Well, it’s finally over, and I think it’s fair to say I called it. As I predicted back in January of this year, working class Americans—fed up with being treated by the Democratic Party as the one American minority that it’s okay to hate—delivered a stinging rebuke to the politics of business as usual. To the shock and chagrin of the entire US political establishment, and to the tautly focused embarrassment of the pundits, pollsters, and pet intellectuals of the mainstream media, Donald Trump will be the forty-fifth president of the United States of America.
Like millions of other Americans, I took part in the pleasant civic ritual of the election. My local polling place is in an elementary school on the edge of the poor part of town—the rundown multiracial neighborhood I’ve mentioned here before, where Trump signs blossomed early and often—and I went to vote, as I usually do, in early afternoon, when the lunch rush was over and the torrent of people voting on the way home from work hadn’t yet gotten under way. Thus there was no line; I came in just as two elderly voters on the way out were comparing notes on local restaurants that give discounts to patrons who’ve got the “I Voted” sticker the polls here hand out when you’ve done your civic duty, and left maybe five minutes later as a bottle-blonde housewife was coming in to cast her vote.
Maryland had electronic voting for a while, but did the smart thing and went back to paper ballots this year, so I’m pretty sure my votes got counted the way I cast them. Afterwards I walked home—it was cloudy but warm, as nice a November day as you could ask for—and got back to work on my current writing project. It all made an interesting counterpoint to the nonstop shrieking that’s been emanating for months now from the media and, let’s be fair, from politicians, pundits, and a great many ordinary people all over the world as well.
I don’t see a lot of point just now in talking about what’s going to happen once the dust and the tumult settles, the privileged finish throwing their predictable tantrums, and the Trump administration settles into power in Washington DC. There will be plenty of time for that later. What I’d like to do here and now is talk about a couple of things that were highlighted by this election, and cast a useful light on the current state of US politics and the challenges that have to be faced as a troubled, beleaguered, and bitterly divided nation staggers on toward its next round of crises.
One of those things showed up with rare clarity in the way that many readers responded to my posts on the election. All along, from my first post on the improbable rise of Donald Trump right up to last week’s pre-election wrapup, I tried to keep the discussion focused on issues: what policies each candidate could be expected to support once the next administration took office.
To my mind, at least, that’s the thing that matters most about an election. Four or eight years from now, after all, the personality of the outgoing president is going to matter less than an average fart in a Category 5 hurricane. The consequences of policy decisions made by the presidency over the next four years, on the other hand, will have implications that extend for years into the future. Should the United States pursue a policy of confrontation with Russia in the Middle East, or should it work out a modus vivendi with the Russians to pursue the common goal of suppressing jihadi terrorism? Should federal policy continue to encourage the offshoring of jobs and the importation of workers to drive down wages, or should it be changed to discourage these things? These are important issues that will affect millions of lives in the United States and elsewhere, and there are other issues of similar importance on which the two candidates had significantly different positions.
Quite a few of the people who responded to those posts, though, displayed no interest in such mundane if important matters. They only wanted to talk about their opinions about the personalities of the candidates: to insist that Clinton was a corrupt stooge, say or that Trump was a hatemongering fascist. (It says something about American politics these days that rather more often than not, the people who did this were too busy slandering the character of the candidate they hated to say much about the one they planned to vote for.) Outside the relatively sheltered waters of The Archdruid Report, in turn, that tendency went into overdrive; for much of the campaign, the only way you could tell the difference between the newspapers of record and the National Enquirer was by noting which candidates they supported, and allegedly serious websites were by and large even worse.
This wasn’t the fault of the candidates, as it happens. Whatever else might be said for or against Hillary Clinton, she tried to avoid a campaign based on content-free sound bites like the one Barack Obama waged against her so cynically and successfully in 2008; the pages of her campaign website displayed a laundry list of things she said she wanted to do if she won the election. While many voters will have had their disagreements with her proposals, she actually tried to talk about the issues, and that’s refreshingly responsible. Trump, for that matter, devoted speech after speech to a range of highly specific policy proposals.
Yet nearly all the talk about both candidates, in and out of the media, focused not on their policy proposals but on their personalities—or rather on nastily distorted parodies of their personalities that defined them, more or less explicitly, as evil incarnate. The Church of Satan, I’m told, has stated categorically that the Devil was not running in this year’s US presidential election, but you’d have a hard time telling that from the rhetoric on both sides. The media certainly worked overtime to foster the fixation on personalities, but I suspect this is one of those cases where the media was simply reflecting something that was already present in the collective consciousness of our society.
All through the campaign I noticed, rather to my surprise, that it wasn’t just those who have nothing in their heads that a television or a website didn’t put there, who ignored the issues and fixated on personalities. I long ago lost track of the number of usually thoughtful people I know who, over the course of the last year, ended up buying into every negative claim about whichever candidate they hated, without even going through the motions of checking the facts. I also lost track months ago of the number of usually thoughtful people I know whose automatic response to an attempt to talk about the issues at stake in this election was to give me a blank look and go right back to ranting about the evilly evil evilness of whichever candidate they hated.
It seems to me that something has been forgotten here. We didn’t have an election to choose a plaster saint, a new character on My Little Pony, or Miss (or Mister) Goody Two-Shoes 2016. We had an election to choose the official who will head the executive branch of our federal government for the next four years. I’ve read essays by people who know Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump personally, and claim that both of them are actually very pleasant people. You know what? I literally couldn’t care less. I would be just as likely to vote for a surly misanthrope who loathes children, kicks puppies, and has deviant sexual cravings involving household appliances and mayonnaise, if that person supports the policies I want on the issues that matter to me. It really is that simple.
I’d like to suggest, furthermore, that the fixation on personalities—or, again, malicious parodies of personalities—has played a huge role in making politics in the United States so savage, so divisive, and so intractably deadlocked on so many of the things that matter just now. The issues I mentioned a few paragraphs back—US foreign policy toward a resurgent Russia, on the one hand, and US economic policy regarding the offshoring of jobs and the importation of foreign workers—are not only important, they’re issues about which reasonable disagreement is possible. What’s more, they’re issues on which negotiation, compromise, and the working out of a mutually satisfactory modus vivendi between competing interests are also possible, at least in theory.
In practice? Not while each side is insisting at the top of its lungs that the other side is led by a monster of depravity and supported only by people who hate everything good in the world. I’d like to suggest that it’s exactly this replacement of reasoned politics with a pretty close equivalent of the Two Minutes Hate from Orwell’s 1984 that’s among the most important forces keeping this country from solving any of its problems or doing anything to brace itself for the looming crises ahead.
Thus I’d like to encourage all the citizens of my country to turn off the television and the internet for a few moments, take a few deep breaths, and think about the tone of the recent election, and to what extent they might have participated in the bipartisan culture of hatred that filled so much of it. It might be worth pointing out that you’re not likely to convince other people to vote the way you think they ought to vote if you’re simultaneously berating them for being evilly evil with a double helping of evil sauce on the side, or sneering at them for being too ignorant to recognize that voting for your candidate really is in their best interests, or any of the other counterproductive habits that have taken the place of reasonable political discourse in today’s America.
The second point I noticed in the course of the election campaign connects to the one just discussed. That’s the hard fact that the United States at this point in its history may still be a single republic, but it’s not a single nation—and it could be argued on reasonably solid grounds that it never has been. Facile distinctions between “red” and “blue” states barely touch the complexity, much less the depth, of the divisions that separate the great urban centers from the rest of the country, and the different regions from one another.
I think it was Pauline Kael who, in the wake of Richard Nixon’s landslide victory in 1972, commented that she didn’t understand how Nixon could have won—after all, nobody she knew voted for him! The same sentiment is currently being expressed in tones ranging from bewilderment and baffled rage from all corners of the affluent left and their hangers-on among the mainstream media’s well-paid punditry. The 20% or so of Americans who have benefited from the jobless recovery of the last eight years, and the broader neoliberal economic agenda of the last four decades, very rarely leave the echo-chamber environments where they spend their days to find out what the rest of the country is thinking. If they’d done so a bit more often in the last year, they would have watched Trump signs sprouting all over the stark landscapes of poverty that have spread so widely in the America they never see.
But of course the divisions run deeper than this, and considerably more ramified. Compare the political, economic, and social policies that have the approval of people in Massachusetts, say, and those that have the approval of people in Oklahoma, and you’ll find next to no overlap. This isn’t because the people of one state or the other are (insert your insult of choice here); it’s because they belong to different cultures, with incommensurable values, attitudes, and interests. Attempts, well-meaning or otherwise, to impose the mores of either state on the other are guaranteed to result only in hostility and incomprehension—and such attempts have been all too common of late.
Ours is a very diverse country. That may sound like a truism, but it has implications that aren’t usually taken into account. A country with a great deal of cultural uniformity, with a broad consensus of shared values and attitudes, can afford to legislate that consensus on a national basis. A country that doesn’t have that kind of uniformity, that lacks any consensus concerning values and attitudes, very quickly gets into serious trouble if it tries that sort of legislation. If the divergence is serious enough, the only way that reliably allows different nations to function under a single government is a federal system—that is, a system that assigns the national government only those powers and duties that have to be handled on a nationwide basis, while leaving most other questions for local governments and individuals to settle for themselves.
My more historically literate readers will be aware that the United States used to have a federal system—that is, after all, why we still speak of “the federal government.” Under the Constitution as originally written and interpreted, the people of each state had the right to run their own affairs pretty much as they saw fit, within certain very broad limits. The federal government was assigned certain narrowly defined powers, and all other powers were, in the language of the Tenth Amendment, reserved to the states and the people.
Over the first century and a half of our national history, certain other powers were assigned to the federal government by constitutional amendment, sometimes with good results—the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection of the laws to all citizens, for example, and the Fifteenth and Nineteenth Amendments’ extension of voting rights to black people and women respectively—and sometimes not—the Eighteenth Amendment’s prohibition of alcohol comes to mind here. The basic federal structure remained intact. Not until the aftermath of the Great Depression and the Second World War did the metastatic growth of the federal government begin in earnest, and so in due time did the various attempts to impose this or that set of moral values on the entire country by force of law.
Those attempts have not worked, and they’re not going to work. I’m not sure how many people have noticed, though, that the election of Donald Trump was not merely a rebuke to the liberal left; it was also a defeat for the religious right. It’s worth recalling that the evangelical wing of the Republican Party had its own favorites in the race for the GOP nomination, and Trump was emphatically not one of them. It has not been a propitious autumn for the movements of left and right whose stock in trade is trying to force their own notion of virtue down the throats of the American people—and maybe, just maybe, that points to the way ahead.
It’s time to consider, I suggest, a renewal of the traditions of American federalism: a systematic devolution of power from the overinflated federal government to the states, and from the states to the people. It’s time for people in Massachusetts to accept that they’re never going to be able to force people in Oklahoma to conform to their notions of moral goodness, and for the people of Oklahoma to accept the same thing about the people of Massachusetts; furthermore, it’s time for government at all levels to give up trying to impose cultural uniformity on the lively diversity of our republic’s many nations, and settle for their proper role of ensuring equal protection under the laws, and those other benefits that governments, by their nature, are best suited to provide for their citizens.
We need a new social compact under which all Americans agree to back away from the politics of personal vilification that dominated all sides in the election just over, let go of the supposed right to force everyone in the country to submit to any one set of social and moral views, and approach the issues that divide us with an eye toward compromise, negotiation, and mutual respect. Most of the problems that face this country could be solved, or at least significantly ameliorated, if our efforts were guided by such a compact—and if that can be done, I suspect that a great many more of us will have the opportunity to experience one of the greatest benefits a political system can bestow: actual, honest-to-goodness liberty. We’ll talk more about that in future posts.
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449 comments:
Not really on-topic but I was trying to understand what the labels "left" and "right" mean, in the context of politics. This, because the terms are most commonly used today, as derogatory epithets. In researching this, there seems to be as many opinions about what they mean as there are people expressing them, which made me wonder if the terms had any objective meaning at all. Then, I recalled your comments from an earlier essay, about "interests" and "values" and I was wondering if "left" could describe those positions that considered "values" as more important, while "right" is a position that considers "interests" as paramount. Your thoughts?
Cheers!
Paul
11/9/16, 4:39 PM
Mongo, At The Moment said...
11/9/16, 4:39 PM
GreenEngineer said...
Please expand upon how you would propose to square this particular circle.
If the issue at hand is gay marriage (or transgender bathroom usage, for that matter), then to the left it's a matter of equal protection/privilege under the law. To the right, it's a matter of those damn lefties imposing their San Francisco values on good ol' Americans.
There are similar dynamics in play around, for example, pollution or climate change. To one side, justice requires action. To the other side, justice requires that the government butt out.
Not every "left/right" issue breaks down this way, but I'd hazard that most of the important ones do.
11/9/16, 4:45 PM
Tom Bannister said...
Completed agree with you about otherwise perfectly thought and reasonable people raving (or screeching rather) about personalities rather than policy whenever discussions of politics come up. Trumps rise and rise has attracted plenty of interest here in New Zealand, although discussions of Trump almost never (so far as I've heard) actually addressed any of the issues that have now propelled him into power (Well ok, I managed raise those issues on a few occasions, with mixed results). Rare exceptions consisted of a observance that of something like "Americans are so desperate for change they'll do anything" but then the subject promptly turns back to "trump is a moron" etc etc etc. Though quite a bit of our media is straight out the American institutional propaganda machine...
Just for any NZ readers, I'd say our closest equivalent to Trump is Properly Winston Peters (That is, he'll pick up the anti establishment vote).
11/9/16, 4:51 PM
donalfagan said...
I was watching The Young Turks, and they interviewed a few Trump supporters, who said they trusted the Donald because he spoke more like a real person than the scripted style of Hillary Clinton (and most media types). I thought this election was more of a repudiation than an endorsement. So I think the only policy positions that mattered was that Trump repudiated the establishment, NAFTA, immigration, etc.
https://donalfagan.wordpress.com/2016/11/09/holy-crap-trump-won/
11/9/16, 4:57 PM
Cortes said...
Trump's mother hailed from Tong/Tunga on the NE coast of the Isle of Lewis. When we spent a holiday on that island back in?1995, the village was really "the land that time forgot " for people from mainland Scotland, even after 25 or so years of access to TV. NO movement by locals except to church on the Sabbath. I gave my wife a long lie in bed and walked the kids around the area and at an isolated house a young woman ironing clothes hurriedly pulled the curtains closed.
That was ?1995.
The village in the days of Trump's mother's youth would have been familiar to the Taliban.
I suspect that there is an inner core of such asceticism in DJT.
Ridiculous as it appears.
11/9/16, 5:12 PM
Dale NorthwestExpeditions said...
I support your idea of devolving power back to the states as much as possible. The one concern I have is trails of tears type exoduses from within a state or between states as individuals attempt to find folks who share similar belief systems.
I can't wait to see what you come up with next. I truly appreciate your insights.
11/9/16, 5:17 PM
Grebulocities said...
The most striking thing to me about the results is that it's impossible to dismiss them as racism or white nationalism. Trump actually did better among ethnic minorities, in particular Hispanics, than Mitt Romney did four years ago. And there were patches of solid Democratic support in a few rural parts of the Midwest, especially in parts of Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota, that went solidly for Obama twice but completely flipped red this year. Iowa was solidly in Obama's camp in 2012 but flipped a full 13 points, from Obama by a 5% margin to Trump by 8%; Wisconsin is the same story but a few points more Democratic. A whole lot of Obama voters all over the Rust Belt, both white and minority, went for Trump. The Dems won't win the presidency again until they figure out and address the real grievances of the voters who left them this year.
11/9/16, 5:17 PM
Philip Bridges said...
A thoughtful post, as usual, about our current state of politics and culture, but I do have one question. I grew up in the segregated South, went to white-only schools, and lived in the white part of town. How does one draw the line to determine mutual virtue in situations like those? Many Southeners viewed legal segregation as our "unique institution" and actively resisted civil rights efforts. Would racial segregation in schools, eating establishments, and public places be allowed if the local majority desired it?
11/9/16, 5:18 PM
thenoteswhichdonotfit said...
Speaking as a resident of the Left Coast, I think the social compact you speak of could gain a lot of popular support here. A lot of the push to impose our values on other geographical areas is because it is believed that, if we do not push our values onto them, they will push their values onto us (which some people from other geographical areas have tried to do). With a strong guarantee that they cannot push their values onto us, I think most people here will lose interest into pushing our values onto them, just as we generally don't try to push our values onto Mexico or Canada.
Trump's stance on leaving the marijuana issue to the states is encouraging in this regard. I think recreational drugs in general should be managed at the state and local government level, not the national level.
11/9/16, 5:19 PM
Cherokee Organics said...
You called it. Well done for your prescience. Seriously, A+, and 10 out of 10. I’d even chuck in the elusive and rarely seen Elephant Stamp, but alas this forum is not mine to do so. I reckon you earned a Gold Star though and wouldn’t be at all unhappy with you awarding it to yourself because you deserve it!
And here today you have delivered a fine reprimand and scolding to the many naughty children who well deserved it. But also, I must add, that you have shown the way forward as well. Respect to you!
The media down here is foaming at the mouth in disbelief, which appears to have arisen because they have seen firsthand for themselves that they do not indeed set the tone of the public opinion. That job is reserved for the public who have to live with things as they actually are. Do you reckon that is a form of cognitive dissonance? It looks a bit that way to me.
Yesterday I heard a guy interviewed on the radio who wanted to talk about the class issues which are driving politics and the interviewer blithely ignored the guys observations - even after the election result was in. It was uncanny. The pollsters and advisers should be sacked, immediately and no questions should be asked and certainly no blathering should be listened too.
I was mildly curious as to whether the belief in your prediction had been shaken by the sheer weight of opinion thrown at you over the past few months? I sort of believe that it didn't but it appeared to me that you spoke more gently to people who held divergent views as time went on. Dunno really.
Congratulations on the new book too and I shall grab a copy!
PS: Nothing beats paper ballots for honesty and I can attest to this.
Cheers
Chris
11/9/16, 5:21 PM
Jason B said...
11/9/16, 5:28 PM
trippticket said...
Make sure you're on the 'Counties' map in the left column.
Notice how the arc of blue counties in the southeastern U.S. follows the fall line, the geographic transition from piedmont to coastal plain around the South. What? Why? Why would that occur? Seems odd, doesn't it? Could it be some sort of common mineral deficiency or something?? ;o) oink, oink!
Full disclosure: Johnson/Weld voter, and disappointed they didn't get the required 5% nationally to assure them a place in the conversation next time around.
Very impressive, Mr. Greer. You outdid even yourself with this one.
11/9/16, 5:34 PM
ChemEng said...
During the course of the last year I have become deeply involved in a local issue that will have a major impact on the small town in which I live (not too far from where you are) and the surrounding areas. I have found that the more local the politics are the more they focus on the actual issues, not on personalities.
At the federal level it has all been about emails and other scandals. At the state level my observation is that the two persons running for Representative are decent people, even though their opinions are far apart. At the county level, based on what I have observed, I respect the thoroughness and balance of the Board of Supervisors. And at the Town Council level it has all been about the issues and hard work, almost regardless of personalities (with some exceptions, here and there).
Based on this experience I would also like to see a devolution of power all the way down the chain. I recognize that some issues, such as a trans-country pipeline, have to be handled at the national level. But many more issues can be much more effectively “delegated” to the local elected representatives, supervisors and councilors.
11/9/16, 5:36 PM
Varun Bhaskar said...
Brilliant. Thank you for this calm and level headed response to what has been the most disgusting political season I have yet witness. I had the day off and took the time to watch the left-wing reaction the elections. I am saddened by the fragility of so many people in this country. One of my inlaws got an invitation by some neighborhood housewives for a hug party this morning, I had other people on my facebook feed explaining how they had broken down in tears. It is such a mess, and in the current environment it is impossible to talk about policy. Hate and anger are the orders of the day.
Regards,
Varun
11/9/16, 5:36 PM
JacGolf said...
11/9/16, 5:37 PM
Mark said...
11/9/16, 5:38 PM
John Conner said...
Funny you should mention Oklahoma. Was down there for a 50th anniversary celebration a week and a half ago. Coming back stopped to visit a cousin. She was all down on Halloween... Blames all on Druids.... And she is one of the few relatives I can still talk to in the Oklahoma - Kansas area. But things are about as varied there as in the country as a whole. My wife's side is largely 'liberal' (unions and Pot) but not Mass. style.
11/9/16, 5:41 PM
Unknown said...
I submit that a large reason for the Republican clean sweep of the Presidency, house and Senate majority was the meteoric rise of so-called "Affordable care" premiums just two to three weeks ago. It seems to me that the election results represent a clear mandate to "do something" about this...
Regarding the "no one I know" groupthink bubbles, I have seen electoral maps by county and it clearly debunks the red state, blue state myth. It shows quite clearly that the cities are islands of blue in a sea of red...
-Joel
11/9/16, 5:41 PM
Kevin said...
It's going to be an interesting next few years. I have never been more glad that I immigrated to Canada, and not the US, in 1981.
11/9/16, 5:42 PM
Mark said...
11/9/16, 5:44 PM
Lucius Cornelius Sulla said...
The first is terror from members of vulnerable minority groups. Their political champion turned out to be a paper tiger and now they are falling into despair or are preparing to go out in a blaze of glory when the black vans come for them.
The second group are the Hillbots. They have been busy blaming everyone from Bernie Sanders to Jill Stein to the entire white race for Hillarys defeat.
The last, and most numerous group are burning with white-hot fury. Not against Trump, but against Hillary, her most ardent supporters, the media and the entire left wing establishment. They want blood and will tear apart whats left of the Democrats to get it.
11/9/16, 5:44 PM
canon fodder said...
From the invective and spittle I’ve seen in all sorts of media, I agree with you that we probably cannot forge a nationwide consensus on much of anything. If we can somehow devolve the federalist system to emphasize true states rights, I also agree that a nationwide consensus really isn’t necessary except for those few things listed in the Constitution as federal responsibilities. Unfortunately, I don’t believe for a moment that the Federal government will relinquish one bureaucratic minutia to the states unless it is forcibly removed, either by constitutional amendment or actual armed force. Not only would the ruling elite oppose such transfer, but the 16th amendment also blocks the way. Most of the taxes collected in the US funnel through the federal government. Regardless of how much of the money is funneled back to the states, the monetary power is held by the Federal government. And, as the old saw goes, whoever has the gold, makes the rules.
I don’t find the overt focus on personalities inconsistent with how Americans act. We are, by and large, a nation that worships celebrities, thrives on sound bites (or tweets), and prefers a rousing round of he said/she said over stolid discourse. Throw in a bit of narcissism and coddling, and you have the makings of an electorate that will actively avoid issues. Issues make you think. Issues make your positions susceptible to reasoned debate. Issues make you look beyond your own insular, entitled cocoon to the wide, uncaring world. Issues paint the world in shades of grey instead of the politically correct black/white. And issues can make you have to admit you’re wrong. All of these and more are why we celebrate the cult of personality, not the triumph of reason.
Perhaps one other thing has lead to the dearth of issues in our national political discourse - the political promise. Much of what I have read or heard from candidates has been presented as “here’s my position, and here’s what I’ll do if elected.” The follow thru is usually lacking, if not completely upended. The usual joke is for a book to be published labeled “Promises I Have Kept” by Some Politician. It’s blank. I have one from Bush II and Obama, and no doubt many others exist. Why engage in a discussion of issues when you know the person you’re talking to will turn around and stab you in the back whenever convenient. On a more positive note, I can and do have discussions on issues with most of my acquaintances. But they’re not politicians.
Household appliances and mayonnaise??? Now that’s an image that’ll take a while to eradicate. I may have to resort to chocolate therapy.
On a completely different topic, I’ve noticed that the book links on your blog take me to a couple different sellers. As I have a Kindle and it’s easiest to feed the beast from Amazon, I’ve looked at your books there as well. As I want to support your blog, which seller nets you the most income?
11/9/16, 5:49 PM
Ray Wharton said...
A Federal Government that is actually Federal would be attractive to me. I can even see a narrow path to such a thing. Everybody I know is shocked, my liberal friends are really having a rough time. Once you have accepted decline of western civilation as a thing, the out come of one election isn't as deeply disturbing.
11/9/16, 5:50 PM
K Sc said...
Yes definitely worth taking a step back from the vitriol.
However, I humbly disagree on the point that it's not the candidates fault we ignored their content.
How often can politicians be trusted on their word?
We've heard the lies so many times, we don't trust they will do what they say.
11/9/16, 5:50 PM
Rich_P said...
First, a full ten percent of SF voted for Trump. I suspect they are the old-school residents who are fed up with the haughty, anti-social tech workers who have flooded the area during the present Federal Reserve-fueled asset bubble.
Several people took the day off to "process" the outcome of the election. The fact that people in Ohio and Michigan are scraping by while office workers on the coast can take a day off to pout is indicative of the overall problem, but the SF Progressives are too clueless and self-absorbed to understand this.
As you predicted, the elites and SF office workers are coming up with a litany of just-so stories to explain Trump’s victory. Everyone who voted for Trump is a racist! Facebook did it – if only we had an approved news source which supplied the “facts”! Rural America is soooo dumb you guys! If only everyone went to college and received the approved talking points in exchange for thousands of dollars of debt!
The more I hear this, the more I realize that modern Progressives (the Obama stalwarts) sound exactly like Stalinists too clueless to realize that Prada was full of lies. This is more frightening to me than Donald Trump.
Lastly, to bring things full circle: early on you said the Progressives would make a serious mistake by implying ALL Trump supporters are bigots (even though some totally are). This turned out to be true. Likewise, I was sometimes called a bigot because I support states’ rights (only racists like that!) and secession, as a last-ditch response to tyranny.
But now that Trump is in office, wouldn’t it be great if California could secede!? This coming from the elites who mercilessly mocked Northern California’s “State of Jefferson” movement for decades – and who called me a neo-Confederate for pointing out, like you do JMG, the importance of federalism and how it was the Framers’ intent from the beginning.
The statists destroyed federalism, enlarged the federal government, and now must live with the consequences of Donald Trump controlling leviathan. You reap what you sow.
While I do not support Trump, I am enjoying the elites eating a buffet of crow.
11/9/16, 5:51 PM
Jordan said...
Long time reader of your blog, I always appreciate your wide perspective and historical insight on matters of the day. That being said, I think you're off the mark on this one. I will grant that people voting for Trump have been thrown under the bus for the last 40 years. They can't find jobs or economic opportunities because of immigrants, outsourcing, automation, neoliberalism in whatever form. I get it, I really do. They have needs that aren't being met and that could be met and should be met. But along with those unmet needs breeds fear and hatred of the "other" that have taken those things from them. And what Donald Trump's personality does is legitimize those feelings. "Hey, if he's saying it, it must be ok." People will rally around a charismatic leader, you know this. People rallied around Churchill when he called for shared sacrifice. People rallied around Hitler when he told them the Jews were responsible for their discontent. And people rally around Trump when he says it's ok to blame Muslims, Mexicans, and women for their problems. That's why his personality matters. You keep insisting that it's only the policies that matter, all that other stuff is irrelevant. Tell me this, how hard do you have to look to see that Trump will not actually give his supporters what they need in terms of economic opportunity? I know, I KNOW that it will not be different with Clinton. More of the same, I get it. But Trump has been hobnobbing with political insiders for decades. The man comes from more privilege than most of us can imagine. He has no idea, none, what it's like to live life like one of his "deplorable" supporters. Just today it was announced that he's looking into Rudy Giuliani, Chris Christie, and Newt Gingrich for his cabinet. Honestly, how different are Trumps policies going to be, really? The small chance that he rises to the occasion and actually delivers something different is not worth the hate and the vitriol that we already know come along with it. It feels like cutting off our nose to spite our face.
11/9/16, 5:58 PM
James M. Jensen II said...
The Democrats really did deserve to lose this one. The fact that Trump took the Rust Belt, which Clinton had thought was a safe bet for her, shows where the hurt really lies: "The economy, stupid." The real economy, not the meaningless piles of paper and bits pushed around all day.
I've no love for Trump, and if any of the allegations of sexual assault against him are true, then he deserves prison. But when a working-class family is faced with a choice between a candidate who wants to continue the status quo that's destroying your ability to makes ends meet and one who might--might--do something different, is it really so hard to understand why they'd go for the latter?
One thing that fascinated me throughout the race was how effectively Trump used the Left's tactics and issues against us. How were we supposed to counter "Make America Great Again" when we've been the ones saying America wasn't great? And I wonder if the impact of the Access Hollywood tape and allegations of rape and sexual assault against him weren't significantly blunted by the fact that the last time we had a sexual predator in the White House were the last halfway decent years for many working class people in this country (not to mention the fact that said predator was his opponent's husband).
Philosopher Richard Rorty, a self-described "decadent liberal" politically, often argued that the Left's lack of old-fashioned patriotism has been one of our greatest weaknesses, and at least once even argued that our elitism and ignoring the issues faced by the working class was going to be our undoing. He didn't live long enough to predict a Trump victory, but I wouldn't be surprised if he would have.
The Left generally and the Democrats specifically have a lot of soul-searching to do. Let's hope we find the right answers, and the right questions.
11/9/16, 5:59 PM
Kevin Warner said...
To my mind, one of the most fascinating essays that you have ever done was the one on Trump predicting his eventual success - but not about the man himself. It was your analysis of how much of the West was coming down to a salary versus wage class struggle in it that has let me understand a lot of what I was witnessing across the world, especially here in Oz. It was like how changing the focus on a set of binoculars brings everything into sharp focus. That essay is going straight to the trophy room!
It was weird watching the reaction to Trump's win from several thousand klicks distance. The pearl-clutching, the wails, the tears, the accusations - and that was just the men! Perhaps Brexit led the way but it was the courage of average Americans to take a leap into the unknown rather than accept more of the same misery and victimization that gives me hope. The knock-on effects are going to be massive across the world.
Huge sections of American society have just been rendered irrelevant - the pundits, the pollsters, the media, celebrity opinions, Republican & Democrat HQs. Only now are they waking up to the possibility that they have only been playing to an echo chamber. God knows what the effect will be on the upcoming French and German elections next year. Probably the jihadists in Aleppo are now wishing that they had taken up the Russian offer of evacuation. Being a New Yorker Trump will have no sympathy for their ilk. Interesting times ahead.
11/9/16, 6:05 PM
Darthy Noxin from the Planet Gopp said...
Long-time reader, first-time commenter. This is one of those moments where I felt I wanted to just put this out there as an adoring fan.
Reading your Nov. 9 post reminded me of a book called _American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America_ by Colin Woodard that gives perhaps-more-than-needed contextual information on why, for example, the people of Massachusetts and the people of Oklahoma on aggregate don't see eye-to-eye.
I had originally thought I had become aware of this book through your blog. However, since you didn't mention this book in your post (and I did a word search on your blog for the author's last name and found no results), I now presume I had discovered this book elsewhere.
Just in case you have not read it, I would like to add it to the no-doubt long list of suggested reading materials from your admiring fans.
P.S. Thanks to you, I have had roughly 11 months to subconsciously prepare for the result of Nov. 8. I think I needed it. Unfortunately, my friends and associates who are even more insulated than I am probably had between 1 minute to 3 hours to mentally prepare, depending on if they learned the results before or after they slept for the night.
P.P.S. To you and all other commenters, a somewhat-edited quote of an Egyptian blessing that I encountered from an episode of _Babylon 5_, a sci-fi show I wistfully know now will not become even-somewhat-slightly-true in the future.
"May God [or whatever word you wish to use in this sentence] stand between you and harm in all the empty places where you must walk."
11/9/16, 6:09 PM
Ducky said...
11/9/16, 6:10 PM
beetleswamp said...
11/9/16, 6:12 PM
Jen said...
Admittedly, I expressed my fair share of disgust, sometimes serious but often petty, with the characters and demeanors of the candidates (and was known more than once to declare that I had met potatoes more inspiring than Hillary Clinton), so I am not guiltless. I will keep a better eye on myself in future as regards my own tendency to engage in the "politics of personal vilification," as you term it.
What concerns me most about the whole trend is not so much its application to the candidates themselves, unfortunate and obstructing as it is, but its extension to anyone who chooses to vote for one of them. Never have I felt so strongly that my choice of candidate was functioning as a sort of litmus test, in the minds of my fellow citizens, of my worth as a human being. Moreover, the degree to which I was assumed to be identified with the candidate I chose was disturbing--as if I were personally putting on their every fault, and should be punished in proxy for their every sin. I felt like an effigy about to get burned on more than one occasion. It worries me.
11/9/16, 6:14 PM
Nestorian said...
If the politician is a virtueless opportunist, as so many of them are, then speaking about the merits of the policies they claim to want to enact is a useless exercise fit only for suckers. As such, personal morality turns out to be a very important trait for a politician to have, and arguing about it in political discourse is not at all out of place.
11/9/16, 6:21 PM
cynndara said...
11/9/16, 6:32 PM
Glenn said...
Glenn
in the Bramblepatch
Marowstone Island
Salish Sea
Cascadia
11/9/16, 6:33 PM
Paul said...
Predictably enough, just like every time, the response both during and after this election from the Democratic Left is "Hey, ordinary people, you're a load of morons"
Same thing happened with Brexit. The lazy characterisation of those that supported leave as ignorant racist knuckledraggers did two things. One, it hardened their stance. Two, it meant they didn't bother arguing their views. Just kept it to themselves. Why bother, when you know full well you're just going to be reviled? So no wonder it came as a surprise.
If the dems had nominated Bernie Sanders, they might have had a chance.
11/9/16, 6:34 PM
llmaiwi said...
11/9/16, 6:37 PM
brett rasmussen said...
Do you think this new federalism that you write of is actually possible, or is your recent fictional post-2nd civil war scenario more likely?
11/9/16, 6:37 PM
pygmycory said...
Trump is certainly VERY unpopular in Canada, especially with those on the leftward end on the spectrum. One of the candidates for leader of the conservative party wants to be Canada's Trump. I don't think that's likely to fly here unless the situation gets a lot worse.
I find myself not as downcast as part of me feels I ought to be by Trump's win. Perhaps I detest the neoliberal elite more than I knew. Or maybe I'm just hoping that he might actually live up to his better policies instead of down to his worst. Hope springs eternal in the human breast...
11/9/16, 6:37 PM
Amy Olles said...
I noted on my social media outlets, and during my conversations today that people are talking about everything but what you bring up in this post. Women can't shatter the glass ceiling and this is a terrible thing!(But yet, who leads England and Germany?) RACISM. SEXISM. UNEDUCATED IDIOTS - these types have done this country in - I've been told this all day today. I have witnessed shock from my peers who are males, and fear from my peers who are females. I have tried to use some of your points, to present a case as to how the election results turned out the way they did, but I have been told I was wrong all day. Fair enough, I'll try to respect others opinions. However, it's very encouraging to read a post like this after a day like today. As usual - thank you.
11/9/16, 6:43 PM
Revere T. said...
How would you describe the mood in Cumberland? Things are pretty subdued in your dear old Los Angeles North!
Also, I'm curious, did you have a draft worked out for what you would have written had Hillary won?
11/9/16, 6:44 PM
KL Cooke said...
My hat is off to you. You called this one months ago, in the face of all seeming evidence to the contrary.
You can deny it, but somehow I think there were some druidical tea leaves involved.
11/9/16, 6:46 PM
Chris Balow, Jr. said...
Do you believe this "new social contract" could potentially keep the United States together over the course of the next century? Or, do you see a break-up of the union--whether peacefully or violently--into separate polities (e.g. a Lakeland Republic future) as basically baked into the cake at this point?
11/9/16, 6:47 PM
blue sun said...
11/9/16, 6:58 PM
Bruno B. L. said...
11/9/16, 6:58 PM
patriciaormsby said...
We had the third meeting of the Kanto Green Wizards, but this time it was small group of long-time Kompira friends, who are really like family. Long-term expatriates from various western countries with close Japanese friends or spouses. Our friend from Germany was just terrified by Trump, saying how his family had seen the rise of Hitler, and it was just like that. He requested us to pray that Trump would lose.
