I've been trying for some time now to understand the reaction of Hillary Clinton’s supporters to her defeat in last week’s election. At first, I simply dismissed it as another round of the amateur theatrics both parties indulge in whenever they lose the White House. Back in 2008, as most of my readers will doubtless recall, Barack Obama’s victory was followed by months of shrieking from Republicans, who insisted—just as a good many Democrats are insisting today—that the election of the other guy meant that democracy had failed, the United States and the world were doomed, and the supporters of the losing party would be rounded up and sent to concentration camps any day now.
That sort of histrionic nonsense has been going on for decades. In 2000, Democrats chewed the scenery in the grand style when George W. Bush was elected president. In 1992, it was the GOP’s turn—I still have somewhere a pamphlet that was circulated by Republicans after the election containing helpful phrases in Russian, so that American citizens would have at least a little preparation when Bill Clinton ran the country into the ground and handed the remains over to the Soviet Union. American politics and popular culture being what it is, this kind of collective hissy fit is probably unavoidable.
Fans of irony have much to savor. You’ve got people who were talking eagerly about how to game the electoral college two weeks ago, who now are denouncing the electoral college root and branch; you’ve got people who insisted that Trump, once he lost, should concede and shut up, who are demonstrating a distinct unwillingness to follow their own advice. You’ve got people in the bluest of blue left coast cities marching in protest as though that’s going to change a single blessed thing—as I’ve pointed out in previous posts here, protest marches that aren’t backed up with effective grassroots political organization are simply a somewhat noisy form of aerobic exercise.
Still, there’s more going on here than that. I know some fairly thoughtful people whose reaction to the election’s outcome wasn’t histrionic at all—it consisted of various degrees of shock, disorientation, and fear. They felt, if the ones I read are typical, that the people who voted for Trump were deliberately rejecting and threatening them personally. That’s something we ought to talk about.
To some extent, to be sure, this was a reflection of the political culture of personal demonization I discussed in last week’s post. Many of Clinton’s supporters convinced themselves, with the help of a great deal of propaganda from the Democratic Party and its bedfellows in the mainstream media, that Donald Trump is a monster of depravity thirsting for their destruction, and anyone who supports him must hate everything good. Now they’re cringing before the bogeyman they imagined, certain that it’s going to act out the role they assigned it and gobble them up.
Another factor at work here is the very strong tendency of people on the leftward end of American politics to believe in what I’ve elsewhere called the religion of progress—the faith that history has an inherent tilt toward improvement, and more to the point, toward the particular kinds of improvement they prefer. Hillary Clinton, in an impromptu response to a heckler at one of her campaign appearances, phrased the central tenet of that religion concisely: “We’re not going to go back. We’re going to go forward.” Like Clinton herself, a great many of her followers saw their cause as another step forward in the direction of progress, and to find themselves “going back” is profoundly disorienting—even though those labels “forward” and “back” are entirely arbitrary when they aren’t the most crassly manipulative sort of propaganda.
That said, there’s another factor driving the reaction of Clinton’s supporters, and the best way I can find to approach it is to consider one of the more thoughtful responses from that side of the political landscape, an incisive essay posted to Livejournal last week by someone who goes by the nom de Web “Ferrett Steinmetz.” The essay’s titled The Cold, Cold Math We’ll Need to Survive the Next Twenty Years, and it comes so close to understanding what happened last Tuesday that the remaining gap offers an unsparing glimpse straight to the heart of the failure of the Left to make its case to the rest of the American people.
At the heart of the essay are two indisputable points. The first is that the core constituencies of the Democratic Party are not large enough by themselves to decide who gets to be president. That’s just as true of the Republican party, by the way, and with few exceptions it’s true in every democratic society. Each party large enough to matter has a set of core constituencies who can be counted on to vote for it under most circumstances, and then has to figure out how to appeal to enough people outside its own base to win elections. That’s something that both parties in the US tend to forget from time to time, and when they do so, they lose.
The second indisputable point is that if Democrats want to win an election in today’s America, they have to find ways to reach out to people who don’t share the values and interests of the Left. It’s the way that Ferrett Steinmetz frames that second point, though, that shows why the Democratic Party failed to accomplish that necessary task this time. “We have to reach out to people who hate us,” Steinmetz says, and admits that he has no idea at all how to do that.
Let’s take those two assertions one at a time. First, do the people who voted for Donald Trump in this election actually hate Ferrett Steinmetz and his readers—or for that matter, women, people of color, sexual minorities, and so on? Second, how can Steinmetz and his readers reach out to these supposedly hateful people and get them to vote for Democratic candidates?
I have no idea whether Ferrett Steinmetz knows anybody who voted for Donald Trump. I suspect he doesn’t—or at least, given the number of people I’ve heard from who’ve privately admitted that they voted for Trump but would never let their friends know this, I suspect he doesn’t know anyone who he knows voted for Trump. Here I have a certain advantage. Living in a down-at-the-heels mill town in the north central Appalachians, I know quite a few people who supported Trump; I’ve also heard from a very large number of Trump supporters by way of this blog, and through a variety of other sources.
Are there people among the pro-Trump crowd who are in fact racists, sexists, homophobes, and so on? Of course. I know a couple of thoroughly bigoted racists who cast their votes for him, for example, including at least one bona fide member of the Ku Klux Klan. The point I think the Left tends to miss is that not everyone in flyover country is like that. A few years back, in fact, a bunch of Klansmen came to the town where I live to hold a recruitment rally, and the churches in town—white as well as black—held a counter-rally, stood on the other side of the street, and drowned the Klansmen out, singing hymns at the top of their lungs until the guys in the white robes got back in their cars and drove away. Surprising? Not at all; in a great deal of middle America, that’s par for the course these days.
To understand why a town that ran off the Klan was a forest of Trump signs in the recent election, it’s necessary to get past the stereotypes and ask a simple question: why did people vote for Trump? I don’t claim to have done a scientific survey, but these are the things I heard Trump voters talking about in the months and weeks leading up to the election:
1. The Risk of War. This was the most common point at issue, especially among women—nearly all the women I know who voted for Trump, in fact, cited it as either the decisive reason for their vote or one of the top two or three. They listened to Hillary Clinton talk about imposing a no-fly zone over Syria in the face of a heavily armed and determined Russian military presence, and looked at the reckless enthusiasm for overthrowing governments she’d displayed during her time as Secretary of State. They compared this to Donald Trump’s advocacy of a less confrontational relationship with Russia, and they decided that Trump was less likely to get the United States into a shooting war.
War isn’t an abstraction here in flyover country. Joining the military is very nearly the only option young people here have if they want a decent income, job training, and the prospect of a college education, and so most families have at least one relative or close friend on active duty. People here respect the military, but the last two decades of wars of choice in the Middle East have done a remarkably good job of curing middle America of any fondness for military adventurism it might have had. While affluent feminists swooned over the prospect of a woman taking on another traditionally masculine role, and didn’t seem to care in the least that the role in question was “warmonger,” a great many people in flyover country weighed the other issues against the prospect of having a family member come home in a body bag. Since the Clinton campaign did precisely nothing to reassure them on this point, they voted for Trump.
2. The Obamacare Disaster. This was nearly as influential as Clinton’s reckless militarism. Most of the people I know who voted for Trump make too much money to qualify for a significant federal subsidy, and too little to be able to cover the endlessly rising cost of insurance under the absurdly misnamed “Affordable Care Act.” They recalled, rather too clearly for the electoral prospects of the Democrats, how Obama assured them that the price of health insurance would go down, that they would be able to keep their existing plans and doctors, and so on through all the other broken promises that surrounded Obamacare before it took effect.
It was bad enough that so few of those promises were kept. The real deal-breaker, though, was the last round of double- or triple-digit annual increase in premiums announced this November, on top of increases nearly as drastic a year previously. Even among those who could still afford the new premiums, the writing was on the wall: sooner or later, unless something changed, a lot of people were going to have to choose between losing their health care and being driven into destitution—and then there were the pundits who insisted that everything would be fine, if only the penalties for not getting insurance were raised to equal the cost of insurance! Faced with that, it’s not surprising that a great many people went out and voted for the one candidate who said he’d get rid of Obamacare.
3. Bringing Back Jobs. This is the most difficult one for a lot of people on the Left to grasp, but that’s a measure of the gap between the bicoastal enclaves where the Left’s policies are formed and the hard realities of flyover country. Globalization and open borders sound great when you don’t have to grapple with the economic consequences of shipping tens of millions of manufacturing jobs overseas, on the one hand, and federal policies that flood the labor market with illegal immigrants to drive down wages, on the other. Those two policies, backed by both parties and surrounded by a smokescreen of empty rhetoric about new jobs that somehow never managed to show up, brought about the economic collapse of rural and small town America, driving a vast number of Americans into destitution and misery.
Clinton’s campaign did a really inspired job of rehashing every detail of the empty rhetoric just mentioned, and so gave people out here in flyover country no reason to expect anything but more of the same downward pressure on their incomes, their access to jobs, and the survival of their communities. Trump, by contrast, promised to scrap or renegotiate the trade agreements that played so large a role in encouraging offshoring of jobs, and also promised to put an end to the tacit Federal encouragement of mass illegal immigration that’s driven down wages. That was enough to get a good many voters whose economic survival was on the line to cast their votes for Trump.
4. Punishing the Democratic Party. This one is a bit of an outlier, because the people I know who cast votes for Trump for this reason mostly represented a different demographic from the norm out here: young, politically liberal, and incensed by the way that the Democratic National Committee rigged the nomination process to favor Clinton and shut out Bernie Sanders. They believed that if the campaign for the Democratic nomination had been conducted fairly, Sanders would have been the nominee, and they also believe that Sanders would have stomped Trump in the general election. For what it’s worth, I think they’re right on both counts.
These voters pointed out to me, often with some heat, that the policies Hillary Clinton supported in her time as senator and secretary of state were all but indistinguishable from those of George W. Bush—you know, the policies Democrats denounced so forcefully a little more than eight years ago. They argued that voting for Clinton in the general election when she’d been rammed down the throats of the Democratic rank and file by the party’s oligarchy would have signaled the final collapse of the party’s progressive wing into irrelevance. They were willing to accept four years of a Republican in the White House to make it brutally clear to the party hierarchy that the shenanigans that handed the nomination to Clinton were more than they were willing to tolerate.
Those were the reasons I heard people mention when they talked in my hearing about why they were voting for Donald Trump. They didn’t talk about the issues that the media considered important—the email server business, the on-again-off-again FBI investigation, and so on. Again, this isn’t a scientific survey, but I found it interesting that not one Trump voter I knew mentioned those.
What’s more, hatred toward women, people of color, sexual minorities, and the like weren’t among the reasons that people cited for voting for Trump, either. Do a fair number of the people I’m discussing hold attitudes that the Left considers racist, sexist, homophobic, or what have you? No doubt—but the mere fact that such attitudes exist does not prove that those attitudes, rather than the issues just listed, guided their votes.
When I’ve pointed this out to people on the leftward side of the political spectrum, the usual response has been to insist that, well, yes, maybe Trump did address the issues that matter to people in flyover country, but even so, it was utterly wrong of them to vote for a racist, sexist homophobe! We’ll set aside for the moment the question of how far these labels actually apply to Trump, and how much they’re the product of demonizing rhetoric on the part of his political enemies on both sides of the partisan divide. Even accepting the truth of these accusations, what the line of argument just cited claims is that people in the flyover states should have ignored the issues that affect their own lives, and should have voted instead for the issues that liberals think are important.
In some idyllic Utopian world, maybe. In the real world, that’s not going to happen. People are not going to embrace the current agenda of the American Left if doing so means that they can expect their medical insurance to double in price every couple of years, their wages to continue lurching downward, their communities to sink further in a death spiral of economic collapse, and their kids to come home in body bags from yet another pointless war in the Middle East.
Thus there’s a straightforward answer to both of Ferrett Steinmetz’ baffled questions. Do the people who voted for Trump hate Steinmetz, his readers, or the various groups—women, people of color, sexual minorities—whose concerns are central to the politics of today’s American Left? In many cases, not at all, and in most others, not to any degree that matters politically. They simply don’t care that much about the concerns that the Left considers central—especially when those are weighed against the issues that directly affect their own lives.
As for what Ferrett Steinmetz’s side of the political landscape can offer the people who voted for Trump, that’s at least as simple to answer: listen to those voters, and they’ll tell you. To judge by what I’ve heard them say, they want a less monomaniacally interventionist foreign policy and an end to the endless spiral of wars of choice in the Middle East; they want health insurance that provides reasonable benefits at a price they can afford; they want an end to trade agreements that ship American jobs overseas, and changes to immigration policy that stop the systematic importation of illegal immigrants by big corporate interests to drive down wages and benefits; and they want a means of choosing candidates that actually reflects the will of the people.
The fascinating thing is, of course, that these are things the Democratic Party used to offer. It wasn’t that long ago, in fact, that the Democratic Party made exactly these issues—opposition to reckless military adventurism, government programs that improved the standard of living of working class Americans, and a politics of transparency and integrity—central not only to its platform but to the legislation its congresspeople fought to get passed and its presidents signed into law. Back when that was the case, by the way, the Democratic Party was the majority party in this country, not only in Congress but also in terms of state governorships and legislatures. As the party backed away from offering those things, it lost its majority position. While correlation doesn’t prove causation, I think that in this case a definite case can be made.
More generally, if the Left wants to get the people who voted for Trump to vote for them instead, they’re going to have to address the issues that convinced those voters to cast their ballots the way they did. Oh, and by the way, listening to what the voters in question have to say, rather than loudly insisting that they can only be motivated by hatred, would also help quite a bit. That may be a lot to ask, but once the shouting stops, I hope it’s a possibility.
406 comments:
In other news, my band just put out our new album. The writing is definitely inspired in part by my dreading of this blog. It's called "Apocalyptic Dreams" and can be downloaded at thehillsandtherivers.bandcamp.com.
11/16/16, 1:31 PM
Wes Loder said...
So some of the tar smeared on Clinton did stick. I also believe that the strange words from Comey DID have a last-minute effect on some people—maybe even enough people.
I would agree that had Sanders won the nomination he would have buried Trump. His personal integrity was never in question, he had no e-mail issues. But more important, his message appealed to many of the same groups of people that Trump's message did. He did not like Obamacare as it exists, he was against the endless wars, and definitely against the constant removal of taxes on the wealthier classes and pandering to large corporations. So I believe that his message would have appealed to both the coastal elites and the interior have-nots.
But we have a lot of politicians who care only for their own jobs and they control the parties.
Open primaries, elimination of gerrymandering and term limitations would go a long way to open up the political landscape of this country. But what do I know? I vote and no one I talk to wants to hear what I say anyway. Cheers, WES
11/16/16, 1:35 PM
RAnderson said...
11/16/16, 1:42 PM
JWN+ said...
11/16/16, 1:43 PM
drhooves said...
Due to the ongoing Long Descent in which Trump and the rest of us are mostly helpless, I fully expect the Dems to be motivated and organized for the 2020 election, which should see the Left/Socialists crush the opposition and usher in a new age of wealth redistribution. As a positive net taxpayer and "producer", it's motivating me to retire/collapse early.
11/16/16, 1:44 PM
Five8Charlie said...
