Cross posted from the European Tribune
In common with many political junkies here, I suspect, I’ve been following the US elections very closely. And yet, despite having written about 60 stories on US politics in previous years, I’ve written hardly a word this time around. Where to start? The subject is almost too horrible to contemplate: a reductio ad absurdum that keeps on plummeting into new unfathomed depths. Could anyone have imagined a candidate so ridiculous as Donald J. Trump winning the Republican nomination, never mind the Presidency itself?
A narcissistic, racist, misogynist. A self-confessed serial sexual abuser of women and allegedly a child rapist as well. An admirer of Vladimir Putin, Saddam Hussein and assorted dictators around the world. A businessman who has stiffed many suppliers, contractors and customers throughout his career. A candidate who has encouraged his supporters to commit violence, and who has said he will imprison his opponent if elected. A rich kid who claims to speak on behalf of the dispossessed, and yet proposes policies which will dramatically further increase the gap between rich and poor in the United States.
And yet he is polling within a few percentage points of the front runner, Hillary Clinton, who, for all her faults, is none of the above. Yes, you can fault her for using a private email address for official business, possibly to avoid congressional scrutiny. But she did so on the advice of a previous (Republican) Secretary of State, Colin Powell, and it was apparently a practice widespread amongst top officials, partly because of the cumbersome nature of the official email system, not to mention the risks of leaks emanating from that system due to cyberattacks and bureaucratic infighting.
So what is happening to the USA, and is it a harbinger of things to come in Europe and elsewhere in the world?
Much has been made of the increasing disparity in wealth in the USA; of the evisceration of the middle class by technology and globalisation; of the encroachment on traditionally white held occupations and areas by various racial minorities, some of whom are recent immigrants, legal and illegal. But studies have shown that much of Trump’s support is not coming from those most effected by such trends, and that indeed his average supporter is wealthier compared to Hillary Clinton’s.
Yes, his support is disproportionately from older, white, male, church going and non-college educated demographics living in more rural areas, so it is easy to interpret his rise as a protest against an establishment more inclined towards globalisation, pluralism and liberal social values. But it is difficult to imagine the contortions that religious fundamentalists and social conservatives have to go through in order to throw their support behind a serial philanderer who has never worshipped anyone but himself. Still, if you can believe the world was created 4000 years ago, perhaps you can believe anything.
Perhaps “liberals” make the mistake of believing in a rational universe. Where conclusions are reached on the basis of falsifiable hypotheses and hard evidence. Where facts and truth and verifiable theories are the basis of policy and decision making. Where democracy is supposed to be about enhancing the common good.
Perhaps Trump has it right that politics is really about provoking fear and creating scapegoats who can be blamed for those fears. About greed, envy and just plain ignorance. An inchoate rage about the world that is, without much thought as to how it could be made better. Perhaps it is just about riling up one tribe to fight against another for the spoils of war, and the only thing that matters is that you have more weapons than they do.
Perhaps it is difficult to overcome millions of years of evolution in just a few generations, but it is worth noting that humans became one of the most successful of all species through their ability to communicate and cooperate with one another, to their ability to care for each other and nurture the young.
Trump is threatening to return us all to the dark ages, a task made all the easier by the weapons of mass destruction he will have at his disposal should he manage to win the Presidency. It is a dystopian world of dog eat dog, and may the devil take the hindmost. We have seen echoes of such tendencies in the rise of far right nationalism in the EU as exemplified by Brexit, and also in the sheer barbarism of wars such as that now going on in Syria. We last saw it on a global scale in World War II.
Most often people are caught up in such conflicts through circumstances beyond their control; through accidents of time and place. But sometimes they have a choice, and the American people are being given that choice on November 8th. They can choose to turn back the clock on decades of political, economic and social development, or they can put their trust in the slow, complex, confusing and often frustrating process of engaging in political dialogue to make things better for everyone, even if some always seem to get the lion’s share of the spoils. It doesn’t have to be about them and us: It can also be about all of us.
You ask:
Short answer?
Yes. It is a harbinger of things to come. Worldwide. It has already begun. Duterte. North Korea. The renascent right wing/white wing all over Western Europe. ISIS and the other throat cutters. Putin’s Gang of One. The governmental failures in South/Central America. The amazing wealth and ferocity of the drug cartels. The many covert U.S. wars.
Etc., etc., etc.
Longer?
We’ll talk after Tuesday.
I will say this…no matter which of the several ways things go next week in the U.S., it will not stop the newly visible dirtiness that has been unleashed by this election. The Empire is at worldwide risk, and it will do whatever it can to maintain its position.
Nature, red in tooth and claw.
It was no less dirty before this election. The only difference now is that the covers have been torn off the mechanisms that hid the dirt. Once the purveyors of that dirt are unmasked, they have less reason to be…covert.