As it turned out, though, the other priestess, Ikeda-san, did not want to hold a ceremony, so I proposed we do a short standardized prayer together and then a harae for anyone wanting it, but everyone else wanted a ceremony enough that we held a short one, with the standard prayer and everyone able to make their own private wish to the gods. We asked our friend if he'd wished for Trump's defeat. He'd forgotten!
For the first time in my life, I gave a short sermon I'd planned. I spoke about dissensus as a strategy in rapidly changing times and a few other related ideas from your book, Ecotopia. It went over quite well. I'd also brought along food preserved in three ways not needing refrigeration, plus simple materials for a quickly constructed solar dehydrator. Everyone was chatting, but I think they absorbed what I was trying to convey. It was too shady on the mountain to demonstrate the dehydrator, but they could all see me making it and they asked a lot of questions. There was talk among them about farming. The nearly constant rains starting in August ruined most people's crops, and the only fermented food I had on hand to bring were anchovies (which I don't share for fear of mistakes being disastrous) and extremely hot peppers, which seem to love the rain. Still, they found fresh, unstrained tabasco to be quite good. They noted that some experienced farmers managed to get some degree of produce despite the rains. None of these people are following Green Wizardry, but they are practicing it on their own with awareness of its importance.
I want to buy the rest of your books, John, but I don't want to go through Amazon. Is there a way I could send you a check and have you send me your books, or is there any other way to send a check and make sure you get the proceeds?
11/9/16, 6:59 PM
andrewmarkmusic said...
11/9/16, 7:05 PM
JRG said...
11/9/16, 7:06 PM
Tower 440 said...
We in Northeast Ohio are following Melbourne’s example by holding well-advertised monthly meetings.
The monthly joint meeting of the Green Wizards’ Benevolent and Protective Association, Tower Number 440, and Ruinmen’s Guild, Local 440 will be held at 11:30 AM on Wednesday, December 21 2016. Our location is Ruko’s Family Restaurant, 9385 Mentor Avenue, Mentor, Ohio 44060, (440) 974-1914. Shining the Green Light! Public Welcome! Tables for Failed Scholars. Look for the table topper with the Green Wizard Hat. Contact us at [email protected].
Many thanks to John for the posting space on his blog.
11/9/16, 7:08 PM
onething said...
A lot of young people raised in the blue demographic understand things differently than their parent's generation. They were Bernie supporters but wouldn't switch to Hillary. She said I should inform certain of my friends that there's a new demographic called moderate independents, and they are out for blood - blue blood.
They weren't the ones polled. She was in despair a few weeks ago about those polls. I told her not to worry, that they were probably not accurate.
11/9/16, 7:12 PM
Mister Roboto said...
11/9/16, 7:13 PM
D.X.Logan said...
It has been odd watching normally sane people melt down on both sides of the political spectrum and start chasing phantoms instead of things of substance. I especially worry that most people will take away the wrong lessons from current events instead of trying to really analyze them. Thank you for your illuminating and insightful posts.
As an aside, I've also enjoyed your creative ventures as well. Retrotopia most recently inspired me thinking about a potential novel. I normally favor Science Fiction and Fantasy, but obviously this one would be based more on near-future events. Not quite dystopian or utopian exactly. Either way, your work was inspirational and I plan to start hammering it out after I've completed those I am already working on.
11/9/16, 7:13 PM
Barrabas said...
Everyone here in Australia was absolutely glued to it and the Prime Minister immediately took to the airwaves to make a panicked , incoherent speech reassuring everyone that Barack Obama will be in office until January 2017 and the U.S is still the bestest ever friend Australia has ever had .
The 99% corporate controlled media here in murdochs plutocracy has ensured the australian public all think that Trump is just a racist misogynist Fascist pig , although all of the media talking heads appear severely dumbfounded and rattled .
The only sensible sounds ironically came from elite lefty but neoliberal critic naomi klein who pointed out the ravages of globalism . There is a sense of nakedness and palpable trepidation in Australia now , but overall barely anyone gets it.
11/9/16, 7:23 PM
Old Professor said...
Another great post... I agree that moving more towards state, even regional power, would help the Republic. There are already rumblings from rich techies in California about secession. In the microcosm of family, we all agreed to refrain from voicing opinions on the candidates as the Northerners and Southerners did not agree, of course. We do talk about policies and usually find common ground there.
I note with hope that at the state and local levels people are finding agreement on issues as diverse as cannabis, gun control, and campaign financing. There are problems at the state level such as gerrymandering but the courts have been addressing this at least here in Florida. However, federal power will be difficult to curb as long as it can print money and run up debt. The states are very dependent on the dollars flowing from the Golden Goose.
11/9/16, 7:25 PM
HanZiBoi said...
11/9/16, 7:26 PM
Ien in the Kootenays said...
11/9/16, 7:32 PM
Raymond R said...
Excellent summary of the election. If Mr. Trump sticks to the main points of his platform, there may be hope for the American Republic. I wish my American neighbours well.
For those hoping to escape to Canada, it is not any better here, just a few programs like state run medical insurance for which we pay through fairly high taxes. The divisions are here, just not so acute - yet.
11/9/16, 7:32 PM
zach bender said...
I do have one quibble, which is that while I have not watched a whole lot of Trump's speeches, I did watch portions of his debate performances, and I have read a fair amount of content on his campaign website -- much of which, incidentally -- weirdly -- has now been delinked in favor of a page celebrating the election victory.
And I found him not only unable to form coherent sentences, but also vague to the point of meaninglessness on specifics of how he intended to bring us from point wherever we are to the promised abstraction. He identifies a target, but not a path.
I have little doubt he will surround himself with technocrats, possibly Beltway insiders, who will advise him on how to frame and pursue his agendas, but I will suggest even his strongest supporters can have very little idea how exactly he proposed to go about accomplishing any of his objectives.
11/9/16, 7:37 PM
James Fauxnom said...
http://www.defensenews.com/articles/new-warships-big-guns-have-no-bullets
11/9/16, 7:38 PM
Darren Urquhart said...
11/9/16, 7:38 PM
Compound F said...
I saw a few silver linings within the general horror. First, apparently the deep state is not entirely in control of democracy. Second, Clinton did not get elected, and therefore the certainty of escalation with Russia/Syria/Ukraine et al, becomes a more open question, because who really knows what Trump thinks? Third, it was a clear rebuke of entrenched power by generally powerless people.
That said, Trump's language is entirely offensive, insofar as it predicts policies, while his actual policies remain completely obscure. My confidence in him is essentially nil.
The major silver lining is that voters finally figured out that when Monty Hall keeps showing you the donkey (i.e., a bad choice, not necessarily a reference to Democrats...) you absolutely and always increase your odds by switching your choice to the other curtain. In a three curtain situation, your odds increase dramatically just by switching from your initial choice.
Now, one might argue that the only reason that statistical reasoning works is because "monty is obligated to show you the donkey, because it never makes sense to show you the Cadillac." Whereas I would argue that it also seems that the elite are also obligated to show us the donkey, because it never makes sense to show off their Caddies!
11/9/16, 7:40 PM
Maverick said...
US presidential election is the most keenly watched event on Earth. At least wherever English media dominates. It got big coverage here in India and was a great source of humor for us.
I understand what you are trying to say, I really do. We have our own set of CNN, Huff Post type liberals who foam at the mouth for every bit of perceived immorality. My country took them to the cleaners in last general election. They have been at the receiving end ever since.
Congratulations on achieving something similar in US.
On a side note I found this gem online
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/us-election-will-trump-clinton-win-electoral-college-swing-states-a7402351.html?cmpid=facebook-post
There's this pundit (a PhD candidate) in Australia who proclaimed that it's mathematically impossible for Trump to win.
Poor fellow will have this article haunt him for the rest of his life. I wonder what his university will do now, I believe it's a logical case for firing him from his PhD for displaying such poor mathematical skills :)
11/9/16, 7:45 PM
Roy Smith said...
You have accomplished to same feat (it seems strange to describe simple looking as a feat, but there it is) with regards to this election; the entire army of pundits, pollster and politicians failed to look, and now you look brilliant. Congratulations!
In other news:
The November meeting of the Cascadia Guild, Greater Seattle Branch, will be held on Thursday, November 17, 2016, from 6:30 to 8:00 PM. Venue will be the conference room at the Edmonds Library, 650 Main Street, Edmonds, WA 98020.
Visit our online forum for meeting agenda and other details.
Thank you to Mr. Greer for the inspirational blog as well as for tolerating advertising for this in the comments section.
11/9/16, 7:53 PM
Dennis Mitchell said...
I have a good view of the future here in Idaho. We are solid Republican. They have not made our state great. Lower taxes to match lower wages. Thick bureaucracy. Low unemployment. Just people struggling. Very few small businesses, unless you mean those small farms who employ only a few hundred, mostly Hispanic. The dairy industry calls these family farms.
The cult of personality has gripped our culture by the neck. From mega churches, to politics, TV news to CEOs. Something as simple as a plant based diet has followers of x just to be opposed to y for suggesting a little bit of meat is acceptable. Course to belong to the web site is twenty a month, but you get a discount on all his salad dressings, so it's not really that much. That does it for me no more late night coffee. Enjoy your corner of Retrotopia!
11/9/16, 7:55 PM
Zanshin said...
Here in New Zealand disquiet at Trump's win is mixed with satisfaction (outside of the ruling neoliberal circles) that the TPPA is dead in the water.
11/9/16, 8:03 PM
Bryan L. Allen said...
I know nothing of CNBC or of the particular writer who wrote the piece, but here's what seems to be a quite thoughtful reflection on why Trump won (is the author, Jake Novak, someone who's been reading your blog?):
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/09/sorry-uncovering-americas-racist-underbelly-wasnt-why-trump-won-commentary.html
Onwards!
11/9/16, 8:17 PM
peakfuture said...
"It’s time for people in Massachusetts to accept that they’re never going to be able to force people in Oklahoma to conform to their notions of moral goodness, and for the people of Oklahoma to accept the same thing about the people of Massachusetts"
This still confuses me somewhat. It seems that is incredibly obvious, but this is missed by many on the left and right. What is the reason for this? Is it fanaticism to one idea or political viewpoint, or something else? What causes anyone to think that they can get people to conform to their own notion of moral goodness?
Friends on the left (in coastal states) are in shock; friends on the right (of course) are happy with the result, but most don't seem to be gloating. Most want to be left alone. So far, only a few tantrums have been observed.
At least the principals after the election were somewhat civil and dignified. Let's hope we continue the tradition of a peaceful transfer of power.
11/9/16, 8:19 PM
Goldmund said...
11/9/16, 8:36 PM
Emmanuel Goldstein said...
"Chapter XXII - Of the Secretaries of Princes"
http://www.online-literature.com/machiavelli/prince/22/
If Trump is good enough to pick competent people who will put the interests of their nation above personal interests, he is probably OK. If he picks people who are set on gaming the system, we're in trouble.
This chapter is well worth reading--
Highlights include;
"...there are three classes of intellects: one which comprehends by itself;
another which appreciates what others comprehended; and a third which
neither comprehends by itself nor by the showing of others; the first
is the most excellent, the second is good, the third is useless."
and
"...When, therefore, servants, and princes towards
servants, are thus disposed, they can trust each other, but when it is
otherwise, the end will always be disastrous for either one or the
other."
11/9/16, 8:56 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Now, on to individual comments:
Bootstrapper, I'm rather startled by your suggestion that "left" and "right" are derogatory epithets; last I checked, they're common labels routinely used by the people to whom they're applicable. No, the division doesn't correspond to that between values and interests. If you go out and ask people whether they're politically to the left or to the right, then ask them to explain their political beliefs, I'm sure you'll figure it out promptly.
GreenEngineer, I'll be discussing that in upcoming posts. The phrase "equal protection of the laws" has been stretched and bent embarrassingly out of shape of late, and requires a bit of resizing. So does the concept of justice, which you'll notice I didn't reference. The law is not there to enforce somebody's abstract notion of justice; it's there to maintain those minimum standards of behavior without which civilized life is impossible. More on this as we proceed!
Tom, I'm sorry to hear that it isn't just an American problem. Sigh...
Donalfagan, obviously I disagree.
Cortes, fascinating. I've suspected for some time that the brash blowhard persona is basically an act...
Dale, thank you. The funny thing is that some Trump supporters were saying that a vote for a third party candidate was a vote for Hillary!
Grebulocities, exactly -- though the establishment Dems will try to spin it as racism as long as they can.
Philip, that's one of the things that a refederalization of the country would have to address. Since the Fourteenth Amendment gives the federal government the right to intervene against legal or institutional inequalities on the part of state governments, I don't think it's unreasonable for federal law to continue to prohibit segregation of public amenities, businesses open to the public, and the like.
Notes, I suspect that's behind a lot of the frantic attempts to legally impose this or that system of values on the whole country -- the fear that somebody else will impose an intolerable system on you. I would agree about drugs, and a great many other things; those are best left to state and local governments, and to individual choice.
Cherokee, thank you. I was unsure of my prediction for a while in the later part of the summer, when Trump made a lot of gaffes on which Clinton's people were able to capitalize; I thought it was possible he would crumple in the stretch -- but as it turned out, he managed to recover, regain control of the narrative, and win. I was pretty sure by the beginning of October that he was going to take it, and the louder and shriller the Clinton camp and their pet pundits got, the more sure I was that they were desperately trying to convince themselves that the inevitable was impossible.
11/9/16, 9:04 PM
Unknown said...
I'm prompted to leave a comment by today's post regarding the different nations of the US.
Folks not familiar with it might be interested in Colin Woodward's map of the 11 nations of the Americas, from his book "American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America"
http://colinwoodard.blogspot.com/2012/04/presenting-slighty-revised-american.html
However, now that I'm here, I do have to wonder if the men of this country, possibly including you, are not stuck in their own echo chambers, clueless to the painful blow dealt to the women of this country by the "personality"of our president-elect. Back when Obama was nominated, it was only at that moment of feeling some racial healing that I understood the pain that all of us live with due to racism. And I'm white. So although I wasn't gung ho for Hillary, as the prospect of a woman being elected president seemed likely, I began to feel the relief of the pain of long-term, deeply-conditioned gender discrimination. I became aware of how deep the pain has been, for me as a woman, and how deeply it affects the dynamics between all of us in this country, maybe even more so than racism. But we're so used to it, we usually don't even see it. It's like having a toothache for so long you just think it's normal. Well, many women in this country finally felt the depth of that pain and anticipated the relief of that pain that a Hillary victory would bring. Instead, to have a p***y grabbing man elected to the highest office in the country feels not just disappointing, and not just painful, but humiliating. Mutual respect you say?
So I do feel for the stark landscapes of poverty. Their plight is one of loss. And please be aware, the women of this country are still waiting to ever have the thing they lost.
11/9/16, 9:05 PM
Guilherme de Baskerville said...
Anyway, I'm always impressed by your druidic prediction powers. It almost makes me believe you have supernatural powers :)
And for a post that could have been just a "Told ya!", which you would be entitled, I appreciate the excellent discussion and thoughtful arguments.
I'll have to question some of your assumptions, though. As one of the first commenters asked, how do you square things like the Civil Rights Act? Or even slavery in the South pre-1860? Do you think Abraham Lincoln over-stepped the boundaries of the Federal government? Did Lyndon Johnson when he signed the Civil Rights Act? I mean, there WAS widespread popular support (from whites, that is) for Jim Crow in the South. On the other side of the fence, I bet there would be enough popular support in a few of the more liberal states to essentially revoke the Second Amendment locally, and if the divide keeps growing, in the future they might view "the right to keep and bears arms" as intolerable interference by the central government. At a certain point, the diferences are so great that moving from state to state would feel like crossing a international border.
I mean, there's some issues that are fairly ameneable to being decided in a more local manner, for sure, but there's some stuff that's non-negotiable as long as you're trying to maintain any kind of political union. Large multi-cultural, multi-religion, multi-national political unions existed in the past for sure, but they tend to be unstable and usually held together by a degree of force from the dominant religion/ethnicity. One of the great criticisms lobbied against the Europpean Union is precisely that it's too difficult to balance the interests of the different states within and even the extremely weak degree of central coordination they have is seen as intolerable intereference by a growing number of people in the continent (Brexit comes to mind, of course!). I seem to recall you not being very sanguine about the future of the EU as a political entity.
What I'm saying is that, yes, there's some issues that could and should be easily devolved to the individual States, but there's some things that either you can agree upon or you can't and no ammount of federalism will help and it's likely that the political union will dissolve at some point, with or without violence.
I'm also slightly more sceptical about the benefits of extremely descentralized government, but that's a huge topic and I'm not the one who's blogging here, so, I'll just end here;
11/9/16, 9:14 PM
drhooves said...
I think you're spot on with the view to devolve the Federal government, which goes hand-in-hand with the decentralizing the Long Descent will impose anyway. You noted the increase in size of .Fed along with FDR's terms, and I believe you've mentioned that he was one of three American "dictators", and we're about due for another. If so, I see the table being set for this dictator to come to power in 4 or 8 years (if by "election"), and that event being in direct conflict with any attempts to devolve the Feds...
11/9/16, 9:23 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Tripp, funny! No doubt it was a mineral deficiency. ;-)
ChemEng, exactly. That's one of many reasons why I think a renewal of federalism and a devolution of powers are worth pursuing.
Varun, remember that a lot of these people have spent the last year or so convincing themselves that Donald Trump is Satan incarnate -- I suspect this was at least in part so they could overlook the more dubious aspects of Clinton's record -- and now they're terrified that the bogeyman they imagined is going to come and eat them. You're right, though, that there's a lot of emotional fragility these days. It's a stressful era.
JacGolf, I probably should have, but it wasn't until I fielded some trollspittle in response to last week's post that the penny finally dropped.
Mark, no, it wasn't me, but it's a valid point. As for Retrotopia, one of the points of that story is that you give people good jobs at good pay, a relatively fair and democratic government, and other such amenities, you don't have to control them -- they take care of themselves and their society just fine, thank you!
John, I hope you enjoy it! As for Oklahoma, I thought of it because I've been to Guthrie a couple of times for Masonic speaking gigs, and found the very different culture there interesting and by no means unpleasant.
Unknown Joel, I'm sure you're right about the Unaffordable Care Act. That really rubbed the noses of a lot of people in just how little affluent liberals care about what happens to ordinary Americans -- and Clinton, who'd promised to keep Obamacare, was the logical target for their wrath. Even so, that was simply one more straw atop an already overburdened camel.
Kevin, I can understand Hispanic Americans and Muslims feelng threatened by Trump's "stated intentions," but the others you named? I think some serious demonization is at work there.
Mark, so noted! Ah, but what about the household appliances? ;-)
Lucius, I wonder what the first group is going to do when it finally sinks in that the black vans are entirely figments of their imagination. The third group -- those are the future. I wish them wisdom, persistence, and ultimate success.
Canon Fodder, that's why I think it's important to begin pushing political discourse back toward issues, and holding elected officials accountable for their promises. It'll take a lot of work, but it can be done. As for books, please don't patronize Amazon or any other discount retailer if you can avoid it -- those discounts come straight out of the authors' income. The links I provide are mostly publishers, and buying from them gets me the largest royalty. Thanks for asking!
Ray, Blake's usually a source of good advice.
K Sc, politicians go back on their word because they know the voters won't throw them out of office for doing so -- so again, it comes back to the voters.
11/9/16, 9:37 PM
SamuraiArtGuy said...
I have been lavishly quoting you, especially your thoughts about the plight of the wage class under thirty plus years of neocon foreign policy and neoliberal economic policy. The majority of the audience swiftly diverts to Right vs Left ideology, discounting or badmouthing the poor, or the usual accusations of racism, naziism, or sexism, so that those people can be dismissed as deserving of scorn.
Well they’re angry as hell, and sent a right proper Brooklyn Salute to the Beltway. And many of them apparently dislike and despise Donald Trump’s personality and (forgive me) deplorable business record, but voted for him ANYWAY, as their fury at thirty years of maltreatment by Washington “Trumps” his liabilities. Some of the cognitive dissonance among pundits and more attentive observers is that despite his disturbing rhetoric and behaviors, he still managed to be the only candidate, once Bernie Sanders was safely disposed of, to speak directly to the concerns of this cohort. Unfortunately, he also adroitly spread his outreach exploiting racial resentments and religious intolerance. So his campaign has swept up racists, bigots, sexists, and authoritarian proto-facists among his supporters and normalized their views, which distorts the perception of the legitimate and very real anger of the Ordinary Citizen.
There were two other thoughtful humans that saw this coming, Kevin Drum wrote in MotherJones back in 2011 –
"If politicians care almost exclusively about the concerns of the rich, it makes sense that over the past decades they've enacted policies that have ended up benefiting the rich. And if you're not rich yourself, this is a problem. First and foremost, it's an economic problem because it's siphoned vast sums of money from the pockets of most Americans into those of the ultrawealthy. At the same time, relentless concentration of wealth and power among the rich is deeply corrosive in a democracy, and this makes it a profoundly political problem as well.”
- Kevin Drum, Why Screwing Unions Screws the Entire Middle Class, Mother Jones, March/April 2011
www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-labor-union-decline
And of course, the deeply missed George Carlin –
"Because the OWNERS of this country don't want that. I'm talking about the real owners, now. The REAL owners. The big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You HAVE NO CHOICE. You have OWNERS. They OWN you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They've long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the State Houses and City Halls. They've got the judges in their back pockets.And they own all the big media companies so they control just about all the news and information you get to hear. [italics mine]
"They've got ya BY THE BALLS!
"They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying. Lobbying-- to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else.”
– George Carlin, "American Dream", Life is worth Losing, 2005
youtu.be/eVbgeFgIBms
There's more...
11/9/16, 9:52 PM
SamuraiArtGuy said...
But whatever policy, or crisis management, comes out of the Trump Presidency, I agree with your assessment that the two-party system is in some trouble, and even the pundits are coming around to this view. Among disturbing possibilities, the GOP is a MESS, fractured, consumed by the anti-establishment insurgency, and spent the campaign in all but an internal civil war. The smell of power will more than likely hold them together, unruly as they might be.
However, the Democratic Party may very well also be quite finished as a poliitcal force in this Nation, and along with it any legitimacy of the American Left, especially as conceived by affluent elites. And this was entirely self inflicted, and utterly avoidable. But the store is bare, the varsity bench is empty. The DNC in it’s obsession to coronate Sec Clinton, utterly abandoned both their rank and file, and democratic principles. This has cost them the House, Senate, and now the White House, and in January, The Supreme Court, likely for a Generation - should the Republic endure that long.
More immediate casualties may likely be the Affordable Care Act, with all it’s flaws, the rolling back of Environmental Protections, and any legitimate response to Climate Change. But as you have remarked, the Paris Accords were all but a PR photo op in the first place.
As for ordinary folk - we’re still on our own, and have been for a while now. I found it interesting that Trump in his acceptance speech was pledging to do all the things the GOP absolutely stonewalled for eight years. This is going to be a lot MORE interesting if he tries to stick with the high sounding stuff he's tossed out there last night.
But he got there setting every thing in sight and in his path on fire. Now that he's triumphant, he's being all gracious and Presidential. The Man rather has a thing for “winning." We'll see how that lasts when it's time to actually govern, or the first crisis comes across his desk, or hits some blowback in the GOP or Congress. Who knows, maybe he’ll actually help, but his record in business is not reassuring.
My plan is to remain a citizen of this Nation, and act like one. With everything that implies. In the meantime the sun still came up. Still have to chop wood, carry water, still have to sit at the workstation and shove pixels, so long as the power stays on.
11/9/16, 9:52 PM
SamuraiArtGuy said...
Mind you, the results were entirely within the stated "margins of error." Margins make a difference in statistics, as Mr Silver would be happy to remind people. Many states went to Trump by far LESS than said margins.
Jus' saying'.
11/9/16, 10:00 PM
Nancy Sutton said...
I'd happily support 'states' rights' on a lot of issues. I voted for a woman's right to choose in 1973 here in WA, before Roe v Wade. Single-payer medical care will happen on the state level, first, in those that want to join the rest of the world. Just as the reversal of the unconscionable outlawing of cannabis is happening on the state level. I'd love to see how the other 'nations/cultures' in this country would proceed with 'freedom' distributed 'unequally', amongst the states.
But, I think a large element is being left out here... the bottom line is the usual bottom line... the most powerful ($$ and military) buy the best minds to strategize the most effective ways to control.. using the tried-and-true 'divide and conquer', the 'social', i.e., crotch, wedge issues, bleeding heart red-herring appeals, etc. We are so easy to manipulate (see Edward Bernays, et al) ..no wonder the TPTB want to make the world democratic! Dictators like Saddam and Ghadafi were a challenge (even though their countries had high literacy, fair gender equality, and posed a military threat to no one ... except you-know-who :).
Jesus had it right... the one and only alternative to God is Mammon ;)
11/9/16, 10:11 PM
lordyburd said...
11/9/16, 10:45 PM
Candace said...
At any rate, my family and friends have so thoroughly absorbed the idea that Trump is unleashing the forces of hate that they spent the wee hours weeping and terrified that "black vans" are coming.
Thanks for the voice of reason. I was hoping that you or some of the LGBT commenters would be able to help me find a way to communicate that this election is disappointing, but panicking that the brown shirts are coming to take you and your friend away is not necessary.
11/9/16, 11:06 PM
Brian Cady said...
Brian
11/9/16, 11:10 PM
Mario Incandenza said...
If Trump had such appeal to "the working class," why did he perform abominably in the very hardscrabble towns of the Rio Grande Valley and the Mississippi Delta? The answer clearly has something to do with race.
I'm not trying to take sides in the tired economic anxiety vs. racial anxiety debate; I am happy to allow that the phenomenon of political support for any given group is overdetermined. But this blog entry would give the impression, if one didn't know better, that the Trump phenomenon had pan-racial appeal, uniting the disaffected of all colors in rejection of the politico-economic establishment. That is simply false.
11/9/16, 11:14 PM
jean-vivien said...
not much of surprises about the reaction in France.
Here, journalists were busy re-making the election, asking if Bernie Sanders would have had a better chance of beating Trump...
Interviewing respected American artists and intellectuals who were (rightly)horrified that he had insulted all those groups of people.
Talking about values a lot.
Now some journalists are actually talking about his program, but mostly to say that it will be disastrous or that he will be unable to enforce it.
We have also had plenty of explanation about how America is actually in a very bad shape, a lot of people are poor, and that's why they were desperate and voted the way they did.
Still the narrative told is that the Obama program did work out and it profited mostly non-white groups which is why the poor white groups did vote the way they did.
Parallels are being drawn between the USA and France, but to point out the danger of a vote to the far-right.
Amid all of this, the failure of the whole neoliberal agenda gets little discussion, even from the talking heads usually busy denouncing it.
Interestingly, the political figures taking this victory as example to defend their programs are the ones on the right - Le Pen, Sarkozy... but Sarkozy is advocating exactly the neoliberal agenda that got us in trouble in the first place.
As for Le Pen, her party is divided between several currents, one of which is more on the neoliberal side of economic policies, whereas the other is more focused towards protectionnism and economic patriotism.
I feel that somehow, the right lessons are not being drawn. It amazes me that the journalists here don't seem to understand that the US campaigns are full of lowbrow tactics and lowkick insults, but that it's mostly for communication purposes.
Or rather, they accept it when it comes from certain candidates, and not when it comes from some others.
It looks arrogant to us, so I can barely imagine how the folks in the USA must feel about their journalists...
In the end you cannot draw parallels between France and the USA, because those are two very different nations, in terms of History, politics and culture. Whatever political solutions might work for the USA would certainly not work for France, and reciprocally.
And yet you can bet your shorts that there will be no shortage of journalists trying that perilous exercise !
I saw some people commenting about French police demonstrations. Just one precision here : there are two corps of French law enforcement forces.
One is police, those who are demonstrating, and they are attached to the Home Affairs' Ministry. Whereas the other is Gendarmes, and is attached to the Defense Ministry. Those are not demonstrating.
I suppose that it might be a future faultline in our society, army versus civilian law enforcement... And it is just one more harbinger of troubled times to come.
However it is nothing new, there have been police demonstrations before (against other leftwing governments...).
In fact, a lot of what is happening now is nothing new, what is unprecedented is the level of collective forgetfulness and lack of hindsight that we display.
11/9/16, 11:32 PM
PRiZM said...
11/9/16, 11:38 PM
Rita Narayanan said...
for a person like me in inculcation & mind liberal but in outward philosophy not so :( # to protect that which is liberal have to be conservative ( like a wired fence).
it has been a long journey for ma person who admired a Hillary Clinton in 1992 but the wheel has come full circle & I felt only a Trump win would delve a serious slap to the rich educated liberal elite.
the term ** minority is often used as if these communities are old Christians being fed to the lions but the truth is internally many such communities are far more conservative/regressive than ordinary decent conservative White people...& the even worse part of this charade is that this form of liberalism often turns on the progressive elements in such communities.
Hard work is not just physical labour but also the hard work required for the mind, manner & soul..this is what I feel (with due respect)America does not recognize.
Thanks & regards!
11/9/16, 11:54 PM
Roy Smith said...
11/9/16, 11:57 PM
Rob Rhodes said...
Since you rebooted my view of him in Jan. it has been a delight watching him play the media and break all the rules of modern campaigning, declining a big cumbersome machine and just flying around talking to people while HRC raised money to feed her machine. His campaign was so different that it gives more hope that he can lead real change. With no "ground game" across the country I guess you could call it a federal campaign!
11/9/16, 11:59 PM
Scotlyn said...
The thought in summary, is this: The opposite of inequality is fellowship.
And fellowship has become the biggest casualty of a politics conducted as a vendetta or intergenerational feud. Also the biggest casualty of an economics of widening inequality where the beneficiaries believe too strongly in their own personal merit.
Building fellowship around me... my personal little campaign for the nonce.
11/10/16, 12:01 AM
Ondra said...
"congratulations" that you rightly guessed the result of elections. Now it's time for Saudi Arabia to fall apart!
I want to note that it has been bad season for pollsters, beginning with general elections in the UK 2015, then referendum on staying in the EU and now your new "presden"... There is certainly some class of people which is unrecognized by standard measures of public opinion, and this class is decisive.
As you said, liberal left is often baffled by the fact that not everybody has the same opinion as they do - I have seen this in the US as well as in the UK. Here in Czech rep. it is not that often, probably because of the fact that it is not that easy to be completely out of touch with the Others, who are not so "enlightened".
One more thing - as you said, devolution of powers is the reasonable direction. But the division runs across states, it is very much urban - rural, at least on state level.
Regards
Ondra
11/10/16, 12:11 AM
Scotlyn said...
I watched the speeches, Trumps, and then Clinton's.
"Rebuilding infrastructure" featured in the first.
Those are two very strong words that I cannot imagine Clinton having uttered were she on the winner's podium.
11/10/16, 12:11 AM
cristina said...
Just in case somebody's interested: Against Elections, The Case for Democracy by David Van Reybrouck. A rather slim volume, but worth reading.
11/10/16, 12:31 AM
Taraxacum said...
11/10/16, 12:51 AM
Avery said...
Some old left archivists and I were looking through the demographics of the vote. The Washington Post made a handy chart of all the counties won by Obama in both 2008 and 2012 that switched to Trump in 2016. And there's a huge block of them stretching from Peoria through Mason City, through La Crosse, all the way to northern Wisconsin.
I was interested by the fact that I had heard nothing about this, and did some sleuthing. It appears that the entire upper Mississippi survived through 2008 through some kind of sustainable economic development, then was hit by a flood of factory closings since then. There's no outright proof of this, only scattered references in papers.
It's fascinating to me-- when the Rust Belt started to rust, it was major national news and a theme for articles that persists as a stereotype today. Pundits and journalists who wanted to dig into the Trump phenomenon went to west Pennsylvania-- and not without reason, as they produced a surprise upset. But the economic failure of a similarly sized Midwest region, what appears from the polls to be an entire new Rust Belt, didn't even make a mark on the topics of national concern. Colbert never put them on notice. Jon Stewart never had a laugh about them. There's not much to laugh about anyway.
11/10/16, 12:59 AM
Spanish fly said...
However, "Killary" would have keeping on the same selfish and reckless "bushists" politics in foreign affairs and confrontation with Russia.
Stupid pundits say that Trump is a menace to Europe, but in fact his triumph is better to Europe and the world.
Bye bye, WWWIII! (at least for some years).
I don't like much Trump, but it was the "best between two evils".
Spanish Prime Minister Mr. Rajoy congratulated yesterday Mr. Trump for his victory.
http://www.theolivepress.es/spain-news/2016/11/09/spains-leaders-react-to-shock-donald-trump-victory-in-us-presidential-election/
He was the same politician that some weeks ago warned against fool populist people in politics. From extreme left to neocon right, everybody was anti-Trump here. How embarrassing!
I have no idea how to translate our emphatic set phrases: "trágate el sapo" or "trágala perro"...'swallow your pride', maybe?
So, I've found a visual explanation of these vernacular sentences:
http://81.169.222.198/still/kunst/pic570/370/101003285.jpg
http://adelantelafe.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/tragarsapo.jpg
11/10/16, 1:00 AM
Vedant said...
11/10/16, 1:05 AM
Spanish fly said...
Amy Olles: and similar types lead Spain... Some days ago our government denied refueling at port to the Russian fleet. They were good Obamas minions...Now, they are sweating blood to please new USas president (but they are very unconfortable with Trumpo).
When I told people around me that I am not Trump's supporter (aka fawscist, extreme right...) they don't understand me.
11/10/16, 1:11 AM
Phil Knight said...
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2016/11/closing-liberal-mind
It sums up something that I've felt more and more over recent years - that Liberals are simply incapable of learning, or adapting their ideology to real-world circumstances. Indeed the opposite is the case - the more they are proved wrong, the more they double down.
11/10/16, 1:12 AM
PV Learning Garden said...
11/10/16, 2:03 AM
Barrabas said...
11/10/16, 2:10 AM
Alan B said...
11/10/16, 2:40 AM
Ron said...
Indeed discussion, debate and reason is something we sorely miss these days, wherever we are. But you said it yourself repeatedly; shouting down someone who disagrees is so much more easy then having a debate. The latter would require intelligence, facts, argumentation and mutual respect. Again something more often than not sorely missed.
Yet another question that came to my mind was:"Why was mr. Trump allowed to win, if he was such a threat to the establishment?" Surely a single politician could be dealt with, when said establishment overthrows governments, instigates revolutions and bombs entire countries and populations to kingdom come, whenever it suits them?
Why indeed?
11/10/16, 2:46 AM
Sleisz Ádám said...
I think that the strong focus on the personal quality of candidates may be an early attribute of caesarism. The power of caesars is personal power, their only allegiance is to the "little people". The theories and institutions of the former elite are essentially just decorations. Leaders must be competent to get things done and convince the masses to trust them. Any other thing gradually becomes irrelevant. Nowadays even the supporters of the establishment frequently say that populists are not "electable" and cannot be taken serious because, hey, just look how miserable they are! A perfect environment is emerging for charismatic leaders.
You may have a disagreement with Spengler (or my interpretation of him) on this issue but he explicitly said that democracy directly belongs to a certain historical period of a civilization. In his model, the call to revive or even save its original spirit and meaning - a call you seem to make here and elsewhere, too - is almost certainly a losing proposition. Such a thing would be unusual from you. Do I miss something?
About the decentralization of politics, I can only wish good luck. We all are going to need it.
11/10/16, 3:13 AM
mr_geronimo said...
As the Druid said: when the system falls you fall with it.
Disclaimer: i'm falling too. I'm public worker and my category bet everything on the worker's party system. The party has fallen and there is nobody to protect my category from the approaching economic liberalism.
11/10/16, 3:13 AM
Mister Roboto said...