You explain - correctly, I believe - why rural American voted for Trump, but Democrat have to look at why their own party members just didn't bother to vote. Ferrett doesn't talk about that. Outsiders can point at Clinton's failures, but the DNC needs to wake up and take a hard look at how it made the decision to run a candidate that lost to Obama in 2008 and would have lost to Sanders in a fair fight in 2012. I suspect the decision was made because the Clinton's effectively run the DNC, but that's also a party failure. The DNC needs to get its own house in order first. My advice would be to start by actually trying democracy.
And congratulations on calling the election!
-Dave
11/16/16, 1:55 PM
Mr. Bystander said...
For what it's worth, I'd like to offer another perspective that certainly aligns with what you are saying here. The creator of the Dilbert cartoon, Scott Adams, has done much work to frame this as a case of persuasion and hypnosis by both sides. He offers an entertaining and thoughtful analysis from that school of thought. We just have to wake the country up from it's cognitive dissonance.
11/16/16, 1:56 PM
Larry N said...
There appear to be indications this round of "shouting" is more organized and funded than the last round in 2008...
http://twoicefloes.com/the-snowflake-riots-an-inside-report-from-an-american-university/#more-14734
Sort of a Twilight's Last Gleaming scenario.
Thanks for the great, thought-provoking analyses over the last years.
Larry N.
11/16/16, 2:01 PM
M Smith said...
One of the things I love about your essays is your habit of presenting both sides. It's much easier for me to be still and listen thoughtfully to "the other side" when I feel that "my side" is given airtime too. I can't think of a time when you didn't present the merits of a point of view with which you happen to disagree. Besides, I derive a degree of calmness and peace from reading well-written thoughts.
11/16/16, 2:06 PM
Marcu said...
If you want to come along, let me know via the e-mail below and make a note in your diary for Saturday the 26th of November 2016. Please make sure that you are registered on the mailing list, I will be sending out further details from there.
Send queries and comments to limitstogrowth1972[at]gmail.com.
P.S. I have created a webpage where I will post the details of the next meeting and any further details for those who don't frequent the comments here. The webpage can be found at wormlamp.com/gwam
11/16/16, 2:06 PM
Cortes said...
On Ferrett Steinmetz:
https://goodmenproject.com/ethics-values/brand-dear-daughter-i-hope-you-have-awesome-sex/
The type is common. I had a run-in with just such a "liberal" in a dispute with my then employer about 5 years ago. Will spare you details.
11/16/16, 2:16 PM
David, by the lake said...
One interesting experience I had, which I thought also provided commentary on the election generally, occurred on Election Day. I had voted weeks earlier, as soon as the Wisconsin early voting window had opened (no new data was going to alter the fundamental decision I'd come to and I wanted to get on with my life) -- in fact, I was told by the clerk at city hall that mine was the first ballot cast int he city -- but my wife had decided to vote in person as was her habit. She texted me that morning to say that she had decided not to vote. My manager swung by my office in the early afternoon, having gone to vote during lunch, and commented on the lack of any line at his polling station. Then, he offhandedly remarked that his wife had decided that morning to not vote. I looked at him and said, "Interesting, because that is exactly what my wife said as well." Anecdotal, but a fascinating synchronicity.
Your points are well-made. The left appears to me to be bewildered, disoriented, and confused by the "impossible" outcome. Is it enough to re-establish a working class focus and jettison the neoliberal axioms they'd adopted? I don't know. If they do not, then the party of Jefferson will run out of lives and a new coalition will take its place. (The claim of continuity is tenuous at best, but it is there.) Will Trump actually be able to govern in any substantial way contrary to core Republican philosophy? I don't know there, either. I hope he is able to put some of his better ideas into action. If both of the major parties maintain the same old patterns, we are priming ourselves for some serious unpleasantness.
11/16/16, 2:16 PM
O. Douglas Jennings said...
11/16/16, 2:19 PM
Eric S. said...
11/16/16, 2:22 PM
Eric S. said...
The first is the possibility of some sort of internment, ID programs, and tracking of American Muslims, which rankles me on a deep and visceral level for a variety of reasons. I have yet to see Trump say anything that has assured me that such possibilities are off the table, and what I've seen from him regarding Muslims has mostly been extreme statements that he's quickly backed down from. It wouldn't have to be a holocaust to be a dark period in American history, and America has done things like that plenty of times over the years.
The second is the specific nature of his rhetoric surrounding immigration... my views on immigration completely shifted when I saw how the agricultural industry treated migrant workers (between employing child labor, skirting basic workplace safety laws, and cramming workers into inhumane working conditions)... but at the same time, Trump seems to be placing most of the blame on the migrant workers themselves and making them the targets, rather than targeting an agricultural industry that uses illegal immigration as an excuse to cut costs by getting away with slave labor while the political establishment looks the other way. It really seems to me that the target should be companies like Phillip Morris that depend on illegal immigration to cut costs, rather than on innocent people and their families, and by targeting Mexican immigrants specifically, I am definitely worried about what is going to happen (especially having grown up in Texas as the son of a bilingual teacher and therefore having spent a huge part of my childhood around those very communities.)
The other is the things that have been done in Trump's name since he's been elected (Trump may have come out in support of the LGBT community, but there are definitely Trump fans who haven't gotten that message yet)... I was heartened to see Trump speak out against those behaviors, but it could still easily get out of his hands... and the political violence from the other side points towards an America that has the potential of becoming extremely unsafe without any regard for the policies Trump actually puts forward.
So I am still concerned about the near future. I think Trump can get some helpful things done, but there are possibilities lurking in the corner of my mind that feel a little more tangible than the panic that comes out of the media circus… the biggest question I’ve been asking, and trying to figure out especially in the midst of all the shouting is: if you’re wrong… if Trump is the exact push towards American totalitarianism that you’ve warned about in the past (and in some cases such as the character profile in Strange Bright Banners even in ways that sound almost exactly like him)… what is the line he’d have to cross before you’d shift your attitudes? I’m watching him closely… but what would be the thing he’d have to do or say that would call for a reassessment of both his place in history, and the appropriate responses to him?
11/16/16, 2:22 PM
Mark Mikituk said...
11/16/16, 2:27 PM
Helix said...
Thanks as usual for a thoughtful article.
My sense here is that this election was the Democrats' to lose -- and they did. The final nail in the coffin was Hillary's now-notorious "deplorables" comment. What an imbecilic thing to say! Insulting your opponent in a political campaign is par for the course, but insulting your opponent's supporters just guarantees that they will turn out in droves to vote against you.
Furthermore, it indicates that you're unfit to serve as president. One thing the rank-and-file of whatever stripe wants when the dust settles is a government that is fair, just, and weighs everyone's interests when pursuing its policies. Making comments that indicate contempt for half the population can alienate even your own now-erstwhile supporters.
Not to mention creating backlash among the insulted. These folks are now looking for payback. Your "fairly thoughtful" acquaintances who felt that "the people who voted for Trump were deliberately rejecting and threatening them personally" may not be that far off the mark. From theburningplatform.com (once a conservative yet insightful -- but now an overtly right-wing -- financial and social blog) in an article the day after the election: "[P]ut on a happy face my special snow flakes because regardless of whoever/whatever you are and regardless of what nation it is you reside in, we, the deplorables, are coming for you." In case there was any doubt about what "coming for you" might mean, the article was headed by a picture of a phalanx of warriors with the caption "Deplorables Regrouping For The Next Attack", and concluded with another warrior picture with the inscription "Give then NOTHING. Take from them EVERYTHING."
These kind of sentiments are the wages of the politics of division. Both sides indulged in it, and as far as I can tell, they still are. But Hillary made it personal. Not good when you're running for President.
https://www.theburningplatform.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/15f13bfda87b4837b55fbe9fce6c5c3e.jpg
11/16/16, 2:40 PM
Phil Knight said...
So I think that there won't be any serious reflection in the Democratic party. I think they believe that they only lost because Donald Trump won a narrow majority in a handful of states, and this itself was because of the Democrats' own complacency in believing the polls, voter suppression through voter ID laws, insufficient effort to get the Democrat vote out, and the late intervention by Comey. Which means that I'm pretty sure that the DNC will come to the conclusion that they only lost due to tactics, and not to strategy.
In turn, I think such a conclusion is essentially comforting. Like the liberals who backed the Remain campaign in the UK, I think US liberals are now so used to getting their own way, and feel they are so advanced in promulgating their programme, that even a small step back, or a slight change of tack, is unacceptable to them. Just as the Leave vote has not been accepted, nor will the Trump presidency. After the initial shock and panic, and the consequent apocalyptic ramblings, US liberals, like their British equivalents, will start to regroup, and see Trump, like Brexit, as a temporary aberration in the long march of progress. The psychology of previous investment plays a big part here.
So I expect the Democrats to pursue exactly the same strategy during the next election, only with more scepticism towards the polls, greater energy in getting their voters out, and they might select a candidate with a bit less baggage. Here in the UK, liberals will continue to attempt to stretch out the process of leaving the EU, in the hope that it might be permanently postponed or mired in constitutional wrangling.
All of this I consider to be terrifically dangerous, but the last three decades of continual liberal/centre-left success has habituated them to getting their own way, and they are no longer capable of displaying the slightest humility or learning the most elementary political lessons.
11/16/16, 2:43 PM
Peter Kalmus said...
I don't think racism / sexism / other isms are binary things, they exist on a spectrum. Liberals (of which I am one) have their own isms to greater or lesser degrees. You make a good point that a lot of Trump supporters may have had some degrees of one or more isms, but that they also had valid reasons for voting how they did, which were in most cases likely much more relevant. I sincerely hope that both sides can start listening to each other a bit and working together to make a better America and better world, although I'm not holding my breath on that. I think that there are mostly mostly-good people on both sides, though perhaps not a single perfect person on either side. I just wish humans were a bit better at empathizing and communicating than we apparently are.
I do feel compelled to point out, though, that W. was not "elected president" in 2000. Or did I miss something? Seems unlike you to make a mistake like that.
11/16/16, 2:52 PM
Eric said...
As far as the protests, they will die down once those that wanted anyone but Trump have had their cathartic moment. They may get stuck in the 2nd stage (Anger) of grieving for a couple of weeks but eventually, they will move on through to stage 4, Depression (Stage 3, Bargaining, being skipped over). At some point, acceptance will sink in and they will have to pick themselves up off the floor and get on with their life. It doesn't mean that
That all said, and all that you said, it's not going to matter if lefties swallow their pride and humbly prostrate before the flyover leftovers in this country that voted for DT, and ask for their forgiveness and offer their help. Setting aside the war issue, growth is never, ever, EVER coming back. Jobs and growth are not coming back.
This is what bothers me the most about all the hand wringing over DT being the president. We are so focused on the moment and our "feelings" that we forget about the Dark Age America, Long Emergency and Long Descent that still heading towards and will not stop!
We can shut the borders and deport all we want. We can slap massive tariffs on products coming into this country. We can spend like there is no tomorrow and rebuild all kinds of infrastructure in this country. But, as you have and many others have pointed out, without growth in energy (aka fossil fuels), there is no growth in the economy (aka GDP or whatever metric you want to measure growth by).
In 1972, when we were "temporarily" taken off the gold standard, why did that really happen? Look at the historical charts for US fossil fuel production and the increase in debt/credit from that time to now and it is clear that our cheap and easy to extract domestic oil (conventional) had peaked and we needed the "freedom" from the tether of the gold standard so we could print, print, print and buy, buy, buy, not only oil from overseas, but also "growth."
Now that the Fed is stepping back from monetary policy - why do you think they have hemmed and hawed about raising rates, because they don't have any tools left in their toolbox that doesn't bring it all down - and letting government initiate plan B - aka fiscal stimulus (btw - both candidates want to unleash the fiscal printing press) - they will try to make America into the 1950's - 60's economic powerhouse we once were (aka great again), but it won't work.
By the time 2020 rolls around, it won't matter who is running for president, the slide will be gaining terminal velocity and everyone - left, right, center - will be as destitute and poor as the forgotten flyovers were. We will all feel their pain and we will all wish we had listened to each other and cared for each other.
11/16/16, 2:56 PM
Isaac Vars said...
For any of the social issues that may come with this president, I am hopeful he pulls through with some of the things he's promising. Some kind of reform for Obamacare (my family falls into that space of not enough money to rationalize spending that much for healthcare, but too much to get any assistance). Pulling back from meddling in the affairs of other countries. Focusing on strengthening our country. Bringing jobs back. In these, I am skeptical, but hopeful. May these things come about, with out minorities paying the price.
And if he builds a wall, he better have a good idea about how it's going to be funded. I don't see Mexico saying "Yeah, you're right. We should pay for it."
One thing I do cherish in his victory is watching the smug faces of the media talking heads that proclaimed Hillary the winner early on wondering, dismayed, "What happened?" Wednesday morning. It is a symptom of the echo chamber that many people of both sides create, walling out opinions other than their own. I have friends who were zealous for their chosen candidate on both sides. I would watch them unfriend people over who they were voting for. Most just complained about both options. In their bubble of chosen opinions, they had no sympathy for the thoughts of others. In their failure to try and understand the opposition, staunch Democrats heavily underestimated the strength of the support for Trump.
The DNC messed up on so many levels.
11/16/16, 2:58 PM
Moshe Braner said...
11/16/16, 3:02 PM
FiftyNiner said...
As usual, this is a good an analysis of current events as one is likely to find. It is amazing to me the number of women (and men) who have told me their number one fear of Clinton was her endless warmongering.
As to the Bernie Sanders phenomenon, however, I have a different view of it now than I had at the beginning of the primaries. As I have said here, I voted for Sanders in the primary, because I had decided long ago--I don't remember just when--that I would never cast a vote for Hillary Clinton. The point is that there had to at least be the appearance of a contest on the Democrat side to balance the enormous attention that the Republicans were destined to get.
Hillary could not have sat there all those months and then presented herself for her coronation without being at a huge disadvantage vis a vis the Republican nominee, whoever that turned out to be. Bernie was in on the fix of rounding out the message that Clinton wanted to present to the voters. The enormous effort that Sanders put into the campaign is not balanced by the speed with which he threw in the towel and endorsed Clinton.
If Trump has any success at all, he will be reelected. I just do not believe that the Democrats can "right" themselves in four years.
I am relieved that I already live on the edge of Retrotopia!
11/16/16, 3:04 PM
Nancy Sutton said...
But, yes, I voted for Trump, because Hillary was the same plutocratic rule continued. And I agree on your points... they were my points. And, Trump has flip-flopped so often, who knows where he'll eventually land. And the histrionics over his caddish behavior were an insult to women in general, I think, and to the victims of real rape.
Also, I think it is supposed to be a 'free' country.. freedom to hate and despise and denigrate anyone you dislike ... barring personal injury. So we have to quite DEMANDING that they stop hating. Who the heck do we think we are!?
I don't think there's one member of a minority group, nor a single mother, nor a debt-burdened grad, etc. who wouldn't gladly 'give' the haters their 'freedom' in return for increasing economic security. We may have been 'played' by the Dem/Rep plutocracy...perhaps starting with the Dem swing away from economic justice to 'identity politics' in the 60's?
BTW, I don't think there IS a 'left' anymore ... the first Clinton killed it. The only shred I see is Bernie's three priorities: 1) rigged economy 2) Wall Street criminals 3 Washington corruption. Let's make these the rallying cry of 'our' party ... and see what kind of 'cross over' appeal it has :)
11/16/16, 3:07 PM
Mark Hines said...