Political nature always ends up an iron fist when challenged.
Always and everywhere.
A bloody iron fist.
Watch.
AG
Trump is both the miserable human misfit that you describe AND the most unqualified major party prez candidate in American history. And it is the failure by our useless corporate media to even slightly comment upon this later circumstance, and the fact that Trump’s woeful inexperience is absolutely of no consequence to at least 45% of the American electorate which is the most interesting and concerning feature of this election. The idea appears to be if the Repubs nominated him, he is de facto “qualified”.
One can argue that Repub prez candidates have been trending towards being very poorly to weakly qualified for some time now, with Dole being perhaps the last clearly qualified Repub nominee. While McCain had been in the senate for a long time, he had nothing to show for it, and was obviously a person of below average intelligence. A dummy, which he practically had to admit: “I don’t know much about economics”. All he “knew” was that the US military had to remain bloated beyond belief and that he would fight for that.
But Trump is in an unqualified class all his own, and the fact that he does not (and cannot) make the slightest pretense of knowing anything about public service, or the federal government, or any state government, makes clear that the American electorate has now given up the ghost and reached catastrophic level of failure—American fascism seems now simply a matter of time, especially with a Repub senate majority frustrating the most basic levels of governance should HRC eke out a 2% win.
We can also see this radicalization in the recent Repub decision to play Russian roulette with the Supreme Court—with both conservative “intellectuals” saying that (Repub) senators have a right “to let the Court die” and (Repub) senators making clear they will not confirm any HRC nominee (unless they have pre-cleared the person).
This is obviously radically new, with Repubs talking about normalizing either a permanent 4-4 tie or 4-3 Repub Court majority—yet our useless corporate media do not even report on it. Hell, as far as I can tell, Clinton and Kaine are afraid even to remark upon it in the last week of the campaign with Der Trumper closing everywhere. Certainly Americans do not hear from any source that a Dem prez/Repub senate will result in a constitutional crisis in very short order in 2017.
But of course radical politicization and manipulation of a nation’s courts is the lynchpin of historic fascism and critical to the success of a Hitlerian authoritarian government—hence the willingness of “conservative” intellectuals and politicians to move in that direction.
With democracy around the world looking pretty unhealthy, nations around the world need to take a very, very clear look at the decaying situation in US politics, the reality of the American “conservative” movement and its captured party, the Repubs, as well as what has become of our electorate. The citizenry were intentionally led into their manifest degeneration, surely, but many were dying to be led there and sought out every opportunity to gorge at the shit trough, refusing to credit any remotely factual narrative. Global warming is a hoax, etc, etc….
As we look out at the final week of Election 2016, we have arrived at the logical endpoint of “conservative” politics. Let the Supreme Court die, indeed….
All across the Western world, we’re seeing a resurgence of far-right parties. They all have three characteristics:
Opposition to immigrants
Skepticism or worse on climate change
Russian support
We’re seeing something like the long-standing Republican trick of racism weaponized by fossil fuel money, but with Russian oil money behind it instead of American corporate oil money. Trump is just this new conservative movement coming to the US.
I tend to disagree with this hypothesis. Opposition to climate change is very much a US phenomenon, and Russian support doesn’t apply to Europe, especially in the case of Brexit. Trump support has several uniquely US characteristics. not least the worship of money and material “success”, the complete embedding with the “private enterprise” model of capitalism. and the “religionisation” of greed. Most Europeans, even right wingers, still look to the state to do lots of things for them – they just want it tilted more in their direction. Immigration is a common thread, I grant you, often in countries with least experience of it. The Russian influence is hugely overplayed,. Perhaps that is a uniquely Trump phenomenon.
You wrote:
This captures so well a set of values I hold dear and a reminder of the stakes. A politics that emphasizes cooperation, rather than fear and division is so desperately needed. Of course, there are things that I would want reformed – the rules of the economic system that has led to such income inequality being first and foremost among them. But, I would much rather prefer to incite for such changes without completely gutting the progress that has been made during my lifetime and certainly before. As a late Beatle once said about those wanting a revolution, “well, you know, we all want to change the world.” Change comes slowly, with setbacks, and more gains, more setbacks, and so on. But I would certainly not trade away a world that has afforded me and my family so many chances to see parts of the world we would never have seen otherwise, to be exposed to the art, music, and literature of a vast array of cultures, and so on. Can we do better? Yes. And we will. But not by building walls, making threats, shaking down friends and allies, and releasing the worst impulses our species is capable of.
I got yer “new politics.”
Right here!!!
No taste, no content.
Like dat!!!
AG
It’s been like a long sick-bed vigil for the Age of Enlightenment and our hopes and aspirations for the future. That it would be done merely for profit and petty emotional motives really hurts; we despair of our fellows. If the patient dies, all bets are off.