And the primary issue that I believe decided this minority of third-party voters who could have given this election to Clinton, of whom I am certainly one? Not wanting World War 3 with Russia, as you said to Jason B. And that sounds very plausible and was certainly also true for at least a handful of Trump-voters. When you see a movie such as The Day After on television at the age of sixteen, believe me when I tell you that it stays with you for the rest of your life!
11/10/16, 3:16 AM
Fred said...
There is a Micah White, PhD who claims to be co-creator of Occupy Wall Street and lives in Oregon. He is called on activists to move to the "red" areas of the country and take over local city governments. Oh, and he's asking for donations from people to do it, because you know, there is no work there and it will take money to move and all that. This is the weirdest thing I read since the results came in.
People are protesting "Not my President" in the streets. More are being organized tonight. It is so childish to be protesting in anger against something. Isn't this why you said the left has failed? They have no proposal for what to do instead.
AlthoughI did see a talking head media person post that we need to have all the election all over again, leaving off all the 3rd party candidates. It would only be fair of course to do it this way, he said. And I thought, ah, he's gotten to the "bargaining" phase of dealing with grief. Lots of shock and anger out there right now. Wish more of it was directed at Clinton than at their fellow citizens.
11/10/16, 3:20 AM
Fred the First said...
Locally in rural PA, people run on both party tickets in primaries so when voters pull 'straight party" they get in no matter what.
11/10/16, 3:32 AM
Anselmo said...
The necessity of to demonice de opponents is a necessity imposed by the mass psicology according Gustave Le Bon (Crowds; 1898).
The democracy is a good way of goverment, but it si not perfect. An equivalent of the democracy brought to the field of the TV scheduling, is the trash that usually is watched in TV. According with the words of a philosopher called Gustavo Bueno (a different person than Gustave le Bon ).
Finally I must add that the last paragraphs of the present post, are misguided in my opinion, because ,seems to me, that in these are missing the idea that politics is the fight for the power. And, too i think, that your love to your country impedes you to acknowlwedge that his future as an united state is practically imposible, because as you remark, it is not possible to speak of an american people. and this is a basic condition for the construction of a national state.
Finally i fear that t a democracy an not survive without economic progrees and peronal freedom. Two things that will not exist in world biten by sharp limitations.
11/10/16, 3:36 AM
barrigan said...
I, too, am reminded of Woodard's book by this election. I think what Woodard terms the "Midlands" actually extends further north into Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio etc. and that the "Yankeedom" influence is mainly felt in the Great Lakes-urban corridor. I know there's some degree of a cultural divide between Cleveland and Cincinnati.
I would not be surprised if, for instance, California wanted to secede as a result of this election. (I would also not be surprised if much of the rest of the country was perfectly fine with this.)
11/10/16, 3:53 AM
Alex Blaidd said...
I think people should be relieved that we are far less likely to see a WW3 between US/The West and Russia (and no doubt China and Iran). That's all I've said to people about it.
The thing I've had to observe in myself is my desire to want to 'convert' others, persuade them, tell them they're wrong (about Trump that is) etc. And that is why I've imposed a ban on myself of either a) posting anything on Facebook espousing the alternative view to the media, or b) even going on Social media. It's tempting, but I've learnt from the aftermath of Brexit that there is little to be gained by it, and perhaps indeed that desire is the problem with politics at the moment - everyone's trying to put their opinion onto others (albeit by most by yelling and screaming and wailing). Facebook I've come to realise, from spending a little bit of time on it again recently, against my better judgements, is nothing more than a stream of consciousness and one-upmanship of the least conscious sort, and it's not worth getting worked up over. Then again much of the everyday discourse around politics has become that. There seems to be too many 'knowing' opinions these days. Too many armchair experts, and I don't want to become another one. Any historical examples of it being the same? And besides on Facebook and the internet in general all social norms, and values go out of the window meaning it descends into playground mentality (actually that's insulting to school children) - perhaps because its a dehumanised form of communication.
But finally what is it in me that gets to riled when I see everyone acting like children on Facebook? Why can't I let it wash over me? Why does it frustrate me? I'd be spending my time better answering those questions I think, otherwise I am merely projecting my shadow onto my Facebook 'friends.' And besides, it really has become quite boring discussing politics all the time - can we not find something else? Can we not explore the range of human emotions beyond that of injustice and rage? Can we not have friends that have different thoughts, views and beliefs to ourselves? Do we have to become so monoculture?
About government now being too big, and too cumbersome, I can only agree. The UK is less diverse and smaller, and I think even here it's needed. Different people have different needs and different contexts, so why not allow for that? Perhaps trying to force everybody to live by everybody else's values isn't such a great idea. I think society needs to become more human-scale again, which in practice means local government.
I'm thankful there are people like you in the world prepared to tell a different story and go against what the cultural mainstream would prefer. We need more of it.
11/10/16, 3:59 AM
Russ said...
11/10/16, 4:02 AM
Mat F said...
Thanks for electing Trump so Germany doesn't become the next hot zone in a war with Russia.
Thanks for electing Trump so we do not have to suffer TTIP and international corporations overriding our local justice system and environmental protections any more than they already do.
Thanks for electing Trump: Hopefully he takes along the nuclear warheads that are stationed next to my house (30 miles) when he abolishes NATO and brings the troops home. You know, if you do not have to suffer the tax cuts for the rich, abolition of health care, gay marriage turnaround, racism, etc. the whole thing does have some bright sides.
I identify myself as dark green, at the same time fiercely in favor of individual civil liberties and equitable societies, I am also homosexual - so not a natural bedfellow of Trump. I think, this whole election just shows how weird, unpredictable and erratic reactions to our predicaments have become. Now that it is so hard to paper them over any longer - and I mean that on both ends of the voting booth. Guess, if you encounter a lot of "problems" that are not solvable any longer you get these kinds of answers from your leaders. Let's see what happens with the French and German elections 2017 - I also see this même there...
11/10/16, 4:15 AM
Sub said...
Here's to hoping that the country can do as you say, and find a way to accommodate the wide variety of cultures that exist here peacefully. There is a book called American Nations by Colin Woodard that I thought did an excellent job of highlighting how the different regions of the country have very distinct values, and how they have shaped the policies of country as a whole.
I have had a lot of anxiety about the heights(or depths) of the rhetoric being used against "the other side" being an indicator for the potential of civil unrest and violence, and apparently there are already riots in some parts of the nation as a result of Tuesday's election. I really hope that we can find a way to defuse these cultural conflicts before they lead to widespread violence that is good for no one but arms manufacturers.
Looking forward to next weeks essay already.
11/10/16, 4:16 AM
Juandonjuan said...
11/10/16, 4:54 AM
Sub said...
It was interesting to see people's reactions at work yesterday as I work in an academic science lab. In general there was a lot of hair-pulling and gnashing of teeth among the American born, but the PI of the lab is Russian, and one of our postdocs is a Chinese national, and the first things they said coming in were "shit happens" and "the sun will rise tomorrow" respectively.
While almost everyone, American or not, was concerned about what the state of science funding would be(hopefully the repudiating of the religious wing that JMG mentioned will limit this), both my boss and the Chinese postdoc were happy with the election outcome in the sense that both viewed it as highly likely that military tensions with their home countries would be reduced.
I will be quite happy if this election results in a rejection of the "mission accomplished/we came, we saw, he died" neocon wing of geopolitics for awhile. It has been disturbing to see how many left-leaning friends dropped their anti-war stances and became pro-civilian drone bombing as soon as it was "their guy" in charge of it.
11/10/16, 4:56 AM
Juandonjuan said...
11/10/16, 4:58 AM
Greg Belvedere said...
I could not agree more about the insane focus on personalities in politics. My younger brother told me that he knew people who worked with both Clinton and Trump. I could not give him anything but a blank look when he told me how people say she is very nice and he is a jerk. Who cares. Frankly, I find her affable enough and I find him incredibly crass yet entertaining. Comedians who don't like him have admitted that he kills as a performer. They each have policies I agree with and disagree with, but this did not get talked about. We need to put the league of women voters back in control of the debates.
I think the democratic party will go through a positive transformation and we can elect a progressive Bernie style dem in 2020. Probably Elizabeth Warren. Bernie is already working for such reforms and this failure of the third way should make this the obvious path.
Two pieces from the Intercept I find relevant.
First, an analysis of why the dems lost which makes points similar to the ones you have made here.
https://theintercept.com/2016/11/09/democrats-trump-and-the-ongoing-dangerous-refusal-to-learn-the-lesson-of-brexit/
Another, which talks about rebuilding our democratic institutions. I have my qualms about some of these points, but I think # 4 is on the money.
https://theintercept.com/2016/11/09/donald-trump-will-be-president-this-is-what-we-do-next/
11/10/16, 5:10 AM
asr said...
It was people voting their perceived economic self-interest.
Broken down by income bracket, 52% of voters earning less than $50,000 a year – who make up 36% of the electorate – voted for Clinton, and 41% for Trump.
But among the 64% of American voters who earn more than $50,000 a year, 49% chose Trump, and 47% Clinton.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/09/white-voters-victory-donald-trump-exit-polls
11/10/16, 5:10 AM
Greg Belvedere said...
11/10/16, 5:14 AM
Karim said...
Thank you John for such a pleasantly enlightening view on politics in your country that you sketched out for us over the year. I feel I know better your countrymen and women now (even though I have never set foot in the US).
Now that trump is President Elect, do you think that he'll carry out much of his promises, especially concerning Russia, jobs and immigration?
It seems to me that should he honour some of his promises, he'll go down in history as someone who actually made life better for his citizens and may be even for the rest of us.
11/10/16, 5:15 AM
David, by the lake said...
I'm late to the party this week, but I'd like to add my congrats to everyone else's. You totally called it.
I have to admit to 1) a definite schadenfreude and 2) a certain admiration for Mr. Trump -- he had a sense (I can only envision it as an intuitive sense) of the path that took him from being a fringe-candidate in a crowded Republican field chock-full of insiders to President-elect, and he stuck to that path in the face of derision and dismissal. (And the flanking maneuver through the Rustbelt was masterful, I have to concede.)
I've had to point to out to e number of folks (on the left and the right) that Trump is not (or did not run as) a standard Republican. Rather, he took the Republican label and ran off with it. So the Republican party's "control of government" is something of a misnomer if Trump's policies are anything akin to what he offered in the campaign. It will be interesting to watch what he actually does, particularly those aspects where he (and the voters who sent him to the White House) is at odds with the Republican establishment (trade comes to mind).
I agree with you that the federalism you describe is our best chance to hold the nation together. Essentially, we have to (re)adopt a much looser structure among the states and between the states and the federal government. I wonder, however, whether such a structure would last in the face of our very human tendency to get in other people's business. Perhaps devolving into the collection of more culturally-homogeneous nations is a more effective way. I guess I suspect that so long as there is an over-arching power structure, someone is going to reach for it and try to use it to impose their values across the board, so the best way to prevent that is to not have that over-arching structure in the first place. Just my (admittedly still-evolving) thoughts on the matter.
Re the "if you're not voting for Hillary, you're voting for Trump" meme -- I was told that more times than I could count. After a bit, I tried to point out that the logic was nonsensical, but with little luck: if, given the two major candidates A and B, a non-vote for A is a vote for B, then likewise a non-vote for B is a vote for A. Since I voted for neither A nor B, by that logic I therefore voted for both A and B, and everything cancels out nicely.
I saw that Kingsport was up for advance order early yesterday and immediately got my order in. Cannot wait until March :)
11/10/16, 5:16 AM
asr said...
http://wiki.c2.com/?WhatIsLeftOrRightWing
11/10/16, 5:16 AM
Nastarana said...
My two children are both of mixed, anglo-hispanic, birth, identify themselves as persons of color, and are in full panic mode. sigh. I have been trying to reassure as best I could. Outright segregation is and has been illegal for decades, and cannot be easily reinstated. Both are considered valuable employees at their places of work, as is shown by steadily improving salaries and responsibilities. There is in any case hardly a "white", if I may use the term, family anywhere in the USA which does not have at least one set of non-white inlaws.
11/10/16, 5:16 AM
Bill Pulliam said...
11/10/16, 5:23 AM
Ahavah said...
For Senate the Dems ran an openly gay mayor of one of the two big cities here against Rand Paul, in spite of the fact that the state voted for Bevin the last time around who ran on a get rid of gay marriage platform. I knew he didn't have a snowball's chance you know where, even though he's a bona fide DINO. His economic policies are 100% chamber of commerce Republican.
Against Andy Barr they ran an elderly wealthy white woman who proudly proclaimed in her ads that she was a single mother. Guaranteed not to go over well with struggling families who can't get any help from welfare benefits due to being married.
At the state level, Republicans came iut with full control of both houses of the legislature, giving Bevin a de facto mandate to turn us into Kansas redux, though it would be hard for our educational system to get worse since we're already fourth from the bottom in the nation. That won't stop them from wrecking the economy worse than it already is and shredding what's left of the social safety net. Welcome to thurd world America.
As someone else noted, the two urban countries here were islands of blue in aw of red. Places that actually supported Obama last time refused to vote for Hilary.
And I am sure that skyrocketing ACA premiums are a bit pay off the blame. There are lots of people whose stories are like mine - can't get any medical care all because we don't have money to pay the ridiculous deductibles (which for our family is actually more than I make a year) yet our premium is already higher than our mortgage payment before any 2017 hikes. It's insane to think families can afford this. Yet they was the Dems main supposed selling point.
The SJWs here are in complete shock. One of the secular orgs I work for had a "safe space cookie social" yesterday. I am curious to see if the local Federation office will do anything useful. A few years back I wrote an article for the local Shalom newsletter saying we need to return to more traditional Federation programs such as having a community doctor, lawyer, accountant, etc funded by the Federation as well as an agressive program to help people get out of debt, a community garden, tool and appliance library, etc. They refused to publish it. And now here we are, looking Bevinistan in the face. It is depressing, though I don't think cookies are going to help.
11/10/16, 5:24 AM
Glenn Murray said...
11/10/16, 5:30 AM
Ben Johnson said...
I lived here until 2006, moved to the east coast, rural PA, and then back in 2014. The culture in some ways has changed.
To be clear; Oklahomans are by and large still closet racists with a strong authority-loving/theocratic streak, and I feel that's too bad for a state that gave America Woody Guthrie and Will Rogers.
HOWEVER, I think even here, the times are a changin'. We continue to elect people to state government who think that a day of prayer for higher oil prices are a solution to a billion dollar budget shortfall, so that's disappointing. But, we voted on a number to amendments to the state constitutions, and the results were largely encouraging.
Without going into too much detail; we voted to change the states outdated liquor laws, we voted to keep the death penalty, we approved two amendments aimed at reforming criminal justice by reclassifying drug possession to a misdemeanor, and we rejected a 'right to farm' amendment, a penny sales tax to support public education, and, most shocking to me, we rejected the removal of the separation of church and state clause from the state constitution.
I find this last one particularly shocking, and it is my hope that, even if we keep electing corporate tools to state government, at lease the people themselves seem to have chosen economic interest over values. My guess is that many Okies rejected the sales tax for education because of how regressive it is. I also guess that they embraced criminal justice reform because drug laws have economically crippled many communities. And modernizing our liquor laws took place in spite of opposition that claimed that doing so would increase alcoholism destroy public morals.
I sincerely hope this represents a shift in the political culture towards pragmatism over moral policing. Having grown up here though, I'm not holding my breath.
11/10/16, 5:39 AM
donalfagan said...
So you don't agree that people are largely irrational?
11/10/16, 5:43 AM
Ursachi Alexandru said...
Good luck with your soon to be new president. Romania's leaders have already done the sensible thing by congratulating him and showing willingness to work with him. We'll find out soon enough just how many of his campaign promises with regards to US foreign policy will be reflected in his administration's actual policies.
11/10/16, 5:43 AM
Nancy Sutton said...
".. He mentioned that he has over 200 retired generals and admirals consulting with him, which raises the possibility that this was just maybe a Pentagon-led insurrection against Hillary’s plans for WWIII. The Pentagon has never won an honest war game against Iran, and most admirals admit that our sixteen aircraft carriers are just fat, slow targets for swarms of supersonic Russian and Chinese and Iranian missiles. The Pentagon doesn’t want a real war; they just want more money for new toys..."
11/10/16, 5:46 AM
Fred the First said...
11/10/16, 5:50 AM
Bill Pulliam said...
If you listen to Trump voters talking now, they have absurdly ridiculously mind-bogglingly high expectations for their man. Many of his base see him as a savior who is going to fix everything, absolutely everything. This may only be about half his supporters, but that is an awful lot of people. It seems to be more extreme than what I remember from Carter, Reagan, or Obama supporters on the morning after their wins (those are three other candidates I can personally remember who were swept in on a tide of emotional and political opposition to the status quo -- Watergate, Stagflation, and Cheney's "Long War"). It's gonna get ugly when reality hits them in the face. There is potential for a massive backlash in the 2018 midterm, with angry motivated Democrats and disappointed bitter Republicans. There is almost always a backlash 2 years into a presidential first term; this one might be a doosey! And then we get divided government and gridlock, continuing... and perhaps a steadily shrinking Supreme Court.
Don't forget, the Evangelicals got the VP spot. And living here in Evangelical land, in a truly rural area, Trump voters are not especially gloating. I actually think I saw fewer trucks flying flags yesterday, Union or Confederate, than is normal for this town. The evangelical prominence may account for the lack of Trump yard signs that I and other rural ADR readers here noted in our neighborhoods in contrast to your experience in an old mill town. They voted for him overwhelmingly, but they don't love him, and I'm not sure how much they trust him either.
11/10/16, 5:54 AM
Nastarana said...
I will take a cute donkey, and its home produced fertilizer, over a gas guzzling, thief magnet Cadillac any day!
11/10/16, 5:56 AM
Patricia Mathews said...
Meanwhile, Charlie Stross from Scotland pities us, saying "Worse than Brexit", and dear clueless Dana Blankenhorn compares Trump to Carter and cries out for the next Reagan, saying that Trump's presidency is hurting the tech sector and the internet and that the future lies in being like China. Brin is going to have screaming hysterics, I'm sure.... and I haven't yet dared call one of my friends who is totally value-driven and choleric to boot. One only hopes he hasn't worked himself up into a heart attack.
The good news is that a bitterly divided nation pulled together after Pearl Harbor and forged a consensus that lasted until the (insert sarcasticon) Great Boomer Awakening - even though no such thing happened in 1860. These two being the only reference points I'm sure of, other than those I could dig up out of antiquity. And no, this old lifelong liberal - whose liberal roots greatly predate the current definitions - is not in a panic. However, the dice were thrown and have flown high. Let's wait and see.
11/10/16, 6:02 AM
Bill Pulliam said...
I will be very curious how he approaches cannabis legalization. As a businessman I would think he would be all in favor of expanding opportunities for growth and entrepeneurialism (no way I spelled that right...) in a new industry.
11/10/16, 6:04 AM
Bill Pulliam said...
11/10/16, 6:07 AM
Mark said...
On the morning after the morning after, it seems to me most likely that Trump is going to try for a sort of redo of the 1980s - triggering an American industrial resurgence, deregulating and getting back to basics, but with much less focus on financial engineering. I don't know that he really has any other practical options. Would love to hear your perspective on where he is actually going to go. I think we'll know soon, based on who he decides to put in what jobs and what advisers he leans on.
11/10/16, 6:08 AM
Johnny said...
Thanks for your insight into these elections. I think had I not read your work I very possibly could be caught up in the same confused outrage that seems to be ubiquitous among my friends (and the media too). As it was I was able to just listen to him speak and think about what he was saying a little less emotionally.
During one of the debates, I think it was the second one, the issue of abortion came up. When pressed on it Trump said the judges he would choose would likely lead to Roe vs Wade being overthrown, and then (why I am bringing this up), he twice said it would be up to individual states to decide what they wanted to do. It makes me think he might be thinking in ways along the lines you are writing about this week.
11/10/16, 6:16 AM
Bill Ding said...
11/10/16, 6:22 AM
Bill Ding said...
11/10/16, 6:30 AM
gwizard43 said...
4. Everyone must stop saying they are “stunned” and “shocked.” What you mean to say is that you were in a bubble and weren’t paying attention to your fellow Americans and their despair. YEARS of being neglected by both parties, the anger and the need for revenge against the system only grew. Along came a TV star they liked whose plan was to destroy both parties and tell them all “You're fired!” Trump’s victory is no surprise. He was never a joke. Treating him as one only strengthened him. He is both a creature and a creation of the media and the media will never own that.
So that may be the extent of the agreement, but still. If some of the liberal establishment can see that far, perhaps there is hope of some thoughtful conversations after the tantrums have died down.
And, BTW, congratulations - I consider this a real vindication of your historically-informed political analysis methods.
Meanwhile, seems there's more agreement with you on the non-establishment Left - check out two of Glenn Greenwald's pieces - the first on Brexit:
https://theintercept.com/2016/06/25/brexit-is-only-the-latest-proof-of-the-insularity-and-failure-of-western-establishment-institutions/
and his followup on Trump:
https://theintercept.com/2016/11/09/democrats-trump-and-the-ongoing-dangerous-refusal-to-learn-the-lesson-of-brexit/
I see large areas of agreement here, at least in regard to diagnosis:
"That message was heard loud and clear. The institutions and elite factions that have spent years mocking, maligning, and pillaging large portions of the population — all while compiling their own long record of failure and corruption and destruction — are now shocked that their dictates and decrees go unheeded."
Senility of the elites, anyone?
11/10/16, 6:39 AM
Pantagruel7 said...
11/10/16, 6:42 AM
Jessie said...
I was surrounded by coworkers who felt utterly free to drop all pretense of workplace self-control the day before the election and talk about the "morons in the country" voting for Trump -- precisely because of the success Clinton's team had in framing him as the next hitler. Who doesn't feel free to openly hate Hitler? But it bothered me that people took his ugly rhetoric into account and ignored the very real dead children that would result from her foreign policy, liberal interventionism, tough-guy stance towards Russia, etc. My liberal coworkers had literally formed her into a sort of savior in their brains and yes there was the sobbing over fears of family members being deported. But didn't NAFTA ultimately leave the citizens of Mexico worse off?
11/10/16, 6:48 AM
Bill Pulliam said...
Many analysts fall into several errors. Biggest is that they forget that states are not independent. If North Carolina goes heavier for Trump than expected, Florida and Wisconsin are more likely to also. And polling has a sample size. People will look at the theoretical "normal" distribution for an infinite sample size. But the real t-distribution of means based on smaller sample sizes (samples of DIFFERENT POLLS, not the number of people sampled within a poll) has much fatter "tails," i.e. events that appear unlikely are actually more probable than they might seem. Throw all this together, and even based on existing polling Trump's odds going into Nov. 8 were more like 30%, not the 5% or 2% some people gave him. And 30% is pretty good odds, nearly anyone would take those chances on such a huge prize.
Maybe we need to teach probability and statistics in grade schools? It might save millions of poor people a bundle on lottery tickets they can't actually afford.
Obama in 2012 outperformed the polls to the same extent that Trump did in 2016. The difference is that Obama was already favored to win, so he just won by a larger margin than expected. Trump's error bars straddled the "win/loss" line
11/10/16, 6:53 AM
W. B. Jorgenson said...
My apologies for the language used in the headline, but it's amusing to see that apparently the only possible reason for a Trump victory is the email issue was blown out of proportion. Another fun one I'm hearing from a lot of people is there was an attempt to create a "false equivalency" to avoid accusations of bias, however I find it hard to think of many positive stories I've heard of Trump since the election started, and many in the media were very anti-Trump.
On an unrelated note, but I think people here will be interested, but I recently decided to try to set up a home phone, and found out no one is installing new ones in my area. Not just are they not installing, but no one is even willing to install. This is a little concerning to me, since home phones aren't reliant on electricity. Given some of what I'm hearing about the state of the electric grid here, that seems very appealing...
11/10/16, 6:58 AM
Mountain said...
"Despite what the public polls suggest, and even with her latest email scandal, the election is Clinton’s to lose, and it appears mathematically unlikely that she will."
11/10/16, 6:59 AM
W. B. Jorgenson said...
The collective freak-out is quite amusing. I expected it, I wasn't sure what form it would take though. I'm rather enjoying the form it appears to be taking: "We weren't hard enough on the Evil One and din't highlight the good in She Who is Perfect enough!"
On an unrelated note, but I think people here will be interested, I recently decided to try to set up a home phone, and found out no one is installing new ones in my area. Not just are they not installing, but no one is even willing to install. This is a little concerning to me: given some of what I've been hearing of the electric grid here, using anything not reliant on electricity, like a home phone, seems like a much better idea than the electric equivalent, such as a cell phone.
11/10/16, 7:11 AM
Lawfish1964 said...
Brandon believes the world is run by the "elites," what some would call the deep state. I believe he is correct about that, but perhaps not so all-encompassingly powerful that they could influence the presidential election. Brandon's theory was that the elite wanted a Trump victory so that they could blame the coming collapse (when Yellen raises rates in December) on conservatives. The theory was that the ship is sinking, so best to put the right scapegoat in as captain before the ship slips beneath the waves. That reasoning was also behind his correct prediction of the Brexit.
I find your reasoning more persuasive. I too have sensed that the affluent liberal class has completely missed why Trump was so effective. He is a rejection of the status quo. There is no small number of us ordinary white folk, who as you correctly note are the only group it is acceptable to hate in this country, who are fed up with the pandering and political correctness that permeates everything in this country. The left were claiming Trump was a maniac who couldn't be trusted with nuclear weapons. But Clinton represented more of the same - endless wars, provocation of Russia (she advocated a no-fly zone over Syria, which is an overt act of war), continued over-spending on the military industrial complex, etc. When Putin stated on the record that a vote for Trump was a vote for peace, he was right. Yet none of the affluent liberals gave any credence to that.
I am now busily unfollowing a number of my affluent liberal friends on social media who simply can't leave it alone. The evilly-evil evilness discussion has become tiresome.
11/10/16, 7:16 AM
Howard Skillington said...
I was unable to convince any of my old-school liberal friends that insulting a beauty queen was a lesser threat to the republic than instigating World War III, or that the TPP might outweigh insensitivity toward non-WASP ethnic groups as a deal-breaker.
Above all, America has needed a disruptive agent to destroy both of our decadent political parties, and Trump appears to be that nemesis, having sundered the candidates the Deep State had anointed for each. It certainly appears hopeful that a coalition of embittered old Bernie supporters and dismayed Millennials might now have a shot at putting a stake through the heart of the Democratic Party.
Unfortunately, it now looks as if the Republicans may be perfectly happy to set aside their many fundamental differences with Trump for the sake of being in power with him. Our best hope is that he will treat the GOP old guard with such contempt that their egos will compel them to annihilate themselves by opposing him.
11/10/16, 7:18 AM
Allie said...
I also noticed that some family members and friends would also resort to calling certain ideals and beliefs the opposite of what they were b/c those ideals and beliefs they either liked or didn't like. The main example I have in mind is that people called Hillary a socialist b/c she advocated for a global economy. The ideal of a single free market where capital, goods, services and labor could move freely without excessive interference from governments in the way of tariffs, immigration quotas, etc. When I pointed out to people that those ideals have been on the wishlist of the arch capitalists of the West since the end of WWII and are actually capitalist ideals, their eyes would just glaze over. In their mind, since immigration and free trade had hurt their fortunes those things deserved to be labelled with the cold prickly label of: Socialism.
The flip side of that was also true. When I'd point out to those same people that Trump was campaigning on the very same talking points that the international Left (socialists included) had for decades, they just wouldn't get it. I pointed out how the socialists said that free trade / free markets destroys the working class and creates mass unemployment and immigration into and out of certain areas depending on the flows of capital. They had advocated for protectionism and trade barriers to protect jobs,etc. Of course a huge distinction b/w the international Left and Trump is that the Left correctly laid the blame at the feet of the wealthy and powerful business interests. While Trump for the most part blamed any convenient scapegoat for the policies; which he had to do, lest he sound like a socialist. So since he advocated for things they felt would be beneficial to their fortunes they were labelled with the warm and fuzzy label of: Capitalism.
Lastly, a lot of the same sort of warped thinking happened in the Hillary camp. All of her campaigning for hyper global capitalism was worded and viewed instead through the warm and fuzzy rhetoric of an "open, accepting, egalitarian, global society". Instead of what it actually advocated for: tearing down borders, pry open new markets and unleash the predatory corporations upon the world with ever more force. Of course she couldn't speak so honestly lest she sound like a big mean ol' capitalist.
Up is down, left is right and America stumbles along to the next set of crises.
11/10/16, 7:19 AM
onething said...
“Trumps rise and rise has attracted plenty of interest here in New Zealand, although discussions of Trump almost never (so far as I've heard) actually addressed any of the issues that have now propelled him into power “
I am horrified to discover that the propaganda machine that I thought was American is fully integrated into the coverage in Europe and Australia/NZ. The way I know this is that the narrative and the way that people fall for it is identical. Truly the reach of the New World Order is long.
Cortes,
“I suspect that there is an inner core of such asceticism in DJT. Ridiculous as it appears. “
Not ridiculous and one of the reasons I voted for him. Oddly, and partially because of two of his wives, I think Trump actually sees that there are other human beings in this world.
Dale,
“I tried a number of times prior to the election to get my liberal friends to just consider some of the things that the supporters of Trump were saying, and why. “
This is where I'm getting convinced of some serious brainwashing. You see, the liberals know that brainwashing occurs – to someone else. That they themselves might have buttons that are deliberately cultivated so as to be pushable, never enters their purview.
All these people that I have felt a part of for years - these aged hippies who support Hillary so strongly - I believe they have lost their way. Look, back in the 70s these guys understood that our govt was an empire possibly headed toward ruin, that we meddled immorally in world affairs, that Viet Nam was a blot on our nation, that there was a lot of lies and corruption in high places, that the media was not to be trusted -- and now they support a candidate so STRONGLY who is everything that they deplored. Everything that they ran from when they came to West Virginia - she's Monsanto, and Big Pharma, and Nafta, Wall Street banking, TTP, and a neocon war hawk.
It's like JMG said a few months back. Trump's their man (at least way more than Clinton) but they just can't see it.
Kevin,
“Much of the horrified response to this election result that I'm seeing in my circles is... from those who see themselves as likely to be directly and negatively affected by Trump's stated intentions - women, people of colour, First Nations, LGBT folks,”
Respectfully, what stated intentions? Trump is a social moderate. Bush and other presidents stated they were against abortion, for example, and we did not have this national day of mourning. This is evidence of the success of the brainwashing!
11/10/16, 7:39 AM
HalFiore said...
11/10/16, 7:46 AM
Mark Rice said...
You called it.
trippticket
Back in the days of water power, a lot of towns with manufacturing set up along the edge of the Piedmont Plateau. Water power plus ships could sail up to the towns. The urban areas went for Hillary and the rural went for Trump. Hence the arc of blue on the map.
11/10/16, 8:05 AM
HalFiore said...
11/10/16, 8:06 AM
Fred the First said...
11/10/16, 8:13 AM
Dammerung said...
11/10/16, 8:28 AM
Eric S. said...
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2010/08/care-and-feeding-of-time-machines.html.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Anyway, on to the actual substance of the post:
You said “it’s time to consider, I suggest, a renewal of the traditions of American federalism: a systematic devolution of power from the overinflated federal government to the states, and from the states to the people. It’s time for people in Massachusetts to accept that they’re never going to be able to force people in Oklahoma to conform to their notions of moral goodness, and for the people of Oklahoma to accept the same thing about the people of Massachusetts”
I think there’s another angle to that as well… and it’s a situation I’ve been having a much harder time figuring out the solution for… you’re quite right that Oklahoma and Massachusetts are different cultures… but the same cultural division exists between Baltimore and Cumberland, Austin and Waco, and so on, and that has had just as drastic implications as the cultural division between regions. Most recently that played out in North Carolina, when Charlotte tried to pass a city ordinance that was voted in by its people, and the state government proceeded to impose the values of North Carolina as a state on the very different values of Charlotte as a city (which led to a nation-wide circus). There does seem to be some sort of correlation between certain aspects of culture, and its expression in human ecology, and I’m not sure what the best answer to addressing that is… because if imposing New England culture onto the Southwest is a mistake, it’s just as much of a mistake to impose the culture of Iredell North Carolina onto Charlotte or Asheville.
I think the suggestion is the right one, but it almost seems like it would have to be taken a step further in order to really account for cultural distinctions… It looks like what would have to happen is a distribution of power in which the United States federal government has roughly the level of power that the UN currently does, with the state governments having similar power to the federal government as it currently stands and individual counties being able to do the things state governments can currently do, that way Charlotte is still able to pass its city-wide antidiscrimination ordinance without getting it shut down by the governor, and without it having to be imposed on the very different culture you see in surrounding rural counties.
11/10/16, 8:32 AM
Eric S. said...
We have a new balance of global power, things we’ve been hoping for for a long time are on the way, between this and Brexit, globalism will be dying a harsh death over coming years… the Europe/US centric world will give way to an ascendant Russia and China, Neoliberalism has had a big hole punched in it… And Trump is going to probably be as instrumental as Roosevelt and Reagan in completely rewriting our economic consensus. It’s going to be a different world…
However, while Trump the person may guide the policies that define the next era of history, but there is also a cultural element to what Trump’s America will become, and there are some people who are apprehensive about what that will look like. I’ve had friends of mine in vulnerable demographics already receive threats online from Trump supporters talking about what their new America is going to do to them… And there are some people who are feeling… empowered by this in ways other than hope for jobs. it may be the working class and legitimate policies that pushed Trump to victory, but that does not erase the existence of a shadow contingent of his supporters who were motivated by things other than international trade. To the people here who did support Trump though, the ball is in your court now, and Trump’s America is your responsibility, and I imagine there are a lot of apprehensive people looking to you to prove their worst fears about what that world will look like wrong. It’s an extreme example, but I think about Oswald Spengler voting for Hitler for legitimate policy reasons, and speaking out as soon as he saw lines being crossed and spending his final years under house arrest as a result.
That’s an extreme example of course… Trump’s obviously no Hitler… at best he’s a Reagan, at worst a Berlusconi… but I would say that that sort of prescience and caution from people who have supported Trump’s ascendency is important, as is keeping a finger on the pulse of the country closely in coming years, just in case people do begin to slip into that all too familiar and all too enticing collective madness that can so easily when a tired and broken country is rescued from the jaws of collapse by a charismatic and unconventional leader. We may be too big and diverse a country to that sort of madness to become universal, and of course it’s just as likely to inspire an equally ugly resistance, but that sort of mentality can still affect enough people to feel justified in acting out in terms of some internalized idea they’ve projected on to Trump that it could still be a significant force… bringing the fringe I have been following the conversations of on forums like Stormfront off of the internet and out into the street. It feels to me like we’re entering into an era of history that is as precarious and dangerous as it may be necessary.
(Note… I’m not calling Trump a fascist, or calling all or even most of his supporters racists or any of that… I’m basically saying that there is a possibility (and in some cases already a reality) of a noticeable uptick in things like assaults and harassment directed towards certain visible and vulnerable demographics by a fringe who has dragged a few Trump quotes out of context and used them to justify itself and decide it is no longer a fringe… and that it is the supporters of Trump who supported him for legitimate reasons and are not that who are in the best position of power to speak out against such things when they happen.)
11/10/16, 8:37 AM
Alex Blaidd said...
11/10/16, 8:45 AM
ThisOldMan said...
11/10/16, 8:56 AM
James M. Jensen II said...
"They are your family, your friends, your nearest and dearest - but they do not love you."
Later,
"They do not love you, so do not be fooled when they tell you they do."
Yes, this is the message we need to be sending to people right now: be suspicious and distrusting of your friends and family because of who they voted for. Which, because this is one of the reddest stats in the union, is probably pretty much everyone you know. Because that's going to be helpful in healing this nation just now, obviously.
I am so ashamed of my own side of the aisle. We deserved to lose.
11/10/16, 9:23 AM
Matthias Gralle said...