I think maybe 3 or 4 months would be plenty sufficient for the candidates to express publicly what their understanding of the issues are and what they propose to do about it. There wouldnt be time to drag everyone through the mud. There would be plenty of time for the issues and maybe a couple of debates devoid of "he said, she said." Maybe along with term limits we should also consider campaign time limits.
Great post. Keep up the good work.
11/16/16, 3:32 PM
Varun Bhaskar said...
As a Wisconsinite this speaks to me. I live in flyover country, even though Madison doesn't consider itself flyover, we're a small enclave in a sea of forgotten misery. That misery is edging into our bubble, we've lost our biggest factory and are now wholly supported by the government, university, epic systems, and a smattering of smaller companies. I don't know where we will be when the economic bubble bursts, but it won't be any place good.
The Dems don't speak to me anymore, and the left-wing seems totally lost in it’s identity politics. The left-wing cannot succeed when it’s dominated by the coastal cities who don’t understand the economic realities of flyover country. We need a leftist ideology rooted in class identity, a left leg instead of a left-wing. We’re not going to get it if we don’t build it ourselves.
Regards,
Varun
11/16/16, 3:45 PM
Little Al said...
11/16/16, 3:55 PM
Raymond R said...
Great post - it will be difficult for left-wingers to adapt to actually listening to potential voters instead of lecturing them on what they should believe. Perhaps the experience of defeat will make some of them teachable
11/16/16, 3:59 PM
Revere T said...
I think you hit the nail on the head when you mentioned the Religion of Progress. This is nothing less than a crisis of faith for many, especially my fellow millennials, who came to political consciousness during the Bush years and have seen a lot of social progress under Obama. They're definitely disoriented, but most remain unaware of the economic and thermodynamic forces eating away at the system from the bottom up.
Finding a way to decouple liberal social values from runaway technotopian fantasties seems like the essential project here, but I'm not sure where to find the people who would be willing to put together a Use Less Party. I think my problem is that they're already out there using less, and here I am on my smartphone...
11/16/16, 4:01 PM
John Zelnicker said...
Your analysis is spot on. The number of pundits flailing around trying to explain the vote is quite hilarious. I've even seen some trying to deny that one of the main reasons people voted for Trump was economic, i.e., jobs. The economy is doing so well, don't ya know. Average wages went up by 5.2% last month and the unemployment rate is down to 4.8%. HA! Ignoring that wages have been stagnant for the past 40 years, and the unemployment rate is down because of the number of people who have dropped out of the labor force and, therefore aren't counted. The almost willful blindness of these supposed experts is just sad.
By the way, I wouldn't consider the Democratic Party to be left-wing in any sense of the word. Ever since Bill Clinton and the DLC, at least, they have been as corporatist and Wall Street oriented as the Republican Party, just a bit more egalitarian on the surface.
11/16/16, 4:11 PM
will said...
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2nQIcjnMFQo
11/16/16, 4:16 PM
Repent said...
I went to the bookstore a couple of days later and bought his 1987 book, the art of the deal, and the people at this bookstore looked at me like I was weird or something. I said to the staff that I would have thought they would have had a 100 copies of the book on hand after the election result; instead the book was buried at the back of the store on the bottom shelf of the business section and I needed their help to find it. My daughter, also a Canadian who could not vote, came home going on about how 11/9 was the worst thing that happened to the world since 9/11. (She was 3 when 9/11 happened and I am sure she has no recollection of the event. The Alex Jones crowd was out immediately ridiculing anyone feeling this way, which is also an inappropriate reaction.
https://youtu.be/fqm2HQQeHBg?t=1s
Scott Adams had the most reasoned response saying that Trump was made out to be a monster, but as soon as he has a saving a cat in a tree moment, and acts in a way that a monster would not act, all the fuss will start to end.
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/153172272041/how-to-break-an-illusion
Great essay
11/16/16, 4:18 PM
Keith Huddleston said...
I see a lot of people who make cogent arguments about the macro-level decline and fall, and our near inevitable financial melt-down dancing in the end-zone the entirety of this week.
Any prepping any one was doing should continue, if not be increased.
1. I don't think Trump has any real answer on banks.
2. Trump's transition team and policy statements makes it clear that it will be full-steam ahead on using the planet as an open sewer (pun accepted). Fracking will also intensify.
3. Is there any indication that the infrastructure Trump proposes will be for anything other than car culture?
4. The national debt. It's a fair score-board. Any doubt that it will dramatically increase under Trump?
And, no, Hilary was no good on any of these. But that's my point: if all of this stuff is going to be screwed up still, what is the point in acting like there is a triumph?
I don't think 2016 was going to buy us much time, either way. We, on an individual and community level, have a lot of work to do.
11/16/16, 4:23 PM
Tom Mole said...
I expect that if you asked Ferrett whether he hates his political opponents he would say no. Hate is a dirty word on the Left and in general I think they fancy themselves as being above that kind of judgement by emotion. That's well and good but they then project that shadow on their conservative opponents where it's really not warranted. Still, his heart's in the right place and it's resonating with his readers so I am cautiously optimistic that useful reform of the Democrats may eventually occur.
11/16/16, 4:51 PM
Brian Kaller said...
Thank you! You'll be happy to know that I was on Irish television on election night, making some of the same points you did. The other panelists seemed like nice people, but were all political science experts, all predicted a Clinton win, and none offered much reason why anyone was voting for him. "I guess a lot more Americans than we thought are racist," one told me afterwards.
Also, I have written a piece saying many of these same things, hopefully to appear in a national magazine in the next few days. I'll send you a link when it's up, and I promise I wrote it before I read this. :-)
11/16/16, 4:52 PM
Bluebird said...
I came to the election a liberal, in most ways. I genuinely appreciated your analysis of Clinton's (and Obama's) flaws, and those posts changed me. I saw how my party had failed me. I voted for Clinton (Trump didn't reassure me on war, and he ignored the environment, my pet issue) - but I did so mentally composing my first of many planned letters to her giving her hell. I didn't give up on what I consider to be liberal values. Maybe, as you suggest, values like inclusiveness, tolerance, fairness and sharing responsibility for each other are part of the myth of progress and are doomed. I don't know, I guess I wouldn't want to live with the alternatives.
I sat with my neighbor, watching the election results come in and saw the writing on the wall by 9PM. The next day, I couldn't look my kids in the eye while telling them Trump won. You see, they are little, and I am trying hard to raise them to be loving, kind and upright, not to bully others, you know. Clinton may not have been those things, but she praised them. And Trump didn't, really. My kids got that and they were pretty sad. Then I walked into work, glancing around knowing that pretty much everyone I worked with had voted Trump, mostly because these wealthy folks (we're physicians) wanted to save a buck on taxes. I got a lot of Mansplaining (?whitesplaining) that day, and in the days that followed, about how it would all be fine, what was I worried about?
And yet of course it isn't necessarily fine. You've said yourself it will be a bumpy road ahead. You've opened my eyes to the genuine potential for the country to fracture along cultural lines, with civil war as things fall apart after peak oil. Remembering your tendency to look back at history, how could I overlook the parallels with the rise of Fascism in Europe? If not Trump, then maybe from those he has emboldened (wouldn't it be ironic if Trump avoided an international war but somehow provoked a civil one?). And of course, the people I find add so much to our conversation in America, immigrants (fascinating people!), women, minorities, LGTBQ, feel under threat. While I hear your comments about flyover country, please also remember that many of my kind of people were actively pushed out of it, to the coastal cities, by intolerance. In the past week, I've seen so much anger from the right, people are really vicious. I posted something on Facebook telling people not to panic, to take a deep breath, and go out and make the world a kinder place. And I got roasted for it, accused of ignorance of Clinton's flaws and the usual ad hominem attacks.
So yeah, I'm pretty discouraged. I am more than ready to march in the streets for the rights of poor whites (and others) to better jobs, a fairer economy and a reformed political system. By all means, let's drain the swamp. I want a better system, jobs that aren't green-washing but are sustainable (not coal mining), Retrotopia. I think a lot of people are like me and are going to double down on their committments. What we don't have much use for are intolerance, anti-intellectualism and anger.
I'd be interested to hear how you think we can work with Trump to achieve Retrotopia. You seem to think he will improve things, and listen. What exactly would you say to him?
11/16/16, 5:11 PM
Paul said...
11/16/16, 5:12 PM
rapier said...
Not that anyone is doing Left anymore. If you can find the Left in the Communist Party run China do tell.
I know I am doing JMG a little disservice here but these things need to be fleshed out.
11/16/16, 5:20 PM
Joel Caris said...
Yep. I've been trying to have calm conversations with whomever I can in the aftermath of this election. Living now in, uh, Portland, let's just say that I'm speaking primarily with Clinton supporters; if I've spoken with any Trump ones, they haven't been forthright about it.
It is a little bit crazy what a tightrope it feels like to talk about some of the issues you laid out here that I believe are behind Trump's win in a city that has to a certain degree plunged into fury, outrage, and disbelief. That's a bit of an exaggeration, mind you; the city is still moving right along, despite the protests, and I think people are slowly starting to get over it. But yeah, I can't bring myself to keep my mouth shut or to just go along with the "Well, they're all just a bunch of racists, etc" party line, and I've been stepping very carefully in seeking out those who are willing to listen to a different, more honest narrative versus those who just want to lash out and rage against the world.
The one thing I'll say, from here in the heart of a liberal city, is that I've been able to find a surprising number of people who I've been able to talk to honestly about this, and who are open to hearing the thought that voters were motivated more by honest and legitimate interests than outright hate. It's interesting, because in a number of conversations I feel like it bounces back and forth--there will be tentative agreement on class issues, but then a "deplorables" talking point (without actual use of that word) will pop right back in. I generally don't push too hard, but ease back into the alternate narrative, trying to coax out some alternate and less comfortable ways of viewing the world.
I like to think I've helped a tiny bit. There's a lot of fury out there, but I think there's a lot of hopeful receptivity. As the protests have gone on downtown, I've opted to instead have conversations I hope are helpful and to survey the political landscape in the hopes of finding small openings for me to push the Democratic party toward a recognition of its failures and a willingness to fight for everyone with legitimate grievances, even when they're white or male or live in a rural area or say crass things, the way so many do. I hope maybe I'm helping bridge the divide just a little.
I don't want to see what happens otherwise.
Thank you for this essay. I'll look for people I can share it with, and I hope it catches on just as much, if not more, as the other essays you've written about Trump and this election.
Oh, and a double P.S. First of all, I've been unveiling a deindustrial science fiction story on my Litterfall blog in recent weeks (amongst a bit of chatter on the election) and would encourage anyone who's interested to check out the first and second installments. (Interestingly enough, it's set in Portland and features civil unrest.) Also, the third issue of Into the Ruins is now shipping to subscribers and is available for order. I just had a friend on Facebook comment that this is basically now nonfiction. Not yet, of course, but onward we slide down the slope of decline.
11/16/16, 5:21 PM
Armata said...
Thank you for being a voice of reason and sanity in these crazy times. I have been forwarding your blog's recent posts to a lot of people I know to help them gain a better understanding of what is going on behind all the shouting, propaganda and vilification.
I voted for Donald Trump because I saw him as being a better bet than Hillary Clinton. A major factor in that was Hillary's role as a shill for Wall Street and the rest of the status quo. I was disgusted in the extreme that the Obama administration did not prosecute a single Wall Street bankster for their outrageously and brazenly corrupt criminal conduct, conduct that very nearly brought about another global depression in 2008. As we all know, Hillary played a key role in President Obama's first turn, even if she wasn't directly involved in economic policy. She was certainly his designated successor and the last thing we needed was Obama's third term, which is what we would have gotten. I saw a vote for Hillary as a vote for the same ruinous status quo that is leading this country over a cliff. At least with Trump we have the possibility of reform, although I have no illusions about whether or not we will see enough changes in the right direction to matter. We will just have to wait and see. But at least the possibility of positive change and bringing American jobs back home is better than no hope at all.
The disaster that is the Unaffordable Care Act was another issue that influenced my decision. I am currently insured through my employer, but as we all know, the predatory bipartisan consensus of the Republicrat and Dempublican parties has devastated the American labor market and who knows if I will continue to have a job that provides health insurance? I also have friends and relatives who have seen their insurance premiums skyrocket thanks to Obamacare, so that was another factor. The prospect of having to buy my own health insurance through the Obamacare system and either pay ridiculous and escalating rates with sky-high deductibles and co-pays or pay the fine and take my chances with no health insurance is a scary one, especially given the labor market that wage class Americans face these days.
Finally, Hillary's incessant warmongering frankly scared me, as did the warmongering of her neocon buddies. Dmitry Orlov once wrote that the two scariest words in the English language are "Victoria Nuland" and I agree wholeheartedly, knowing about her track record with regards to Ukraine and Russia. As someone who comes from a military background and has friends and family who are still in the military, I am very much relieved we probably won't be going to war with Syria and/or Russia.
I have friends and relatives who are still in uniform who breathed a sigh of relief when Trump won. Now they won't have to go fight in Syria or find out first-hand just how effective the anti-missile defenses and electronic countermeasures on our warships are against the latest Russian anti-ship missiles. I suspect a sizeable percentage of those missiles would get through and we would have a lot of good men and women going to meet Davy Jones in a hurry if that happened. All it would take is one or two P-270 Moskit, P-700 Granit or P-800 Oniks supersonic cruise missiles getting through to sink most warships. Anyone who doubts just how deadly these missiles are should watch this video footage from the Russian Navy of two P-800's being test fired.
The revelations about Hillary's emails and the Clinton Foundation didn't play a very big role in my decision. For me, they just confirmed something I think most of us knew all along, that Trump's nickname for Hillary Clinton, Crooked Hillary, was very aptly chosen.
11/16/16, 5:59 PM
Howard Skillington said...
Then there is the Democratic establishment, who made it very clear today that they have no intention of learning a lesson from last week’s debacle, by doubling down with the biggest Wall Street tool in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, for minority leader.
If four or more years of a Trump administration results in the utter annihilation of the Democratic Party, and the creation of a new party dedicated to the constituency which it has betrayed, then liberals will have much to thank The Donald for, whether they will ever admit that or not.
11/16/16, 6:03 PM
marxmarv said...
I've been privileged to be in the same (large) room with Ferrett once or twice, and if a little intel helps you understand anything, he is a white male sci-fi author and househusband of a white female corporate lawyer, both in Hillary's favored 40-65 "apres ma 401(k)" constituency, and therefore his class interests are 200% in with bourgeois liberalism. As such, it's deemed an exclusive right of his class to judge others as deserving or undeserving and to distribute the proceeds (ostensibly) accordingly.
Ferrett is NO leftist. Leftists want to unite the working class. Liberals want to divide it. He is as near as I have seen to the whole of neoliberalism in one sentient carbon-based life form.
That said, there's a good case to be made from the Podesta Papers that the Democratic Party's primary was nothing more than a highly stage-managed reality show, with a predestined outcome. Even Trump's free "Pied Piper" media blitz was a Democratic campaign strategy. The Party's anti-Sanders "socialist Jew" strategy was drawn up by Democratic PR hack Mandy Grunwald. There are also plenty of ads for protesters on Craigslist in major markets. This whole election smells factory, not organic -- and people were voting against the source of the stench.
Finally, I seem to recall in some comment on a thread long ago that you predicted a color revolution in the US right around now. You predicted it would be Russia, but in fact, it's our perma-jilted Ukrainian friend Mr. Soros working on the homeland. I'm giving you full credit anyway; Anti-Russia is as good as when money's at stake.
