying home and binge watching Storage Wars.