Forty Short Post-Election Theses: Where We Stand Now and Where We Go From Here
This is a great article from Counterpunch by Anis Shivani, a Houston-based, Harvard-educated writer. Read it, please. It is the only one that I have found in a week of post-election searching that makes much sense to me.
Following are a few snippets from it.
Read on:
1/ Do not underestimate Trump’s executive ability. He ran at least five different campaigns during this one cycle, showing himself swift-footed and quickly able to change staff and ideas depending on the needs of the moment. He will move blindingly fast to enact his repressive agenda, every word of which he meant seriously.
—snip—
3/ The monopoly of political correctness over the media and the intellectual apparatus has had dire results, it has reached its end point in the fascistic reaction. Political correctness diverts attention from the kinds of material issues that propel this kind of election result. How can this monopoly by broken?
4/ When democracy on the left is suppressed–i.e., someone like Bernie Sanders is cheated out of the nomination that should have been his–the result is an extreme reaction from the right, and the victory of the opposite of the suppressed message. This has been true for nearly forty years of neoliberalism.
5/ Fascism arises only when liberalism fails. How has liberalism failed us? The cultural liberalism of the elites doesn’t allow room for economic liberalism, which has been sidelined during the course of the neoliberal ascendancy.
6/ Trump has rewritten all the rules of politics. Those in the elite bubble, both Republicans and Democrats, have been made to look like fools. Trump made a direct appeal to the people, converting American politics into a reality show. Politics is reality TV now, and will remain so. How does a rational message of economic redistribution and justice get through this screen?
—snip—
8/ The demographic wall has been shattered. Trump’s only chance of success was to break through in the Rust Belt, as the Democrats’ weakest point of exposure. Ted Cruz or any conventional Republican would not have won, the demographic wall would have stood. The only way was to scramble the map. Has the Rust Belt been breached for good? Yes, if fortune favors Trump and he can deliver even a small amount of what he promised.
9/ Just as the neoliberal elites were gambling, the electorate took a massive gamble too, they chose to end unbearable stagnation under neoliberalism, even at the risk of bringing on something apocalyptic. They knew the risks, but they could not bear neoliberal precariousness anymore.
10/ The elites had a chance to figure out an amiable solution to inequality, to share the fruits of the biggest economy in the world. They didn’t, and now it’s de facto civil war. Things cannot go back to the status quo ante, the elite consensus has collapsed for good.
—snip—
18/ By not taking the slightest steps to address economic inequality, neoliberals have plunged us into the abyss. Whenever we want even the slightest concessions, as in 2000, the system gives us something ten times more repressive to set us back. It is a system-wide failure, it is not just a failure of either political party. Trump is who we are, it is where we are, it is who we want to be, just as Bush was all those things to at least half the population.
19/ Trump, masterful strategist that he is, saw two bankrupt political parties, and seized control of one, as in his real estate dealings. Who will seize control of the bankrupt Democratic party now?
20/ A new political consensus will emerge eventually, though it may take a while. Both parties are dead, the neoliberal consensus is over. This is the first stage of either an authoritarian/inegalitarian political economy or a participatory/egalitarian one. The false center is gone.
21/ The neoliberal wing of the party had no intention of presenting any policy agenda, they were only prompted to concede a few things because of the pressure put by the Sanders wing. They have lost all credibility and should never be heard from again.
—snip—
25/ Writers, intellectuals, academics, and artists in the public eye are nearly 100% with “the Dems.” When I was in college it was ridiculous to be for the Dems. We were socialists, Marxists, radicals, anarchists, greens, freethinkers, rebels, secularists, hardcore feminists, utopians. What the hell happened to all of that? Young people should get away from the Dems, and build a green/socialist/egalitarian alternative, not just at the political party level but as a living reality, a transcendent goal of existence. Trump has done us a favor by blowing up the corporate Dems, they were never going to change on their own.
26/ This should be the end of the intensely anti-intellectual “liberal” websites and blogs, right? We know who they are, shoveling pure snark at anyone the least bit skeptical of the party line, designed to flatter the hip and cool young professionals with politically correct propaganda and little understanding of the reality of working people. Young people should educate themselves about the history of political economy, stop wasting time with this diversionary new media.
—snip—
31/ The electorate wisely rejected 44 years of a Bush or a Clinton at or near the top, which it would have been by 2024.
32/ We also come full circle in confronting the total decimation of the Democratic party in congress and at the state level under Clinton and Obama. The Democrats had a lock on the House since the New Deal, which they lost permanently in 1994, making any legislative advance impossible. This was a direct result of the Clinton neoliberal cave-in, it’s what happens when you end opposition and turn your own party into a replica of the other side. Essentially, we’ve had one-party rule since the end of the Cold War. And this has created the philosophical vacuum intp which Trump has stepped.
—snip—
34/ The entire Democratic party leadership should resign in shame. How does Howard Dean have the nerve to want to run for DNC chair after having opposed Sanders and having thrown in his lot with the Clinton machine for more than a decade? Sanders has the moral authority to have his choice, Keith Ellison, go forward. A new leadership and new philosophy of resistance needs to mobilize before Trump’s inauguration, and before his anticipated dire first actions, particularly against immigrants. Can the party move that fast?
—snip—
36/ Trump is coming after undocumented immigrants and Muslims in a big way. Mobilize now, be ready to fight. Every liberal institution rolled over in the first two years after 9/11, as registration of Muslims, illegal incarceration, mass deportations, and torture and rendition became the new order. Nothing happened in those first years as a token of liberal resistance. We will soon find out if this has changed.
—snip—
38/ Here come Fareed Zakaria and Jill Abramson and all the rest of the liberal prognosticators, blaming themselves for their failure to understand the agony of people in the rural areas. They are sorry they didn’t go to the South. The South? They’re right under your nose, in the urban areas, do you need to travel thousands of miles to find poor people?
39/ Blaming poor white people for taking advantage of white privilege is another part of runaway political correctness. The poor white person is as subject to police and surveillance authority, as subject to arbitrary employer exploitation, as is the poor person of any color. Can that meme end now?
40/ A forceful seizure of the Democratic party is necessary, and at the moment only Bernie has the moral authority to do it. In the longer term, there must be electoral reform, campaign finance reform, space for third parties and viewpoints beyond the two centrist parties. But in the short-term, Bernie is the youngest 75-year-old in the land, so take it away!
And, as always…sigh…
WTFU!!!
Later…
AG