11/16/16, 6:11 PM
Justin said...
Last weekend, I ate dinner with my family and another very salary-class family. The attendant two-hours hate was... unpleasant. The criticism of whatever rednecks are and their anger that white women somehow violated the sisterhood by voting for someone who at least promised to keep their fathers, husbands, brothers and sons home from war and employed in some sort of dignified capacity was repulsive. I hate the culture I belong to and am incredibly pleased to see them finally experiencing cognitive dissonance.
11/16/16, 6:26 PM
DaShui said...
Hey ADJMG,
Here is a fb post by a guy in Texas that teaches foraging. As far as I know he does not read your blog, but he sounds exactly like u.
"Yarrow has been used around the world throughout time as a strong medicine used for everything from sword wounds to helping babies sleep. It's all over Texas right now so if your health insurance costs have skyrocketed like mine have you should probably harvest some for self-treatment. Learn more here: http://www.foragingtexas.com/2008/09/yarrow.html #freemedicine #foragingtexas #merriwetherforager"
11/16/16, 6:33 PM
canon fodder said...
Excellent post as usual
Thanks for the reference to Ferrett Steinmetz’s article. As you say, he had some good points, but missed the real issues behind the election results. Part of the problem is illustrated by the quote you used: “We have to reach out to people who hate us.” How do you have a conversation with someone you think hates you? They’ll soon pick up on the underlying assumption and the discussion will probably sour. This will only provide confirmation to the bias that these are “people who hate us.” Until this fundamental perception of half of America changes, I don’t see them making much headway on convincing that half to vote the “proper” way.
I am inclined to believe that this year’s amateur theatrics are on the surface similar to the prior quadrennial hissy fits but different under the surface. There are several things going on behind the mob in the streets.
First, many of the protests are seeded by non-profits providing ideology, manpower, funding, and logistics to whatever crowd is willing to be herded in the appropriate direction. Want $15/hr? Come protest the election with us. While not a grassroots movement since it’s directed by the liberal elites, the protests can give the appearance of a grassroots movement that can be leveraged for both legitimacy and grounds for further social unrest. This is similar to the playbook used in other nations for undermining and/or overthrowing governments.
Second, none of the Democratic leadership is speaking out against the protests. Clinton certainly hasn’t, for many reasons. If she and the Clinton Foundation want to remain a clearinghouse for party access and favors, she needs the Democratic base to see that the monster Trump stole the election, not that she lost it. President Obama is electing to stay quiet even though he’s in the best spot to calm the waters without harming the Democratic Party. Perhaps it’s his passive aggressive way of de-legitimizing the Trump Presidency, or maybe because he’s in on the liberal elite’s plan for further social unrest. Their silence gives a certain tacit legitimacy to the protests and the underlying causes they represent.
Third, the mainstream media are doing their best to legitimize the protests as something more than a pity party. Before this election, I would have passed it off as their normal underwhelming reporting. However, the obvious bias and leading narratives displayed this last year are in the fore here as well. Just watching the coverage made me believe they were given a sheet by the paid organizers as to which people to watch out for and what narratives to push. No dissent or analytical thought allowed.
These things point towards a future with more antagonistic partisanship, where public discourse is reduced to labels and expletives, and differences are manipulated to increase discord. Very similar to what you said about a democracy in crisis.
I’m finding many similarities to the late ‘60s social protests, though they were truer grassroots movements than we have now. Buffalo Springfield captured it in their song “For What Its Worth.” One line I especially like: “A thousand people in the street/ Singing songs and carrying signs/ Mostly say, hooray for our side.”
One last thing to ponder. As president, Trump has no more power than Obama had. Millions are afraid of what Trump will do, but none protested what Obama could do. If the power in a position is only acceptable when the person who holds it is of like mind, then perhaps that position has too much power.
11/16/16, 6:38 PM
Eric S. said...
11/16/16, 6:39 PM
tolkienguy said...
11/16/16, 6:56 PM
LL Pete said...
11/16/16, 6:58 PM
Juandonjuan said...
In the NW NC agricultural scene, the new spin on sustainable agriculture is still too heavily dependent on being the market garden for the nearest metro area. Asheville is probably the best example of a successful model, but they've been at it for a long time.
11/16/16, 7:01 PM
W. B. Jorgenson said...
Both Facebook and Google are now taking steps to combat "fake" news. I wonder what else will be caught by this...
11/16/16, 7:03 PM
siliconguy said...
The war-mongering was a big issue for me; I do wish the Republicans would throw McCain out of the party. I'm tired of him too.
And the Clinton's history on gun control isn't on your list, but it is most certainly on mine.
Otherwise I don't see much to argue about. Interestingly, a comic named Jonathan Pie has a great (but very profane) video out on the election and makes basically the same points. Traditionally, part of a Jester's job description was to remind the King of unpleasant facts. The rant certainly fits in that category.
11/16/16, 7:09 PM
ganv said...
While people may believe that Trump would be less militarily adventurous and bring back jobs, the reality is that these are both pretty unlikely. Leaders with his authoritarian and anti-dialog streak usually end up in armed conflicts. And his ignorance about actual trade economics makes it pretty likely we will have fewer jobs in America, at least in the short run.
You are absolutely right that the left has an irrational tendency to see everything in the lens of sexism and racism when people are really just looking for someone who will fight for their interests. When the academic and media elites tell rural America about 'white privilege', they reinforce Trump's message: "only I will fight for you". You can call it racist if you want, but the "cold math" as the blog notes ensures that you won't get elected telling people they need to set aside their own interests and vote for the interests of people who have it worse than they do.
11/16/16, 7:51 PM
Candace said...
I read somewhere that Bill Clinton told Hillary's team that they should give more consideration to rural voters and they laughed at the suggestion. I think he should have repeated the mantra he had when he was running (It's the economy, stupid.). It's not like there wasn't evidence (http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2016/01/12/six-years-later-93-of-u-s-counties-havent-recovered-from-recession-study-finds/).
I feel like the Democrats couldn't admit/see that doctoring statistics doesn't actually fix the problem.
I think the old wisdom used to be that if the economy was going well, the encumbrant party would win,...if not the other party would win.
@JNT+
The main difference I see between Fred Haliot and Trump is party structure. Fred had Brown Shirts in place when he took power, Trump does not have a parallel group at his disposal. Are some police/military figures sympathetic to Trump, I'm sure there are some, but there would also be many who are not. Trump is having to fish around for his team, let alone recruiting jack boots. It's the guy with the civic group that can replace current police/government systems that will start to pose the real threat. He might be able to develop a group, but it doesn't exist now. I think that is one of the hallmarks to look for.
11/16/16, 7:58 PM
Leo Santilli said...
A post of interest to this: You Are Still Crying Wolf
http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/11/16/you-are-still-crying-wolf/
I like this bit
"Stop saying that being against crime is a dog whistle for racism. Have you ever met a crime victim? They don’t like crime. I work with people from a poor area, and a lot of them have been raped, or permanently disfigured, or had people close to them murdered. You know what these people have in common? They don’t like crime When you say “the only reason someone could talk about law and order is that they secretly hate black people, because, y’know, all criminals are black”, not only are you an idiot, you’re a racist."
11/16/16, 8:02 PM
Blind Webster said...
Besides the myth of progress many liberal young folk only seem to be able to model human groups by sex or race. Listen carefully to an interview and you find them trying to stretch legit observations of class struggle,culture clash, or immigration questions into a race or sexism paradigm. Reading the attacks on Stephen Bannon today they're now trying to stretch him into being a white nationalist. Many of the authors are in their 20s and seem to not be propagandists but true believers that Trump is a Racist. This is one of the big reasons the old internet culture supported Trump.
The general population doesn't realize that Reddit - the_donald, 295k people strong now, and 4chan /pol/ were doing heavy grassroots lifting for Trump: reading and analyzing massive wikileak dumps, debunking the mainstream media, making memes like no others. (The joke is its weaponized-autism, i.e., masses of people that will sit on the internet 16 hours a day reading documents like its an obsession) Trump allies, including the semi-ally Fox, clearly started to pull stories straight from the_donald the last few months.
Tying right in with your myth of progress theme the "internet-right" has a very good concept of the future not being linear. The running joke on the forum was "because its Current Year". There's numerous clips of people including Trudeau, Clinton, and John Oliver saying "because its 2015/2016" as an answer to policy questions. The other joke (joke on the internet, serious in real life) response being "because you're a white male" to shut down discussion. The social media I follow seems to be doubling down on all that type of rhetoric.
I've seen almost zero racism at the_donald. Most of the people there voted Trump and spents hours every day supporting him because of his stand against the corrupt media, corrupt government, PC culture, and the PCing and liberal take over of the internet. It's hard to remember how i found the Archdruidreport 8 or 9 years ago. Something like Digg->Reddit->Zerohedge->Kunster->JMG. There were so many diverse opinions present a decade ago. Nowadays it would be something like Facebook->Elon Musk is the greatest and the patriarchy is the root of all problems. It'll be interesting to see if 4 years of Trump will break this trend. I suspect the money will move more towards physical goods producers and that will give them power in the information realm.
11/16/16, 8:06 PM
Ben Johnson said...
In short, while half of the response to this election by the left has been hysterical, I think the fears of minority communities here are more than justified. In my view, it does a disservice to those communities who harbor legitimate concerns to draw a false equivalence between fears of forced deportation (which Trump has essentially promised) and affluent liberals throwing a fit.
11/16/16, 8:16 PM
Justin said...
https://www.wikileaks.com/podesta-emails/emailid/15560
11/16/16, 8:25 PM
Lawrence Bohler said...
The things you say Trump promised to change - trade agreements, war drum beating, immigration taking American jobs, elimination of health insurance, etc, are the core objectives of the Republican party. They (Republicans) are going to play clueless Trump like a Patsy to get their objectives accomplished.
11/16/16, 8:27 PM
Bryan L. Allen said...
11/16/16, 8:47 PM
Mark Luterra said...
Thanks for another collection of clear thoughts. If nothing else, this election has forced me to do some hard thinking politically to reconcile my distaste for Trump as a personality with the fact that many of the people supporting him did so for reasons that I can agree with.
There are two points I would like to address. The first is the racism, homophobia, Islamophobia, and general minority-bashing exhibited by an angry, vocal minority of Trump supporters. At times Trump seemed to condone this behavior, or at least to be glad of their passionate support. To my friends, this is the greatest barrier to accepting a Trump presidency and even being willing to engage in dialogue with his supporters. I had a conversation yesterday with a coworker who felt that any conversation discussing the negative effects of illegal immigration had to be motivated by covert racism - the assumption being that it is simply easier to target immigrants as job-stealers than it is to target them directly for the color of their skin.
I think that there is a responsibility on the left to accept that many - the vast majority perhaps - of Trump's supporters are not supporting him because they are racist or hateful toward one group or another. I also think there is a responsibility on the right to call out such behavior within their ranks - such as you describe in your own community when the KKK came visiting, but on a larger scale. I could draw a parallel to the feminist argument that men have a responsibility to call out body-shaming, cat-calling and other such callous male behavior when they see it. In short, if you find yourself in the same group as people who are doing unacceptable things, and you agree that those things are unacceptable, then you ought to speak out about them to avoid being tarred by a too-broad brush (which in this case is being directed against anyone who voted for Trump).
The second point, which I suspect you will address in the future, is that while Trump may have won the election by mentioning a problem that has been carefully avoided by politicians to date (the ongoing economic immiseration of a majority of Americans), the "solutions" that he offers are not going to make any meaningful difference. In short, the salary class and elite are benefiting from the current state of affairs. Their current strategy of "distraction at all costs" has reached its pull date, and in its place we are getting Trump's vision of "call out the problem and offer solutions that appease the masses but won't affect the elite." My exasperation is not so much with voters who identified with Trump's message; it is with the observation that so many of them believed it. Rather than targeting policies that allow corporations to pay below minimum wage to undocumented immigrants - an anti-corporate message - he chose to target the immigrants themselves as "rapists and criminals." This perpetuates the strategy of redirecting the anger of the lower and middle classes from the logical target of the folks at the top toward the folks at the very bottom who are somehow getting more than they deserve.
Trump has already chosen a Goldman Sachs alumnus as chief strategist, and he is expected to select another as his treasury secretary. In doing so he will follow in the footsteps of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama. This may have been a historic election in many ways, but when it comes to the intimate ties between big money and government, nothing is changing at all. If Trump can't make the economy grow (and I'm sure he can't), then his policies only stand to exacerbate wealth inequality in this country.
If you're interested, I wrote about this in more length on my blog last night: http://www.luterra.com/blog/?p=824
11/16/16, 8:50 PM
Marinhomelander said...
This country is of course marching into a full blown recession. That will be blamed on Trump by the people that helped create it back when Bill Clinton was president, who kept heaping the debt on us, destroying jobs, hoodwinking us into thinking that we could borrow our way to prosperity.
A group of us that meet once a week to drink beer and talk about things, sort of a bookclub for guys, without the books, have decided to go on strike to support Trump.
We are going to avoid all discretionary purchases until he's sworn in. Then it'll be time to buy things we've been doing without.
11/16/16, 8:51 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Wes, exactly. Many of the Trump voters I know spoke favorably of Sanders; they didn't like the label "socialist," but they liked a lot of his policy stances. I'm pretty sure that if the Dems had nominated him, he would have won with a very solid mandate.
RAnderson, no question -- if Trump pulls an Obama and ditches all his campaign promises the moment he's inaugurated, to quote a certain political figure of the not too distant past, "this sucker's going down." And I don't mean that in a good way.
JWN+, not so. Hitler was pounding the antisemitic drums long before he became Chancellor -- the difference, of course, was that antisemitism was socially acceptable in Germany, and indeed throughout the western world, at that time. One of the reasons why Godwin's Law is so good a tool for ferreting out sloppy thinking is that "Hitler" and "fascist" so often serve as catchall labels meaning next to nothing, other than dislike for whatever's labeled with them.
Drhooves, nah, the Democrats aren't going to favor wealth distribution. Far too much of the party's base consists of affluent liberals who have no desire to see their wealth distributed!
Five8Charlie, I only know one person who admits she stayed home rather than voting, so I don't even have a useful sample. I wonder if it would be possible to find out why so many people sat this one out.
Mr. Bystander, yes, I've read Scott Adams on that; he definitely gets kudos for being one of the few who called it, but I'm less than convinced by his NLP-centric argument.
Larry, yes, I'd heard that. It wouldn't surprise me at all if someone on the Democratic side of things (cough, cough, George Soros, cough, cough) had fantasies of pulling off a color revolution. I wonder if anybody's thought about what would happen if all those well-armed people in flyover country decided that they had to rally to Trump's defense...
M Smith, thank you. I try to wallop both sides more or less equally; it helps that in most cases, they both richly deserve it. ;-)
Cortes, I have to say I'm baffled by the link you cite. Why shouldn't a parent hope that their child has a happy sex life, and find the notion of parental ownership of their children rather creepy?
David, fascinating. As for the parties, I think both of them are arguably in rigor mortis. What will take their place is another question.
O. Douglas, you're welcome and thank you.
Eric, that's exactly my point. If the Democratic Party remains stuck in their current politics of exclusion and blame, the most likely outcome of the 2020 election will be Trump's reelection by the kind of landslide that will leave the Democratic Party in the wilderness for a generation. If they're to have the chance to defend their constituencies, they've got to learn to drop the vilification and figure out how to speak to middle America.