However, The Atlantic has quietly posted a very well-researched and referenced article on how the Democratic Party in the 1970s abandoned anti-monopoly policies and small independent farmers and shop owners, favoring centralisation and redistribution instead.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/10/how-democrats-killed-their-populist-soul/504710/
11/10/16, 9:32 AM
RPC said...
11/10/16, 9:49 AM
Caryn said...
OTOH: They can afford to dismiss that angry rhetoric as just inconsequential bluster. ((Well, so can I, but I'm not sure I want to.)) They can afford to dismiss the vitriol of his more extreme supporters as justified economic angst, or well, OK, maybe some of them ARE racists, but of course not all, so not to worry, nothing is going to happen. No Kristallnacht is on our horizon. Don't worry, ignore it, Calm down.
There are some people who cannot afford to ignore it, but they don't live out here in rural WY or rural/suburban NV. They are not in our sphere.
There are policies of Trump's that I like and agree with: cooperation with Russia, a move to isolationism, (dismantling US hegemony), trade tariffs, the goals of encouraging manufacturing to come back, (although I disagree that they are laid out in any specificity, as a commenter said above, the goal is stated, but the path is missing), rebuilding infrastructure. Some I think are problematic because they seem to me to be very open to graft, corruption or abuse: Rounding up 11 million illegal immigrants, a ban, (temporary or not) on people based on their (Muslim) religion, building a giant wall that Mexico will, (but has refused to) pay for, "fixing" the healthcare debacle by simply opening up cross-state competition between insurance companies, more trickle-down Reaganomics.
Personally, my biggest concern is that if we are headed for some big fractal collapse, some big chunk of our glass dome falling in, like another 2008 or something, President Trump will abandon those problems and the hard work on them in favor of the easier path that strongmen throughout history have taken to regain their popularity and public approval: just scale up the scapegoating. I don't know why, I keep thinking in this respect of Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe more than the funny little man with the mustache. Demonizing a clear, targeted minority group to coalesce different factions of the majority. Laying waste to the country and the people in the process.
JMG: I'm pretty sure you will disagree with or also dismiss this fear. You have written about this a bit before. I wish I had your faith in the goodness of humans, but I don't. IMHO: Yes, we are headed for a collapse that has nothing to do with civil rights or how we cut the pie, but I do foresee as a part of that collapse, a large or complete rolling back of civil rights. When not personally affected, I predict people will just not care enough or think "We've fought that fight, we've won, It can't happen here". It can. I think it will.
11/10/16, 9:54 AM
Scotlyn said...
Further down this thread, he muses:
"A win for Trump and a win for Clinton would have been a win for white supremacy. But Clinton didn't embolden bigots like Trump does. There has been some serious evil brewing from rhetoric that Trump continually used. White supremacy has been here but now it's on the hunt... When you dehumanized a group it's very easy to justifiably commit various forms of violence and abuse on them. You don't see us as equals. We're tired. We just want to live another day and that ain't even promised."
This is certainly a time to resist the pull of tribalism, and to really have one another's backs in the face of violence... solidarity is not about saying the "correct" words (especially if you don't mean them, or if they disguise your investment in the status quo). But it IS a matter of doing the right thing, especially when it comes to the protection of the weakest and most vulnerable, and there are some people (not the vocal or affluent, by the way) who are especially vulnerable at this very fraught time when things hang in the balance and can still go any way.
11/10/16, 9:57 AM
zerowastemillennial said...
They are "despondent", having cry/hug sessions in classes, and apparently MassArt had a "moment of silence", to use their words. These are people who would not have benefited from Hillary, and will not be particularly disadvantaged under Trump. It just boggles the mind, though, how quickly they went from #Feelin' the Bern to being #With Her. Hopefully they will just as quickly get over themselves about this.
I did not vote - I did not consent to being governed by any choice that I had, and I knew all of the important ballot measures here in California would go my way anyways - that is, except for the death penalty repeal, which was rejected by not a slim margin. It perplexes more than it angers me at this point, though.
I'm just ready to move to Canada at this point - and for legitimate romantic reasons, not to escape a political mess that I had some hand in making. A parliamentary system makes much more sense to me.
For now, I'm going to avoid speaking to my friends until they learn to get on with their lives - and take heart knowing that we're all up dung creek anyways, no matter who is in office. It's only another 8-10 more election cycles before all of our port cities are underwater, before the oceans are empty, and USian infrastructure finally stumbles down from a D+ to a solid F. Only then, I believe, it might be appropriate to start panicking. (If you're into that sort of thing.)
11/10/16, 10:01 AM
Jeff said...
11/10/16, 10:22 AM
Gabriela Augusto said...
Chapeau!
And also mea culpa, mea maxima culpa you are so right, "Four or eight years from now, after all, the personality of the outgoing president is going to matter less than an average fart in a Category 5 hurricane", and I also fell on that trap concentrating on the duplicity I witnessed on Mrs Clinton long public career, instead of her political program.
It is disturbing the incivilities of democrat supporters in reaction to the election results. Did it ever happened before?
11/10/16, 10:24 AM
steve pearson said...
11/10/16, 10:29 AM
Scotlyn said...
In any case, I think it is fair to say that at this point there is an "insider left" and an "insider right" (the established core of both party organisations and their connections in business, media, finance, etc), for whom status quo still works. There is an "outsider left" (Bernie Sanders movement) and an "outsider right" (Tea Party movement and Trumpism). These are the populists on both sides for whom the status quo is not working. And right now there are ways in which the "insider" versus the "outsider" dichotomy is so pronounced that it can blur left and right. That is to say, the outsiders may sometimes have more in common with each other, at least just now, than they do with their respective "established" wing.
I think you can also find "interest/based pragmatists" and "values/based idealists" on both the right and the left. And again, there are times when the pragmatic/idealist dichotomy is more pronounced than the left/right one.
As for myself, in puzzling over where my best "fit" is, I'd say I'm definitely an "outsider" and will always lean left, and I know I've never been a "liberal". As to values v interests I am learning that my values are for guiding me alone, while pragmatism must guide my search for a workable common ground (as much as that may ever be found) with my fellow human beings.
And then there are days when I decide, flip all that nonsense. At heart, I'm a barbarian, I live on my wits, my courage, and my honour, as best I can, among people who, believe it or not, are just people, like people everywhere.
11/10/16, 10:29 AM
Ric said...
IIRC, you've made the point that the US is *not* like a household, or a business, in that it can always "pay" its debts by financial manipulations, but that's not exactly a free pass to bliss.
11/10/16, 10:49 AM
Scotlyn said...
We've heard the lies so many times, we don't trust they will do what they say."
In this I am with JMG (and incidentally Thomas Frank, whose writings I have just discovered)... it is up to us to organise around our concerns and issues in such a focussed way that we can ultimately "trust they will do what [we] say" (or at least give it due consideration in the resulting compromise). (For example, would an effective trade union movement not have prevented/softened the effects of NAFTA, or a great deal of offshoring, and prevented the working classes from being as easily divided from each other's support by race, ethnicity?)
If all our discussion revolves around who can be trusted, we never get around to thinking about what issues we care about them, and more to the point, what we are prepared to do to advance them. Why should a politician care about any issue, if we spend zero time putting our concern for it into words and deeds.
Focussing on trust also tends to reinforce a way of thinking that there is a half of our fellows who cannot be trusted... not hard to see where that leads.
I hope there are people even now starting to think about issues to put on the table for the mid-terms in 2018.
11/10/16, 10:50 AM
Bill Pulliam said...
11/10/16, 11:03 AM
SOF said...
11/10/16, 11:14 AM
Revere T said...
With your Druid hat on, what are your thoughts about the impact this recent shift in U.S. and global politics will have on the biosphere? There is much gnashing of teeth in liberal media outlets about what's going to happen to environmental policy under a Trump administration. I'd certainly hate to see even more habitat destruction and climate chaos than we already have, but I get the sense that there may be a silver lining or two here that many people are missing. Is it just that throwing wrenches into the gears of the financial casino machine does more for the environment than the EPA ever could?
Do you think that this could be the first stumbling step towards an America that actually acknowledges the reality of limits, or is our national psyche too wedded to the myth of the Blaze of Glory?
11/10/16, 11:30 AM
asr said...
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/steven-mnuchin-treasury-donald-trump-230716
11/10/16, 11:34 AM
Ray Wharton said...
11/10/16, 11:38 AM
aNanyMouse said...
Part of what the Kennedys did to live up to that motto was to give their opponents a FAIR hearing. (Perhaps I was spoiled by growing up in a time of such great men as JFK and his pal Goldwater!) However, as you vividly emphasize in this post, this ethos has suffered hugely this year.
Part of giving others a fair hearing involves restraint from the urge to straw-man, rather than faithfully represent, the views of one’s opponents. A particularly egregious instance of this was the Media’s charge that Trump had called (all) Mexicans rapists, when a fair reading of his (rather famous) actual words about them belies that caricature. (This is similar to the degenerate hatchet job on Gore’s supposed words about “inventing the internet”.)
And part of this urge to straw-man stems from isolation in ideological or social echo chambers, where those trying to correct the record on the words etc., of Gore or Trump, are intimidated (into silence or withdrawal), e.g. via the sorts of diatribes which you so vividly decry. It’s the Media’s job to correct such misinformation, but, starting (?) with the hatchet job on Carter’s “malaise” speech, the Media has been increasingly MIA.
As long as the Media gives many of those practicing these demagogic tactics free passes, I fear that debate in this land will continue to deteriorate. We once had folks like Irv Kupcinent and Bill Buckley, who tried to mind the store in this regard, but they got replaced by smarty-pantses like Tim Russert, Rush Limbaugh, and Rachel Maddow. Mogadishu, here we come!
11/10/16, 11:53 AM
MawKernewek said...
Obviously not as many people went from #Feelin' the Bern to being #With Her in realspace rather than on Twitter.
Perhaps try to get Congress to approve an amendment that provides for a 8-year trial of a parliamentary type system with a figurehead president?
According to WikiHow the President has no veto on constitutional amendments.
However getting that through 66% of Congress and 75% of state legislatures by the end of January doesn't sound very likely
11/10/16, 12:01 PM
Devin Martin said...
I see a certain level of dark thaumaturgy taking place as a result of the election that disturbs me. Just today, I learned that a Muslim woman was assaulted and robbed of her hijab at my alma mater university by a group of men in white Trump hats. A friend related that her elementary age schoolchild, who is multiracial, was bullied by another child and told that she was going to be deported. I’ve seen many more such events related on social media and in the news. Obviously bad actors aren’t limited to just one side of the political spectrum, as demonstrated by riots breaking out at some anti-Trump rallies in California and other places, and certainly not all Trump supporters are violent prone white nationalists, but his campaign does seem to have emboldened them. Unlike many on the left, I’ve watched many of his rally speeches online, where his demeanor, cadence, and subtext is a bit too much like a few 1930’s style dictators for my taste.
And even here, reader Trippticket says:
“Notice how the arc of blue counties in the southeastern U.S. follows the fall line, the geographic transition from piedmont to coastal plain around the South. What? Why? Why would that occur? Seems odd, doesn't it? Could it be some sort of common mineral deficiency or something?? ;o) oink, oink!”
Maybe trippticket can comment as to what he meant by “common mineral deficiency…;) oink oink”, but a good knowledge of geohistory tells us why those counties went blue: that transition from piedmont to coastal plain has some of the best soils for growing cotton, and thus was the place where lots of African slaves were imported to grow it for their white masters. Their descendants still live there and vote blue from a loyalty to the party that helped deliver ensure their right to vote in the 1960’s.
11/10/16, 12:12 PM
Violet Cabra said...
I wonder if it has occurred to others that political legitimacy is a shared commons? Watching the debates, and listening to people speak of their hated candidate I was filled with a sense of foreboding; if everyone seeks to delegitimize the other, than the results are a delegitimized political process. This is a tragedy of the commons. I doubt very many people who engage in this behavior truly want the sort of future that they feed by trying to taking the initiative to demonize the other.
11/10/16, 12:38 PM
Nathan said...
Thank you for your eloquence and blunt words.
One reason I focused some on character this election is because the specific policies I voted for in 2008 (the only other year I have voted major party) didn't happen. Obama very clearly promised opposition to the Iraq War and the Wolfowitz Doctrine in the Middle East. I saw him speak live about this, and watched him talk about it in countless debates. These policies were nearly 100% under his authority as CiC, he didn't have to get congressional authority or anything. Yet, except for the late term deal with Iran, all he did was double down on neoconservative tactics, as you yourself have pointed out on this blog.
This left a sour taste in my mouth for politics. Since then, I feel like my first priority is to figure out how much each candidate can be trusted at all to even try to implement their promises in office. Thus, character evaluation must play a part. In this election, I felt like Trump both had more character and policies more compatible with my politics (with major caveat being climate change), so it was an easy decision.
Hope to hear your opinion on this.
11/10/16, 12:52 PM
pygmycory said...
11/10/16, 12:53 PM
[email protected] said...
Congratulations on the successful prediction of a Trump victory.
Your post in early January helped push me, to the point where I made my very same call, as I had a growing sense that Trump could do it. Your analysis of why he would win was very powerful and influenced and sharpened my own analysis on why the Donald could go all the way to the White House.
I have been a little surprised about how limited the reaction has been to a Trump victory. Most people seem to have taken it, in the UK, in their stride. Maybe Brexit has already used up the capital of emotional hysteria among the Brits or just maybe the average voter is a bit more clued up than our elites.
One thing that did cross my mind is what I call the "orphaned generation", the 18-25 year olds who were brought up under Abundant Industrialism but their early adulthood has been shaped by the Great Recession and the emerging era of Scarcity Industrialism.
This cohort, the first to be raised in the era of "progressive" politically correct identity politics, seems unable to cope with the emergence of a post-liberal politics. Their response seems to be bitterness, anger and a strange kind of nihilism.
Will this generation be forever orphaned... unable to adapt to the reality of late industrial civilization in decline?
Out of interest, in my summer post "winter is coming" I noted that the likely election of Donald Trump would herald the start of the era of Scarcity Industrialism. Would you agree with that statement?
https://forecastingintelligence.org/2016/07/14/winter-is-coming/
I have ordered the bulk of your remaining peak oil/civilization books and I am sure you will be pleased to hear that there is a Greer section in my study!
Regards
LB3
11/10/16, 1:08 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Ducky, go compare the change in the rate of permanent unemployment with the change in the working age population from 2000 to today. That'll show you just how jobless the "recovery" has been.
Llmaiwi, sure thing. There are three basic rules for staying out of the self-reinforcing groupthink of our time:
1. Get rid of your television. This is the most important step of all, because television makes you stupid. I mean that quite seriously; the "plug-in drug" puts you in an alpha state, turning off your critical faculties, and then fills your head with a torrent of mind-numbing imagery. The sooner you get rid of it, the sooner your capacity for clear thinking will return.
2. At least once a month, read a book that was written before you were born. This helps break you out of the unexamined presuppositions of the present.
3. Schedule time every day for solitary, silent thinking. You can call that "meditation" if you want to, so long as you're using your mind, not turning it off. Have mind food handy -- books and other resources, that is, that give you interesting things to think about, and then think about them.
There are other things you can do, but those three are the basics. Give 'em a try.
Brett, I think it's an either-or situation. Either we begin moving deliberately toward a renewal of federalism, or the centrifugal stresses at work in this country will tear it apart, with or without benefit of civil war.
Amy, you certainly may quote me on that!
Revere, yesterday was an ordinary day here. I think a lot of people are glad that Trump won but they want to see whether he'll actually make a difference.
KL Cooke, only the ones I use to brew my morning cuppa. The tools I use for forecasting are a close study of historical parallels and a location outside the bicoastal bubble of affluence.
11/10/16, 1:30 PM
Unknown said...
Wanted to leave this.
http://americancrackpot.blogspot.com/2016/11/twist-endings.html
My collaborator and I predicted Trump would win with our satirical "Ronald Krumb" in our online comic Apocalypse Mom last spring. (The farcical Barney Ganders is elsewhere parodied with a not shown graphic in a mock election gimmic)
Only place I could brag about something so goofy! Cheers,
Jutin
11/10/16, 2:16 PM
Elderwoman said...
I also agree that the personality of the victor is not the most important thing.
What I feel the need to point out, however, because nobody else here has, as yet, is that there is a sense in which the personality of this particular man has had a profound effect on a certain segment of the population--probably a larger segment than we might think. For although a lot of women voted for DT, there are also many, many thousands of women (and possibly some men too) for whom the election of a man like DT to the highest position of authority in the land has inevitably triggered a deep, visceral pain that goes way beyond shock and disappointment. These are the people - and they are legion - who have been sexually abused by male authority figures and, as a result, carry ancient emotional wounds, often from childhood. As a psychotherapist (long since retired) I have counselled many abused women and I know how easily such painful memories can be triggered and how easily those old wounds can bleed again. Not only that, but millions of women still carry a race memory of abuse by male authority figures from way back in the burning times.
So it is not just the 'glass ceiling' issue that makes Hillary's failure so painful for so many women. This other, darker layer of pain should not go without a mention. There are thousands who spent yesterday in floods of tears. And have spent a lot of today processing it all with their friends. Tomorrow, maybe, they will read your column, and others like it, that will help to return them to a calm rationality. And, in time, on hopes, to constructive action.
11/10/16, 2:31 PM
Phil Harris said...
Over here in Britland I personally very much have the same experience and echo your thoughts. We might be even more tied root and branch to the USA than you are in Canada. Our Brexit of course isn't panning out anything like a potential revolution. Who knows whether Trump is actually going to change the course of things in US, but there is no intention here among the dominant political stratum to allow any real class struggle to make a difference. If anything those who have done worst are going to lose what little they have.
But as you say - hope for the best. Thanks for your informed humanity. I echo JMG I think when I suggest that easing-off failed American foreign policie might provide some breathing space.
Phil
11/10/16, 3:04 PM
Justin said...
11/10/16, 3:23 PM
Patricia Mathews said...
Well, the sore losers are out in full force, from the destructive fools who covered the University of New Mexico buildings with graffiti, to the mass marches, protests, and school walkouts being reported by NPR as if it were the only proper response to the election. Yes indeed, it's not the right who are starting to tear the nation apart, but the left, if those terms still have any meaning. My side, and I'm afraid, once my tribe. And they apparently don't see anything wrong with it. Because, after all, it's .... the Great Unspeakable, after all! An outrageous offense against the Natural Order of Things.
Well, the sore losers are out in full force, from the destructive fools who covered the University of New Mexico buildings with graffiti, to the mass marches, protests, and school walkouts being reported by NPR as if it were the only proper response to the election. Yes indeed, it's not the right who are starting to tear the nation apart, but the left, if those terms still have any meaning. My side, and I'm afraid, once my tribe. And they apparently don't see anything wrong with it. Because, after all, it's .... the Great Unspeakable, after all!
I will not cry. But until they become the Loyal Opposition, I am turning in my resignation in the tribe now carrying on like a bunch of ....crybabies. Said in anguish - it's getting ugly indeed. "Sore Loser" used to be said in scorn and contempt, about on the same level as "crybaby!" One of the things that bothered me about Trump was his statement that if he lost, he would bot accept the results of the election.
Pat
11/10/16, 3:27 PM
pygmycory said...
How do you evaluate whether a would-be leader of country X will be a Hitler or a Berlusconi?
11/10/16, 3:28 PM
rapier said...
11/10/16, 4:34 PM
latheChuck said...
11/10/16, 4:59 PM
latheChuck said...
11/10/16, 5:08 PM
David, by the lake said...
http://www.npr.org/2016/11/09/501451368/here-is-what-donald-trump-wants-to-do-in-his-first-100-days
Unsurprisingly, McConnell seemed cool to the idea...
I did not know this was on Trump's agenda, though. My estimate of him just went up a notch. His list actually has some good ideas on it.
11/10/16, 5:13 PM
latheChuck said...
Not that I'm any kind of a baseball fan, but the winners of the 2016 World Series was Chicago, with 27 total runs in seven games, compared to just 27 total runs for the Cleveland Indians. Does ANYONE question that it was a historic victory?
11/10/16, 5:21 PM
David, by the lake said...
I realize of course that the President has no authority with re to constitutional amendments and Congress would simply block the issue by not bringing it up. However, could you not see Trump deciding to put out a call to the states, asking them to call a convention to bypass Congress and get these limits put in place? He doesn't seem to be one to be stymied. If, that is, it isn't just talk.
Just for the record, there was much on that list I don't agree with, but more that I do than I would have imagined there'd be.
11/10/16, 5:29 PM
Cortes said...
Even we'll-written modern novels are little more than exercises in product placement. I don't recall brand statements in Balzac, Dickens or Thomas Wolfe (the real, NC one).
11/10/16, 5:38 PM
Compound F said...
I appreciate your thoughts. My focus was not on the Caddy v. donkey as material possessions having valence beyond what it meant in the 70's gameshow; at this point, those representations are purely metaphors of history. My intention was to introduce the logic of the Monty Hall problem, which everyone, to a man and most women, have extreme trouble understanding. When Marilyn vos Savant explained that logic, statisticians worldwide blew their tops about why females should never be allowed near math. Of course, after their very public, self-righteous indignation, she was proven right, and they wrong. The entire episode was particularly beautiful, in its way of exposing the adamant, and vicious illogic of the supposed logical geniuses.
11/10/16, 5:42 PM
Bluebird said...
11/10/16, 5:42 PM
David, by the lake said...
"term limits" obviously, not "termimits"
11/10/16, 5:43 PM
pygmycory said...
11/10/16, 5:50 PM
ganv said...
The problem of course is that people don't do a very good job of figuring out how to live on their own, and (as you have written about over the past few years) many of the traditional networks (churches, extended family, neighbors, fraternal organizations, etc) that helped guide people about how to live have become very weak. Liberty is really quite a bad thing without a strong culture that helps you make many key decisions. Humans just are not smart enough to go it alone.
Return of control of policies like welfare and abortion to state control might be a step forward. It also produces complexities and inefficiencies and it allows injustice like Jim Crow laws to remain longer than they would otherwise. On the whole though, I agree that this is a good direction to move from where we are.
11/10/16, 6:02 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Blue Sun, good question. Does anyone know if actual telegraphy is involved here?
Patricia, thank you, but I don't sell my own books -- I'd have to have a business license and jump through a whole series of hoops. You might go to the links on the right side of the blog and see which publishers ship overseas.
Zach, you might try this link for a summary of the specifics.
Bryan, if he's reading this blog, he's kept quiet about that -- but I understand it's fairly common these days for reporters to "borrow" ideas from the blogosphere and present them as their own. Ah, journalistic ethics...
Peakfuture, a lot of people on the left as well as the right are in love with power. They want to make everyone in the world follow their ideas of how people ought to behave. That's the thing that has to be let go of.
Unknown, understood, and I hope that the Democrats learn the obvious lesson of this defeat and come back in 2020 with somebody who's actually electable, not to mention less of a clone of George W. Bush when it comes to policy stances. I'd be delighted to cast a vote for Tulsi Gabbard, say, or Tammy Duckworth, to name only two of the rising stars in the Democratic firmament. For me, though, and also for the tens of millions of American women who cast their vote for Donald Trump or simply sat the election out, Hillary Clinton's gender didn't outweigh her loyalty to an intolerable status quo.
Guilherme, those are among the issues that will have to be worked out in the process of a renewal of federalism -- and please note that I'm not proposing to pass all powers to the states! The 14th Amendment to the Constitution, for example, gives Congress the right to pass laws governing voting rights, so that's in the federal bailiwick.
Drhooves, not at all. It's entirely possible that Trump himself will turn out to be the divisive and transformative figure who kickstarts the next major realignment of the US, and the shape of that realignment need not be in the direction of increased centralization of power in Washington bureaucracies -- quite the contrary, since those bureaucracies are Trump's natural enemy right now. Still, we'll see.
Mario, "race" is a very blunt instrument to make sense of today's fractured US. According to the statistics I saw, roughly a third of Hispanic men and around a quarter of Hispanic women voted for Trump, so it's hardly accurate to split things up on a simplistic white/nonwhite basis. Different ethnic communities in the US have different interests, and voted on those interests -- but I'd point to those predominantly working class demographics in the upper Midwest who voted for Obama in 2008 but for Trump in 2016 as evidence for my thesis that the destruction of the working class is a major issue here.
11/10/16, 6:05 PM
Lisa Mullin said...
Clinton vs Cruz, Clinton wins.
Trump vs Sanders, Sanders wins.
Trump vs Clinton, Trump wins.
I have to admit I thought Trump had managed to self destruct (several times) and he nearly managed to do so given how close the popular vote is, if the Dems had ran even a quarter decent campaign to capitalise on that she would have got across the line (just) .
But the Democrats put up the worst candidate and then ran the very worst campaign I think I have ever seen anywhere.
The biggest stated and underlying issue has been neo-liberal economics and how that has crushed incomes. That has galvanised a huge protest vote, that Sanders would have got, but Trump then got it a little bit of. Don’t overestimate his success, he got a lot less votes than many previous candidates.
In fact when Trump moved to the religious right that nearly cost him the election, he was actually more popular when he was saying socially liberal things during his fight for the candidacy, which was one of the ways he beat Ted Cruz.. When he went all 'religious right' he lost a lot of Independent and Democrat voters who were going to vote for him after Sanders got beaten.
But and here is the nasty but, Trump has gone full 'religious right' (who are really Authoritarians in disguise) on social issues and is picking people that are the same ..or far worse. Pence is a well known extreme LGBTI hater ..and a hater of women's reproductive rights.
The stated policies towards both groups (and others but those 2 are the #1 targets) are downright horrible and follow the 'religious right' (such as the hate group the FRC) to the letter.
So it will be a full scale war on LGBTI people and women.
US transgender people like myself (who is safely in Australia) will be literally fighting for their very existence.
11/10/16, 6:23 PM
Happy Panda said...
I also turned out for my civic voting duty. You can call me a downwardly mobile wage class worker who only ever joined the salary class twice in my entire life. Most of my working life has been in the so-called "precariat" class. And yes, all this even with a BA. Got the degree but the salary job disappeared when the corporation I was with got bought out and "right-sized" (this happened to me more than a few times in several other corporations).
In Texas there is strong pressure for corporations to prefer temp workers like me over permanent ones because temp workers are exempt (usually) from receiving unemployment benefits. The IT industry in this city is filled not only with H1 B1 foreigners but when they are actual U.S. citizens the corporations often prefer "professional temps". Not all U.S. IT workers are temps of course but a non-trivial number in Texas definitely are. There's just too many federal and state laws that favor these types of employment instead of old fashioned full time employees from my parents and grandparents generation.
I checked out the county by county voting map of Texas. In Texas the primary cities (all of which have a lock grip on wealth) all went blue (Democrat). My metroplex - DFW went blue. EVERYTHING else in the state that was not one of these wealthy cities slam-dunked Red (Republican). Even cities that were not one of these 5 wealthy ones voted red. The county voting map doesn't lie. Where ever there was concentration of wealth it voted Blue. Where ever there was ever increasing decline and poverty it voted Red.
Foreign readers should check out a county by county map of Texas' voting then imagine that same thing happening across the whole continent to get a better sense of what the other night's vote meant.
*****Extra! Extra! Read All About it!*******
factoid No. 1:
According to census data as of 2010, 7 in 10 DFW residents moved here within the last 15 years. That comports with my own anecdotal experience. Whenever I meet new people only once in a blue moon do they say they were born and raised here like me. Even my BF is not from here. He's from upstate NY but came here because he was tired of our long-distance relationship and DFW has IT jobs whereas Upstate NY is starved for them.
Factoid no. 2.
As of 2016 Dallas proper (not including the surrounding suburbs which have a similar story to tell) now has 60 homeless tent cities each averaging 300 - 400 *families* a piece. Texas is in the top 5 wealthiest states in the nation according to federal government rankings but is 49th when it comes to social safety net benefits.
Factoid no. 3:
According to some government statistics 78% of the so-called "recovery" since the 2008 Derivatives and Sub-Prime Mortgage Debacle went to just 20 counties nation-wide (Dallas and Houston were among them according to the report). Just 20 counties across the entire U.S.A. saw a rebound worth being called a rebound. All other counties were either stagnant (if they were lucky) or actually in on-going decline (if unlucky). Yes, you read that right - ALL other counties in the U.S. are stagnant or in on-going decline.
I wish I could find the link where I read that. Readers may take it with a grain of salt obviously since I'm unable to find that report anymore but for me - when I read it originally I sat back stunned. It was like..."wow, just wow...JMG is right. If this report is correct then this country is much closer to insurgency explosion than even I thought. And I was already convinced because I've been reading him since 2010 and see much of what he talks about around me every day."
I think the old Chinese curse is coming true. The U.S. is living through interesting times.
11/10/16, 6:36 PM
Doctor Westchester said...
Again congratulations on the Trump New Year’s prediction.
One thought has come to mind. This does seem to be one of those ultra-pivotal 1860/1932 type elections. I wonder how much Trump is aware of this. Obama does appear to be following in Herbert Hoover footsteps. You pointed out that that some of the economic policies carried out early in Obama’s tenure were basically updates of what Hoover tried. So could Trump be thinking of himself as the next FDR? Could his ego be telling him that he cannot be just some run of the mill President, but one of the Greats? Actually, I kind of hope so. He has the opportunity – although so did Obama who didn’t take it. However, it’s ultra-early but so far what I see isn’t inspiring. He will try to kill Dobb-Frank, but is the re-installment of Glass Steagall in the works? From what his economic advisor team appears to be, I’m not holding my breath.
And, of course, even if that is what he is going for, there is that very slight issue that the resources that enable FDR to accomplish what he did have been burned up, washed out to sea or otherwise used up. Ilargi is right; America is the Poisoned Chalice for the next President. Dear Trump, poor fool.
11/10/16, 6:52 PM
Unknown said...
I found something very interesting when looking at the county level maps of results in the vast majority of cases this election was not a east/west coast vs the mid west it was a urban vs non-urban. pick any state and the major population center or two voted democrat and the rest of the state voted republican.
This held true even in the states that "always" vote just one way including Texas, California, New York, Kentucky, etc
Basically islands of left in a ocean or right.
Not saying that the left/right spectrum is a good measure of the world but it is what the election lets us look at
I would be interested to know how this apparent urban vs non-urban divide figures into what you expect to come, both politically and economically
Thank you
Aaron
11/10/16, 7:42 PM
rputnam said...
11/10/16, 7:51 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Taraxacum, there's also been a great deal of violence, including rioting and beatings, carried out by Trump's supporters. You might want to read this, this, and this, for starters. This is why all of us, on all sides of the political landscape, need to get past the politics of demonization and stop insisting that all evil belongs to the other side...
Avery, fascinating. That would make a lot of sense.
Ron, "the establishment" isn't a unified thing. It's a loose aggregation of competing power centers aligned in loose alliances, all scrabbling for more wealth and power at one another's expense. Trump assembled one such alliance to displace another, which has been sitting at the top of the heap since 2001. If you read any good book on the internal politics of a baboon troop, you'll understand more about the power politics of Washington DC than you ever will from any other source!
Sleisz Ádám, I'll be addressing that in an upcoming post. The short form is that Spengler focused on the overall governance of societies, and to my mind paid too little attention to what happens closer to the ground. More on this as we proceed!
Fred, thank you for bringing that to my attention. I'm not sure that counts as a prediction of a Trump win, since the post in question predicts that Clinton will lose but doesn't actually say that Trump will win. What do you think, readers? Does this count as a prediction of the election outcome?
Karim, we'll see. If he does an Obama and embraces the failed bipartisan consensus now that the election's over, things are likely to get very ugly indeed.
Donalfagan, no, I think people have been taught to be irrational. If I didn't think they could do otherwise, why would I be advocating that they try?
11/10/16, 8:03 PM
pygmycory said...
11/10/16, 8:12 PM
Steve in Colorado said...
An interesting anecdote of the last week. After Sunday, when the FBI cleared Clinton and she was supposed to win, there were posts on several of the more right boards I follow about which country folks were thinking of moving to when Hillary won. As I am sure you heard, the night of the election the Canadian immigration website crashed due to the traffic load. LOL, it would seem that both sides have much the same thoughts on how bad the opposing candidate is. Mostly, it is really telling about the depth of the divisions in the country.
Thinking ahead to what Trump will be able to accomplish I think it will fall far short of his promises (what candidate doesn't), but he will get some major changes through congress. ObamaCare will be repealed, and to some extent he will relax clean air rules and allow more coal and oil burning (although how much will have to be seen, since once a plant is converted to NG, converting it back makes little sense unless coal is being virtually given away). The solar/alternative energy sector will go into a tail spin as he limits and allows to expire rebates and incentives. Repealing NAFTA and the other trade agreements will flop IMO, since the majority of the Republicans in congress are not on his side on this, they are pro "free trade". Similarly nogo with the wall on the southern border, although increased funding for immigration control is likely.
I have to say that I never really believed the line on how Donald was so much better than Hillary in keeping us out of WW3. The neocons, for all they have done in the last 40 years, are if one thing very aware of not wanting to get in over their heads (not that they were in the past always, but they have been humbled). That is why Obama always skirts around direct troop involvement. Donald appears to have a less confrontational approach, but IMO is more likely to be manipulated into something (the classic move would be for Russia to manipulate the US to go to war with China, leaving Russia out of it to pick up the pieces, or China to do the same with the US and Russia). Neither is out of the question, given enough planning and clever minds on the wrong side.
But we will have to see about all this. It will be an interesting few years...
All in all, I suspect Trump's legacy will be in worsening CO2 and methane emissions at a most critical point in climate change. All of the other stuff (even a war or two) will not be significant down the road (as much as it may effect those of us living through it).
11/10/16, 8:30 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Bill, of course the rural-urban divide is standard, though it's mostly a function of the later history of a society, e.g., London in 1400 was basically a glorified cow town without much distinction from the small towns and villages around it; London in 1800 was something else again. The point I was trying to make is that this exists alongside many other divisions. Consider the sharp differences we've discussed between our respective regions -- both poor corners of the shallow South, and yet the cultural and political differences are not small. Moving here from the Pacific Northwest felt very much like moving to another country!
ThisOldMan, I've discussed this, and climate change generally, many times in this blog. The Democrats under Clinton and Obama have talked the talk about climate change but they have done nothing to actually decrease the rate at which greenhouse gas pollution is increasing year over year. Hillary Clinton's policies were simply more of the same. Trump is the same thing without the green rhetoric. Since there was no effective difference between the two, I'll be discussing climate change again in a later post not linked to the election.
James, yep. For what it's worth, it's on both sides of the aisle.
Caryn, I do indeed disagree with you. I have, of course, a very different take on the timing and trajectory of collapse; I'd argue that we're already collapsing, and that a lot of the dissolution of old bigotries we're seeing these days is a normal part of the disintegration of established hierarchies that normally accompanies collapse. More on this in an upcoming post!
Steve, thank you!
Ric, the United States is effectively bankrupt; it can print money to cover the short-term shortfalls, but the national debt is never going to be paid and there are trillions of dollars of corporate and personal debt that will never be paid either. If Trump can use his experience with bankruptcy to get America through the necessary reorganization, that might just be a good thing...
SOF, I've written at great length about anthropogenic climate change on this blog and in my books. This post is about politics, not climatology.
Revere, the destruction of the biosphere has proceeded unhindered under Obama, despite a certain amount of green tokenism. That'll stop, as The Limits to Growth demonstrated, when the costs of growth rise faster than the profits and bring the economy to its knees. Mind you, we may not be that far from that...
Ray, that's promising; now that the Democratic Party apparatchiks have been utterly discredited, I think it's quite possible that something constructive could come out of it. Yes, I've also been watching Tulsi Gabbard, also Tammy Duckworth, who just beat the stuffing out of a GOP incumbent to take Obama's former Senate seat in Illinois -- another mixed-race combat veteran, and a first-rate campaigner who can fire up a crowd and pound the bejesus out of her opponents. I could see either or both of them going very far indeed.