11/16/16, 8:55 PM
Gabby Zdrazilova said...
Looking from the outside, it is an interesting spectacle. People on the "left" are not synonymous with the Clintons and the Democratic party which is Neoliberal, unless left now equals Wall Street and Silicon Valley money + identity politics. The U.S. and most other democracies today are not left/right but up/down - those in the "up" category have to set it up as if there is a left/right (hence identity politics. Imagine if the people were fully aware that there the "up" serves only itself (see Bush's support of Hillary as an example that busted the left/right open). Even Americans are starting to see through that. People are disoriented and interestingly, Trump is uniquely positioned to shake things up. That is why he was so demonized and frankly, I was shocked he was allowed to win - some cock up somewhere - it took hours for Clinton to concede. Can't imagine it was fun to get to her to accept that, given how entitled she's felt all along.
One thing I most noticed as I was raised in a dictatorship that maybe some others may not have noticed. Trump's acceptance speech. He went out of his way to signal that the army is behind him - lists number of generals plus many decorated soldiers. Then he singles out the CIA (who ever mentions the CIA during acceptance speech?)and then the cops. The thing is, North Americans I talked to about this attribute this to law and order agenda. I am not at all convinced. The establishment he went against is extremely powerful - but perhaps Trump has the men with guns. Given the humiliation the various patriots who serve not greed but country, would it be surprising they were behind a strongman who promises to bring a semblance of honour back to the country? Watch him and not for the reasons everyone is discussing.
11/16/16, 9:05 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Please note that I never said he was a plaster saint; his role in American history, like that of all pivotal figures, has nothing to do with moral goodness or with making choices that I like, and everything to do with the resolution, one way or another, of a rising spiral of conflict that has rendered the previous political arrangements unworkable. At best, a lot of people are going to get hurt; at worst, well, my prediction of domestic insurgency and/or civil war here in the US in the next decade or two still stands. It's possible that a Trump presidency, if he keeps his promises and his policies actually work, will head that off -- but we'll see.
Mark, hmm! I didn't happen to know that. Merci!
Helix, I know. I hope that Trump has the common sense to try to put a brake to that. If not, things could get very ugly indeed.
Phil, if the Democrats do that, they're making the same mistake that the GOP made after Roosevelt's election in 1932. In 1936, they basically ran on the same platform as before, and convinced themselves they were going to win; with the advantages of incumbency, and millions of voters at his back convinced that he'd made their lives at least a little better, FDR won one of the most spectacular landslide victories in American history, taking every state but Maine and Vermont. It's unlikely that Trump will do that well, but if the Democrats run another political insider on a platform that consists solely of their idea of business as usual, they're going to be shellacked.
Peter, if you want to insert a different verb in place of "elected," be my guest.
Eric, in the long run, of course, you're quite correct -- the Long Descent waits for nobody. In the short run -- and 2020 is the short run -- be prepared to be surprised. So much of the economic collapse in flyover country is the product of deliberate policies that benefit the affluent at the expense of everyone else that if Trump manages to get even a good fraction of his proposed policies enacted, things may well get noticeably better for a lot of people in middle America, for a while. Just for a while, but in politics, that's enough...
Isaac, understood. Trump is a crapshoot, and the interesting thing is that a lot of his voters realize that. They voted for him because a vote for Clinton guaranteed the perpetuation of an intolerable status quo. Now we get to see what he actually does. If he backs away from war with Russia, scraps a bunch of trade agreements, and reenacts Glass-Steagall, he'll have done more good than any of the last four presidents -- but I'm aware that he may also do a lot of harm to a lot of people, and that also has to be weighed in the balance.
Moshe, how did Bernie's write-in vote compare to the minor parties?
11/16/16, 9:14 PM
American Herstory X said...
That said, I voted against that genocidal maniac who just happens to be another female because I didn't feel like staring down the barrel of potential nuclear destruction for the next four to eight years.
11/16/16, 9:30 PM
rharper said...
Rudy Harper
11/16/16, 9:41 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Nancy, er, how is it inaccurate to compare the tantrums of the GOP with those of the Dems? Having lived through several of both, I find them more or less interchangeable.
Mark, I think you'll like the constitutional amendment I'll be proposing a few posts from now!
Varun, that last sentence of yours earns you tonight's gold star. Exactly; if you want an option that isn't being offered you by the status quo, you need to get out there and create it.
Little Al, of course the wall comment comes across as "hateful," when you've been told by the media over and over again that it can only be taken in that way. That there might be good reasons for a nation to have control of its own borders isn't a concept the media likes to talk about, you know.
Raymond, in the words of Wowbagger the Indefinitely Prolonged, "a being can dream!"
Revere, good. It might be enough to pry loose social liberalism from economic neoliberalism, you know.
John, the reason I use the term "left" is that it's the term that a lot of people who support the Democratic Party use for themselves. It's an abstract label, after all.
Will, many thanks for the link, and your memorable summary!
Repent, I'm not at all sure Trump will follow Adams' advice! Having a bunch of Portland activists screaming, throwing bricks, and lighting fires to protest his election solidifies his standing in the eyes of the GOP and his own core constituencies, you know. If he simply lets them throw their hissy fit, and goes about the business of getting ready for the inauguration, they're going to end up looking foolish and he's going to look calm and statesmanlike. (His restaurant visit last night was more of the same -- a deft way of signaling to his supporters that he despises the press as much as they do.)
Keith, if you're prepping, you should certainly keep doing so; as I noted above, the Long Descent waits for nobody. I do think that if Trump can get Glass-Steagall reenacted, that will help considerably with the banking problem -- you'll notice that the banking industry was much more stable while that was in place than at any time before or afterwards. Other than that, no argument.
Tom, one of the things I find most fascinating about the American left today is that they're such a case study in the return of the repressed. They think hate is awful, and so of course they label other people as "hateful" and hate them with all their hearts -- all the while insisting that they're doing no such thing. Jung would have had a field day; talk about projecting those things you can't stand about yourself onto others...
11/16/16, 9:42 PM
Ares Olympus said...
The worst lesson the democrats might find in this election is that Trump's presidency will be a disaster over the next 4 years and so they might choose to just let the pendulum swing too far, and trust it'll swing back, and 2020 we can go back to forgetting about middle America.
And even my state of Minnesota only held a weak Democratic vote on a large metro area, but with way too many rural counties going 70%+ Trump, and they had to add an 80% category! And more interestingly Trump barely got more votes here than Romney, but it was Hillary who couldn't get the votes that Obama did.
On your list of issues, I most see #4, "Punishing the Democratic Party." myself, whether that punishing was done through voting for Trump or not voting at all. And Michael Moore's TrumpLand, and the bootleg copies explaining the reasoning of the "Rustbelt" a desire to blow up the system, democratic suicide.
But whatever degree Clinton was a hawk, no one can seriously consider a Trump presidency will be dovish or isolationist. When Trump says "Make America Great Again", seeing how he sees Muslims and Mexicans, being great to him means finding scapegoats to punish, and even if he doesn't do any major invasions, bombing will always be popular, like Ted Cruz's desire to use laser-focused carpet bombing of until the sand glows.
And with the Dakota pipeline standoff, you can be nearly sure that a President Trump will be very happy to do some native-bashing, and help the pipeline companies get their way. And its easy to imagine Clinton's "Deplorables" will be cheering President Trump all the way.
And that's what I really fear. Since President Trump will not be able to "Fix everything" as he claims, the alternative is to identify sequential scapegoats to punish, no matter how unlikely they are the source of any real trouble.
One voice I've listened to recently is Jonathan Haidt, who first came to attention by observing value systems and seeing Conservatives as having a more balanced set of values, while Liberals too easily got pulled into fairness, and oppression narratives on otherwise ordinary competition. And he sees Social media as a part of our new divide, where no one needs to be isolated, and whatever your grievances, you can find others who will validate them.
https://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_can_a_divided_america_heal
The Right has seemed excited to claim that President Obama has increased racial strife, via movements like BLM, while it is clear that social media is the uniting factor in that. And now White Power movements have been given their light in the sun, and however much Trump says "Stop it", he set the tone on how to treat people who you disagree with, and that Political Correctness is the enemy and direct expressions of anger and rage are how you get a voice and get power.
So you have to think all of this is going to multiply, and each sides transgressions will embolden the other side, and justify further police power to restore "Law and order" and everyone will be painted by their worst behaviors, just like George W. Bush reflected that the Dallas funerals.
And we are a country of guns, and many vulnerable people who feel safer with a gun in hand. This can't end well.
11/16/16, 9:44 PM
Genevieve Hawkins said...
11/16/16, 10:02 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Bluebird, of course there's plenty of intolerance from the right. There's just as much of it from the left, and just as much hate speech. As I noted in last week's post, the politics of personal demonization is a problem straight across the political spectrum, and all sides need to stop and think about what they've been saying and doing. As for Trump, we'll see what he actually does; as I noted earlier, if he backs away from confrontation with Russia, tears up some trade agreements, and reenacts some form of Glass-Steagall, he'll have done more good than any of the last four presidents -- though admittedly that's a pretty low bar. I'd like to see him begin the process of extracting the US from its imperial entanglements; for reasons I'll discuss soon in a post, that could spare all of us a lot of grief.
Paul, based on what I've heard from Trump voters, it's not a factor at all. Their core concern about mass illegal immigration is that it's been used to drive down wages and benefits.
Rapier, you're talking as though this abstract label "left" has some inherent meaning. It doesn't; look into its history, and you'll find that it's meant a galaxy of things. I use it because most of the people I'm talking about use it of themselves.
Joel, glad to hear that you're trying to talk to people. The thing is, as a moderate Burkean conservative, I've got no stake in either party; the GOP's stances on most issues are as alien to me as the Democrats' -- but it's important that neither party has a permanent stranglehold on power, and for that reason I'd like to see the Dems extract their heads from their backsides and stand up for the things that used to win them the support of so many working people of all colors and ethnicities. That was the point of this week's post, after all! I'm also delighted to hear that the latest issue is out; once I get my copy, I'll put something at the bottom of the following week's post.
Armata, you're welcome and thank you. You speak for a lot of people I know in flyover country.
Howard, if the Dems double down on a failed strategy, they're going to get hammered in four years. I've been looking over the history of comparable cases in the past, and there are very clear patterns to follow. I wonder if they have anybody who bothers to learn from history...
Marxmarv, if Soros et al. think they can drum up a color revolution with the current crop of professional protesters, based on the fairly large sample of the type I knew in Seattle and Ashland, he's got another think coming. Do you recall what happened in Romania when activists tried to destabilize the Iliescu government in 1990? Iliescu called in the coal miners from the countryside, and there were some very ugly scenes as the activists were beaten and driven out of Bucharest. Think of how many well-armed men and women in the flyover states are Trump supporters, and imagine what would happen if Trump called on loyal American citizens to stop an attempted coup...
Justin, I suspect a lot of people stayed home to protest the wretched selection of candidates. As I noted several times before the election, there were easily ten thousand Americans better fitted to be president than Donald Trump, but Hillary Clinton was not one of them.
DaShui, it's not an accident that I've got plenty of yarrow growing in the back yard.
Canon Fodder, no argument at all.
11/16/16, 10:27 PM
Frank & Jessica said...
11/16/16, 10:34 PM
Nancy Sutton said...
Plus, when our attention is so skillfully 'contained' in a particular arena, other ideas and possibilities are relegated to the shadows. This works to the advantage of ... who? We could be discussing the ingenious National Popular Vote campaign (B Boxer's bill is a sop); the Chicago Plan (google it); how the 'growth imperative' = the inscrutable money creation reality; how modern capitalism would not exist without it's roots in 'wealth creation' via chattel/wage slavery etc... and how our abysmal ignorance of these, and many other, absolutely critical facts makes us easy prey for the plutocrats. While they fan the emotional flames on both sides.
As long as 'dramatization' passes for analysis these days, maybe you could write another superb narrative that explicates the economic and monetary reality (and history) as wonderfully as you've done with technological possibility in Retrotopia. :)
11/16/16, 10:40 PM
Roberta said...
There is one factor in "support" for Clinton which I don't think has been given adequate acknowledgement. This is anecdotal, but of three women who detested Clinton but voted for her anyway, all had experienced a "grab her by the" incident. They are uneasy about whether there will be increasing social acceptance of random groping of young women. This behavior is all too common in the U.S., but extremely common in some other countries, so it seems like a realistic fear. I suspect that quite a few Clinton voters were people who could not bring themselves to vote for the Donald for this most visceral reason.
11/16/16, 10:46 PM
barry_NZ said...
11/16/16, 10:48 PM
John Michael Greer said...
LL Pete, sorry I couldn't help you with the World Series; I know squat about baseball!
Juandonjuan, exactly. We've had twenty-four years of neoliberal, globalist, open-borders economics, and the results are in: they produce obscene profits for the already rich and misery for the working class. Now let's draw the logical conclusions and try something else.
WB, maybe we should start a meme that zombies were responsible for Clinton's loss. They've already tried just about everything else...
Siliconguy, so noted! You've been added to my unscientific data base.
Ganv, maybe so, but I think there's actually a fair chance Trump may actually back away from confrontation with the Russians and improve the job market at least a little. He's already been on the phone with Putin, and has reiterated that he intends to pursue a less hostile line over Syria -- and so much of the job losses in middle America have been caused by offshoring that terminating the trade agreements that facilitate that, and slapping penalties on companies that do so, might reverse the trend at least a little. But we'll see.
Candace, Bill Clinton could have won this election. I don't like the man, but he's a brilliant campaigner and politician, and Hillary is neither.
Leo, those first two sentences of yours ought to be put on the business end of a branding iron and applied to some very sensitive backsides. Thank you!
Webster, interesting. I've had very little direct contact with the internet-right, other than a few people who've commented here and flagged their presence by saying "praise Kek" or what have you; by and large, they've been more polite, more willing to engage in dialogue, and less prone to spew out thoughtstoppers than their opposite numbers from the left. If you're right and they aren't into racism, that's another plus in their column.
Ben, as I've said rather more than once -- starting in January -- I'm convinced that Trump's use of language that the left considers unacceptable was a deliberate choice intended to signal to his main constituencies that he wasn't a "suit." His entire strategy was based on distancing himself from the political mainstream, in which politically correct language policing is de rigueur. So no, he couldn't have done other than he did -- not if he wanted to get the enthusiasm of the abandoned working class voters that he needed to seize the GOP nomination. The lesson I'd suggest you take from that is not that US is awash with racists; it's that the US is awash with people who have no time for the language policing just mentioned, which is not the same thing.
Justin, thanks for the link.
Lawrence, um, I think you're letting partisan loyalty get in the way of reality testing. No, the Democrats weren't interested in doing the things I listed -- I dare you, for example, to find me any significant number of Democratic politicians who showed the least interest in enforcing the immigration laws. As for your characterization of the GOP, sure -- but Trump does not represent the mainstream of the GOP, which is why so many of them fought him tooth and nail. Look at what the man himself has said, and what he's still saying he's going to do, rather than insisting that all Republicans qua Republicans have to fit your stereotype.
11/16/16, 10:51 PM
Joel said...
At least one member of my family has been targeted for this type of harassment. While this wasn't the beer bottle to the face or the swastika painted on a church that some people had to endure (a partial list here, it was explicitly about her race and was tied to an expected change in Federal policy in addition to an unraveling of norms.
People I know from Ireland (including those who have occasionally allowed their visas to lapse for one reason or another) do not receive the same treatment as people who look Mexican but were born in the USA, which makes me think the response would, in fact, be different if the immigration were from Canada.
What's especially sad to me is that the attackers, in general, seem to feel they are breaking free of oppression: that violence, property damage, and threats of violence against groups that seem different were some basic right that they had been denied for decades.
I realize an elected official's policies matter more than their persona, but much of Trump's portrayal as racist (and Steve Bannon's flirtation with white nationalist ideology) has helped make this presidential race double as a referendum on political correctness. People are taking liberties with each other on that basis.
11/16/16, 10:51 PM
Rob Rhodes said...
11/16/16, 11:01 PM
patriciaormsby said...
A brief rundown on Japan's reaction to the surprise (note I'm reporting this indirectly, as it is my husband's chore to keep an eye on the TV, in case it tries anything, so this is filtered via two human beings with their own biases):
When it became apparent Trump would win, a few newscasters came out suddenly and started criticizing Clinton on air for her corruption and violence. They'd been holding back because she was the presumed winner. It seemed to be mostly women opening up like this, and I've seen a lot of dislike for Clinton among women aware of international affairs, with one commentator a couple months ago saying she disliked Clinton for forgiving her husband's philandering.
The news has subsequently focused on the TPP, which the ruling class and media have highly favored (but a short trip through the countryside, where anti-TPP placards are plastered every which way reveals Japan's own rural/urban divide). As of yesterday, there was a split among commentators as to whether Japan's economy would improve or worsen without the TPP. Today there is some talk of Asia going forward with the TPP minus the US.
For the first few days after the election they carried some news about violent demonstrations in America, but they are not interested in liberal Americans' reactions to the defeat. They present a generally positive impression of Trump, with a certain amount of dissent, and discuss the ongoing bias in America's media.
None of my students brought up the election results. I taught them Ogden Nash's "Invocation" (Senator Smoot, Republican, Ut., Is planning a ban on smut). They enjoyed it.
A nice sunny day today with a shining Fuji. I went out and shook the kiwi jungle gym to get the ripe ones to fall, and moved the avocado tree up close to our house.
Durians are impossible anywhere outside of the tropics, but I am trying to nurse a couple back to health in the greenhouse.
Still no frost. Used to occur about a month earlier.
11/16/16, 11:02 PM
Roberta said...
11/16/16, 11:08 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Mark, the problem of the violent minority is present in every corner of American (and not only American) society. Should American conservatives call out the violent minority in their midst? Of course. So should American Muslims, and every other subset of our society that has a violent minority within it. It's when partisan passions lead various groups to insist that their violent minorities have to be given a free pass while calling for the other side's to be punished that we get into the kind of mess we're in today. As for Trump's solutions, there I disagree, because tearing up the trade treaties that have facilitated offshoring jobs, and enforcing our immigration laws, will very likely improve job prospects for people in the flyover states at least to a modest extent. But we'll see, of course.
Marinhomelander, hmm! I wonder how much impact such a buyers' strike might have, if it spreads beyond your circle of friends.
Gabby, some of my readers have noted the number of generals and admirals that supported Trump in the election campaign, and suggested that the military may have backed him as a way to stop Clinton from picking a fight with Russia that the US is arguably far from certain to win. Thus you may be on to something.
Herstory, thank you for the data point. I've noticed that women especially tended to vote for Trump because of Clinton's reckless militarism, so you're far from alone.
Rharper, thank you.
Ares, there's a middle ground between empire and isolationism, you know, and I find it entirely plausible that Trump intends to move into that middle ground, away from the current empire-at-all-costs mentality. The insistence that he can't possibly do so, it seems to me, says more about the way that the Democrats turned him into a cartoon bogeyman than anything else. More generally, I'd encourage you to think about the origins of the scenario you've laid out, and compare it to the equivalent scenarios that so many Republicans were waving around to console themselves after their drubbing in 2008.
Genevieve, that may just happen.
Frank & Jessica, thank you.
Nancy, if you go back and reread my post, you might happen to notice that the only equivalency I talked about was the fact that both parties are sore losers, and whiny about it to boot, when they lose the White House. I'm not sure how you leapt from there to the things you've talked about in this comment of yours.
Roberta, understood. I'm not telling people how to vote, you know -- I'm talking about why a lot of people I know voted the way they did.
Barry, it's as left as we've got here!
Joel, and of course that's a valid point. Both candidates helped turn it into a referendum on political correctness, and I think the Clinton campaign wasn't at all aware of how that part of the vote would go.
11/16/16, 11:13 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Patricia, I loved that Nash poem when I was a child -- it made a splendid chant. "Smite, Smoot, smite for Ut.!" Thanks for the data points.
Roberta, granted. To some extent, Trump has to hand out favors to the Republicans who supported him, and to hand out other posts to potential allies within the party, so that he can count on legislative backing for at least some of his agenda. Still, we'll see. As noted above, if he pulls an Obama and abandons his constituency the moment he gets into office, things may get very ugly very quickly.
11/16/16, 11:16 PM
goedeck said...
OT: I wanted to report that I have successfully tested and achieved my ARRL Technician privileges, (got 35/35). Do you have a General, Mr. Greer?
11/16/16, 11:31 PM
Maria Rigel said...
Also, it's based on the assumption that people really vote based on policies, by comparing candidates side by side. All the evidence suggests otherwise. People don't usually think about their president like you'd think about the question: "Is this the right mechanic to fix my car?" It's much more like: "Is this the right deity to worship?" It's a lot easier to have disagreements with your friends and neighbors about mechanics than it is about deities. That's why people are much more willing to overlook the evidence, twist facts, and avoid doing their due diligence to check if their beliefs about what this deity stands for are correct, in order to arrive at the "correct" answer.
I don't vote. I've never voted. Since the whole thing was explained to me as a teenager, it was clear to me that the current system was, at best, doubtful in its ability to give people the best government possible. But I accepted that, pragmatically, generally speaking modern democracy was producing acceptable governments. That's, of course, because the times weren't too bad. Modern democracies can be terrible at giving you acceptable governments when times get difficult. That's why the Nazis got voted in Germany, many years ago. I'm not going to describe here what I think would be a better government, I could be wrong and it's another discussion. I just want to make it plain that I don't think that Trump is a terrible idea because I'm being partisan. I have, like everyone else, my ideas about what policies are right and wrong. But I don't have, and never had, pledge my allegiance and promised to worship any particular party, or even modern democracy itself.
11/16/16, 11:55 PM
Scotlyn said...
I am drawn to reflect upon the fact that, as a body needs two fully functioning legs to be balanced, so a society needs fully functioning bodies of engaged citizens to balance each other out in the pursuit of "left" goals of redistribution and shaking things up*, and "right" goals of order and conservation of the good. The truth is, we all need tongue and heart and service to be given to both, though for most of us, we will feel drawn more to one or the other side in terms of our personal inclination, giving us the prospect of a society with a left and a right leg. Phew!
(Of course, the two legs need to be in continuous communication and interaction in order to get anywhere they want to go)...
Or one could consider a model of homeostasis - for a body to maintain a desired state it needs to have mechanisms that ckeck its tendency to go too far in either direction... The left mechanism should check a society's tendency to accumulate too much in too few hands and to get fixated or stuck in the customs and habits that reinforce that, while the right mechanism should check a society's tendency to forget lessons learned and to disregard the wisdom of the ancestors. And if both checks are working, the society will be able both to know itself, and to renew itself.
11/17/16, 12:18 AM
Avery said...
It's interesting to think about what people are actually trying to accomplish with this kind of writing. I'm of the opinion that they previously took the silence of the world as a narcissistic cosmic assent that they had total control over the next page of world history. Now that silence is no longer good enough, thanks to the ballot box, so there's a sort of frantic feeling to their writing, as if they hoped that with enough eyeballs, likes, and shares, their egos can be returned to something like their pre-election state.
Rather than taking all of this personally, I hope that your readers will stand back and see this as part of a slow but massive breakdown of urban political rhetoric, which did not start with this election but stretches decades into the past, and will continue to go on for decades into the future. The myth of progress, which you've discussed for several years now, will have revelations for all of us as it unravels. Spengler says that what comes next is the Second Religiousness.
11/17/16, 12:55 AM
Indian Blogger said...
11/17/16, 2:10 AM
Ares Olympus said...
I 100% agree there is partial equivalency in any surprise shift of political power when one major party rise and another falls, and over the top rhetoric during any campaign by the losing side creates self-terror when their boogieman is elected.
And in some ways we can be glad that Trump may be a relative figurehead populist president, while a half-capable republican leadership is actually in charge, and under traditional VP politician Mike Pence, and basically we're headed more for a traditional Right "borrow and spend" leadership that economists hate, while acknowledging it is the only path left for imaginary economic growth.
James Howard Kunstler this week imagined Trump's task isn't to MAGA, but instead to created a managed contraction, and perhaps "States rights" is the next stage of this process, and now the Left is going to see the new virtue of state power, when they have no federal power left.
And we're going to slowly divide and sort ourselves out, and white supremacy can win in the south, and drive out the minorities, while the southwest will become a bigger battleground between the white and latino influences.
But President Trump doesn't look at all to be neutral in these shifts, and there will surely be demands that he follow through with his boasts of expanding deportations, starting with what Obama is already doing, but when he needs scapegoats, when the economy is not going well, surely those times are the best times to demand "law and order" however much it discriminates.
Anyway, whatever fears the Republicans had i 2008, and I guess bathroom wars were declared, and threatened innocent white girls everywhere from perverts. And now its minorities who have to be afraid, and us safe white people don't have to care, as long as things don't bother our neighborhoods.
11/17/16, 2:41 AM
Juandonjuan said...
I mean we're not talking about out here on the fringes where Archdruids lurk. Maybe they should look?
11/17/16, 4:00 AM
David, by the lake said...
11/17/16, 4:48 AM
gregorach said...
There's also the fact that being told that they're not representative isn't particularly reassuring when you're the one on the sharp end, or at risk of ending up there... Hearing "most Trump voters aren't Nazis" is no great help when you find a swastika along with the words "Heil Trump" graffitied on your church, or a fake deportation notice stapled to your door, or you're being beaten up in a parking lot by a bunch of thugs in Trump t-shirts with lighting bolt tattoos.
Here in Britain, it was said that "not all Brexiteers are racist, but all racists are Brexiteers"... The US does unfortunately have something of a problem with far-right hate groups, and they're all overjoyed and energised by Trump's victory. If they see it as an endorsement, is it unreasonable for their opponents to agree?
11/17/16, 4:52 AM
Phil Harris said...
It would be interesting but probably impossible to know if the anti-KKK hymn singers (good aerobic exercise) voted roughly 50:50 in the recent election. It would be good to know that the same singers would have the nerve to do it again if the Klu Klux Klan turns up again next year.
In UK we have had a lot of immigration for work – mostly since EU enlargement post-2000.
A quote from official ONS numbers:
Looking at the employment estimates by nationality, between July to September 2015 and July to September 2016:
"UK nationals working in the UK increased by 213,000 to 28.39 million.
non-UK nationals working in the UK increased by 241,000 to 3.49 million.”
UK has not done well since the financial crash 2008/2009 but I emphasise that we do not seem these days in 2016 to have any shortage of badly paid jobs, even though many areas have never recovered from de-industrialisation that was deliberately fostered after 1979. The social catastrophe has been ongoing. We are highly urbanised especially in traditional industrial areas and too many towns and cities are no longer centres of net prosperity.
I would be interested if your view is similar to the one reported by Gary Younge yesterday from Muncie, USA, (the classic ‘Middletown’) after a month staying there. https://www.theguardian.com/membership/2016/nov/16/the-view-from-middletown-final-thoughts-on-trumps-victory
Thanks again for your insights and alerts.
best
Phil H
11/17/16, 5:00 AM
Renaissance Man said...
- They would vote for Mr. Trump because of his economic policies. However, when pressed, they cannot explain those policies (which I find to be a collection of incoherent and fragmentary complaints). These same people are also turning out to be anti-muslim or anti-gay or sexist bigots. It's very depressing.
- They would vote for Ms. Clinton because they fear a crypto-fascist and bigoted Trump administration. In this case, they are not using fascist as a snarl-word, but really speaking in terms of genuine fascism. They compare Mr. Trump and his supporters behaviour and statements as uncomfortably according with the characteristics of a fascist state.
- They despise Mr. Trump because of his encouragement of bigotry, misogyny, and because they seriously doubt the economic competence of someone with a long string of bankruptcies.
- They despise Ms. Clinton because she has no consistent voting record that supports any ideological position. Because she has become the puppet of the establishment who benefit from the economic and political status quo. Because people blame U.S. foreign policy over the past 30 years for the chaos around the globe and because people are tired of having neo-liberal economic policies and asymmetric trade deals foisted upon them. She represents all this. Plus she is seen as more corrupt than average (probably due to 20+ years of Republican propaganda).
One interesting and consistent point is whenever I say something like "the American Empire is about to fall" there is complete agreement across the board. And none of us like feeling like being next door to a falling structure that our political leaders have tied is tightly to over the past decades.
11/17/16, 5:15 AM
fudoshindotcom said...
Since the election my vote for Trump has earned me the titles of; racist, sexist, homophobe, and moron. As, in fact, I am none of those things, I know people in those communities and consider them friends. One thing I noticed while being berated was that none of them appeared to believe that there were any legitimate reasons to support Trump. When I mentioned idiotic foreign policy, immigration policies that hurt the working class, or decades of needless overreach by the federal government these concerns got flatly ignored. When I responded to accusations that I supported rape by pointing out that allowing adult men who self-identify as women to share restrooms with young girls does actually enable sexual predators, I was accused of bigotry.
When I brought up Clinton's career long record of unethical behavior, her admitted intent to continue attacking the U.S. Constitution, or her likely criminal acts these things were quickly brushed aside.
As a non-affiliated voter my perception is that the Democratic party did a spectacular job of disenfranchising me during the campaign and now feels they have every right to condemn my lack of allegiance.
Having a capricious streak in my nature, I admit I somewhat enjoy watching their antics as they work around to the realization that their viewpoint is not the only valid one.
I look forward to an interesting four years and answer all the accusations leveled by way of a quote from the character Quai-Chang Caine, "Whatever you think I am, I am".
11/17/16, 5:21 AM
Kevin Price said...
11/17/16, 5:22 AM
Iuval Clejan said...
11/17/16, 5:28 AM
paularbair said...
Another great post, thank you. Once again you lay out the reasons behind Trump’s success very clearly and convincingly. You had actually already done that and correctly called the result of the election months ago. You have even correctly and consistently analyzed and explained over the last decade why ‘something like Trump’ was probably always meant to happen in America. Hats off to you.
I’m however a bit surprised by the tone of your last two posts, which seem to be a bit more hopeful than what I would have expected.