11/10/16, 8:36 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Lordberia3, my take is that the transition from abundance industrialism to scarcity industrialism is a gradual one, and proceeds at different rates in different places. In the US, it began around 1974, and took a big jump forward after 2008. Here in the north central Appalachians, we're already in it, while the affluent coastal regions are still in abundance industrialism. That said, depending on what he does, Trump could certainly accelerate the process.
Unknown Justin, welcome to the Omphaloskeptic Order of Prophetic Seers (note the acronym: OOPS) which is hereby founded to include all those who predicted this election's outcome in advance. ;-)
Elderwoman, did the women you mention have the same reaction when Bill Clinton was elected President? He has exactly the same reputation as Trump, you know.
Rapier, corporations become dominant during eras of relative peace, open borders, and free trade. They become subordinated to the political process during periods of conflict, closed borders, and trade barriers. I'll let you guess which of those we're approaching just now.
11/10/16, 8:45 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Doctor W., we'll see. I think it's quite possible that Trump will turn into the sort of pivotal figure who catalyzes a major change in US politics; certainly he's being vilified just as fiercely as the last two examples of the species were! But it's always possible that the change in question will be the collapse of the Union, with or without civil war...
Unknown Aaron, I'll consider a post on that as we proceed.
Rputnam, I'm going to propose a constitutional amendment, one of several, which will address that issue. Incidentally, it will also take the primary election out of the hands of the parties; if we'd have had the setup I envision this year, we'd all be talking about the implications of Bernie Sanders' landslide victory over Trump today.
Pygmycory, I think you misread what I wrote.
11/10/16, 8:53 PM
John Michael Greer said...
11/10/16, 8:59 PM
jay taft said...
11/10/16, 9:05 PM
Bill Pulliam said...
Given that he has No None Zero Zilch Nada record as an elected official in government to give any clue whatsoever as to how he will actually behave, our present circumstance feels like the country has lept off a cliff and we are in free fall with no idea if there are rocks, water, or a fluffy feather bed waiting at the bottom...
I have some predictions based on nothing:
There will be no wall.
There will be no Muslim ban.
There will be no mass deportations.
11/10/16, 9:08 PM
confuseious said...
I really enjoyed your discussion of the current political landscape in this post. As always, it gives great fodder for thought that will help move us all beyond this traveling circus of an election. There was a very good question posted by one of your readers here in the comments page that I would very much like to hear your response to. I feel like you glossed over this issue in your post. The question is in regard to a real difference in the rhetoric of HRC and Trump when it comes to minorities, immigrants, and protesters at rallies.
"Jordan said...
Long time reader of your blog, I always appreciate your wide perspective and historical insight on matters of the day. That being said, I think you're off the mark on this one. I will grant that people voting for Trump have been thrown under the bus for the last 40 years. They can't find jobs or economic opportunities because of immigrants, outsourcing, automation, neoliberalism in whatever form. I get it, I really do. They have needs that aren't being met and that could be met and should be met. But along with those unmet needs breeds fear and hatred of the "other" that have taken those things from them. And what Donald Trump's personality does is legitimize those feelings. "Hey, if he's saying it, it must be ok." People will rally around a charismatic leader, you know this. People rallied around Churchill when he called for shared sacrifice. People rallied around Hitler when he told them the Jews were responsible for their discontent. And people rally around Trump when he says it's ok to blame Muslims, Mexicans, and women for their problems. That's why his personality matters. You keep insisting that it's only the policies that matter, all that other stuff is irrelevant. Tell me this, how hard do you have to look to see that Trump will not actually give his supporters what they need in terms of economic opportunity? I know, I KNOW that it will not be different with Clinton. More of the same, I get it. But Trump has been hobnobbing with political insiders for decades. The man comes from more privilege than most of us can imagine. He has no idea, none, what it's like to live life like one of his "deplorable" supporters. Just today it was announced that he's looking into Rudy Giuliani, Chris Christie, and Newt Gingrich for his cabinet. Honestly, how different are Trumps policies going to be, really? The small chance that he rises to the occasion and actually delivers something different is not worth the hate and the vitriol that we already know come along with it. It feels like cutting off our nose to spite our face."
I'll just note that you did respond to a similar question by another one of your readers. In that response, you pointed out that there were anti-Trump protesters who were promoting hate and violence too. That answer doesn't apply here because the question is about the behavior (i.e. personality) of the candidate himself, not his supporters. Doesn't personality matter when a candidate says things that are undeniably racist and meant to foment racism and perhaps even violence in his supporters (even if this is just being used as a political tool)? Don't the personalities of our leaders have any effect in shaping the opinions or views of the electorate? Couldn't such talk directly lead to the creation of a political landscape where unjust policies targeting the "other", not to mention outright violence, become more palpable?
One of many examples:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/election-2016-donald-trump-defends-calling-mexican-immigrants-rapists/
11/10/16, 10:07 PM
Nestorian said...
Her name is Jill Stein, and I, for one, voted for her.
I think it must be pointed out that the cohorts of voters to whom this is an important issue have already passed up multiple chances to break the glass ceiling by failing to vote for Jill Stein. As such, I don't really see that they are in much of a position to complain now about the fact that the electorate did not permit Hillary Clinton to break that ceiling.
11/10/16, 10:09 PM
BoysMom said...
Some time ago, a copy of a permit request from Scotland was floating around the web wherein Mr. Trump had asked permission to do something, I forget what, to mitigate sea level rise due to global warming, on one of his properties there.
If NAFTA and the other Free Trade treaties are going away, there will be some sort of something, presumably involving Duties and Tariffs, to replace them.
I don't know what will happen, but I submit that setting up a system based on the costs of the difference in government environmental and worker regulations would accomplish both bringing many manufacturing jobs back to the USA that have been exported, and getting some of the biggest pollution growth nations to cut down significantly. I'm no accountant, but I know that corporate accountants already figure those differences when they tell their bosses where they should locate new facilities, so it must be feasible for the government to figure those costs and turn them into import fees.
I furthermore suggest that no Democratic president could get such a law passed: the outrage would be too great. If anyone is to use the USA's status as over-consumer to push worker wages, benefits, and safety, and environmental concerns on the rest of the world, it has to be a Republican, and it has to be under the guise of protecting Americans. The Republicans would have blocked any attempt by Mr. Sanders, and Mrs. Clinton supports more free trade deals and would never have tried such.
Has Mr. Trump any intentions of doing any such thing? I have no idea.
11/10/16, 10:34 PM
nuku said...
re faxes: some business people and national security agencies are using faxes again because they are very secure compared to hackable e-mails and anything internet related. Its also a pretty simple tech (fax machines are tough beasts) and only requires a phone line.
Faxes can also be sent via various radio frequencies. I used to get my weather reports via radio brodcasts from various national metrological agencies in fax when cruising the S. Pacific on my yacht. I printed them on a 12vdc dot matrix printer. Old tech is sometimes better tech for some purposes!
11/10/16, 10:41 PM
Nestorian said...
I hope you will address the issue you raised in your original post of how concerns with character have trumped concerns with issues (no pun intended) for many voters in this election cycle. About a half-dozen commenters have objected along similar lines to myself to the seeming implication of your post that politicians' stands on issues alone matter, to the exclusion of their personal character.
Your individual responses to a couple of other commenters make clear that our objections involve a misunderstanding of what you were actually saying, but I for one would be grateful if you could clarify this misunderstanding at greater length, since I think the character vs policy stand issue is an extremely important. Ultimately, at its heart is the primordial struggle between truth and deceit in political discourse.
11/10/16, 10:57 PM
inohuri said...
She is subtly very controlling. She says and does the right things at the right times. She can tear up and get sad on cue. This may be unfair but her appearance is exactly right while looking casual.
Do a WWW search for "Tulsi Gabbard, BJP" or "Tulsi Gabbard, Israel".
The Samoans I have known are not nice people except to one another. The Samoan neighbors I had were not good neighbors. I did what I could to help them but I learned not to loan them tools, they never even thought about giving them back. Gabbard has that vibe.
The woman is a politician and a very good one. I wish that also meant she intends to do good.
11/10/16, 11:44 PM
Zanshin said...
https://thejuicemedia.com/hillary-clinton-vs-donald-trump-juice-rap-news-special-edition/
11/11/16, 12:44 AM
latefall said...
For me (and I believe for a majority them as well) the point of the biggest loss in the whole process was when the democratic establishment elbowed out the alternative.
I think they'd find a lot more common ground with the crowd that voted for Trump and may start to regret it in the coming months. If Hillary remains the face of the opposition devolution is probably the best realistic option. One big advantage of that would be that most failure modes become mode gradual.
11/11/16, 1:23 AM
Bruce Bell said...
Many comparisons were made between the Brexit vote here and the rise of Trump. The number of stickers, signs etc endorsing the cause being a better indicator of the result than the polls is one. The other is the view that the result is a rejection of liberal elites, a view espoused loudly by the victors. But in the UK those victors are mostly the products of some of our most elite public schools and/or Oxford University, are drawn from the wealthiest sections of society and as such have had the ear of the powerful for much of their adult lives. Are Trump and his team really any different? While they may reject parts or even much of classical liberalism, they can hardly disown their status as part of the 'elite'(I read this morning that among other establishment figures he's considering for cabinet positions he's looking at an ex Goldman Sachs banker or possibly Jamie Dimon as Treasury Secretary).
When it comes to delivering for the people who voted for them I wonder if Brexit might provide a clue as to how things may go. The Brexiteers campaigned saying that the UK sent £350 million a week to the EU (a misleading figure because its gross and doesn't count what we get back) and that this money could be spent on the NHS instead (very popular). That apparent promise was quickly dropped and the money not sent to the EU now looks likely to be spent maintaining agricultural subsidies that disproportionately benefit the wealthiest landowners and possibly paying the EU in order to maintain passporting rights for the financial sector - plus ca change. Of Trump's policy promises my guess is that it's his massive tax cut (that will disproportionately benefit the wealthiest) that he'll implement first and with greatest success. Well if the rich getting richer was really going to benefit ordinary people you'd think we'd have some evidence of that by now. Apparently this tax cut will stimulate investment, but I suspect that will simply provide a feeding frenzy on Wall St. rather than a resurgence on Main St. Should he fail to deliver on many of his other promises how will the American people respond? I've seen you use the term "strip-mining idealism". That seems like a dangerous game but strip-mining anger seems more volatile.
Whatever one's political leanings its hard not to feel a little glee when the political establishment gets a kick in the teeth. However it seems to me that these inflection points take decades to bear fruit. Nafta, TTIP, the offshoring of jobs and rising inequality were simply the logical conclusions of the neo-liberal turn instigated by Reagan and Thatcher almost 40 years ago; With hindsight its easy to see the second world war as the logical outcome of the Treaty of Versailles (which was much praised at the time). Now we seem to be at another inflection point: we have Brexit and Trump and I expect nationalist parties to come to power in France and Austria in the next few years - that wave is growing in power and confidence. I wonder what fruit our current inflection point will bear in 20 or 30 years time?
As an outsider the greatest tragedy of this election seemed to be that the Democratic party rigged it's primary race to keep Bernie Sanders off the ticket. He has a far better record than Trump of opposing (as opposed to profiting from) the machinations of the neo-liberal elite. Viewed from afar he seemed like the candidate with the strongest ethical core. More importantly for me he had a plan to tackle climate change as part of his wider platform.
11/11/16, 1:34 AM
trippticket said...
re: mineral deficiency comment
Well, the "oink, oink" at the end of my comment was certainly meant to convey the idea that my proposal was intended as a joke, that I was acting like a pig, metaphorically, but now that you've pointed out the idea that cotton farming might be the common link, I feel much more satisfied with my analysis! Cotton farming is awfully hard on topsoil!
But really, cotton farming is at least as dominant on the coastal plain as it is in the transitional geography, and you don't see the same pattern emerging there...
Above all, sir, I hope we can maintain a sense of humor, even if it's dark humor, through all this.
11/11/16, 1:36 AM
Phil Knight said...
11/11/16, 2:42 AM
Scotlyn said...
Wow! very well put. It bears repeating. And I shall be reflecting it. Thank you.
11/11/16, 3:58 AM
Mister Roboto said...
You know, I always hated it when this meme would be trotted out that both the left and the right in this country are equally wrong and bad in the very same ways, because it sounded like a very intellectually lazy way of shrugging of the scorched-earth obstructionist politics of post-Obama movement-conservatism. But if this meme wasn't entirely true previously, I'm starting to think it is now.
11/11/16, 4:11 AM
Lei said...
I don't think that the person of president does not matter, just on the contrary - it is a signal or a message to the people, that is completely normal, allowed and even advisable to behave as Trump has been behaving - which can be summarized as ruthlessness, fostering hateful attitudes to minorities, women etc., constant lying, constant abuse. Once such behaviour becomes tolarated by political elites, the society starts to get more and more immersed in intolerance and callousness. There are good expamples of this from the history of Europe in 20th century as well as from the rise of populist right wing of these days.
I don't think either that the vote of the American people can be actually justified in terms of rational thinking even of the basic form that is depicted in this blog. After all, it has been well documented that people simply do not act rationally and that they are easily manipulated (by the way, this is a very nice article on a related topic: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/why-were-living-in-the-age-of-fear-w443554). I simply cannot see what they could expected from Trump, although I agree that the present state of affairs is quite terrible.
I can see this also on the example of my compatriots from the Czech Republic who practically cannot complain of declining stantards of living or security or whatever. Since 1989, we have had a tremendous rise in these standards, in real wages, we have 5% unemployment rate, we have free health care and a robust system of public services, we are now amongth the most secure countries in the world, and we have very few immigrants. Despite of this, you can see the same right-wing populist psychosis as anywhere else, all that talk about the evil EU, NATO, corrupted traitorous "pseudoelites" (which involve also poor university teachers, unemployed enviromental activists, or whoever who is not willing to abandon liberal values), and you can feel the completely irrational hate rising everywhere - pure hate and intolerance to any kind of minority.
It must be really for a large part because we are living in the post-factual world where objective data and information are of less value than emotion and animal instinct, and also because for many politians it is extremely useful to incite these moods of the crowd and then to channel them in support of their aganda and personal power.
It has been stressed in this blog repeatedly that not every change must lead to something better, and it has been discussed quite recently that gradual prudent reform may be better than "revolution" - but this step into the void is precisely that - how could people, oh my god, have come to the conclusion that Trump could help them with their problems? Someone proposing partially policies that go right against the interests of the poorest and partially having no realistic ideas how to keep his promises? And, for a large part, having no real ideas at all?
It is not accidental that Trump's victory has been appreciated by European far right, celebrated by Russian (real!) neo-nazis, welcomed by Russia's and China's regimes both shifting right now from authoritarian to totalitarian. This is already something!
11/11/16, 5:12 AM
Lei said...
At last, I must bitterly laugh to read the collocation "affluent liberals" all the time here in this blog. I know it may be a bit different in the USA, but still - here, a vast majority of the liberals I have ever met are not affluent all, on the contrary. All those people who still believe that anything is better than authoritarian rule of hatemongers and who still support the basic ideas of the Englightenment and of the emancipation story, who engage in enviromental protection, who are oftern various volunteers, who are simply the basis of civic society here, have never been affluent. Traditionally underpaid teachers, precariat journalists, more generally cognitariat, educated but badly paid or unemployed people. But still, they hold to these values and institutions, as they can see that there is there is no good in the return of conservative authoritarian rule - not that is not good for the "affluent liberal elites", but that it is not good precisely for common people withouth money and power. And one more note: in the Eastern bloc before 1989, true liberals were either dead or sitting in the jail, not living in better neighbourhoods and writing in support of the regime!
11/11/16, 5:13 AM
Martin B said...
I was hoping Trump would be a breath of fresh air in the fetid swamps of Washington. But judging by the first few named members of Trump's team, it's going to be a case of "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."
11/11/16, 5:25 AM
Nicolas Costa said...
11/11/16, 5:34 AM
TerminalOne said...
Voters were looking for two things in this election - the repudiation of the current status quo w/ respect to trade and immigration and honesty/authenticity. Clinton offered neither so her loss makes sense. Trump offered a big break from business as usual and I do like some of those ideas. He was smart to see that the media and establishment politicians were both seen as inauthentic and dishonest and the smartest way to establish his own authenticity was to get attacked by them. You said as much in your essay on the politics of resentment. However, during the last debate I watched him deny saying several things of which there is video record. This is clearly dishonest. Time will tell whether this was part of the act he needed to perform in order to fool the usual gatekeepers of power or part of his personality.
Sanders was an interesting addition to this election. His policy proposals were pretty consistently far left, antiglobalization but still pro-immigration. He only had half the recipe, but he also seemed to be very authentic and had a voting record that was consistent. I supported him ardently not because he offered everything I was looking for but because enough of his policies did sound right AND because I believed he would try to make good on what he said.
The ultimate distinction regarding personality/character of candidates that crystallized for me during this election was that the desire for power exists on a spectrum. Towards one end there are people who believe they are the best and most important and seek confirmation of that fact by getting voted to the most powerful position in government. Towards the other are people who believe their cause is the most important and seek the power of office to help them help their cause. In the future I will look for a candidate that shows evidence they seek to be a good steward of their office and the power that it temporarily bestows.
11/11/16, 6:21 AM
Herbert Pagg said...
As for the urban-rural divide; what hasn't been mentioned is the fact that many "left-wing issues"-ballot measures passed even in "red states" (mass transit proposals in Atlanta and Indianapolis, higher min-wage in Arizona and South Dakota etc). These results implicate to me that when it comes to issues of interest, the "left-wing liberals in the Dem" do have viable proposals among a majority in many places (but for many other reasons they'll never capture the majority of seats in most state houses).
With HRC nothing would've been done as the congress would still be split (the Dems never had a viable chance of capturing the House of Rep. ). For the first time in years, the legislative process can work as designed under the constitution (even if there'll be some terrible laws that pass). This fact alone gives the political system a chance to breathe and maybe even think ahead.
As for devolving powers from federal level down, Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts basicaly argued for this in the ACA decision:
http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/11pdf/11-393c3a2.pdf
"State sovereignty is not just an end in itself: Rather, federalism secures to citizens the liberties that derive from the diffusion of sovereign power.” New York v. United States, 505 U.S. 144, 181 (1992). Because the police power is controlled by 50 different States instead of one national sovereign, the facets of governing that touch on citizens’ daily lives are normally administered by smaller governments closer to the governed. The Framers thus ensured that powers which “in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people” were held by governments more local and more accountable than a distant federal bureaucracy.[...] This case concerns two powers that the Constitution does grant the Federal Government, but which must be read carefully to avoid creating a general federal authority akin to the police power."
Under the decision, Roberts held that the federal government could decide to not increase Medicaid funding for states that did not expand Medicaid. That is like a contract – take our money, accept our rules. But it could not take away existing Medicaid money from the states that did not expand Medicaid. That is more like telling the states what to do. Hopefully more people will consider this in earnest.
Kind of bizarre that in the year 2016 you could still run a campaign based on "vote for me as a X because I am a X!". Next year I expect these people to endorse Marine le Pen in France's presidential election (she's a woman! And women should always support and look out for each other, you know?).
Lastly, an important part of the problem in the rust belts is that free trade and deregulated and effective capital markets have made it easy for politicians to pursue policies of de-industrialization. The policies has often been dressed up as "environment friendly" and so on, while in reality they have only served to move production or extraction to China, Mexico or hundreds of other places. The effects of the process have been largely invisble in the large metropolitan centers, because the policies have in no way affected consumption. In fact, they have worked quite the other way around, as prices have fallen and benefited city consumers. This is why you can get elected on a "non-environmental friendly" platform in "the red states". The environmental groups have never analyzed these policies seriously but all too often resorted to blame games ("They don't understand their own good!") and being taken hostages by those who talk the talk (DNC).
11/11/16, 7:44 AM
Renaissance Man said...
11/11/16, 7:56 AM
Renaissance Man said...
11/11/16, 7:56 AM
Justin said...
If the present government of Canada decides to double down on everything that got Trump elected, and the CPC has some will-to-power and the brains to understand the situation, then yes, we will see a Canadian Trump (I just hope it isn't Kevin o'Leary - he's what the Huffington Post claims Trump is). It looks like the NDP is going full race-gender-sexuality politics and will probably perform very badly, leaving the LPC and CPC to fight it out in 2019.
On the other hand, we might elect a Sanders who advocates for the racist xenophobic policy of limiting immigration, work visas and temporary foreign workers.
Next week`s news cycle will be interesting - already some of the usual suspects are advocating for more immigration to Canada as a response to Trump - they really don`t get it, do they?
JMG, I'll make a prediction: By this time next year, you'll have been mentioned by a popular member of the alternative media (no, I don't have a specific one in mind) who will drive your weekly views up to a quarter million. I suspect we'll see significant problems in the economy in spring/summer 2017 and oil prices will spike again.
11/11/16, 8:19 AM
zach bender said...
I do understand that now he had been elected Trump has a hundred day plan. Much of it will require cooperation from other players he may not get, but there is much he can do as a "strong executive," which is one of the knocks some of his supporters had against Obama. Already McConnell is saying he may not get much cooperation from the Republican controlled Congress.
All of which is beside the point of my comment, which was that Trump was both vague and inarticulate on the campaign trail, possibly intentionally so. He announced distant abstract goals, but did not provide roadmaps.
In any event, we have learned once again, or failed to learn, that the existing mechanisms for expressing the collective will of three hundred million people are broken, and almost no one is stepping forward to try to repair or replace them.
The reasons for this are multiple. Among them is the fact that even the [probably rather small] percentage of people who might be capable of exercising critical reasoning skills are not taught how, and are instead taught to treat anyone who disagrees with them as less than human.
11/11/16, 8:37 AM
BlueWinds said...
http://www.yescascadia.org/
I'll be volunteering with YesCascadia, the independence movement for Washington + Oregon, mirroring the goals and methods of http://www.yescalifornia.org/.
Initial goal is an exploratory ballot measure on the next election. 2018, we'll hopefully be organized enough to put up a linked initiative in Washington and Oregon - if both states vote yes on the ballot, it'll trigger a special two-state election to vote on the exit from the union.
Will it succeed? Don't know. Will it raise awareness that the way things are aren't the way they have to be? Absolutely. As the Archdruid here has said several times, it's time to present a positive vision for the future and stop armchair quarterbacking the future of the country.
11/11/16, 8:46 AM
onething said...
"I am so ashamed of my own side of the aisle. We deserved to lose."
Discussing all this fallout, I said in a recent email to a friend, "I have only recently realized that I am not a liberal."
Yeah, they have lost their way.
11/11/16, 9:03 AM
Matt said...
The Trump phenomena did *seem* to gain a life of its own, but everything was going according to plan and Clinton was set to coast to a relatively easy victory until the leaked emails gave voters enough of a sense that she was a dangerous and manipulative psychopath to shy away from voting for her. Few have looked into the emails, and the media white wash/black out is truly a conspiracy theory come true right in front of our faces, but without the disclosure of the emails Hillary would have won.
Though we know—again, from the emails—that the democrats have ways of massaging the polls to show a lead that isn't there, she was still pretty far out ahead, farther out ahead than they can fake. Also, even with the revelation of massive election fraud, treason, media manipulation, bribery, and corruption...she still almost won. That's almost the biggest news to me...she still almost won. For anyone who has spent some time with the emails, this is a chilling fact indeed and cause to question the entire project of democracy. God knows what would have happened if she actually was elected.
Incidentally, we also know from the emails that Clinton and the DNC also killed the Sanders campaign from the top down and if he was competing on a level playing field he would have won the nomination and then probably won a landslide against Trump. I haven't gotten much love from my liberal friends in pointing out that the Clinton and the DNC, with their media allies, created the Trump phenomena, buried Bernie's run, and then handed the election to Trump by being sloppy and careless with a gigantic record of her crimes. I don't know why this is, since I have merely helped them see that there is precisely one person above all that they should be angry at...and that is the person they voted for. And to top it all off, when democratic voters perceived that she had rigged the system against Bernie, she created another mini media blitz to show how they were a bunch of moronic wack-jobs for even thinking such a thing!
I purposefully will be lazy and not cite my sources. The exciting part about the leaks is that it is true mass journalism: anyone can look at them and search them, and for much of the body of documents this is truly original work, with material that in many cases may not have been read by anyone since they were read by their original recipients. Part of the revelation is going down the rabbit hole yourself...though its not really so much a rabbit hole as an endless sewer.
Its incredibly ironic, stranger than fiction, and sounds totally insane. but—its turns out that is actually the world we live in. Hillary Clinton pulled all the strings she possibly could...and the result was to get Donald Trump elected when he wouldn't have otherwise had a chance! And now, with Trump's victory, we have for perhaps the first time since LBJ took his oath of office, a truly spontaneous and unplanned event in a presidential election. Turns out the nut-job conspiracy theorists were pretty right all along; turns out that people were crazy for NOT believing that elections and public perception are completely manipulated by a global elite who may or may not be satanic pedophiles (the jury is still out on this one, but its kinda looking bad....)
11/11/16, 9:16 AM
Beatrice Salmon-Hawk said...
11/11/16, 9:32 AM
zerowastemillennial said...
Why do you assume that these friends are online? These are all very real-life friends I've had for years and years. The hashtags were meant to point out the sad irony in how easily they went to bat for the opposing team. (And the fact that they did use #ImWithHer in tagging their self-congratulatory "I voted" selfies, as though Bernie never existed.)
Perhaps that's more a tell that they've been going to school or living in coastal college towns for the past ten years than anything else, though. Makes me sad that I haven't actually spoken to any of them all week because I ran the very real risk of them cutting me off for not participating in the groupthink.
11/11/16, 10:16 AM
Gottfried Wilhelm Melvin Hicks-Leibniz said...
11/11/16, 10:40 AM
Varun Bhaskar said...
You’re right. I just find the whole process of freaking out annoying. Midwestern stocism is kinda deeply rooted around here, the lefties around here were pretty sullen, but not really freaking out like the bigger cities. Guess it’s a cultural difference.
You’re about to be two for two on your predictions for this election season. Liberals are starting to eat themselves. I use the Seattle Stranger, a leftwing newspaper in Seattle, as a sounding board for goings on in the leftwing and the rhetoric on there has been ugly. Well, ugly is actually too light a word. Angry and self-destructive is more accurate, but as of today they’ve started to directly attack the DNC. In the meantime we have a perfect opportunity to pull the environmental movement out of the captivity of the liberal political agenda.
Regards,
Varun
11/11/16, 11:15 AM
artinnature said...
Regarding the presidency, campaign promises and plans for change: I've heard people say many times over the years, that it seems like once the new president gets into the white house and the briefings begin--already happening with Mr Trump--and he/she learns (or is told in no uncertain terms) how things are behind the scenes, and how they're not going to change just because *you* are the new president, and as a result all campaign promises go right out the window. What do you think about this theory JMG...commentariat?
11/11/16, 11:18 AM
James M. Jensen II said...
I had thought that was obvious: an openly gay person is someone who is honest and forthright about their desire to have sexual and romantic relations with persons of the same sex as themselves. As opposed to someone who has such relations but hides it from others.
11/11/16, 11:21 AM
Stephanie Ladd said...
11/11/16, 11:36 AM
Bryant said...
11/11/16, 11:51 AM
Nancy Sutton said...
These shenanigans are to be expected...however, what I don't understand is why the Dem leadership didn't/isn't screaming and suing. (The Repubs scream and sue over voter fraud 'ghosts'!) I stood up and publicly asked my Dem Rep, in two townhalls, why they didn't. Got a mumbly 'there's a bill..but..' answer. The only feeble explanation I've ever heard is 'we don't want to scare the children away from voting (by letting them know their vote doesn't count)'.
I wish someone could give me an answer than the obvious 'the unitary MOU dictates to both parties (3 or 4 parties would make it significantly harder for them!)'. Bottom line: "Would they, if they could ?" Meanwhile, 'we'are encouraged to focus on endless speculation, theorizing, predicting, nitpicking, comparison, etc.'possible explanations'..which is the magic trick of distracting our attention. (except for me and Brian Cady :)
11/11/16, 12:02 PM
Nancy Sutton said...
11/11/16, 12:04 PM
Sleisz Ádám said...
I look forward to your thoughts about the future role of democracy in the light of Spengler's view. It sounds convincing to me and also reinforces my earlier doubts about the viability of democratic politics when it comes to large crowds of people who cannot know each other personally. However, if some of the techniques can be salvaged and applied on a smaller scale (or something similar), that might be worth considering. You can count on one reader for that one!
11/11/16, 12:45 PM
heather said...
--Heather in CA
11/11/16, 12:54 PM
Jerome Purtzer said...
11/11/16, 1:00 PM
RPC said...
11/11/16, 1:12 PM
Sylvia Rissell said...
Trump promised/said many things during his campaign. We all knew that some of them were false, and some he intended to be true. The question is, which ones?
Some of the things are probably going to be easy with a Republican congress. Making access to birth control and abortion more difficult, for example. Shutting off 'Obamacare' is a little more challenging, but you know they will have a good go at it. 'Rule of Law' that disproportionately affects minority and poor communities would seem to be in this category as well.
Some of the things will be hard. Replacing 'Obamacare' with something else is one of them. Getting manufacturing back in the United States is another, particularly without an understanding that increased automation might be part of the problem.
The easy things here are very, very negative for some citizens. The hard things (which would be good for everyone) may be some of the things that aren't really going to happen, because they are very, very hard. Please understand why lots of non-white or non-male persons feel like they will be thrown under the bus by Trump and congress, just so he can show he is getting shale done.
Also, does anyone really think that more drilling and fracking is a good idea, considering how low petroleum prices are these days?
11/11/16, 1:15 PM
Candace said...
Have to disagree with you about the emails. Whenever I brought up their contents the people around me had no idea what I was talking about. I really only saw them mentioned on Zero Hedge, occasionally RT- that tended to be more about Assange that the content of the emails.
I think once again, "it's the economy, stupid" was at play. People mention that salary-class whites were among strong supporters for Trump.
Even if you make 60,000 a year, how affordable is it to pay $60,000 in tuition for your kids? To keep them on your health insurance because your kids can't find a full-time job when they graduate.
I am lower income, but most of my family would be considered salary class and doing quite well, except for medical bills, tuition, and the fact that they can't afford to retire while they are still supporting grown children. I think more and more people are saying the official numbers are not true, we have not "recovered", what recovery there has been has been for a small umber of people. Even people that have jobs and insurance and can afford housing are scared about the future.
My 2 cents anyway...
11/11/16, 1:16 PM
M Smith said...
I'm a woman who is sick of being treated as if I were fragile, irrational, stupid, and incapable. Weak snowflakes who spend the day "processing" instead of thinking and planning, and drowning in tears because of some "race memories" (just because they're women? That's insulting!)should not vote. They're clearly unable to differentiate between a vote for the best person to lead the country, and a therapist's session.
The world isn't a "safe space". I will assume the women who spent the day in tears do not ever watch TV or go to the movies, because women are pretty much sex objects in the "entertainment" industry. They'd never have a dry eye.
11/11/16, 1:30 PM
inohuri said...
Many gay people don't look or act gay. Because of prejudice they don't shout it out. You might know or work with them. Others are in a range of obviousness.
As a "straight" I lived in a very clean and well managed cheap hotel in San Francisco in the early 1970's. The residents were mostly gay. I learned a lot, especially about platonic affection. I was teased for being straight by my friends.
Occasionally a new one would realize that I was straight (I didn't look or act any different than most of them)and suddenly I would become very attractive.
After several months I got fed up with the bad parts of the gay scene (people who took advantage of people) and moved into a dirty poorly managed cheap hotel.
There was also one rather lame attempt to get me stoned for the wrong reasons. He had been an Air Force officer.
He knew I was practicing Kung Fu. Dangerous for him.
11/11/16, 1:33 PM
M M said...
First off, I’m your huge fan, I read most of your books and I religiously follow your blog since years. So please accept the feedback below as a note from sympathetic reader, trying to remind about the best of your qualities – being able to be an impartial observer drawing on long-time cycles and patterns.
This is the first time I post here and my reaction is triggered by your last post, as it – surprisingly for me – seemed to be in quite fundamental contradiction with some of your best (and most discussed and shared) essays.
Your key point from the last post can be summarized as “no worries, nothing serious happened and we can some good stuff" .
To illustrate my point, let me quote this:
“When fascism succeeds in seizing power, in other words, it’s not a right-wing movement, or for that matter a left-wing one. It seizes the abandoned middle ground of politics, takes up the popular causes that all other parties refuse to touch, and imposes a totalitarianism of the center. That’s the secret of fascism’s popularity—and it’s the reason why an outbreak of full-blown fascism is a real and frightening possibility as America stumbles blindly into an unwelcome future. “
This is your own words from some time ago and I find it strange you didn’t see it appropriate to use them now.
Secondly, Trump’s victory is not a defeat of the religious right - he’ll have to work with Republican dominated Congress, as he can expect fiery opposition from Democrats. The first documents posted on his transition website prove this direction, as his transition team - staffed with long-time Washington and K Street folks, from "swamp" he has pledged to drain.
Further on, you may forget about any voluntary devolution of power under Trump – I live in Europe and had seen Trump predecessors approach to that topic. From Turkey through Hungary to the UK after Brexit, leaders elected on the same wave which brought Trump to power crushed all attempts of self-determination. It’s quite simple - any leader of the nation “great again” cannot let "his" nation get divided, can he?
Finally (and most importantly), Trump’s policy on climate and energy will go directly against what you hold dear; climate change is currently unstoppable, but I hope you admit that there is quite substantial difference between 2C and 4 or 6C, also in terms of our ability to save the best institutions and inventions worth to pass on to the future “ecotechnic society”.
Summing up, you’re right that personality does not matter in comparison to policies. But you, JMG, should know better than others that declared policies have nothing to do with real ones, especially at the twilight of the empire. The election campaign circus is not what I’d expect you to take seriously.
Trump, as someone said, “is the wrong answer to the right question”. Your past analysis and writing was pointing exactly this direction long before Trump himself decided to run. I sincerely hope you can get back to sharing with us your insights on decline of current civilization with clarity not muddled by the current mess in your country.
In the turbulent times ahead it will be badly needed.
Take care,
MM
11/11/16, 1:49 PM
Urban Harvester said...
11/11/16, 1:53 PM
grisom said...
11/11/16, 2:03 PM
M Smith said...
Sorry if I'm harping, but re-read my second sentence. I am so sick of failed women. Between the drugged-into-submission schoolboys who are "in touch with their feminine side" and the "race memories" of the "body-shamed" schoolgirls, who's going to be the grownup in ten years?
11/11/16, 2:20 PM
Nestorian said...
See his "Letters from Under the Altar" at www.antipasministries.com, as well as some of his more recent articles.
Many on this website will dismiss him because he has also been identifying Trump as the biblical Antichrist since summer 2015. For my part, though, I have been, and continue to, watch political developments carefully to see if Shearer might not have that one nailed as well.
11/11/16, 2:33 PM
zach bender said...
We do not talk about Rand Paul being "openly heterosexual" -- if indeed he is --, because we understand that what matters is what he proposes to do once elected. If, as Avahah seems to suggest, Kentucky voters cannot get past someone's sexual identification or gender expression, then we have a lot of work to do.
11/11/16, 2:39 PM
Larz (near San Jose, California, USA) said...
A couple years' ago, I binge-read all of your posts from day-one. In the meantime , I read each week's post in a timely manner along with just about every comment (through Sunday). Even though I am a European-Christian-heritage (white) left-coast liberal who wanted Bernie Sanders but Democrats imposed on me Hilarious Rodham Clinton. I voted for Clinton. I was, however, 95% emotionally prepared for Trump to win, thanks to your blog.
As a female in my early 60s, whose health was permanently ruined by an idiosyncratic reaction to a relatively common prescription drug 35 years' ago, I cannot change the outer trappings of my life. After being "no religion" all my life, due to the info I gleaned from this blog, I came up with a personal blueprint for change, one which I am physically and financially able to implement, fragile as my health is.
I need to do my bit "making America a great place to live." For a year, I have given a great deal of thought to this, if not exactly in Trump's terms.
I decided to become Christian (after a long search, Episcopal/Anglican), returning to my Christian-European roots, which Americans en masse abandoned starting around 1970. I plan to go to church weekly, which I already started doing. I plan to learn from elder church ladies who never stopped practicing Christian charity — to follow their lead on what it means to take care of others (at least scratching the surface), changing my intention to being other-centered rather than (the default) self-centered (having never learned anything else thanks to secular, de-Christianized school system of the 1960s). I plan to help those who are local to me. It will be rough road for me.
This autumn, I have made many personal changes which will help me succeed in helping others who live locally. My plans include INCREASING energy output coming from my home by way of home-cooking (food to give away to those hungry). Increasing one's home's output of energy seems to be universally dumped on here. I apologize for being able to afford to cook for, and donate to, locals who are hungry. It is the best I can muster. I recognize many cannot afford to donate much, but as a (new) Christian, it is my Christian duty to do so, to my ability. Increasing my fuel usage does not make me "different," not better. Our household does what it can to conserve and recycle. I posit that increasing one's household fuel expenditure (electricity, natural gas, heating oil, whatever), if it benefits community, is not bad.
The following book has eminently helped me through this arduous search and process. It gels beautifully with most everything I read in posts and comments here, not to mention is an easy and fun book:
"On the Shoulders of Hobbits: The Road to Virtue with Tolkien and Lewis"
[J.R.R. Tolkien & C.S. Lewis]
Amazon link
by Louis Markos
ISBN 0802443192
Larz
11/11/16, 3:00 PM
Cherokee Organics said...
Thank you for the insight. I appreciate your explanation because I noted over time that the tone of your comments changed and wondered what it meant.
I've been wondering for a while now whether we've passed "Peak Magic" as a viable policy option (if it ever was in the first place)? It never really was a viable option as to my mind anyway as it hid the incredible consumption of the built and social infrastructure. And the reason I write "Peak" is that the various groups are still fixated on their magic rather than looking around at the world around them. They appear to me to be mages who have fallen under their own spell but have forgotten why they cast that spell in the first place.
It is also worth mentioning that I recall that Al Gore made that same claim about winning the election, but also losing it. A bit sad really.
In all of the media rubbish of recent days and there has been a lot of that which I have studiously ignored, I spotted a short video of the documentary maker Michael Moore who when interviewed many months ago predicted a win for Trump. The reason he cited for that prediction was that he just looked at how things were in his local area. I've seen that explanation used before only very recently... Just sayin.
Incidentally, Trumps policies will correct the price signals in the market. You just may not like what those price signals should be saying but currently aren’t.
Cheers
Chris
11/11/16, 3:01 PM
latheChuck said...
11/11/16, 4:23 PM
zach bender said...
11/11/16, 4:27 PM
pygmycory said...
http://rabble.ca/columnists/2016/11/there-are-lessons-canadas-elites-us-election
I'd really like to see a Sanders' style movement within the NDP, to offer a better option for voters than Trudeau or a Canadian version of Trump. Is anyone else on here thinking likewise?
11/11/16, 4:30 PM
pygmycory said...
11/11/16, 4:33 PM
zach bender said...
What I think I am hearing JHG saying, in some degree, is that the concept of "equal protection" has somehow been extended beyond what he or someone might think is reasonable, so that the authority granted to Congress in section 5 of the amendment to enforce its provisions has been overreached.
I will be interested to hear specific examples. Others have mentioned Jim Crow. Obviously there is the question of same sex marriage. Are we talking about rolling this stuff back? Do we really want to try to create a literal federation of separate nation states, with significantly different legal cultures?
It is certainly true that federalism has been greatly eroded in the past fifty-odd years. This has been accomplished largely through carrot and stick mechanisms, where the federal government offers states and localities money and in exchange demands that various conditions be met. Title IX is the hook on which the federal government has intervened in the question of transgender access to restrooms in public schools receiving federal grants, etc.
This may be yet another instance in which there is no clear path to the stated objective. While we are talking about how people at the lower end of the income and wealth scales are being disregarded, we might remember that they -- or maybe here I should say "we," because I am living not that far above the poverty line -- may be very limited in their ability to relocate.
11/11/16, 4:47 PM
Grebulocities said...
There were several competing polling models, including 538 and one by the Princeton academic Sam Wang. 538, much as people are knocking it now, actually did the best of all the mainstream models - it may have made the wrong call, but it gave Clinton only a 71% chance at its last prediction early Tuesday morning. Keeping in mind that the previous odds they gave were 99% Obama on election morning 2008 and 91% Obama in 2012, it actually made one call that was very good: it correctly showed a far higher uncertainty about this election than the two before it. And really, there's nothing more you can do if your model is fed garbage data but spit back the garbage while showing a large amount of uncertainty. Garbage in, garbage with high uncertainty out is even better than the normal garbage in, garbage out.
In the other corner, we have Sam Wang's model. Even when the election tightened during the last couple of weeks, it kept predicting a >99% chance for Clinton. I took one look at it and saw an extremely narrow variance, with all sorts of huge red flags about model overconfidence. If it were an undergrad stats project about something nonpolitical, it would have flunked, but yet here it was being published by Princeton and taken seriously by liberals everywhere. Some people were even wondering if Nate Silver would be displaced as the election modeling guru by Sam Wang.
Luckily I didn't believe it for a second, because I know a magic spell against model overconfidence. The spell is as follows:
Long Term Capital Management
11/11/16, 4:54 PM
Steve in Colorado said...
I would not be surprised at all if as you say, the DNC brought this on themselves. If you have ever seen the movie "The Producers" this election sounds like a real life remake of that movie (with far fewer laughs).
11/11/16, 5:12 PM
Patricia Mathews said...
Meanwhile, there's talk of Calexit and Cascadexit. If that happens, the once-proposed State of Jefferson may be revived; Klamath Falls has no taste for being ruled from Portland, nor Spokane, from Seattle.
New Mexico is full-on blue, not just because of the cities, but because of Indian Country, which knows it would be trampled underfoot without some degree of Federal protection. And may I recommend, for anyone wanting to break their bubbles on that particular side, the radio program Native America Calling - KUNM-FM, 89.9, 11am-noon M-F. OK - it's on NPR. It's still Indians speaking for themselves about what they define as their own issues.
11/11/16, 5:33 PM
NomadicBeer said...
Have you seen this? (http://wolfstreet.com/2016/11/08/portrait-of-the-american-debt-slave-as-of-q3/). It's about the amount of debt the americans hold. It's actually starting to look a lot like another 2008-style "recession" is close. I know that you are trying to focus on constructive approaches for the policies of the future, but an economic update might be helpful (at least to me).
Unrelated but I noticed this fall here in PNW that the night temperatures are ridiculously high. Even when the days are rainy and about normal, the nights are at least 10F (sometimes 20F) above normal. I think we are very close to the predicted permanent El Nino conditions. Just sometimes to add to the list of expectations for next year...
11/11/16, 5:55 PM
Nestorian said...
michaelmoore.com/trumpwillwin/
11/11/16, 5:58 PM
onething said...
"There are thousands who spent yesterday in floods of tears. And have spent a lot of today processing it all with their friends."
I wish I could be more sympathetic. I, too, would be happy to have a woman as president, and if there were two candidates I felt equally about, I might even go ahead and vote for the woman. But the position of president in times like these cannot be used for symbolism or gender statements. If Hillary did not have so very many serious marks against her, I'm sure we could have elected her.
11/11/16, 6:03 PM
Ahavah said...
Yes, the Ky democratic party grossly misplayed the election. The Dem primaires were very lightly attended outside the 2 blue (out of 120 total) counties. Bevin's was elected running almost exclusively on a promise to get rid of gay marriage, and the 118 red counties literally ignored the fact that he also intended to get rid of their health insurance (which he did, cancelling the well received and heavily used Kynect exchange). For good measure he enacted more barriers to prevent them from getting unemployment and food stamps which are, again, heavily used in the rural red counties. In short, they voted to destroy their own financial security JUST because he promised them he would stop gay marriage. It's one reason my son and his partner now live near Minneapolis. There was absolutely no way Gray could win no matter how republican his policies are. All of us could see it clearly but the party officials here live at the top of a very stratified society that has little to no contact with struggling people in rural counties. The 118 counties who consider Kim Davis a local hero are never going to vote for him, unless something huge changes. The backlash was strong enough to hand the entire state govt over to Republicans who had never had such an advantage in nearly a century. This really is a case of bigotry, especially since Gray's policies are essentially republican. He is no progressive, and never has been.
11/11/16, 7:02 PM
Nestorian said...
Welcome home.
I pray that the Spirit of Christ will reveal to you the full meaning of your 35 years' suffering, and also illuminate a clear path forward for you for the rest of your life, and then into eternity.
Nestorian
11/11/16, 7:03 PM
Larz (near San Jose, California, USA) said...
11/11/16, 7:23 PM
nuku said...
re your statement: “On the other hand, we might elect a Sanders who advocates for the racist xenophobic policy of limiting immigration, work visas and temporary foreign workers“.
Can you imagine an immigration policy that limited immigration into Canada, or any other country, on other grounds other than “racist xenophobic policy”? How about a small Pacific Island nation that had only a limited carrying capacity and wanted to limit immigration on that basis? How about a country whose citizens decided that unlimited immagration would result in loss of jobs and instituted a restricted immigration policy that was completely race/gender/country of orgin neutral, but was based only on allowing in people with very specific skills? What about a country whose inhabitants happened to like living in a more or less homogenous culture? Would you force immigration on them simply because you personally believe that multiculturalism is an unqualified positive value?
11/11/16, 7:31 PM
Justin said...
If the LPC makes a 90 degree turn and works to address the actual issues that got Trump into the White House, while paying an appropriate amount of attention to social justice issues I could see them keeping it. Trudeau has lots of time to redeem himself.
NDP is presently doubling down extra hard on race-gender-sexuality politics, which I don't think will work. I don't think many Canadians are necessarily opposed to justice along these lines, but well, trans pronouns don't pay my rent.
CPC is the real wildcard. If they come up with a message and platform that appeals to their base and brings some of those of us who would have liked to see Sanders in office into their base they could do it or push the LPC into a minority government.
I can't find a link, but CBC did some interviews with American Trump supporters who made entirely reasonable points. I was impressed, because often when CBC interviews people about poltics, the people on one side of an issue are well-spoken, reasonable individuals and those on the other are usually not gifted with the gab or have unreasonable views on a matter that warrants reasonable debate. I do see a remarkable amount of 'bending the knee' - admitting that there was a reason Trump was elected other than various -isms and that the issues that got him into the white house are worthy of discussion.
We have to consider what would have happened if Clinton had won:
Instead of seriously discussing why Donald Trump nearly won, there would be an endless stream of celebrating the victory of love trumping hate and other meaningless platitudes. There would be no criticism of neoliberalism and its victims would have been trashed as racist and irrelevant. There would be no serious questions about why Trump happened, and there would be plenty of mutual-self-assurance that nobody will ever bring up the problems that Trump brought up again.
I believe Trump's win was a net positive. I could be wrong, but that's my assessment.
11/11/16, 7:34 PM
nuku said...
Maybe “facist” as in “Trump is a facist” refers to a person who uses Facebook? I’m laughing out loud.
11/11/16, 7:41 PM
JacGolf said...
11/11/16, 7:41 PM
JacGolf said...
Mr. Silver, who, though I detest his political stance and overt bias, overcame that and showed himself to be honest on the fact that this election was a 2 point difference with a 12-13 point uncertainty...It is too bad his critics cannot admit that he actually acknowledged people like me who may not have been entirely open about our choices. We need more good professionals like him.
11/11/16, 7:51 PM
patriciaormsby said...
I think you have a very good point, there. I suspect part of the skewed polls and much of the lack of joy in Mudville today are on account of people believing fervently that if they wished hard enough for a certain outcome, and just kept thinking positively, they could have whatever they wanted. Can't say as how I sympathize with them, though. This is what comes from painting a rosy smiley face over others' misery.
11/11/16, 8:03 PM
JacGolf said...
11/11/16, 8:06 PM
JacGolf said...
11/11/16, 8:23 PM
JacGolf said...
11/11/16, 8:29 PM
siliconguy said...
If you are planning to have secede from the union, please have the West Side leave first. Seattle isn't all that popular on the East Side.
When Congress was setting state boundaries they didn't pay enough attention to geography. A soggy fishing and shipping economy is going to have a different take on life than a farming and ranching economy in a much drier climate. Yelling is inevitable unless both sides can agree to leave the other side alone.
11/11/16, 9:15 PM
Shane W said...
https://www.yahoo.com/style/dont-agonize-organize-164149299.html
11/11/16, 9:19 PM
Devin Martin said...
Thanks for responding. I too want to maintain a sense of humor in all of this. I'm a cajun from south Louisiana, born, raised, and lived most of my life in majority black towns and cities, and I've spent some time in every state of the old confederacy. I know these soils and the people who tread them well, and I'm hypervigilant about expressions of white nationalism at the moment. It didn't take long after the seating of the nation's first black governor, P.B.S. Pinchback in 1872, until the "White Leagues" (self-described as the paramilitary arm of the Louisiana Democratic party) intimidated black voters, officials, and elected leaders from political life altogether. In 1989 a new constitution was passed, effectively disenfranchising black voters in the state until the end of Jim Crow. The myth of progress, indeed.
For a deeper understanding of how ancient soils can affect voting patterns, take a gander here: http://www.vigorousnorth.com/2008/11/black-belt-how-soil-types-determined.html
It's from the 2008 election, and the county by county results for the region are largely the same. While cotton crops are common throughout the lowlands, the black belt region was by far the most productive areas, shown by the maps of cotton production on the blog. this was especially true in the time before synthetic nitrogen fertilizers. That, coupled with Bill Pulliam's and some others comments here about the development of industrial towns in the region, and you get a really clear picture. Also a really good tie in from the posts a few weeks back about geological time!
As JMG has said, when the four horsemen arrive, offer beer. Cheers!
11/11/16, 10:22 PM
Mark In Mayenne said...
11/11/16, 10:24 PM
Kevin Warner said...
What I mean by "artificial" is that the conditions that America was experiencing leading into this election - wages flat-lining since the 1970s, stratospheric salaries of CEOs, the elimination of public opinion in the setting of US policies, militarization of local police, nation-wide dismantling of American industry - nearly all of it was the result of a deliberate consensus of a wealthy section of the population that wanted it that way. It was never inevitable! In another quantum reality, that America had wages going up consistently, modest gains for CEOs, increased education for all Americans, single payer medicare and fewer foreign bases and wars.
As JMG has tried to remind us over the past couple of years with gentle slaps up the side of the head, our real problem is not transient politics but that heavy industrial civilization will be the going away with the severe effects of climate change worsening this slow-motion crisis. We have not yet even started on the entree of the banquet of consequences that we have laid out before us.
My point in all this is this - if the "artificial" crisis of American life threw up a Donald Trump and a Hillary Clinton in 2016, what will the real crisis that America (and everyone else) will be experiencing throw up for the US election for 2040? Need I remind everyone that 2040 is not that bloody far away and most of us will live to see it.
11/12/16, 12:14 AM
Darthy Noxin from the Planet Gopp said...
(5 things & a postscript)
- 1st: Saw this article Friday evening in the NY Post:
http://nypost.com/2016/11/11/muslim-liberal-admits-shes-one-of-trumps-silent-voters/
- 2nd: Been re-reading your Jan. 20 post (along w/sharing it w/as many people as I could) and had the odd feeling of looking at a weather forecast 11 months in advance calling for rain … or tears. Since I’m not privy to your library/recommended list of books (--Would it be possible to have one on your blog like Daniel Quinn’s with his? http://www.ishmael.org/Education/Readings/ ), if I didn’t know any better, you prophesied Nov. 8 with your seeming ability to use “predictions magic,” if you don’t mind my crude statement (I sometimes read your other blog).
- 3rd: Your last paragraph in “Reflections on a Democracy in Crisis” reminded me of a passage in a book by Bill Clinton’s history professor about how any achievement happens over time in a communal cooperative effort through competition. Our nation was jumbled together out of many obviously incongruous parts (interests-wise, not geography-wise) through compromise via conventions, negotiation via public discourse, and mutual respect via the “Full Faith and Credit Clause” (Article 4, Section 1). There’s no reason we can’t make a U-turn and return to that compromising road abandoned long ago, whether as what we are now (a united federal republic), or what we once were (a confederation (--or, as imagined by _Retrotopia_, a collection) of sovereign states).
(In case anyone is wondering about the passage I’m referring to, it’s _Evolution of Civilizations_, pp. 339-40, by Carroll Quigley)
- 4th: As for the question you posed in Comments as to whether your Aug. 5, 2015 blog post qualifies as a prediction, I believe it is Part 1 of 2. Part 2, your Jan. 20 post, completes the prediction, but Part 1 was a necessary prelude to part 2. Moreover, your question made me want to evaluate Michael Moore’s predictions as well.
http://www.businessinsider.com/michael-moore-interview-2015-12
In a Dec. 2015 interview, Moore doesn’t go through a satisfactory analysis as to why Trump will be the Republican nominee. He just seems to have extrapolated, and Trump had secured enough delegates only on May 26. And in this interview, he explicitly states that “there’s just not enough angry white guys anymore over the age of 35 to put Trump in office.”
http://michaelmoore.com/trumpwillwin/
I believe Moore posted this after July 20, given his reference to his HBO appearance. I feel that your blog post had room to account for the female Muslim naturalized U.S. citizen “life-long liberal“ Trump supporter cited above, as well as other non-white Trump supporters. Moore’s post did not.
- 5th: This section is mainly addressed to the other commenters and readers, because I am aware JMG does not watch TV, although I don’t recall if he wrote exactly when he stopped watching TV. If anyone comes across the story that a Mar. 19, 2000 Simpsons episode (season 11, episode 17, “Bart to the Future”) predicted that Trump would become president and the country would hit rock bottom afterward, please be reminded of the full joke.
Btw, I did not vote for Trump, and I do not live in a battleground state.
http://www.simpsonsarchive.com/episodes/BABF13.txt
The transcript is at the bottom of the webpage.
Lisa: As you know, we've inherited quite a budget crunch
from President Trump. How bad is it Secretary Van
Houten?
Milhouse: [shows to a chart] We're broke.
Lisa: The country is broke? How can that be?
Milhouse: Well, remember when the last administration decided
to invest in our nation's children? Big mistake.
Aide: The balanced breakfast program just created a
generation of ultra-strong super-criminals.
Milhouse: And midnight basketball taught them to function
without sleep.
Lisa: What about my pledge to build the world's largest
bookmobile? Isn't there any money left for that?
Aide: No, and we've borrowed from every country in the
world.
11/12/16, 1:37 AM
grisom said...
I'd like to offer you a big thanks for sticking your neck out with a falsifiable prediction. Please keep it up in coming years!
11/12/16, 2:17 AM
Shane W said...
11/12/16, 3:19 AM
Fred the First said...
I explained to him I thought the polls were not conducted right (calls to home lines, who has a home phone anymore?) and people where I live were angry about the economy and lack of good paying jobs. He said "You've got to stop. You have me worried now."
The whole time he was gloating though, all I could think was, "Man, people here would love to blow the bridges and pipelines between here and Philly and leave them to fend for themselves. They can keep all their trash they haul out here to dump in landfills, and they can figure out how to feed themselves and heat their homes and get water."
11/12/16, 4:47 AM
Fred the First said...
11/12/16, 4:52 AM
W. B. Jorgenson said...
1) In order to claim Trump's win is not caused solely by racism or sexism, I apparently need to prove racism and sexism do not exist in the United States.
2) By claiming Trump supporters are not evil incarnate I am now personally responsible for all their sins, including electing Trump to the White House and everything (crazy salary class folk think) happens because of it.
11/12/16, 5:27 AM
W. B. Jorgenson said...
I don't think a comment is needed here.
11/12/16, 5:33 AM
earthworm said...
President Trump: How & Why...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLG9g7BcjKs&
11/12/16, 5:46 AM
Ray Wharton said...
Specifically the victim game which has been used by the left so intensively in recent years is being, I think, over used to make sense of the rising Trump phenomenon. By pointing out the economic interests which motivated many to vote for Trump, those who are already habituated to thinking in the Victim game are left in the situation of casting the working class or rural class as victims of urban elite persecution; and too many from both sides of this divide seem all to willing to play their parts with gusto. Though it is true that a very large element of Trump's electoral success does come from groups voting in a kind of Hail Mary pass, hoping to break the Washington consensus of ignoring their economic interest, using the victim narrative to explain the popular uprising of support for Trump seems to have stark limits.
Though the number of people voting for him our motivated by economic survival might very well have put Trump into the oval office, the same thing is true of any category of voter numbering even a fiftieth of his votes. After all it was a close election, and there for each of many motives for voting for Donald can claim credit. That is to say there are many applicable narratives; of which the poor and despite worker is only a voice in the chore. The victim game is key to either of the two dominant versions of the story I sense settling into explaining Trump supporters to his critics, whether the Trump voter is a victim of elites or are persecutor of the vulnerable.
In Greer's post on the victim narrative he points out that abuse of the narrative is vulnerable to turning into a circular firing square and the different ways of casting the Trump voters go around each other.
I close with an offer of another partial explanation (again only referring to an aspect of the election) for Trumps rise. A change in belief, I think that Trump's win required lift from voter voting for a crash landing, who no longer believe the story of Progressivism, and are looking for ways to cut out.
11/12/16, 6:00 AM
Bill Pulliam said...
538 predicted about the same odds for a Cubs win in the worlds series as a Trump win in the election, about 25-30%. A model is not "wrong" when it predicts a priori a probability in that range for an outcome that really happens. It about the same as flipping two coins and having them both come up heads. Try it. It happens all the time. Only a fool would say "the laws probability predicted this would not happen, but it did! They were wrong!"
Now as for some other models using simplistic and inappropriate methods, whether out of laziness or a desire to skew the results, their predictions were indeed "wrong" and based on bad math. But that is because they actively ignored the demonstrable and well-known ucnertainties in the polls and the polling methods.
FYI, getting information out of "garbage" is kind of what statistics is all about. And determining how sloppy your "garbage" actually is, and what limits that puts on the information you can get from it, well, that is like the core concept in the entire field.
11/12/16, 6:48 AM
Bill Pulliam said...
11/12/16, 7:14 AM
Hamish said...
11/12/16, 7:23 AM
inohuri said...
I did a search and Putin sends congrats routinely by telegram. This is probably Telex.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telex#Decline
11/12/16, 7:46 AM
inohuri said...
http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/curious-islamophobic-politics-dem-congressmember-tulsi-gabbard
http://ahtribune.com/us/2016-election/sanders-for-president/589-bernie-sanders-tulsi-gabbard.html
The email interview at the bottom sounds really good but...
http://qz.com/628124/tulsi-gabbard-the-first-hindu-in-the-us-congress-on-modi-hinduism-and-linking-islam-to-terror/
Ambitious. Convincing. Slick without appearing so. Much better politician than Obama will ever be.
11/12/16, 8:31 AM
inohuri said...
https://www.rt.com/usa/366346-man-attacked-trump-chicago/
This is a car jacking. The Trump excuse is veneer. These fools will most likely be prosecuted from the evidence they put on the internet.
11/12/16, 8:58 AM
pygmycory said...
I was not very happy with the NDP in the past election, and gave them an earful about ignoring the working class when they phoned me to ask what they'd done wrong. My local NDP MP is decent and hardworking, and does try pretty hard to listen to his constituents.
11/12/16, 9:25 AM
zach bender said...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/09/white-voters-victory-donald-trump-exit-polls
@ jacgolf. nobody should be beating anybody, and police should not be the front edge of a military occupation of our communities. roboto offered the yahoo link to support the suggestion there is an emergence of violence from the left, and the link did not support the suggestion, period. also he used the phrase "black lives matter types" as a disparaging epithet, apparently just meaning blacks. the black lives matter movement does not endorse violence.
i will continue to read the blog, but if this is the kind of junk that is going to get posted to comments, i will withdraw from reading or participating in the comments.
11/12/16, 9:55 AM
Sven Eriksen said...
If I may, I should like to add one more point to your answer to LLmaiwi regarding how to extract oneself from the self-enforcing group think of the collective consciousness.
4. Let go of the need to be perceived as "intelligent", particularly by the people who seek to dominate and take advantage of you, but also by the masses in general. People with this need almost without exception always seek to memorize, identify with, and regurgitate the beliefs of whomever or whatever is perceived as authority in order to obtain "its" approval. Those who go one step beyond and attempt to think their own thoughts without giving up the approval seeking (approval is, after all, the most deeply coveted prize sought by little children inhabiting adult bodies), get stuck in between in a kind of no man's land where they try to no avail to negotiate with the collective stupidity. The would-be radicals, faux intellectuals and thoughtful-yet-severely-troubled people we often encounter all fall into this latter category.
Cultivating individuation through disciplining one's consciousness is, as you suggest, essential, but of equal importance is the Will to actually sever the tie.
You did indeed call this one. Thank you for providing the voice of sanity and a place for thoughtful discussion throughout this wild ride. Now award yourself a gold star and pour yourself a pint of stout. Shane and I will save you some hot wings. I have a feeling that the show has only just begun... ;-)
11/12/16, 9:58 AM
Candace said...
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/11/11/betraying-water-protectors-obama-set-approve-dakota-access-pipeline
11/12/16, 10:25 AM
Nastarana said...
I have been hearing loud, crude and rude these 50 years at least. Elegant and refined most of us Americans ain't.
11/12/16, 10:27 AM
Thomas Daulton said...
11/12/16, 10:36 AM
Nancy Sutton said...
Also, I share in every conversation: " 'Three Words to Remember' in the future: potatoes, cabbages and chickens". (and then ask them to repeat them ;) It often starts a 'teaching moment' ;) Btw, I recently saw feral chickens in Seattle's Seward Park... I think you've been there John :) and I discreetly toss potato peelings everywhere in the wet season.. along with cabbage/kale/etc seeds.. we'll be needing edible and calorie-rich 'weeds' ;) For those who don't know, spuds and cole crops grow year round mostly, in shade down south, and survive most winters. The Irish who survived the famine can thank these plants :)
11/12/16, 10:49 AM
Grebulocities said...
I used "garbage in, garbage out" as a rhetorical tool, using a common phrase to draw in people who think that everything about polling this year was a complete fiasco. In reality the polls were just off by a totally normal amount, and the pundits (including models that were really punditry dressed up with numbers) were the ones who were truly wrong.
Silver's postmortem is highly recommended reading: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-fivethirtyeight-gave-trump-a-better-chance-than-almost-anyone-else/
11/12/16, 11:01 AM
Vesta said...
Wanted to share this. A passionate analysis of Trump's victory that hits several of the important themes of this blog.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLG9g7BcjKs
11/12/16, 12:02 PM
Fred the First said...
"They [Clinton's people] offered no apology for the unexpected loss. On the call, Clinton surrogates who have supported the campaign from the outside for the past 18 months offered their thanks to the Brooklyn-based operatives. The mood was light and supportive, with Podesta and Palmieri expressing gratitude for everyone’s hard work."
This reveals a rot that goes much deeper than Clinton, her managers, or even the elites in and around the Democratic Party. This is about a ruling class that has lost all sense of responsibility, all sense of ownership, for the nation it rules or aspires to rule. Contrast this sense of reckless, almost wild, removal from the consequences of their actions—this refusal to accept ownership over the world they have created (you can think of that in narrow ways, i.e., the election, or in broader terms, the social disaster of this country)—with the generation that created an international order after World War II. I don't say that in any nostalgic sense: those men were quite willing to destroy much of the more humane and progressive forces around the world. But they sensed that the world, not even simply the nation, was their responsibility. These people today—and this extends from one end of the Democratic Party to the other end of the Republican Party—see themselves and their fate as bearing no relationship to that of the country they govern. These are the real climate denialists.
11/12/16, 12:09 PM
Maria Rigel said...
It goes to prove that people can be so clever as to entirely miss the point.
Generally, in most elections, what JMG has said would be entirely correct. But this hasn't been a normal election. Because one of the candidates, the current president, didn't actually have policy proposals. Let's clarify the point: his policy proposals varied alarmingly with who he was talking with. I think he said about every possible thing you can say about the minimum wage, for example. Throughout, Donald Trump has behaved like a used car salesman: his policy proposals often would be whatever the people listening to him at the time seemed to approve of.
Some Republicans put together his comments and wrote documents that looked like sound policy proposals, at least from a Republican perspective. But Trump didn't stick to what his own proposals said. He said he believed other countries should take care of their own defense and rely less in the USA. Then the first thing he did as president-elect was talk with a bunch of countries that were anxious at precisely those comments, and reassure them it would be all as usual. To give a simple example.
I've seen and heard this all before. In gangsters when I lived in a rough neighborhood, and in stories from my family about Franco. Don't talk about Trump as if he was a normal politician, because your assumptions about the guy following his stated policies, or even standard democratic procedure, can prove to be way off the mark.
We'll see who was right. I did wonder if JMG would be helpful on my magical path when I posted on the other blog. It seems pretty obvious that he won't be. For those that don't see the connection, somebody who makes that sort of mistakes with real people, is going to make those mistakes when it comes to spirits and deities.
11/12/16, 12:50 PM
Cherokee Organics said...
Yup. Magic as it is understood here, is no substitute for policy and implementation. But it is very useful to mask the consumption of built social and physical infrastructure which is being used up in order to maintain standards of living. The thing I reckon is that that consumption is subject to diminishing returns if it is used to prop up unsustainable choices. Year after year more people get chucked off the boat as there is less to go around. That is what I reckon we are seeing, but I could well be wrong. Time will tell.
Cheers
Chris
11/12/16, 2:05 PM
Rita said...
In very conservative states and nations large cities have often served as de facto free zones. Of course police crackdowns, anti-vice campaigns and so forth disrupt communities of sexual, ethnic or other minorities. And in some times and places such enclaves have been forced to be squalid ghettos. It would be interesting to consider how one might create a legal system that would allow clearly delineated areas to live under different laws than the surrounding countryside without turning the whole country into a crazy quilt of conflicting laws and standards.
11/12/16, 3:33 PM
Kevin Fathi said...
http://www.ianwelsh.net/this-is-a-constitutional-crisis/
11/12/16, 4:16 PM
Kevin Fathi said...
I have also noticed an increased interest expressed by millennials in Freemasonry. You may be interested in the following book written by a millennial Brother:
Millennial Apprentices: The Next Revolution In Freemasonry https://www.amazon.com/dp/0996652809/ref=cm_sw_r_other_apa_.FFjybX59TCCR
11/12/16, 4:29 PM
onething said...
What happened? Is it some sort of coordinated propaganda machine? Whatp mostly happens when I talk to them is that they are so convinced that Trump is a very dangerous and evil man, that nothing else matters. But here's the thing. I'm more or less convinced that Hillary is that dangerous and evil candidate.
It would seem that my opinion is based on lots of history and pretty hard data. As to Trump, I get that he has said some offensive things. So I googled it and read a site about the 18 offensive comments of Trump. Only one was seriously offensive to me. The rest were either mild or taken out of context. One of them he apologized very graciously for.
It would seem to me that Bush was far worse but no one reacted like this. I was told today that Trump said women seeking abortion should be punished. I answered that Trump had never been against abortion and that the comment she referred to was taken out of context but she refused to believe it. Actually, it was a "gotcha" trick question, which was, if abortion was illegal, what should happen to women who seeks abortion. He said they should be punished. The thing is though, are we going to have the rule or law or not?
But on the other hand, I understand he is picking people like Pence, and if that is the case I'll be done with him faster than I was done with Obama.
11/12/16, 5:03 PM
trippticket said...
Well then I guess it's a good thing I've got 10 gallons of pale ale, 10 gallons of mead, and 5 gallons of hard cider on then! Actually the mead is now bottled, and it is the best I've made in my 4 years of making mead. Wild-fermented of course. Although more like a sourdough I guess, after 4 years. Local honey, local microbes, it's pretty decent.
Website looks interesting; I'll check it out. And if you ever find yourself at the corner of Tennessee, North Carolina, and Georgia, stop by for your bottle of choice, ok?
On horseback or otherwise.
11/12/16, 5:18 PM
Smith Mill Creek Notes said...
11/12/16, 5:31 PM
inohuri said...
Is it true that the youngest voters voted overwhelming for HC? I believe that is what I saw.
I blame the US schools. The neighbor kids are remarkably incurious except for two Muslims who also happen to have the best manners here. When I try to show the others better ways to do things on a computer one datum is OK, at two they get antsy and three they make me stop as though learning hurts. Two separate teenagers could not oil a bicycle chain because there were too many links.
I also saw that far fewer Democrats voted, way more than enough for HC to win. Maybe something to do with cheating the voters out of Bernie.
I voted Stein. In Seattle HC would win no matter what. I think the term "Third Party" is stupid and intended to hold people back from forming a sufficient number of political parties to bring better function to "lawmaking". Five parties feels about right to me. Not as good as actual Federalism but allows diverse views.
11/12/16, 6:42 PM
genepaul said...
For instance, we are asked this week to accept the claim that most of us have been distracted by the personalities of the presidential candidates while the wise among us have been concerned with their policies. It's an easy dichotomy which appears convincing but masks the complexity of motivations behind supporting a candidate.
This kind of convenient duality often boils down to where a 'false perception' is contrasted with a 'Greer perception' and can be found week after week in this author's blog posts. It is unfailingly common for a post to begin with the characterisation of a past post's detractions in terms of: "They argue because they believe A or B" I'm correct because I believe C". How many times for example have we been asked to accept the dichotomy of: people who don't agree with my view are either cornucopians or doomers? You have to ask yourself reader, Do these false dichotomies indicate a fault in reasoning?"
11/12/16, 6:47 PM
Avery said...
I went through the same process. Saw my friends freaking out, entreated them that they have nothing to fear from the vast majority of the American public, and was told by multiple people (mostly, but not all, white) that my white opinion doesn't count.
That's when I suddenly had a revelation: I was missing out on something that JMG called years ago. "This is what peak oil looks like," he wrote, with regards to the international situation. A dwindling pool of natural resources and social capital, politicians who promise to devote more social capital to their team, and a public discourse that obscures the fact that we're fighting for access to something that very few people think we can all share.
Jobs, jobs, jobs. Hillary as president means jobs for minorities, women, and their allies in the great cities. Trump as president means (supposedly) jobs for rural whites. Me thinking that it doesn't have to be a fight only betrays my naïveté.
11/12/16, 8:31 PM
Fred the First said...
So I posted this and it's been passed around and liked so feel free to reuse and edit ----
I can't think of a politically correct way to say this, and I'm going to say it anyway. It will probably cost me a client, but here goes....... This country has always had some level of jerk who attacks others for their gender, sexual orientation, race, religion, ethnicity or whatever. But over decades we as a country have decided to deal with it through the hard work and dedication of thousands of people passing laws, enforcing the law, going to courts and just plain loving each other.
People voting Trump in does not mean we are going back to a time when we let people be jerks and get away with it. Every family I know has someone who is homosexual or trans or mixed race or an immigrant or something that some random jerk on the internet doesn't like. And it doesn't matter to Family because Family sticks up for each other and Family has each other's back.
Please speak up for the country that you want and work for that wherever you are and whoever you are with. Love, patience, kindness. Ranting Facebook posts create an environment where jerks thrive. It's like their life blood or something. Go delete those horrible posts and apologize for them. Lead from the front, stop booing from the stands about how its not fair and you are afraid and angry.
You know what conquers fear? Action. You know what conquers anger? Love. Love in action repels the jerks and actually makes them go away and sometimes even changes them.
Posting a long scribe on Facebook doesn't change anything so my commitment is to publicly share where I am being Love in Action as a way to be accountable for the words I am speaking and inspiring others. And I'll work to keep the cursing to a minimum.