In your 2014 book ‘Decline and Fall’, you pointed out that “As the decline accelerates, anyone who offers Americans a narrative that allows them to pretend they’ll get the shiny new future that our national mythology promises them will be able to count on a large and enthusiastic audience. The narratives being marketed for this purpose need not be convincing; they need not even be sane. So long as they make it possible for Americans to maintain the fiction of a brighter future in the teeth of the facts, they’ll be popular.” I believe that this is exactly what happened with Trump. What he promised is the fiction of a brighter future in the form of a return to a mythical past – “Make America Great Again”. It seems to me that his narratives have proved popular even as they have been far from being convincing nor coherent or even sane. Yet it looks like you now somehow consider that he has actually proposed a set of coherent policy proposals during his campaign. I can only agree that he has perfectly diagnosed the resentment that was brewing across the country and masterfully instrumentalised it - but I believe he hasn’t laid out any kind of coherent proposal that would really have even a remote chance of really benefiting the common people that he has pretended to champion during the campaign.
In your 2009 book ‘The Ecotechnic Future', you wrote that: “Too many Americans have fallen into the seductive but disastrous habit of blaming their political adversaries for their own feelings of shame and resentment. Even the briefest glance at history shows where that sort of scapegoat logic leads and it’s no place any sane human being would want to go. A good deal of what happened during Germany’s ordeal between 1933 and 1945, as Jung pointed out in a prescient essay, can best be understood as the end result of this sort of projection, with a grand Wagnerian Götterdammerung as finale. It’s entirely possible that some similar madness could grip America in the years to come.” I tend to believe that the rise of Donald Trump signals that this kind of madness may in fact be approaching in America. Yet you now seem to imply that his election could potentially open a path to some form of “renewal of the traditions of American federalism” (last week’s post), or of the national dialogue (this week’s post).
I personally believe that the Trump phenomenon is a symptom of America - as the epicenter of industrial civilization - reaching the ‘Limits to Growth’ and entering a new phase of what you call ‘catabolic collapse’. But I don’t think that his victory will in any way make it possible to move towards solving or even easing the problems faced by America and the American people. On the contrary, I believe that his policies are likely to make these problems worse rather quickly.
What I think is the fundamental issue is that, as the Western world reaches the Limits to Growth, it also seems to be reaching the Limits to Democracy. Absent economic growth, democracy is losing its edge over other political regimes in terms of its capacity to peacefully arbitrate and mediate between conflicting or opposing interests or values, and thus tends to degenerate and break down. Trump is the most important sign of this evolution so far, but far from the only one. I have tried to explain this in more details here: https://paularbair.wordpress.com/2016/11/15/trump-and-the-autumn-of-democracy/
And I would of course very much like to hear or rather read your views on this.
Thank you.
11/17/16, 5:30 AM
Fred the First said...
And this is what I couldn't figure out the whole 18 months Trump ran - everything the left hit him with, he just grew stronger. Things that took down candidates every other election cycle, just bounced off him and emboldened his supporters, even if quietly. You were the only writer to point out why that was, so it was amazing to watch the entire time.
My leftist friends have moved from shock (public crying), anger (not my President!), bargaining (electoral college must go!), denial (not my President! said louder this time), but they haven't gotten to asking for help, the final stage of grief. It's like they don't want to agree and don't want to work with everyone else.
I did hear one person say that if we aren't publicly denouncing Trump, then its as good as supporting him. The left is requiring allegiance to their cause? And I'm thinking, who is the Nazi now?
I'm at a loss as to what to do. Ignore them? I was mostly doing that. Apparently if one says "relax" or "calm down", the response is "don't tell me how to feel!", so I avoided those words. They seem to be encouraging each other to stay in this emotional state. To stop being against Trump will let the hate in or something like that. But all they are doing is shouting hateful things about Trump????
I'm thinking back to your rescue game post and it seems like ignoring them all is the best solution? They want to be the victim and no matter what is said and done will choose to remain the victim, right?
11/17/16, 5:34 AM
sillybill said...
I hesitate to call you a liar, maybe you have just mistakenly absorbed propaganda from violent racists, but your comment is a good example of why lefties and non-whites are nervous these days:
"BLM motivated killings of police officers (two were shot in Des Moines a couple days before the election)"
BLM has not killed any police officers, they have not called for any killings of police officers, they have asked repeatedly for peace and non-violent protest while remaining firm in their conviction that black people have as much worth as white people and should be treated the same by police.
The police in Des Moines were killed by a white man - you should really do a little research before you accuse someone of murder. If you want to see examples of instigation of murder and torture you should wander around right wing websites like Stormfront or the comment section at Breitbart.
JMG - The Klan is marching in support of Trump in North Carolina December 3rd. I'll be there in opposition.
I enjoy your writing, am fully on board with the idea of progress reaching a point of diminishing returns, but think we must try to keep all the legal rights others have won. I don't think Trump will keep many of his promises. Time will tell.
11/17/16, 5:38 AM
Lei said...
Its politics has become overly assertive, agressive and risky, which is after all the behaviour of each revisionist power. Also, unlike practically all NATO countries, it has adopted war-time budgeting, with offical military funding of ca. 4 per cent, but actually maybe even 8 percet, with the military budget rising by many many per cents each year, although there seems to be nobody anywhere near that would be interested in invading Russia, as the Russian propaganda keeps claiming.
One thing is that we Europeans should take care of our own security, but on the other hand, I do not think that it is the USA (or Obama or Clinton) who incites the conflicts with Russia. Moreover, precisely because the Obama administration has been so weak in the eyes of Russians, Russia has escalated its military operations. Finally, the role and hehaviour of Russia in Syria is ugly and should be designated as such.
If you read Russian strategic material or even mainstream newspapars, you would find out that they are full of plans for a war with the NATO and USA.
You know, looking at those unanounced gigantic military excercises near the eastern boundaries of the EU, during which nuclear attacks on Warsaw and Berlin are simulated, I do not feel quite like that it is the USA who risk the war.
Of course, if might be easier for you Americans to simply hand over Europe to Russia (which is what Putin has been working on for some time, wishing for a new Yalta conference). But not only that would be a sad end of a long-lasting alliance, but also I think that in the end Americans would regret it badly - with all the economical and technological resources of Europe in the hands of a new tsar.
Look at WWII - isolation is not a solution - it only enables your competitors to get much more ground and than to destroy you (in fact, the PRC is following now a very similar parth to that of Russia - that of confrontation and ruthlessness).
11/17/16, 5:40 AM
Fred the First said...
And I'm also surprised that I have not seen one comment of "Hillary for President" rally being organized anywhere. I knew the left didn't like her, the number of votes she received shows that, but wow, even after the fact, she gets zero support.
11/17/16, 5:47 AM
W. B. Jorgenson said...
11/17/16, 5:59 AM
J. Gamer said...
11/17/16, 6:12 AM
Greg Belvedere said...
Your blog has prepared me for these election results, so I have found it entertaining watching the reaction of my fellow leftists over Trump's election. Though it has been less amusing than I thought it would be. Frankly, it is kind of pathetic the way people can't think about the checks and balances preventing him from doing some of the scarier things he has talked about.
I have some first hand experience with the freakout. My gay younger brother who voted for Clinton berated my older brother because he voted for Trump. Accusing him of not caring about his rights which might be taken away. It got so bad he is not coming to Thanksgiving.
I find it interesting that the media can't talk about class without reframing the discussion to include race and gender. Working class turns into white working class, or working class white males.
I have noticed some people trying to understand things you have been saying for a while about the electorate. This has been a pleasant surprise, but a lot of people are doubling down on "they are a bunch of racists and I have no empathy for them". I think this election represents an inability of different groups to see their own privilege. "I don't care if you can get married, or what happens to this group if I can't get a decent job" vs. "I don't care if you can find a job if I my Muslim friends have to register and women's reproductive rights get taken away".
11/17/16, 6:16 AM
Ben Johnson said...
To my point about use of language; Sanders made the same anti-trade argument, clearly distanced himself from the political establishment, and nearly won a rigged primary, mostly on the strength of populist rhetoric. Assuming that the political right is no more or less racist than the left, I think Trump could have done the same thing during the Republican primaries. Which leads me back to my main concern, that his language is a statement of intent rather than political theater. I hope I am wrong.
On a related note, I predicted in March that Trump had a better than even chance of winning the general:
http://purposeofthearrow.blogspot.com/#!/2016/03/another-tuesday-in-march.html
11/17/16, 6:16 AM
Mister Roboto said...
11/17/16, 6:17 AM
donalfagan said...
Right now, Trump seems to be sinking in the swamp he had promised to drain. Perhaps Mike Pence or Jared Kushner will end up being the real power behind the throne. Hard to say.
http://thewire.in/80777/the-tricky-transition-to-a-trump-administration/
Also, with the election of Chuck Schumer, the Dems seem to be doubling down on being the loser party. Bernie Sanders may have an effect, but I don't expect them to give up corporate money.
http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/tear_it_down_why_every_person_at_the_dnc_should_be_fired_20161116
11/17/16, 6:43 AM
Bob said...
11/17/16, 6:47 AM
Ursachi Alexandru said...
The protesters were not necessarily driven out of Bucharest since most of them were from Bucharest, unlike the miners themselves. As for Trump, hopefully he won't be your country's version of Iliescu, because he wasn't exactly fond of democratic institutions and free speech.
11/17/16, 6:50 AM
Elderwoman said...
JMG, as always I appreciate your commentary and the balance you always bring to the debate. But it is the setback to the green agenda that has had me in tears for the past week and hardly anybody here is talking about that. Why not? Sure, I am sorry for the unemployed, the economically disadvantaged, the racially oppressed and all other suffering members of my species, whether in the USA or Africa or anywhere. But there are seven billion of us humans and only a handful of orang utans, Bengal tigers, pygmy elephants...and all those other dramatically declining life forms who have just as much right to live on this Earth as we have. Including the bees, on whom we literally depend for our food, and who are still getting hit with the neocotinoids that the US was just about to ban and now almost certainly won't. It is this aspect I care about the most. For me, everything else about politics pales into insignificance beside that.
Yes, I can understand why some people voted for DT. You have made a good case for them. As Abe Maslow pointed out long ago, it is human nature that personal survival needs take precedence in the human mind. But since we are part and parcel of a living Earth, then whatever harms the planet can only harm us as individuals. If Earth's ecosystems can't survive intact and in proper balance, then neither can our own species. So focusing on personal survival needs rather than planetary ones is selfish and short-term thinking of a dangerous kind. Why are so few people here remarking on this?
11/17/16, 6:53 AM
Thomas Mazanec said...
I voted for Trump for one reason.
Right to Life endorsement.
Imagine living in an America where, each year, over a million African Americans were killed by a Caucasian because that African American was an inconvenience to that Caucasian.
That is how I feel about over a million preborn babies a year being killed by abortion.
11/17/16, 7:01 AM
onething said...
I applaud anyone who is able to open their minds up a bit and that you have learned from JMG's posts. I'd like to suggest, though, that some of the things you mention coming from the right are also coming from the left, if not more so. A lot of intolerance, contempt and worst of all, shutting down discussion. You got roasted for what you posted on facebook, but so do Trump supporters get roasted and in fact dare not even admit their vote.
I voted for Trump for every single one of the reasons that JMG listed plus a couple more, like the corruption and grifting, emails, and as to the environment, I'm not in favor of Monsanto.
The rant posted by Will at 11/16/16, 4:16 PM is worth watching as he lays out some of the unskillful tendencies of the left that have gone unchecked.
I like immigrants a lot myself. I'm almost embarrassed to admit how much, as in my work environment (hospitals) I've been exposed to all sorts of nationalities plus Mexicans. I tend to more or less prefer all of them to American culture and find them so much easier to get to know than Americans. Nonetheless, I'm not for a borderless world. Did you know Mexico maintains a very strict southern border?
11/17/16, 7:10 AM
onething said...
11/17/16, 7:12 AM
Leo Knight said...
All of my other conversations, in person and online, consisted mainly of his supporters repeating pat slogans: 1. Make America great again, 2. Take our country back, 3. I'm sick of politics as usual, 4. He's not politically correct/ he says what he thinks. When I asked for more specifics, they either said nothing, or repeated the slogans more emphatically. One friend hoped Trump would "reform the system." Again, nothing more specific.
A few people were quite angry. Two people liked Trump because of their hatred for liberals. They kept sending me such vile messages that I blocked them on social media. Two in person conversations got very heated. Both expressed their hate for particular women: Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren, and, strangely, Rosie O'Donnell.
None were as specific and informative as your neighbors.
11/17/16, 7:17 AM
Moshe Braner said...
- in Vermont, where Bernie got 6% of the votes (as write-in), the established minor parties, Green & Libertarian, got about 2% and 3% of the vote respectively. Trump and Clinton got about 35% and 55% respectively. It may be that some people in Vermont felt it was "safe" to vote for somebody other than the two major-party candidates since the predictions were for a landslide state-level victory for Clinton.
To quote from http://heavy.com/news/2016/11/how-many-write-in-votes-for-did-bernie-sanders-get-presidential-election-results-california-iowa-new-hampshire-pennsylvania-vermont-total/
"Only about 12 states even allowed voters to write in Sanders for president and have that vote potentially count. These were Alabama, California, Iowa, Mississippi, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, and Wyoming. ... Other states might have received write-in votes for Bernie, but most won’t be counting them."
- that article then goes on to say that:
"In New Hampshire, Sanders got 4,493 write-in votes, according to the state’s official tally. Clinton beat Trump in New Hampshire by only 2,573 votes."
11/17/16, 7:34 AM
Donald Hargraves said...
Women voting against Hillary's warmongering? The women had to live with racists, or were racists in the first place.
Obamacare? They hate (the black) people on welfare. (never mind that I smell price fixing by the Health Insurance companies to fix the election).
Jobs disappearing, and becoming crappier to boot? They believe blacks and hispanics stole their jobs (so they deserve to become the unemployable underbelly of the nation).
Emails? Obvious rigging of the Democratic Primaries? "Bronies" turning into their "alt-reich" racist selves.
Trump overcoming the Republican Leadership? Republicans are racists, Trump just made it obvious.
Have you even ASKED any Trump voter why they voted for him? They lie about their motives.
Never mind that there ARE people who DID vote for Trump for racist (and sexist) issues (and trust me, I will do my part in fighting against THEM), this is a nation that elected Obama President twice. That a lot of the Trump voters I've come across expressed positive views of Sanders (or at least showed great interest) tells me that they wanted to be heard – and that the Left had no interest in hearing them speak.
(Which leads to a second, secondary thread I've seen – the joy they will feel when Trump makes a point of turning against those who voted for him. I enjoy my fair share of Schadenfreude, but I make a point of not seeking it out.)
Honestly, to me this has been a great lesson on Sophistry – what it is (the tailoring of philosophic thought to personal belief, never mind reality) and why it has long been looked down upon. All my years studying (and working on) philosophical concepts, and a great lesson plops itself on my lap.
11/17/16, 7:44 AM
Stu from New Jersey said...
Citizens across the country debated and voted on many important referenda and passed a lot of important legislation. (I'm personally happy with many of the results). For the naysayers: Please compare the record of the voters on these referenda with the results we get from the major parties. Citizens win, hands down.
11/17/16, 7:51 AM
Mary said...
Trump has already kept a couple key promises that had me leaning his way: TPP is dead (for the time being), he's already paving the way to detente w/Russia, and as of this morning has banned lobbyists from his admin (which is putting the media into a tizzy). So war with Russia has been averted, that Sky Dawg.
Bernie continues to disappoint. He appears to have been assimilated and the grand bargain he struck for himself is to be in charge of trying to lure defectors back into the Dem swamp. Good luck with that.