11/12/16, 8:55 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Confuseious, as I pointed out back in January, Trump has very carefully crafted his political persona to appeal to those people who feel shut out by the status quo, and one aspect of that persona is his use of language that has been labeled offensive by the Left. That benefited his campaign, because a great many people in America today see the Left's language policing as intrusive and biased. You can see his choice of language as a reflection of personality; I see it, as I noted in that original January post, as the workings of an exceptionally clever man who knows that whipping up the Left into a tizzy will strengthen his position with the voters that matter to him.
Nestorian, there's a crucial difference between personality and character, and an even bigger difference between personality and the kind of hostile parody I discussed in my post. When Trump voters describe Clinton, and when Clinton voters describe Trump, their descriptions have little to do with the personality of the targets of their respective hatred, and everything to do with that process Jung called "projecting the Shadow." I have no particular reason to think that either Trump or Clinton has any integrity worth mentioning; both have been wallowing for all their lives in the culture of kleptocracy that pervades the upper end of American society today; thus character isn't even an issue here -- and I would still assert that a person of character who supports bad policies, and can be counted on to carry them out, can be a worse choice than a genial scoundrel who seems likely to support good policies, even for the wrong reasons.
Inohuri, well, in that case by all means cast your vote as you see fit. I think it's really likely we'll see her in a national election before long.
Lei, affluent liberals may be rare in your country, but they're extremely common here. The upper end of the middle class pretty much dominates the Democratic Party, for example -- which is one of the reasons they lost so much of the working class vote.
Nicolas, welcome to OOPS!
Herbert, brilliant! Likewise, I don't recall many people insisting that we all had to vote for Sarah Palin because she's a woman...
Matt, to my mind that's far too simplistic an explanation for Trump's win. We know from those same Wikileaks email dumps that the reason a great many of the polls showed such high scores for Clinton is that they were deliberately oversampling Democratic voters to try to generate a bandwagon effect. It wasn't "further than they could fake" by a long shot -- as I recall from statistics classes in college, a ten per cent lead is easy if you can pick and choose the demographics of your sample. Mind you, I won't argue that the Clinton campaign basically stole the nomination from Sanders, and may well have helped Trump get started in the hope that he'd be unelectable -- if you've read my novel Twilight's Last Gleaming, you might remember that a similar gambit blew up in the face of the political establishment in that story -- but the fact that Trump won even though nearly the entire political establishment rallied around Clinton speaks to far more than the effect of a series of leaks that Clinton's followers consistently dismissed as meaningless.
11/12/16, 9:10 PM
onething said...
11/12/16, 9:20 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Stephanie, you're welcome. Do you remember when Obama was elected in 2008, the entire GOP had a mass histrionic temper tantrum, and the Dems laughed at them and told them to get over it? What goes around, comes around...
Jerome, I was born in Bremerton but moved to the south Seattle suburbs at the age of eighteen months, and lived there until I went off to college. I don't know that Burien, WA has a habit of producing people like me generally, though. As for Divine, no, not consciously, though I laughed my way through "Pink Flamingos" back in the day!
M M, obviously I disagree. Trump is a populist, no question, and he's made his reputation as a vulgarian -- I refuse to speculate about the length of his fingers. ;-) I keep on asking people who insist on portraying him as a fascist strongman, though, to show me some evidence that he's any more prone to authoritarianism than Hillary Clinton, and so far, nobody has done so. Do you have any to offer?
M Smith, I won't argue. I suspect a lot of the histrionics going on now are mostly for show -- again, exactly equivalent to the shrieking and wailing from the Right when Barack Obama won in 2008. I get the impression that at least for the next few decades, every time the White House passes from one party to another, the losing side is going to have an epic meltdown and emote all over the place. No, it's not an edifying spectacle!
Larz, if you've found your spiritual home, that's excellent news. Thanks for the book reference, btw -- as you know, I'm a major Inklings fan!
Cherokee, that's an interesting possibility. Peak thaumaturgy, maybe -- if anything, we've been at the bottom of the curve for theurgy for a while now. Maybe once the thaumaturgies fail completely, more people will realize that the work has to start with yourself!
Zach, no, that's not what I'm saying at all. Under the terms of the 14th amendment, the federal government is in the business of enforcing the equal protection of the laws, and since that amendment was properly ratified, it's the law of the land; nor would I want that repealed. What part of the constitution, though, justifies the Department of Education? What justifies the Unaffordable Care Act? What justifies the hundreds of other federal programs, offices, and departments that enforce, through an assortment of carrots and sticks, a galaxy of federal agendas on the states and the people? To keep the US functioning as a nation, I'm suggesting that those programs, offices, and departments can and should be terminated, and their functions returned to those states that want them. More on this in an upcoming post.
Grebulocities, brilliant. Your counterspell just won tonight's gold star.
NomadicBeer, most of the stats that relate to the real economy of goods and services are sliding hard, so I suspect you're right. Yes, I'll consider a post on the state of the economy soon.
11/12/16, 9:41 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Hamish, I'm not sure where you found an exultant tone in this week's post; I noted that in fact, I'd called the election correctly, and then went on to talk about two major and ugly problems with, ahem, both sides of the political landscape and offer some suggestions about how those problems might be dealt with. The behavior of both sides in the election was seriously problematic, and bodes very poorly for the survival of our republic. If you could help me see what's exultant in that, I'd be grateful.
Sven, that's a useful addition. The equation of "intelligent" with "parrots the conventional wisdom" is a major issue.
Maria, if you don't find my writings useful, then by all means go find someone else's stuff to read. I write what I want to write, for those people who want to read it, and if you don't, the blogosphere's a very big place.
Rita, that's indeed an interesting question. I think it could be done, and I'd like to see some deindustrial science fiction exploring it!
Kevin, thank you for the heads up! I'll definitely want to read that.
Genepaul, on the other hand, maybe it's just that my views consistently vary from the conventional wisdom, and since disagreeing with the conventional wisdom does generally imply thinking that it's, ahem, wrong, it's often useful for me to draw the distinction between my views and the views I'm disagreeing with.
11/12/16, 9:58 PM
GreenFlame said...
It's all very well to talk about the blessings of states' rights, but the problem with states' rights is that oftentimes they aren't very good for many of the people living in those states. And how do we pick and choose what gets left up to the states? What are we really talking about, here?
Two of my friends, a same-sex couple, both native here, recently married under a tree in front of the courthouse. Our state would have dragged its feet for years before granting gay people the right to marry. In a states' rights situation, should people have to leave their native towns, homes, families and all their friends in order to enjoy the benefit of something as basic as getting married?
Change does come here -- when it's forced, people adjust and over a generation or two, it kinda-sorta gets accepted. We have a lot of multiracial families now. Many are the proud grandparents of a biracial child who, ten years prior, would have been dropping the n-word like you and I say "and" or "but." My friends' extended family members would never have voted to legalize gay marriage. Yet they're quite happy, now that the decision has been made for them, to bless the couple -- who married in broad daylight in the presence of any townies who happened to stroll by.
The real issue comes down to neoliberalism's four-decade ravaging of our economy. If we as a nation were genuinely prosperous with a lot of medium-to-modestly-large businesses, industries, and farms (as opposed to the Borg-cubes of corporations now); and if our children could still expect to get a decent education without going into massive, lifelong debt, then there would be less pushback on many of the social issues, because the fundamentalist religions that stoke intolerance thrive where people have the least satisfaction and the most despair. The problem is not too much federal government interference. The problem is that the Democrats have helped engineer the economic gutting of our country, and said it was good for us when clearly it's not, while simultaneously pressuring conservative people on the social issues.
11/12/16, 11:21 PM
Nestorian said...
Thanks for your clarification. I think the distinction I overlooked in your original post was the one between personality and a hostile parody of it.
11/13/16, 5:28 AM
Nestorian said...
You single out Trump for always saying what pleases his audience, and consequently having no principled position.
In response, I ask: How is this fundamentally different from what any politician does? They are all like this.
To cite a particularly germane example: It came out of the wikileaks emails from Clinton's campaign that Clinton admitted to there being a decisive difference between her publicly articulated policy positions and her REAL policy positions - the latter articulated privately and in secret to the likes of the Goldman-Sachs braintrust.
In view of this revelation, I defy you to demonstrate that Trump is any more of an unprincipled, untrustworthy, sleazy used-car-salesman politician than Clinton is.
11/13/16, 5:33 AM
Nicolas Costa said...
Real life example of that story, my own country. In 2003 Nestor Kirchner is elected president. Four years latter his wife (Cristina) wins the presidential race*. By a twist of fate Nestor Kirchner dies one year before the next election, and Cristina is forced to run again. After she wins, because there were no candidates that could defeat her at that moment, she goes mad with power, declaring they were going for everything. On January 2015, an attorney that declared he was going to process Cristina for Treason to the Country is found dead in his home a few days latter. That's the last straw that broke her populist train and all her candidates for the last election end up loosing, even on states were her party always won.
For some of the things they did:
- Tried to destroy any media voice that dissented with them, while establishing a party media that only said good things about the government, and attacked everybody else.
- Aligned our country with the worst dictators in the World (Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, the Theocracy of Iran, North Korea).
- Stole public money to fill their pockets in a way never seen before in this country. They were so pathetically inept at hiding their tracks that she and her cabinet might become the first ex-president condemned for corruption. They didn't try harder because their belief was that they were going to die of old age with all the power.
- Constantly speak (even now) about how they made the low class better while the rate of unemployment they left was over 30% (and we were unable to know because they destroyed the institute of statistics in 2007) and caused an annual inflation over 40%. They always denied both the level of poverty and inflation, but now they blame the current president for it when he's been in power for less than a year.
*) Our system allows anybody to compete again for re-election once (like USA). But the greatest difference is that once you had two periods you can compete again if you wait for one four year period between terms. So in order to become president-for-life without changing the laws they were going to switch places on each election.
11/13/16, 5:41 AM
Renaissance Man said...
The point I wanted to make (and utterly failed) was
"It is a myth, not a mandate, a fable not a logic, and symbol rather than a reason by which men are moved."
- Irwin Edman
The one side did that, the other failed, as they have been doing since the Reagan Presidency.
I've seen one profanity-laden video rant by Jonathan Pie that encapsulates in 6 frantic minutes much of what you have explored here in great detail over the past 3 years, especially concerning the shutting down of any serious discussion about important topics & issues.
There is also this item of note written by Mr. Tobias Stone, an historian looking at the recent votes on Brexit and Mr. Trump in historical context:
http://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/history-tells-us-what-may-happen-next-with-brexit-and-trump/
I do not know if Mr. Stone reads your blog, but he certainly writes as you do, taking his observations from the wider, and repetitive cycles of history as a guide.
11/13/16, 5:57 AM
BlueWinds said...
siliconguy - As JMG has pointed out elsewhere, this election was really more about rural vs. urban than it was about left vs. right. So yes, the rural half of Washington hates Seattle right now, understandably.
But one of the points of independence is that rural voters get their interests represented better too. Composing nearly 50% of the populace of a nation will give WA and OR's rural areas far more power to negotiate and influence the direction of the nation than having less than 1% of the US vote.
It even gives them more power than they have right now on the state level - when a border goes up. it becomes a lot more apparent that the cities depend on the farms for food, but the farms don't depend on the cities for food.
Independence isn't about millennials throwning a leftist tantrum, it's about economics - where do our tax dollars go - representation - actually having some say in our own country's actions - and accountability - local representatives living in the communities they serve. Remember that Olympia is the capital of Washington, not Seattle. The movement will utterly fail if it becomes partisan and focused on the big city alone.
11/13/16, 8:18 AM
Anthony Romano said...
Meet The New Boss, Same As The Old Boss.
Hopefully his voters will hold him accountable for some of his better ideas (ie. term limits on congress and changing NAFTA).
11/13/16, 8:33 AM
David, by the lake said...
My concern is not that the current round of (faux-)liberal protests are different from their (faux-)conservative counterparts 8 years ago, but rather that they are more or less the same. These reactions may become standard, but the backdrop against which they occur is not constant. Each occurrence challenging the outcome of an election erodes the legitimacy of our governing institutions just a bit more; with each round of rejection of the results, the 'Mandate of Heaven; recedes slightly. There will be a tipping point reached one day, and we will see a usual round of protests produce an unexpected and sudden result. Not unlike the French and Russian peasantry, we may be astonished at how quickly the structure collapses when that point comes. The question is, how prepared will we be to navigate the aftermath?
11/13/16, 9:44 AM
Patricia Mathews said...
My awakening came this morning, reading the extensive and diverse letters to the editor in the Sunday Albuquerque Journal. I realized I was taking each and every one of them seriously now, and accepting every one of the viewpoints expressed as legitimate, whether or not I agreed with them. Which made me realize the extent to which I had dismissed the other side's viewpoint in the past. Yes, the times have indeed changed, and some things, we can no longer afford to do. Or 'think'. Just an observation.
11/13/16, 9:58 AM
Mister Roboto said...
Okay, this is terribly off-topic, but I work at a grocery store in a working-class neighborhood, and I regularly see people dedicating what must be substantial percentages of their small paychecks to the lottery, not to mention their highly ritualized and obsessive behavior towards what some wags call "the stupidity tax". All one needs to do is a little bit of simple arithmetic with a pencil and piece of scrap paper to see that this endeavor is definitely a net money-loser. So what do they get out of it?
I really do believe that the lottery gives poor working people something into which they might emotionally invest themselves. Because of their relative poverty, it makes sense that their something offers a promise, however illusory, of getting a monetary windfall. But the very fact that they have so little to which they might look forward in their lives guarantees the pursuit will become more meaningful than the actual goal.
That the lives of so many working-class people are characterized by such dismal desperation may go a long way towards explaining why so many of them would place a political wager with their votes on a wild-card such as Donald Trump.
11/13/16, 9:59 AM
Candace said...
The thing I find interesting is that Mr. Stone can see the myth that moved Brexit and Trump victory. He just can't seem to see that he is embracing his own myth.
I did like Scott Adams article on cognitive dissonance,
The question I have is did Brexit and Trump "whip up" anger or did they tap into anger that was already there, or both?
Personally I think the anger that led to Brexit and Trumps victory was already there, the campaigns focused the anger in not necessarily constructive ways - we'll have to see
The New York Times just apologized for its failure to do good journalism, I wonder if the Guardian will?
Mr Stone is incorrect in thinking the rude class doesn't read the Guardian, they just don't take their opinion as gospel.
11/13/16, 10:16 AM
Phil Harris said...
We don't exactly see a big shift in many of the numbers and and to an outsider like me 50:50 seems very similar to totals seen in previous US Presidential elections. Younger people overall, as in recent Brexit vote here, have some reason to be disgruntled. Changes in the geographical spread in USA appear to have been what mattered. How the education and health crisis develops could leave the least well-off in an even worse state.
Bernie Sanders has given the right response it seems to me. Yes he will work with Trump with some caveats about decency.
I hope you get some breathing space by easing off on failed American foreign policies from previous regimes.
best
Phil H
11/13/16, 11:31 AM
Cherokee Organics said...
Ah, of course. Thanks for the correction and I did actually mean thaumaturgy. Of course theurgy is of a more quiet sort, bubbling away in the background for those that care and want to do the work. I do rather suspect that one drowns out the other, as you can't necessarily achieve both. To my mind it looks like some sort of conflict of interest? Dunno, just thinking aloud really.
As to the economy, well governments, businesses and other entities want to keep extracting tokens at a growing rate from pretty much everyone, until they no longer can. And I have to ask the hard question: What sort of Affordable Care Act starts with hefty fines for non-compliance? Do the people who enacted that Act not understand that people do not want to let go of their tokens in return for not being hit with a big stick? Maybe the people who enacted that Act know the true value of those tokens? I suspect that they may. I also rather suspect that the tokens are taken away in that manner in order to keep inflation for basic commodities low. Over here they do the same trick with housing.
Cheers
Chris
11/13/16, 1:00 PM
Roger said...
An asteroid sized impact? No, I don't think so, but it was big and you could gauge the size of what hit the USA by watching the blood drain from George Stephanopoulos' face on election night. Predictably, up on this side of the border, there's the usual moral boasting in the aftermath.
But here's a good word for the American voters that tossed the human molotov cocktail, they did what we up here don't have the guts to do. Because, whether we know it or not, what ails us here, with thousands of manufacturing facilities having left here for Mexico and China, is the same as what ails the US. We're just too blind or dense to see it or too apathetic to do anything about it.
But is Trump going to reverse globalization? Good luck with that. Even if Trump beat the Demo-Republi-crat Party in the election, they are in the pockets of Wall Street so he has got their steadfast opposition as well as that of the Oligarch elite and their supporting clerisy.
So, in the opinion of many if not most, Americans elected a vulgarian. Oh well, it could have been worse. I hope the vulgarian at least addresses the interests of his supporters, and makes some headway, because if he doesn't, if he is stymied, I fear that whatever follows him really will be an extinction event.
11/13/16, 1:00 PM
Gottfried Wilhelm Melvin Hicks-Leibniz said...
#Calexit is trending (with not so insignificant money behind):
http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/trailguide/la-na-election-aftermath-updates-trail-after-donald-trump-elected-president-1478747229-htmlstory.html
yuuuge Anti-Trump demonstration in LA:
https://twitter.com/NaphiSoc/status/797611113391144960
Over 4 Mio people have signed following petition in less than 4 days asking Electoral College voters to endorse Hillary and not The Donald:
https://www.change.org/p/electoral-college-electors-electoral-college-make-hillary-clinton-president-on-december-19
These data points are interesting in context of the social unrest being observed in certain pockets of the US following Trump's win. Was Trump's victory just the tipping point for the slide into Partition?
I always thought Texas would be first to go...
11/13/16, 1:43 PM
Matt Heins said...
Impossible to say.
Extra double plus fun is that so many people are so thoroughly locked in to the net that the ripple/tsunami-destruction-path of the Propaganda Wave is playing out in RL scenarios all over the place. Am I burning a cop car because of social media, or am I influencing social media by burning a cop car - or is it both at the same time (why the hell am I burning a cop car in response to the Presidential Election)? Do my Trumpster relatives on Facebook deserve to be merely unfriended or should I go so far as to not attend Thanksgiving Back Home even though Grandma is getting on and won't understand (why the hell is the difference between lesser-evil candidates for President splitting my family who loves each other apart)?
Just scanning half of this comment storm shows aspects of the phenomenon quite clearly.
So my question is:
Will you be discussing this in the Well blog at all?
To me this feels like - what I would call - dark magic and its resultant side effects.
PS: Echos on the gold star awardings. You certainly called it and I would say for the right reasons. Two things that in my opinion you have under played in your analysis:
1. Why did the rigging systems not turn to Clinton's favor as expected? Answer: oligarchs chose Trump. New Question: Why?
2. Electoral College again prevails above popular vote. Also, turnout way down. Clinton 6 million votes less than Obama 2012, Trump 2 million less than Romney. To call barely 50% of the populace voting and the 538 electors massively going against the populace's narrow decision "democracy" is stretching credulity to the breaking point.
11/13/16, 1:48 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Nicolas, so noted, but I'm far from sure the parallel holds. One of the reasons I don't post much about politics in other countries is that each country and each part of the world has its own political patterns, which don't necessarily translate across borders. For example, our president Franklin Roosevelt came from the same sort of rich background, with the same sweeping populist promises, as the folks you're talking about -- but his career went in a completely different direction.
Renaissance, the one thing I'd point out is that the Left does have a narrative -- it's just a narrative that goes out of its way not to appeal to anybody outside the echo chamber. As long as they cling to that narrative, yes, they're going to lose.
Mister R., bingo. People need hope the way they need food, and the Democrats have gone out of their way to deny hope to the people who voted for Trump.
Cherokee, there's something extremely fishy going on with the Unaffordable Care Act. The annual premiums go up by huge amounts year over year, and yet insurance companies are struggling to break even on their Obamacare business (they're making their absurd profits on other lines of business) and the exchanges are going broke. Somebody is raking off an astonishing amount of money, and where is it going? I don't pretend to know.
Roger, nah, he's not an asteroid. The thing to remember, though, is that the American oligarchy is not a monolith. It's riven with quarrels, power struggles, and disagreements over policy. I'll be arguing shortly that globalization has passed the point of diminishing returns for the US, and I doubt I'm the only person who noticed this; it's entirely possible that the people who backed Trump came from a faction of the elite that recognizes that pulling the plug on the globalization project is the best option they've got at this point.
Matt, if I discuss it on "The Well of Galabes" it'll be a while from now, when the initial yelling has subsided. As for your questions, 1. I wonder if the riggers drank their own koolaid and failed to rig enough of the election to matter; and 2. we don't have a democracy, we have a republic, and there have been iirc four other times when the popular vote went one way and the electoral college went the other.
11/13/16, 3:39 PM
Doctor Westchester said...
Yes, I see it the same way in whether Trump will be a positive transformative figure or kick off something ugly. Since where I live the sound of gnashing of liberal teeth is deafening among my friends because the black helicopters are coming any moment (or is vans for the democrats and the helicopter are only for the republicans?), a thought that some good still might come of this is helpful.
11/13/16, 4:37 PM
onething said...
"These reactions may become standard, but the backdrop against which they occur is not constant. Each occurrence challenging the outcome of an election erodes the legitimacy of our governing institutions just a bit more; with each round of rejection of the results, the 'Mandate of Heaven; recedes slightly."
And here's another thought to add to that. I recall shortly after Obama was elected for the first time that someone on a blog I participated in wasn't buying the hope in Obama, said he would disappoint us and in the end that would contribute to the ultimate readiness for rebellion. I recall being annoyed with him.
(Except that somehow, after not only his disappointing us but having the DNC block the candidate that was wanted and shoving Hillary down their throats, they all forgot about it in a matter of weeks, and became so gung-ho for Hillary that no amount of evidence of her perfidy could make any dent at all.)
If Trump disappoints us in an obvious way, I say that he will be the Republicans' Obama.
Shortly after Obama got elected he began choosing Wall Streeters and Goldman Sachs people and so on; that was our first clue to what was really the agenda. Things are looking similar now for Trump, except that so far as I know Trump is not beholden to them for his election campaign as Obama was for his.
11/13/16, 4:59 PM
Dan said...
Nate Silver pretty much had to hedge his bets given that he got his primary forecasts so horribly wrong, didn't he? Even so, 14 days out from election day he had Clinton at 86%, and averaged a 73% probability over these two weeks (ending with >70%). Now you might say that according to his model Trump did have a 1 in 4 chance of winning so it wasn't a foregone conclusion.
But on the whole, if his model were accurate the chances that both the Democratic and Republic primaries were so far off from his forecasts taken together with the national results is so low that a more statically likely explanation is that his model (and the underlying polls) is not the crystal ball you're cracking it up to be.
11/13/16, 5:23 PM
Izzy said...
Education...ooof. I mean, I agree that different states have different needs, but on the other hand there's the "girls who have sex before marriage are like used chewing gum" version of "sex ed" and the attempts in KS and PA to deny evolution, not to mention Texas's whole thing where slavery totally didn't happen. As someone who probably has to live with the next generation for a while now, I'd rather they actually had to be educated in some manner that roughly corresponds to facts and reality.
11/13/16, 5:26 PM
Joeln said...
your intelligent and sober distillation of the craziness in our world is, truly, a breath of fresh air. Keep up the good work.
11/13/16, 6:27 PM
Janet D said...
Actually, Trump just tapped leading anti-abortion advocate Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, to lead his campaign’s “Pro-Life Coalition.” Dannenfelser is not only against allowing abortion for rape victims, she is also against contraception. This is part of what my women friends are freaking out about.
Perhaps we will soon be like Brazil, where one woman dies every two days from an illegal abortion, and where 250,000 women a year show up in emergency rooms with complications from illegal abortions. (too rushed to link right now. Here is just one article: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-abortion-brazil-secrets-idUSKCN0YG1GP, more articles/sources can be found on google)
11/13/16, 6:29 PM
Fred the First said...
I couldn't figure out why Portland was the city that erupted in riots. Portland is the whitest city in America and we equate riots with African Americans in this country (not that that is right). Was Portland just a case of awful cognitive dissonance? They think they are so smart and clever about everything and to have a result that didn't match their thinking just blew their minds that badly?
I'm trying to look at everything coming at us now in terms of salary class and wage class and its making it much more clear. Thank you for writing about it.
11/13/16, 6:35 PM
The other Tom said...
In terms of class and political category, here's a way you could categorize me: didn't go to college, always did physical jobs, an outdoor guy who owns rifles and shotguns, lived in small towns all but a few years of my life because I prefer it, older white guy with declining income and an old F-150, and after I write this I'm putting on my Carhartt coat and going to the bar to watch the Patriots game. I'm the archetype of a Trump voter, right?
Wrong. I voted for Clinton, and I know lots of others like me who did. I am on the left on nearly all issues, and I lament the fact that the party of FDR has become as bought and paid for by the oligarchs as the Republicans. I saw the election as an unsatisfactory choice between continuing the incremental decline we've been on for decades or a more tumultuous, unpredictable and probably more dangerous decline. In my opinion the option of a more dangerous, faster decline won. We all agree that the ship is sinking, so if I am right it means less time to build lifeboats. (I really do hope I am wrong)
Not all the people who voted for Clinton are urban elites. On the other side, I've been trying to tell my more affluent friends for years that the working class is becoming dangerously alienated, for good reason, and that the real elites don't get it even when they think they do. When I read the op-ed page of the NYT this is obvious. The plight of the working class is an abstraction to them, even if they know the facts they don't understand the significance of those facts in our daily lives.
I don't know where we go from here if conversation is impossible between two tribal ideologies. A return to federalism makes sense to me, like an amicable divorce where we could still be friends. I think this would require some "cultural cleansing" as people moved to other states, and then we could have the 50 state experiments, or groups of states, that de Tocqueville described. That would take care of domestic issues.
I think it would have to go further though. We are going to have an entire federal government that thinks climate change is a hoax and most people in my part of the country disagree with that. I would rather see complete autonomy of states or regions, with a mutual defense pact, like NATO perhaps, that would require a response only when there was a direct military threat to the homeland, and not defending supply lines all around the globe. That way, people in my part of the country would not be getting dragged into endless wars that have nothing to do with defense. We would be on the way to LESS.
I know I am dreaming, but it would be interesting.
11/13/16, 6:39 PM
Shane W said...
Well, I'm a wage class, queer, Bernie to Trump voter, and I have not wavered in my position throughout this election season. To me, Hillary was unacceptable, and there was no way I was going to vote for her. The issue of breaking the neoliberal consensus was far more important to me than any of the other rescue game/politically correct distractions. Yes, I would have been way more comfortable casting my general election vote for Bernie, but he sold out to Hillary and was not an option, so Trump was the only acceptable candidate left on issues of foreign intervention, trade, and the economy. I accept that our first past the post system is inherently bipartisan and does not accommodate third parties except when they replace existing parties, as the GOP did when it replaced the Whigs, so third party was not an option for me.
As a queer person, I find it totally baffling that the most gay friendly GOP presidential candidate is getting tarred as being the most dangerous to the LGBT community. It defies logic. From the Pulse nightclub shooting to the convention and beyond, Trump has refused to pander to right-wing homophobia and has reached out to the LGBT community. I am concerned about his court appointments and how he will conciliate evangelicals and the LGBT community, but he's no George W Bush or Ted Cruz. Of course, I know that Reagan opposed the Briggs initiative (banning gay teachers in Calif.) only to pander to the religious right and do nothing about AIDS as president, so time will tell, but there is nothing in Trump's past or his campaign that indicates the homophobia that protestors are tarring him with. Same with the African-American community. Trump reached out and campaigned to the black community in the same way that Democrats had previously campaigned to the black community: conditions in the inner cities are deplorable, and someone should do something to improve them. Now, his defense of "stop and frisk" is questionable, but can be somewhat forgiven based on his political inexperience. Seeing the reaction of the liberal SJW set is very telling. This is all about the rescue game and keeping minorities "in line" and lumped together. The Democrats got very defensive about the black community, even though they campaigned previously in the exact same way that Trump did (Obama did not even bother to campaign for the black vote, for obvious reasons). Now, because of the most gay friendly and LGBT inclusive GOP candidate ever, queer folk must fear for their lives? It boggles the mind. Because my sexuality was not an issue this year, I was free to vote with my class instead, which is what I did. I am hopeful that this election has put to rest the myth of the "classless society" once and for all, and that the US can accept that it is as class riven as Great Britain, if not more so.
11/13/16, 7:00 PM
Shane W said...
I could not disagree more with Ahavah's assessment of the election in our state and the tolerance of our people. Ahavah, you have created a "straw redneck", if you will, that is a scapegoat onto which you are projecting your shadow, and it does not reflect the reality of the rural wage class of our state. It is not fair. Honestly, if you would spend only a fraction of the time you spend cultivating the wealthy urban liberal SJW set going out into the rest of the state and getting to know the rural wage class, you could not maintain your scapegoat. It is not fair for you to tar these people based on things you read on internet forums. I challenge you to go to places like Pineville, Cynthiana, Beaver Dam, and Russell Springs (just to name a few), find the most popular diner in town, and sit down and actually get to know these people. I can assure you that most people outside of Lexington probably don't even know Jim Gray's sexuality! Certainly, Rand Paul never made an issue of it. I have the misfortune of living with a TV watcher, so was subjugated to way more political advertising in passing than I cared to, and other than occasional transgender bathroom references, sexuality was not an issue. The Democrats, including Jim Gray, did not lose on sexuality, but on the "War on Coal"™ Hillary's "we're gonna put a lot of miners out of business" ran nonstop on ads, and it cost the Democrats the statehouse, and racked up big GOP totals. Now, we all know on here that coal is dead because of peak coal, not Democratic regulation, but the voters of this state still don't understand that.
11/13/16, 7:29 PM
Shane W said...
The wage class people I work with in my red county (we voted Trump over Hillary 7000 to 4000, a 3000 vote margin) could not be more accepting of gay people, save one individual. They want to go to the gay bars and see drag shows. They have gay friends. They voted for the openly gay man running for Frankfort City Council. And yes, they voted for Trump. Regarding Jim Gray, in order to prove that his sexuality was an issue, you'd have to prove that he did worse than other Democrats, yet he won more counties than Hillary. Jim Gray ran a poor campaign that was not really helped by his "wild a*s" commercials, but he didn't fair any worse than any other Democrat in KY. The true test will be when we have an openly gay Republican run for statewide office, and I expect that day will be sooner rather than later.
As for the statehouse, I wait with trepidation. I will lobby against any RFRA (religious freedom restoration act) or Fairness rollback. The only silver lining is that our 4-lane highway speed limits will probably be raised to 65, 20 years after the repeal of federal caps--the Democratic House Transportation Chair was an opponent of speed limit increases.
11/13/16, 7:48 PM
Shane W said...
Regarding Trump's politically incorrect language and the hysterics about "bigotry"--this just reeks of a nasty form of sanctimonious hypocrisy that goes way back in American politics whereby what you do matters much less than what you say. You could be the biggest drinker around, so long as you condemn demon rum and support Prohibition. You can zoom down the interstate so long as you espouse the "life saving benefits" of the 55 MPH speed limit. And you could be the biggest abuser of women so long as you tow the politically correct feminist line (Bill Clinton) Fundamentally, there is no difference in Bill Clinton and Trump's conduct towards women, yet people are foaming at the mouth about misogyny and feeling violated because Trump was elected president.
11/13/16, 8:01 PM
Justin said...
Some of my uh, liberal, friends who can't or don't want to think about the very real issues (foreign intervention, neoliberalism, immigration/border security, globalization) that probably lead many Americans to vote for Trump have almost invented a new word. It's formed when you as many -ist slurs as possible to properly denounce the Hated Orange Man and any of the "white pieces of s*** who voted for him" (that last one came from a white person, who, like me, lives in a wealthy, 95% white part of Canada).
It hasn't coalesced into an actual word yet, but if you try and say "racist, sexist, misogynistic, xenophobic, islamophobic, homophobic" as fast as you can you sort of get the idea.
I agree that Trump's "Nixon goes to X" potential is amazing, whether he knows it or not he has tremendous opportunities to be remembered as a good president.
Regarding the evangelicals and homosexuality, I think that part of the answer is that evangelicals need to stop imposing their will outside their domain, and that pro-gay activists should do the same. I see the really vile evangelical activists as the opposite side of the coin as the sort of person who trolls bakeries into making homosexual wedding cakes (in some cases, the requested cakes also had some seriously NSFW symbolism on them, it wasn't just "Adam and Steve" and some hearts) and then takes them to court if they say no.
In any case I think it is kind of amusing that many of the populations that the Clintonites of the world seem hell-bent on having move to North America and Europe have a rather dim view of homosexuals, or for that matter, women.
The "we're going to put a lot of coal miners out of business" line was a huge disaster. It is truly amazing that even with most of the mainstream media campaigning for Clinton one way or another that she managed to snatch defeat (popular vote notwithstanding) from the jaws of victory.
11/14/16, 2:00 AM
Phil Harris said...
A useful contribution from Professor Bardi, IMHO
http://cassandralegacy.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/trump-defeat-of-empire-of-lies.html
Trump: the Defeat of the Empire of Lies
Quote: " Unfortunately, the fact that Donald Trump was elected largely as a reaction against previous lies doesn't make him a good president and not even someone whom we can trust."
Well, ... an interesting thesis, and Bardi in a reply comment says of science (he teaches Physical Chemistry) "... Science has become an elephant. Expensive and mostly useless. The public is fed up with it. People don't want to pay anymore for people who keep making promises and never maintain them.". Incidentally, for those of us from a Christian bckground, Bardi recalls for us usefully St Augustine of Hippo and the political context of the bishop's Christian honesty.
Personally as it seemed from Britland the Republican Party put up such a woeful bunch of would-be contenders Trump simply shouldered them aside. I agree with JMG that he is a clever man. Historical opportunities produce these kind of guys I suppose.
best
Phil H
11/14/16, 2:06 AM
latheChuck said...
11/14/16, 3:21 AM
Fred the First said...
So the most well paid and educated group is having half as many children as the lower paid less educated group.
None of that is nice to say but it's what the data shows.
11/14/16, 3:59 AM
Phil Harris said...
The British Guardian has been brimful of demonizing of both Putin and Trump and support for ‘breaking the glass ceiling’ and still can’t get over ‘Brexit disaster’. I have just about given up on them.
However, the same paper with its Enlightenment values gives room to these writers including their long term (and long term anti the Euro currency project zone) economics editor.
Larry Elliott: “We are living in a depression - that's why Trump took the White House.
Since 1975, the fruits of economic growth have disproportionately been taken by the few.”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/economics-blog/2016/nov/13/donald-trump-product-of-new-economic-depression
John Harris: “The reasons for Trump were also the reasons for Brexit
Workers in the US mid west are victims of globalisation in the same way as those in Stoke on Trent” Check out Harris for his reporting early in the year from US Midwest and similar depressed zones in Britain.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/10/donald-trump-brexit-us
best
Phil H
11/14/16, 4:27 AM
Fred the First said...
I know I never learned anything worthwhile sitting at a desk staring at the head of the person in front of me while having a textbook open. And most of the country didn't either. Remember that show "Are you Smarter Than a 5th Grader?" I never watched it but I gather than adults were regularly beaten by 10 and 11 years olds on knowledge test of 5th grade curricula in math, history, science, etc. Did 5th graders suddenly become geniuses? No. It was just that everything they learned was completely irrelevant to adults over the age of 25.
Here's what people do learn in the school system -
Sit down, listen to the expert, and wait your turn.
If you want to ask a question, signal it, then the expert will answer (doesn't matter if right or wrong)
The textbook is the ultimate authority (doesn't matter if right or wrong)
The way math is taught will change every decade or so, so parents look like complete idiots trying to help children with homework.
You will work all day and all night on assignments given to you by those in authority.
Your free time is dictated by authority.
There is one correct method for everyone to learn the material. Just one way we all learn.
The bell rings and you stop doing what you are doing and go to the next thing, no complaining or hesitating.
You are alone in doing your work. Don't ask for help from classmates, that's cheating (interesting in office work these days, it is absolutely necessary to work in teams and yet we never give people a chance to do it)
You will be rated and ranked against your classmates (if everyone got an A there is something wrong)
You will be rewarded based on your rank.
Those of lower rank must never socialize with those of higher rank. (remember high school?)
Its not the content of school that is ruining this nation, it is the context in which schools run. We desperately need young people who can work together in groups to come up with a menu of solutions and try them out together. Figure out what works for their community given their resources.
So anything that breaks the school monopoly I am all for it. It is insane how much people defend the school system when they hate it so much at the same time.
11/14/16, 4:49 AM
n=ro said...
thank you for this weeks post. It's terrific - if not to say 'huge'!
If there is any space on your list of future topics, I would be very interested in your view on the role & structure of 'elites' in society. It's become (or maybe always been at later stages of civilisations) such a Bogeyman for propaganda from all sides, that it deserves a thorough look by somone who has some actual grasp on history...
greetings from Germany,
nero
11/14/16, 5:06 AM
Fred the First said...
Now one would say, why don't the parents complain? Well, parents who complain to school administrators are "trouble-makers" and their children will be punished with the lower quality teachers, less random awards (Citizen of the Month kind of thing), and be shunned by the school staff. So the parents stayed silent. And school just goes on and does whatever it wants.
11/14/16, 5:15 AM
Nicolas Costa said...
Peron, Chavez, Kirchner, Castro and the grand majority of the last 100 years populists came from the lower and middle class. They rarely had enough education due to the circumstances of their lives. In the case of Cristina Kirchner, she also held a very deep resentment for her father and the life she had as a kid. So she had a lot of insecurity, and bipolar disorder. It was well known that you couldn't contradict her, or even suggest a slightly different alternative to her plans, if you wanted to keep your position in the government.
The result of 12 years of a populist government is 34% of unemployment, 40% of annual inflation (only Venezuela is worse than us), drug mafias were able to get a foothold here for the first time in our history and the justice system was nearly gutted (I'm glad to say not completely) so she and her children could avoid going to jail for the most massive system of corruption Argentina saw.
So in the collective experience of my country, a snowball in hell's survival is more probable than electing a populist who can actually fix things, instead of abusing power for their benefit.
11/14/16, 5:48 AM
RCW - said...
"I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to force it upon anyone."
Both quotes by H.L. Mencken
Although most connote Puritanism with the religious right, I think that in today's psyche it is equally apt when it comes to the Liberal Left. As the tempest tossed sweat out the upcoming maelstrom, I have no doubt many tears will flow; what is paramount in my mind is that we can get through it with a minimum of blood being shed.
11/14/16, 6:00 AM
David, by the lake said...
I, too, would be interested to see some cross-aisle, nonconformist workings in the upcoming administration -- perhaps even some unusual cabinet appointments -- but the early signs, to the extent they mean anything at all, seem to point to Republican insiders. I hope that he does not fall into the standard Republican establishment mold, but rather attempts to make good on some of his promises to the working class. On the other hand, none of this alters the trajectory of our decline or that of industrial civilization generally, so our fundamental work here at ground level remains.
I do wonder what the Democratic party will do now, however. Will they double down or go through the needed reformation? I will make no prediction in that regard, as I could see it going either way.
11/14/16, 6:12 AM
trippticket said...
Is food safer because of a USDA stamp? Of course it isn't. If you buy food at the grocery store that makes you sick, you could probably get it replaced by the store management, but what are the chances you would be able to meet the farmer that grew it so that you could give him an ear-full of your suffering on his behalf? I'll give you a hint: it's a nice round number.
By contrast, if you buy one of my pastured turkeys for Thanksgiving this year, and I've mishandled the bird in the process of getting it to your table, and your family gets salmonella as a Black Friday gift, how much hell will I personally catch for it? A lot. And you're going to tell all of your friends about my tainted turkey operation too.
Small is indeed beautiful. And accountable. We gain nothing more than a false sense of security from umbrella labeling. And I imagine that plenty of people in Washington, Colorado, and Oregon, at least, appreciate their states' right to disagree with the federal government. I wish Georgia would disagree with the feds on that matter too.
But this idea that decentralized governance will simply be a train-wreck of neanderthalesque incompetence and human rights abuses is just another verse of the "I know what's best for you better than you do" nonsense.
And I for one am tired of hearing it.
11/14/16, 6:21 AM
Lynn Klug said...
11/14/16, 6:29 AM
aNanyMouse said...
In this piece, he quotes Orwell’s and I.F. Stone’s implicit critiques of the Establishment’s cult of “objective” journalism, which, Silverstein charges, has now lost whatever cred it may’ve had.
Perhaps you’ll want to write a post on your views of “objective journalism”, adding to your post of years(?) ago about the difference between information and analysis (if I correctly recall your drift).
11/14/16, 8:04 AM
mgalimba said...
I am reading a outstanding book at the moment: Rancher, Farmer, Fisherman: Conservation Heroes of the American Heartland (written by Miriam Horn). I picked it up on the new books shelf at my tiny, rural library (where the young librarians manage to create a focal point of fun, learning, and community in an space the shipping container. I would highly recommend finding and reading this book before your next discussion of agriculture at scale. Fascinating, highly detailed, and nuanced, full of many voices and perspectives, people working hard and thinking hard.
11/14/16, 8:51 AM
temporaryreality (Wendy) said...
11/14/16, 10:25 AM
Raymond Duckling said...
I wonder why seem to care so much about what some people you don't know or particulary care for believe or fail to believe about their sacred scriptures and their relationships with the current day wisdom of scientific materialism. It is not as if similar minded people failed to grasp the practical implications of Evolution, like in the breeding of domestic plants and animals.
Regarding the "chewing gum girls", I seriously doubt that even Americans are so blind now as to publicly and officially endorse such statements. I do not put beyond (some of) your people to believe such things privately, but it has more to do with every society having their fair share of jerks than anything else. I rather think that such idea is a caricature, in which case I challenge you to prove that your caricature is more accurate than mine: "Progressive teachers are degenerates that want to give your children practical training on the whole contents of the Kamasutra by age 12. Oh, and they will indoctrinate them into believing that having abortions is a human right, too!!!"
I was going to make a really funny comment on Texas' slavery too, but I'd rather not push the issue any further. For one, - and in spite of their other shortcommings, - I think Texans are pretty cool.
11/14/16, 10:58 AM
Izzy said...
But I suspect that we're not going to agree on this topic, in the end. I do think it's important to be sure that, *somehow*, the next generation has access to actual facts and reality, and the ability to evaluate and appreciate training and knowledge in a field rather than falling for any plausible-sounding guy telling them that the Garden of Eden included dinosaurs.
11/14/16, 11:02 AM
Izzy said...
As far as the reasons why: said beliefs affect everything from the way they approach the environment to human rights issues to the overuse of antibiotics and lack of funding for life-saving stem cell research.
And yes, it is a human right.
11/14/16, 11:05 AM
David, by the lake said...
https://politicalwire.com/2016/11/14/trump-will-take-1-salary/
Public service? Noblesse oblige? Is my estimate of him going up another notch?
11/14/16, 12:23 PM
Degringolade said...
This is a ray of hope
ACS Energy Lett., 2016, 1 (5), pp 1034–1041
DOI: 10.1021/acsenergylett.6b00295
Publication Date (Web): October 17, 2016
Copyright © 2016 American Chemical Society
11/14/16, 12:41 PM
Cherokee Organics said...
Yes, insurance premiums are on the rise, year in and year out, down here too. The house insurance here goes up by roughly 12% each year and this is an unsustainable increase. Incidentally, I believe it is driven by the government demands that insurers cover flood events. Fire strangely is not as high a risk factor. I'm pretty sure many people up here are simply not insured.
The interesting thing that I'm seeing is that the insurers are crying poor here too. Of course low interest rates and poor bond yields have a lot to do with that too.
It has been my experience that it is very difficult to continue running an unprofitable business for more than a year or three. And yet, we all know of plenty of large businesses that are doing exactly that. I'm pretty sure I understand how they are doing that too, as there have been quite a bit of publicity about the goings on in that regard - if anyone actually cared to read the articles.
I'd be very interested to read your current take on the world of economics? The strange desire that people exhibit about houses and economics is just weird. The fact is a house should be worth less every year due to the actions of entropy. I mean, they just sit there and break down every single day. How people can expect them to be worth more than the previous year is one of the strange riddles of our time. It certainly feels like wishful thinking to me. And yet there it is... And the consequences of that wish is really starting to play out down here. It is ugly.
Cheers
Chris
11/14/16, 1:01 PM
Fern Hollow Folks said...
Thank you for your thoughtful post. I am not an every week reader, but come in and out as time and my current lines of thinking allow, and I am always appreciative of your perspective. I have a couple of thoughts related to the ideas you shared this past week.
Let me begin by saying that I agree with almost everything that you are saying in your post. But I wonder if the emotional charge of this election has a bit more to it than just people not being thoughtful, insulting on repeat, and not talking about the important issues.
Perhaps there is something larger at work here, something that is rather hard to talk about- particularly in a “rational” way- powers at work that move in and out and around typical rational discourse. A larger story unfolding that we of short memories, limited language, and a general nervousness around all things beyond the rational tend to miss. That is one avenue of contemplation to pursue…
Another path for contemplation is the possibility that by asking for a putting aside of the moral aspect of the two candidates we run the risk of ignoring what seems to me to be a legitimate social concern- and that is that regardless of where it comes from, the derogatory energy spilling forth directly from President-elect Donald Trump’s mouth and then spun by all sorts of media outlets and individuals is just not right. Misogyny is not right. Racism is not right. Homophobia is not right. Mockery of the disabled is not right. If statements made by Trump or his strategists that are abusive can somehow be dismissed intellectually in order to get at what is “really important” like jobs and foreign policy, then what is the state of the society in which we find ourselves?
The way that the election was experienced through the media was so strange and gross and pornographic that the thought of blinking and instantly being on a tropical island with a small group of loved ones, a little tribe of goats, a small garden and a few guitars crossed my mind more than once in recent months. But to say that all that was focused on was the evil evilness of the others, and that we should drop all of that and discuss platform issues, dismisses the understandable frustration and fear of people of all sorts. To oversimplify, there are those that are oppressed by an economic system which has made them feel unimportant and there are those that feel oppressed by systemic racism and sexism. All of these people deserve to feel the negative emotions associated with abuse and to dream of creating a world where they are no longer treated this way. Yet the latter category- those experiencing some form of systemic racism and sexism- must be given some degree of precedence. We need to embrace our diversity in all of its messiness if we are to really be a free society and also if we want to get anywhere in terms of working on the oppression of the former group- the economically disadvantaged. Both of the candidates can be questioned ethically in my opinion, and that spills into policy no doubt (the ignoring of NoDAPL and indigenous rights in general to give just one example.) But the intentional stirring up of white nationalism has historical precedent that is worthy of attention if not alarm.
Again, I know that I am oversimplifying the concerns of those that are feeling frustrated and oppressed right now. And I know that regardless of these things, there still needs to be intelligent discourse about the other issues at hand for the nation, but hopefully you can see what I am getting at…
I’m not endorsing any sort of moral legislation- I love the idea of promoting Federalism and State’s rights- but endorsing a human consciousness that says no way to racism, sexism, etc. is not only okay, I believe it is necessary for us to evolve as a species and grow more beautifully in our expression of humanness.
With respect,
Stephen Lenhart
11/14/16, 1:14 PM
Degringolade said...
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acsenergylett.6b00295
11/14/16, 1:43 PM
Bill Pulliam said...
11/14/16, 2:50 PM
Bill Pulliam said...
This is just 1972, 1980, 2000' and 2004 all over agaiin (all elections I remember well and all but one of which I voted in) And people were talking about fleeing to Canada and declaring "he ain't my president" those times too.
The populist revolution has been canceled, and at present it has not been reschedule nor has the part of "Leader" yet been recast
11/14/16, 3:01 PM
Bill Pulliam said...
11/14/16, 3:31 PM
zach bender said...
http://www.choosingthebest.com/
11/14/16, 4:05 PM
Shane W said...
Regarding wage class Trump supporters, I'm really taken w/how many of them have favorable attitudes towards Bernie and may have actually won some of their votes had he been on the general election ballot, based on character alone.
Regarding secession, I'm an avowed secessionista, and if Trump is the catalyst for breaking the nation down into more manageable units, it's a good thing. If at first you don't secede, try, try again. Besides, national borders will help protect the livable parts of the country from climate refugees from areas that will either be too dry or underwater. Regarding immigration, I considered it a non-issue in this election. The US is about to undergo a precipitous decline, and Mexico has a bright, shiny future ahead as the premier scarcity industrial power in North America. I must admit, I'm envious that Mexicans have a Mexico to go home to, while us Americans have nowhere to go once things go south.
I hear where Trump has already phoned Putin and they've promised cooperation and closer relations. Hopefully, Trump can reestablish the "Nixonian/Kissenger wedge" between China and Russia by simultaneously conciliating Russia while being tough on China. As JMG has mentioned, cluelessly pushing China & Russia into each other's arms has been one of the biggest disasters of neoconservative foreign policy.
11/14/16, 5:02 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Izzy, you're assuming that your side of the culture wars will retain control of the Department of Education. Consider the following scenario: Trump dies or gets impeached, and Pence becomes president. As a good Bible-believing fundamentalist, he issues an executive order requiring every public school in the nation to teach creationism or lose its federal funding. (He can do that, you know.) Does federal control over education still sound like a good idea to you?
Joeln, you're welcome and thank you.
Fred, of course it was Portland that threw a fit. It may be the whitest city in America, but it's also pretty much the furthest left, with a really overdeveloped sense of entitlement. (I spent a lot of time there when I lived on the left coast, and though I enjoyed the place, the holier-than-thou political posturing was way over the top.) Since the protests don't actually affect anything, and Donald Trump knows perfectly well that he can ignore them, it's an irrelevancy -- though I suppose it's good aerobic exercise for the participants.
Other Tom, I'm not sure where you're sensing stereotyping; I didn't say that all working class people by definition vote one way -- as contrasted, say, to the pundits who insisted that women wouldn't vote for Trump, as though all women share the same concerns and political views! I'd caution you, though, against thinking that there are only two tribes in America today. There are many of them, some more or less allied, some more or less opposed, and what happens in each presidential election is that we get to see how many of them line up with each side.
Shane, and let's also note that these same people are insisting they're less safe with a candidate who wants to pull back from a military confrontation with Russia, as opposed to a candidate who spent her time in the State Department pushing regime change on foreign countries and spent much of the campaign threatening to get the US military even more deeply involved in the Syrian quagmire. I remember when Democrats were against reckless military adventurism; it seems like a distant dream now...
Phil, fascinating. If Bardi grasps the trouble that science is in, we may have a better chance to save it than I'd expected.
LatheChuck, true enough.
N=ro, I've already discussed that.
Nicolas, ah, but you've just pointed to one core reason why Trump may be more like FDR than like Kirchner; he comes from an affluent background, so doesn't have the pervasive hatred of the wealthy that so many populists have. Still, we'll see.
RCW, no argument there at all. As I noted a few weeks back, American liberalism has its roots in Christianity, and still retains the underlying Puritan mindset -- it's just that they've found something other than sex to be holier than thou about.
Trippticket, no argument there at all.
Lynn, this matches what I've heard from a lot of people who voted for Trump.
11/14/16, 5:03 PM
Izzy said...
Meanwhile, I content myself with slipping copies of Mercedes Lackey novels to my fundie relatives' kids. ;P
11/14/16, 5:09 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Mgalimba, I'll put it on the get-to list -- thanks for the heads up.
David, it's certainly a very clever move.
Degringolade, fascinating. Yes, that will help a great deal, if the process can be done at a basement-tech level.
Cherokee, yes, the economy is something I should probably address sooner rather than later, as the spread of zero- and negative-interest bonds and the like is a very large flashing red light. Thanks for suggesting it.
Fern Hollow, it seems to me that you're missing a central point. It's not as though the moral evil was all on one side, after all; Clinton's support of regime change projects that have plunged whole nations into chaos and misery is also something that deserves ethical condemnation, wouldn't you say? Furthermore, both candidates and both campaigns went out of their way to insult and denigrate American minorities; it's just that they targeted different minorities, and the one that the Clinton campaign targeted, white working class Americans, are the one minority in this country the Left thinks that it's okay to hate. If you want to criticize Trump for his comments about Mexicans and Muslims, by all means; are you going to criticize Clinton for her dismissal of white working class Americans as deplorables and dupes? If not, it's worth asking whether your ethics have been subordinated to your political passions...
Bill, what you're saying could be said equally well by pointing out that each party has its core constituencies, but must add other constituencies to that core in order to win. You're focusing on one of the GOP core constituencies; I'm pointing out that the strategy of also appealing to the downwardly mobile working class is a significant shift for the GOP, and brought voters into Trump's side who voted for Obama in 2008. Do you disagree with that?
11/14/16, 5:17 PM
Shane W said...
Much has been made of the boogeyman of what will happen in the South once Yankees, via the federal government, can no longer force their will on the South. People misunderstand the South, it is conservative, in the true Burkean sense of the word, not reactionary. Had the Obergefell windfall not resolved the gay marriage debate, I can assure you that the LGBT community was prepared to continue working and lobbying state by state on gay marriage, the way marijuana is being debated. Considering that every nation that ever had African slavery abolished it, the Confederacy would have abolished slavery (especially if they couldn't count on the North to help put down a slave revolt). Somehow, because Yankees are, on average, 5-10 years "ahead" (if that) of the South, they turn this into some sort of sanctimonious virtue than it most definitely is not. As we say in the South, there's more than one way to skin a cat, and our system of government provides many avenues of social change besides just the judiciary.
Oh, and someone had mentioned Kim Davis earlier. There are 120 counties in KY, 118 county clerks quietly went about issuing same sex marriages. Only two threw up any stink.
11/14/16, 5:31 PM
Toomas (Tom) Karmo said...
Sharing privately in the general local passion (everyone I chat with here in Ontario is now worried about the USA), and yet trying to be low-key in what I write, I have posted to http://toomaskarmo.blogspot.com under the title "(Part A): USA Election, and the Hopeful Example of a Dissenting Wartime German Bishop". I tried today to follow JMG's precept in his current TADR posting, by today for the most part discussing Clinton-Trump policies and Clinton-Trump campaign promises.
Sincerely,
Toomas (= Tom) Karmo, in Estonian diaspora near Toronto
11/14/16, 5:32 PM
Bill Pulliam said...
I realize 1980 probably seems like a long time ago to some, but to those of us of a certain age, that presidential campaign remains as vivid as if it happened in 2012. It felt very much like the year we just finished. And indeed Reagan now is deified by some and demonized by others who lived through his presidency.
11/14/16, 5:37 PM
Shane W said...
11/14/16, 5:41 PM
Soulipsis said...
11/14/16, 5:59 PM
Degringolade said...
Last ime I'll bother you tonight. Check this out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpmZkXw4ibk
Maybe we don't have to walk all the way to Stars Reach and talk to the aliens after all
11/14/16, 6:05 PM
Dan said...
11/14/16, 6:18 PM
Shane W said...
11/14/16, 6:23 PM
Dan said...
11/14/16, 6:36 PM
The other Tom said...
As far as the two ideologies is concerned, yes, you're right and I stand corrected, there are countless tribes and points of view. I should have taken the time to say that maybe this country is just way too big, that when presidential candidates are winnowed down to only two choices then it forces a binary choice that distorts all the issues beyond recognition. Maybe that is another reason federalism would work better.
11/14/16, 6:54 PM
chola3 said...
Here I am in Malaysia collecting my winnings from my sullen friends who are not so friendly.
Was hoping for a Trump win but only laid bets after your article early this year.
This week's comments have thought me a lot about the convoluted US political mess more than any of your articles. Maybe a parliamentary system can simplify matters?
Anyway I predicted Trump can only win if he ends up fighting both party establishments.
He had already inducted Bannon in his team. So made more bets:
1. Deporting of Mexicans. Security of the borderlands is a given in almost any other country. Not to mention the security of the Republican party. (A small concession to people who can prove their ancestors were in Texas,etc might be a good idea)
2. Ridding of the H1B visa workers. This goes to secure the middle class and also give a hope to the underclass that there will still be a chance of upward mobility to their children.
(This bet makes me a race traitor here for my middle class 'friends')
Other promises are minor IMO.
I don't see this democracy in crisis being just yours. All over the world well-off people in secure jobs are sucking the blood of the working class while looking down on them and also playing a sort of victim card.
Being a Tamil minority here, I would be crying over a Trump win too; except that I have an engineering degree but decided, with mental support from your articles, to be a happy underclass taxi driver.
You helped me a lot in MANY ways. Only thing I worry is you have mentioned years ago that Malaysia is not a good place when collapse accelerates.
11/14/16, 10:35 PM
Unknown said...
Interestingly, farm prices in Tassie have been going up at 8.6% per annum since 2006, faster than anywhere else in Australia. I wonder why that is ;-).
That "finite supply of land" concept seems to have passed a lot of people by, given the vast amount of absolute garbage talked about our economy needing "growth" to remain healthy.
Cheers
eagle eye
11/15/16, 12:42 AM
donalfagan said...
I'd say that started with the Tea Party, though they were quickly managed away from primarily addressing economic issues. Trump exploited that opening, but seems to be surrounding himself with the very establishment he campaigned against.
11/15/16, 2:34 AM
Shane W said...
11/15/16, 3:27 AM
Shane W said...
11/15/16, 3:30 AM
Phil Knight said...
He sums up the problem thus:
"Most of us would have the kind of government we wanted if we didn't insist on implementing it through Washington."
Other pearls include:
"If you want to use the federal govt as a club to force coed HS locker rooms, don't cry when it's used as a club to defund sanctuary cities."
11/15/16, 3:44 AM
Ahavah said...
11/15/16, 5:46 AM
PRiZM said...
I know you're busy and it is getting near the end of this weeks post cycle and onto next weeks, but I had an interesting thought occur to me related to this event.
The inspiration was from a song I heard in a cartoon my daughter was watching, called Collision of Worlds (from Cars 2.. I know, everything about this reeks of the opposite sentiment and ideas for which this blog is known for.. but I digress!) It caught my attention as an ESL teacher because it points at the differences between American and British English and how a lot of it is connected to culture. The title of the song suggests conflict. Then I got to thinking how today's contemporary culture is predominately urbanized, which is a relatively recent phenomena, as the majority of the worlds population now lives in cities. That means many people have already been born and raised in urban environments, with many more to follow.
This whole election, what preceded it and the events unfolding after it, seem closely linked to this division. A division of cultures within a society. And something which seems, as it was partly the result of globalization, and becoming more globalized, poised to cause such divisions around the world, as is perhaps evident in the Brexit, in the US elections, in Bulgarian and Moldovan elections, and upcoming elections in France and Australia.
My question is, is it likely that these events are linked to the disconnect between urban and rural lifestyles? The implications if such is the case, are huge. That is building up for a massive meltdown of the global society (although in slow, but consistent steps), just as you've been long been making the case for.
11/15/16, 6:14 AM
Raymond Duckling said...
It's not like everything they said is wrong: there are very real risks - physical, emotional, and financial - that may result from casual intercourse; and those risks tend to be greater for younger people, if not for anything else but for their still developing skills to cope with life. But making vague threats about the big unknown has never prevented any ill outcomes.
Still, we will have to agree to disagree, at least on the abortion issue. You steem to strongly attached to your beliefs to seek any common ground and we are borrowing space from the main conversation. Please noto, though, that I am perfectly willing to let you be and not mess in your affairs, even if I consider them misguided. There's such thing as a lesser evil, and I think it would be helpful if you considered my side to be just that. The greater evil being, of course, the possibility that someone may gain absolute power to oppress everyone else.
11/15/16, 6:47 AM
Patricia Mathews said...
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2016/11/playtime-is-over.html#more
11/15/16, 8:23 AM
Boris Seymour said...
11/15/16, 10:13 AM
zach bender said...
And not everything derives from the Fourteenth Amendment. The "commerce clause," Art. 1, sec. 8, clause 3, gives Congress authority to regulate interestate commerce, and while there has been considerable tension over the years on the scope of this authority, even Scalia and Kennedy joined in decisions to allow regulation of intra- state activity if this was necessary to a scheme to regulate inter- state commerce.
This is why we can't have state laws requiring non-GMO labeling, etc. But to address in particular your jibe at the "unaffordable" care act, of course what makes this unaffordable is the resort to private insurers. If we had single payer . . .
but I guess that is a subject for another day. It would have been interesting if the ballot measure had passed in Colorado.
11/15/16, 10:20 AM
gjh42 said...
How We Broke Democracy
Apparently the economic condition of non-elites is not the only driver of current politics. Looks like another good reason to kill your computer and find other ways to connect to people... or at least alter your methods of accessing information to consciously seek alternative viewpoints.
11/15/16, 11:03 AM
Patricia Mathews said...
Interesting thoughts on the fragmentation of society and discourse:
How We Broke Democracy
***David Brin predicted this in EARTH back in 1990.****
11/15/16, 12:54 PM
Pantagruel7 said...
11/15/16, 1:13 PM
Industrialist Capitalist pegged as Elitist 1%er said...
Finally I found someone who can put down in words what I observe, but am not bright enough to articulate.
I don't get out much, I live under a rock in a coastal bubble town in California where I am pegged as a 'bleach blonde entitled liberal' I am anything but, except the bleach blonde.
Searching for like minded individuals these past few years has been impossible in my world, where I am horribly prone to speaking out at dinner parties saying I believe Trump could win the upcoming election, and worse yet, that I understood why his voters are upset.
To add insult to my injury, I have been doing this while dining with my "fellow 1%-ers" who are all wealthy liberal elitists, mostly gay, well dressed, and what I used to think of as open minded. They ALL have thanked me for speaking up by accusing me of being a red-neck "Trump Supporter" even thought, not once, in their presence did I say I was voting for Trump.
I will admit, it wasn't until I read your blog did I actually understand who Trumps' voting base is actually mostly comprised of, but I work with regular guys every single day, and hear them talk. That is how I had idea of how upset many of us are, and after reading your blog, now I fully get it.
He has won, as you predicted so brilliantly.
You had me hanging on your every single word until I read your closing words "the next leader to take up the cause of the wage class could very well be fond of armbands or, for that matter, of roadside bombs. Once the politics of resentment come into the open, anything can happen—and this is particularly true, it probably needs to be said, when the resentment in question is richly justified by the behavior of many of those against whom it’s directed."
Are you saying that if Trump didn't win this election, and take up the cause of the wage class, that the wagers could likely find a new leader who would inspire some sort of violent armed revolt they are inherently prone to? May I be so bold and as to ask you if you are pegging your "wage class" in a Hillary Clinton-esk manner, as AK slinging rioters kept at bay?
If you are, I would love for you to further profile each of your classes, it would be interesting and enlightening to know more from you, as your blog is utterly brilliant! I am asking this without the sarcasm it will seem to have:
could you break the classes down further? Perhaps by their preferred breakfast cereals or firearms or choice. Excluding yourself and your preferences of course, as by the virtue of you being a writer by trade, you do not fit into one of your described four classes.
11/15/16, 2:03 PM
Cherokee Organics said...
Excellent! I look forward to reading your thoughts on the matter. Yes, it is alarming. Have you noticed that forward prices for coal and iron-ore have climbed following the election? Blind Freddy knows a thing or two about that story!!! Hehe!
Hi Eagle Eye,
I reckon you may have missed an important concept when you say: "farm prices in Tassie have been going up at 8.6% per annum since 2006, faster than anywhere else in Australia". Of course, I agree with your implied reasons which I assume are water and climate?
However, I find it to be quite interesting that your mind has focused on one side of that story whilst you completely ignored the other side. The other side of that story is that: money is now buying less farm land year in and year out than it once used to. And what does that say to you?
I've heard that supply side story too many times over and it doesn't wash with me because Australians are predominantly an urban people. The country is a very quiet place from what I can see. It wasn't always that way either.
Cheers
Chris
11/15/16, 2:11 PM
Fred the First said...
So how to break this spell? And then help others break it too?
11/15/16, 3:15 PM
Shane W said...
11/15/16, 3:19 PM
Mark said...
So you'd have me believe gravity works there too? when we're on opposite sides of the planet?
I've heard many a tall one, but that's a bridge too far! I suppose next, there are too many people on the planet, even though space is infinite?
I'll tell you since it's even more fun, it's been half a century since my roots were ripped out of the Earth, and so I'm only half a man, though I can never get enough, of anything.
At least that's true about the roots being ripped out of the earth; I've given up on being, a man or anything definable. Now the roots need to be planted on another planet, one with fewer people, because I would like to be a father, still, just not in this situation. I don't have any complaints about my condition, declining as it is, quite the contrary, I feel deeply grateful to be here. I just don't see the situation for fathering as being fruitful in any near term, or far term scenario. Bodies, like houses, suffer entropy; and yet, the waves that wash pearls and corals onto our sandy beaches for free, that figure in our own consciousness, somehow, the life we experience as our own, these waves, and life are infinite, and eternal as is the universe. Entropy is just a part of the cycle. Building a house, learning how to sharpen tools, to Care For and Respect Wood, Steel, Stone, Clay, Water, Air, to speaking with the tree and felling, Blessing and Thanking the Land, and the Old Ones, the Near and Far ones, who were kind and spoke to you, showing the way in silence even, Yes, we may occasionally have a laugh at ourselves! A bit silly, aren't we?
Why make this comment here? Why Not? Sam Clements came in on a comet, and the next time the same comet came around, made his escape.
11/15/16, 3:49 PM
tolkienguy said...
And another data point on this nation's decline, I was on the University of Virginia website (since I'm considering going back to school)...in state tuition is now about $16,000 a year...enough to buy an inexpensive car. For one year of college. Now, think about how hard it is now to get a non-minimum wage job without a degree, and how much debt $16,000 four times over represents. And with today's economy, our would-be self improver is by no means guaranteed a job when he gets out...just the equivalent of two or three SUV payments a month. (And out of state tuition is over $40,000, which four times over, is almost a mortgage.) But lets all clap our hands, close our eyes, count to three, and say the magic words..."Everything in this country is just fine!"
11/15/16, 4:28 PM
Shane W said...
11/15/16, 5:40 PM
latheChuck said...
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article114622743.html
Black stockings stuffed to resemble human beings were found dangling from nooses on Winthrop University. Intimidation, or inspiration? This time, the activists have identified themselves. "Early Monday, a group called Association of Artists for Change contacted the Charlotte Observer to take responsibility. It claimed the display is “protest art” meant to inspire conversation about the history behind the building’s name."
If no one had come forward, would Social Justice Warriors (SJW) be exploring the possibility that this is yet another sign of racists emboldened by Trumps victory? (Very few commentators appear able to present more than one hypothetical narrative per session.)
11/15/16, 5:58 PM
Shane W said...
11/15/16, 7:01 PM
Jen said...
One thing that I have been doing, that I have found very helpful, is to sit down for anywhere from ten minutes to an hour a day, and reflect on some theme to do with government, politics, civics etc. This might be anything from a concept (such as federalism), to a famous quotation, to an assertion I saw on Facebook which either made me uncomfortable, confused, or that I felt uncritical or complacent about but realized upon further reflection that I didn't really understand or have sound reasoning about. A few of these themes I actually pull from JMG's writing here. I might do a bit of research to get started or prime the well, but the bulk of this time is spent alone, without outside input or stimulus, exploring my own thoughts on the subject and teasing out its implications. I often do this with pen and paper, although I tend to naturally do a purely mental follow up before I sleep which is less structured but often more insightful or surprising, although this is less deliberate than just a natural result of having some thinking time as I wait to drift off. I usually end my oen and paper session with plenty of material for further research as well as the next day's reflection, and a fairly robust immunity to the perils of social media and the unfortunate discourse around this election and politics in general (actually, calling it a discourse lends it unwarranted nobility). That immunity extends to muddled thought more generally, I have found. Also it has curbed my unworthy tendency to contribute to the horror by stringing together a bunch of plausible-sounding but shallowly-understood arguments to convince others/myself that I am right when a belief of mine is challenged.
11/15/16, 7:02 PM
Unknown said...
Increase in price=decrease in purchasing power only applies if you are comparing like with like, but I don't really think it applies in this case so much..
Actually, I think the reason for price increases is predominately the sale of high value horticultural land that has had reliable water infrastructure installed to service it over that period, thus making that land far more productive, and saleable at a higher price. Coal River Valley, Midlands, the area out to the SE of Devonport are examples, and there are more coming on line including one for the Smithton area. I have relatives who purchased a large dairy in the Smithton area last year and have installed a centre pivot they do not yet have enough water for on the basis of a scheme that is being constructed now. That scheme and the pivot effectively drought proofs that farm, and a drought proof dairy farm is worth at least 20% more than one that cannot avoid that risk vector, all other factors being equal. I expect that figure to only increase.
The figures were from an article in Stock and Land's magazine comparing the relative performance of investments in ag production versus shares in ag service companies.
11/15/16, 11:17 PM
trippticket said...
Um...yep, I know. I didn't vote for him, but I was NEVER going to vote for Hillary. Trump was my preferred prospect all along, out of those two.
I'm so glad I'm not "plugged-in" to the hive mind all the time. It makes for very schizophrenic behavior! (And it's so easy to recognize...)
That said, Dave Chappelle had some interesting things to say about the election. Worth checking out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--IS0XiNdpk
Maybe it was Chappelle's influence...
11/16/16, 4:52 AM
Fred the First said...
It's habits and attitudes that impact people the most, and therefore this country. Many of us are now in the habit of only communicating with other people via typed messages through computers. For some their real self is only shown through these messages, and for others they make up a whole persona online. What will that habit lead to in five years? Ten years? Employers tell me now that they can not find a single adult under 35 who will look someone in the eye and talk to them. College education doesn't matter. We are that uncomfortable talking with others in a work setting now.
I won't bother to go on because I don't think you want to engage in this discussion because you said we disagree. Another habit we have now - a lack of curiosity of what others are thinking and figuring out where they are coming from.
11/16/16, 5:06 AM
trippticket said...
IMO, the worst votes cast in this election were for Hillary. But I'm not going to beat you all over the head for doing it. I might unapologetically make a joke at your expense...
11/16/16, 5:11 AM
Fred the First said...
And then it hit me what JMG said - that the political establishment just realized that the block of people who elected Trump are now viewed as a viable voting block and the 2020 election will have candidates from all sides messaging to this same group of voters. Oh boy! If the salary class thinks things are out of hand now, their heads will spin off in 4 years.
11/16/16, 5:11 AM
Nicolas Costa said...
11/16/16, 6:11 AM
Phil Knight said...
http://www.lennyletter.com/politics/a613/hillary-clinton-is-more-than-a-president/
11/16/16, 7:36 AM
latheChuck said...
11/16/16, 1:53 PM
Bill Pulliam said...
JMG - so why does a comment that consists of nothing but an insult at another commentor even get put through?
11/16/16, 4:54 PM
Fern Hollow Folks said...
Well, seeing as I am a white working class American I don't think that I am considering it ok to hate on a group of which I am a member. And I don't think my politics are getting in the way of my ethics as I didn't support either of the two main candidates and I'm not questioning the fact that both of the two major parties have questionable ethical practices. But to put something like calling a group deplorable because they are saying/supporting racist, sexist things in the same category with the saying of the racist, sexist things themselves doesn't make sense to me. To poo poo a long history of institutionalized racism and sexism in our society is an intellectual and ethical mistake in my opinion.
11/17/16, 10:57 AM
Steve Carrow said...
The candidate that seems to most "get it" about the economic hardships ( even if they offer implausible reasons and proposed solutions) will earn their vote. The voters for which this message resonates are also more motivated to vote than those doing the lesser evil, competing personality calculation.
11/17/16, 7:18 PM
Jason Baumann said...
11/23/16, 6:44 AM
Matt said...
12/9/16, 8:24 AM
Unknown said...
12/12/16, 2:02 AM