The creepiest thing they've pulled on me is to track down my "secondary" email. When I was notified my University account was to be closed, I moved critical accounts to my backup email that I used for junk stuff. Weeks before the closing took place, his "Our Revolution" org somehow tracked me down over there. Having never subscribed to begin with, I had already unsubscribed from my university account and now have had to twice from the new account. The third time around I left them a pretty clear message and finished it with "I voted for Trump."
11/17/16, 7:52 AM
Mary said...
11/17/16, 7:55 AM
Fred the First said...
We gotta get people who hate us to like us.
That’s never been easy. But it’s even easier to give into satisfying anger at the expense of effectiveness."
In other words, "We (Democrats) have to be better at manipulating people."
How about this conclusion instead "We gotta love all people, and not just love them, but like them and spend time with them."
Its been painfully clear in the reaction to the election that the left loathes rural America with a seething hatred. They keep posting it again and again on their social media. They don't have that kind of hatred for ISIS. No one is going to support someone who hates them. And we can all see that robotic Hillary and her data driven campaign sees it as below their status to deal with the people of this country and their real issues. Its like we all have cooties or something.
11/17/16, 8:04 AM
William McGillis said...
Is it just me, or are the histrionics a bit worse this year? While I remember the apocalyptic muttering JMG talked about, I think this is the first time its escalated into protests and (arguably) mini-riots. Likewise, the sheer intensity of the anger against not only Trump, but everyone who voted for him ("your vote was a hate crime"? Good grief) and even people who voted 3rd party feels new. And I haven't even gotten to the BLM protests/riots, and the new trend of BLM motivated killings of police officers (two were shot in Des Moines a couple days before the election, but them Trump drowned the story out).
I am wondering where you got your information about the killing of police officers in Des Moines having anything to do with BLM. News reports suggest that the suspect had in the past brandished a confederate flag and expressed displeasure at African-American people protesting by not standing during the national anthem. Hardly sounds like he has anything to do with BLC.
The BLM supporters I know absolutely do not advocate violence; they advocate that black people’s lives be treated as if they, well, matter. I think it pays to be careful when making unfounded/thoughtstopper speculations about activist groups.
11/17/16, 8:07 AM
Izzy said...
This, and thank you. I was reading Ferrett long before that post came out, but that one really cemented it for me.
Also agreed with Joel. I find this post comforting, both because having significant numbers of people hate me and my friends is not wildly comfortable and because it means that if the left wants to address a lot of Trump voters, it can do so without having to back off on social issues. (I'm with Neil Gaiman, in that ninety percent of the time you can substitute "having to treat other people with respect" for "political correctness" whenever anyone complains about that.) Because...yes, people are free to hate whoever they want, and nobody has ever said they shouldn't be, but the rest of us are free to respond to expressed hatred by deciding said people aren't the sort we want to hang out with.
11/17/16, 8:15 AM
Mary said...
11/17/16, 8:17 AM
Richard Green said...
I've been struggling with this idea that Trump is the racist/fascist in this election while Clinton (and by extension the Obama administration) is not. While I hear the words Trump speaks, and he is obviously a very disturbed and scary figure (as are some of those he is surrounding himself with), I want to take a moment to look at the actual record of the current administration. To do this, I'd like to quote some passages from the recent posts of two writers, The Rancid Honeytrap and Doroles Vek, to provide what I think is some much needed perspective on the USA as it actually exists today.
"It seems like every dire warning about the Trump administration starts with a bit about the millions of immigrant families that might be torn apart. Many Trump voters would salivate over the prospect of deporting 2.5 million people, as Obama has done—more than every 20th century president combined. Along the way, the Obama administration has created countless millions of refugees by destroying Honduras and Libya, towards whom the president has shown a remarkable callousness that doesn’t seem to trouble these Democrats suddenly frightened on behalf of immigrants."
"The Obama Administration is now cracking down on immigrants coming from Central America, including those fleeing the hell created in Honduras, when Clinton’s State Department handed Honduras off to fascists and US-trained death squads because the president there wanted to block a dam project and raise the minimum wage. By 2012, more than 300 people, mostly activists, journalists and members of opposition parties had been murdered"
"In three years, her State Department approved $165 billion worth of commercial arms sales to 20 nations whose governments had given money to the Clinton Foundation. Recipients of Clinton-brokered weapons include Saudi Arabia, which funds ISIL and wages asymmetric war on Yemen. This amount is double arm sales approved by George W. Bush’s State Department during his second term. Clinton did all this under the auspices of an administration that has expanded the War on Terror into Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, and more than doubled the number of Special Ops deployments to 134 countries, with Africa being the continent of greatest expansion."
"Hillary is part of a political dynasty that practically invented the mass caging of African-American men; that murdered more than a half million Iraqi children through sanctions; that gutted the social safety net; and that runs a foundation that in addition to taking cash for state favors as in the Saudi weapons deal, extracts personal gain from misery as in Haiti."
"Barack Obama was the President who expanded the White House’s power to kill anyone, anywhere, including American citizens. If wielding power like a führer is the mark of fascism, then Obama qualified as of the 2012 passage of the NDAA."
"Trump will, apparently unlike every president in AmeriKKKan history, be uniquely bad for African-Americans. Will his administration steal the wealth from black homes, the way Obama helped Wall Street loot black America? Will black Americans have to rise up in the streets and declare that black lives matter, to protest the black person murdered every 28 hours in the USA?"
And the take away on racism and fascism...
"That she is widely regarded as the non-racist, non-fascist in this hideous, degrading election cycle is the pr coup of this century so far. Partisan anti-racism is not anti-racism. It’s a whitewash."
So JMG, these ideas that you raise, that actual issues drove the decision-making of Trump voters, combined with what I see as a whitewash of the actual policy record of the current administration makes me suspect of this hysterical outcry I see all around me (in NYC). A little perspective seems critical to begin to bridge this yawning gap and start to gain a touch of understanding.
11/17/16, 8:17 AM
Izzy said...
11/17/16, 8:19 AM
Owen said...
If you don't have a job and are being mandated to pay a poll tax (which is what the Supremem Court said PPACA was more or less) that precludes you from being able to afford things like shelter and food - who is baking cakes for who, DOES NOT MATTER.
And I guess with Trump they more or less told the people who are still able to afford those luxury issues that they are sick and tired of it and to stop it and fix some of these more important things first.
They're not going to learn though. These city dwellers who think these luxury issues are the most important things in the world, they're just going to double down. You're seeing it right now.
11/17/16, 8:29 AM
Nancy Sutton said...
Also, as this is not my blog, I probably should stick tightly to your topic, i.e., not use it as a point from which to shine a spotlight on (possibly more) critical election issues that are kept in the dark by most MSM ... for a deliberate reason.
11/17/16, 8:32 AM
Jamie Mason said...
11/17/16, 8:36 AM
Owen said...
But one of the biggies is WW3 and it is the first question I ask myself when I'm in the voting booth - "Which of the two is least likely to start WW3?"
When it was Romney vs. Obama, I thought "Obama, for sure"
This time around, I thought "Trump, for sure"
And next election, you can be sure I'll be asking that same question in the voting booth, provided things hold together for there to be elections in 4 years from now...
11/17/16, 8:38 AM
Fred the First said...
You've mentioned possible interference by other countries in our country given our history of trying to influence and manipulate elections for the past 50 years. What do you think of some of these hate crimes being that? I'm really surprised that I have yet to see one reported that has any accompanying camera footage from a surveillance camera. Given the number of cameras we have it doesn't make sense. So the individuals who these crimes all managed to avoid cameras? That's weird.
And 437 isn't a lot. I'm not trying to downplay it, but put it in perspective. SPLC says there are 892 hate groups, so that's not even one crime per group. And one person could have done multiple crimes. 318 million people in country...61 million voted for Trump.....so .0007% of Trump voters committed a hate crime? Meanwhile thousands of people (can't find a total anywhere) are protesting against Trump.
And what's the average amount of hate crime usually? This type of crime does go on all the time unfortunately.
I know people aren't rational, but the data just isn't there that Trump voters are violent racists and attacking people in droves. There has been a lot of amplification on social media of each incident though making it look like a massive wave.
11/17/16, 8:39 AM
Roger said...
So what you saw in the Cold, Cold Math essay was more of the same in the reference to the "uneducated" rural, white voters. Given that this same Liberal-left tells everyone that they are all about facts and evidence, I wonder (from my perch north of the border) is there any basis for such an assertion?
Assuming that a majority of these "uneducated" voters have a high school diploma, how does it scan that 13 years of instruction results in a condition of being "uneducated"?
Thirteen years is a long time to sit in classrooms, it represents a large expenditure of public funds and if what you get out of all this money and time are a vast number of "uneducated" people, then I would say that American edu-crats and the teaching profession have a great deal to answer for.
If after thirteen years of schooling you're uneducated, how can it be that a student is able to tackle the demands of supposed "higher" education in colleges? Either a college education isn't "higher" or high school grads aren't uneducated. Tell me, do American colleges have remedial reading and writing and arithmetic for "uneducated" freshmen? Or are high schools in coastal states so superior to high schools in fly-over states?
In any case, using the term "uneducated" sounds to me like dog-whistle politics. If it isn't that, then what is it? The Liberal-left talks a lot about the "dog whistle" politics of the Right, but in my opinion, the Liberal-left, with their highly attuned ears, are the masters. Nobody does it better.
11/17/16, 8:52 AM
Edward Kerr said...
Just to add a data point to this issue. I live a short drive north from you and we met and spoke briefly at the Ago of Limits conference three years ago. Anyway to my point. I voted for Jill knowing that it was at best a protest vote that would have no discernible impact on the outcome. (though some mouths filled with sour grapes seem to want to blame third party voters) As noted Hillary's public motivational complicity in fomenting an illegal war to support a private agenda made her a person that I could not, in good conscience, vote for (not to mention the countless deaths that followed) Trump's obvious mendacity and just as obvious ignorance of why jobs are vanishing coupled with his intention to waste, profligately, the fossil fuels that would be better spent for other uses that generating electricity made voting for him an impossibility.
What I see happening is that our species has finally hit the resource wall and are at a total loss as to what is happening and why. Consequently, they have allowed themselves to grasp at the mirage of a straw that Trump promised. He will not be physically or politically able to deliver on most of his "promises" and well will all pay the piper.
If he's able to being more fossil energy to a shrinking market it will only depress prices further causing greater loss later on. The cooler heads who are working toward a much lower carbon energy economy will not be stopped and will insure Trumps failure.
The Clintons are free to go home and spend whatever years they have remaining in obscurity.
As always sending the best personal regards,
Edward Kerr
Claysburg, PA
11/17/16, 9:05 AM
Dammerung said...
I hope that the self-mockery quotient of a power like Kek keeps this thing from getting too out of hand. We should, I suppose, stop short of actually rounding degenerates into cattle cars, so long as we can establish a new deal for the American working class. It's hard to take anything with a true excess of authoritarian zeal when five posts later you're bound to see Pepe, sneaky grin on his big green mug, wearing a piss-soaked track suit on a public thoroughfare.
11/17/16, 9:05 AM
zaphod42 said...
I don't think that means what you think it means.
11/17/16, 9:07 AM
SamuraiArtGuy said...
This one IGNITED my timeline in partisan squabbling. At least the commentary has been
for the most part thoughtful, but seems to indicate considerable difficulty to get outside a number of orthodox cultural political mythologies. There was a lot of focus on the mendacity of the GOP while not holding the Democrats to account for their incompetency, and their disdain and criticism of the flyover folk for being duped and uninformed - and yes, for giving into racism, sexism, isolationist nationalism, bigotry, and proto-fascism.
But they often still don't give Trump voters credit for voting for Trump DESPITE the racism, sexism, isolationist nationalism, bigotry, and proto-fascism that his campaign exploited. Their rage and misery and rejection of the Washington establishment on both sides of the aisle... um... "Trumped" those concerns. However unfortunately, due to the tone of the campaign, racists, misogynists, isolationist nationalists, bigots, and proto-fascists have been to a degree normalized, and that contingent overwhelmingly fell in behind Trump - even if it was all a big con. And we'll have to with with that cancer as a Nation - which would require separating that hideous hate from the economic injustice.
However, if the majority of the Wage Class voted for a populist outsider in rejection and protest of the Washington establishment and dismissive Liberal Leftism - they may have chosen a poor champion in Donald Trump. This is a man without any discernible ideology other than "winning." His election represents the loudest, most audacious, most shameless, most successful Long Con since we were sold "trickle down" back in the 80s. And on that occasion they actually said, "we're going to give all the money to the rich people."
The transition so far has not been reassuring. Steve Bannon? Rudy Gulianni? Odin's beard... I have every expectation of an Administration that could be egregiously self- serving, headed by a man with little concern with the ten thousand details of governance. We're seriously in Undiscovered Country, folks, So much of what's coming is an uttter crapshoot. The only thing I can count on is that the GOP, while a mess, is going to congeal around the heady smell of power emanating from the Trump White House. The Democratic party, unless they can reboot themselves will continue to crash and burn. Of course Wealthy and Corporate Interests will not have the least motivation to back off their continuing ascendancy and their position of power, influence and privilege. If Trump is unable to manifest some of his grandiose campaign promises, the 2018 midterms will be utter chaos, and the rage and anger will continue to rise. The potential for unrest is high, and perhaps is unavoidable. Global Market forces and the stress fractures of the Age of Limits are a formidable obstacle to business as usual. So good luck with that, Donald.
I noted the four topics of the essay and generally agree with your assessment, but there is a big hairy fly in the ointment.
...they want a less monomaniacally interventionist foreign policy and an end to the endless spiral of wars of choice in the Middle East; they want health insurance that provides reasonable benefits at a price they can afford; they want an end to trade agreements that ship American jobs overseas, and changes to immigration policy that stop the systematic importation of illegal immigrants by big corporate interests to drive down wages and benefits; and they want a means of choosing candidates that actually reflects the will of the people.
This is pretty much stuff that most sane thinking folk want. Of course these are exactly the things that the überwealthy elites and megacorps that OWN our political leadership have absolutely zero interest in giving us.
11/17/16, 9:17 AM
Granny Greensleeves said...
11/17/16, 9:22 AM
Seaweed Shark said...
11/17/16, 9:41 AM
Roberta said...
Second, the most frustrating response of Clinton's supporters is the claim that this was all about rural people being racist and sexist and nothing else. I completely agree with you, that yes, some are, some are not, but this was not the key to Trump's win. I've met way too many Trump voters who are themselves non-white, have non-white spouses, in-laws or what have you. A lot of them even think that he's a bad actor in this respect. They seem to view it as if he were the boss down at the hardware store "yeah, he's a redneck, but never had any problem with him when I worked there." To them, the continuation of neo-liberalism - even if they don't know the word - is a lot scarier than being around a guy like that.
11/17/16, 9:42 AM
onething said...
I'm afraid I've got to add one more thing. To all the disgust at the Trump voters let me add and explain my disgust at voting for Her. I want to say, "At long hast, have you no decency?"
Most people I know who voted for her really wanted Bernie and voted for him in the primary. There were very good reasons for that. But in the wake of the rear-end reaming that was delivered to them by the DNC who undemocratically took him away, somehow there was a bizarre mental about-face in which suddenly she became uber desirable. Where is their anger? If they accept this from the DNC, why shouldn't they do it again? And are they impervious to her track record or what? What happened to their values? Are their 401K's invested in Monsanto and Big Pharma?
Or maybe they just couldn't accept that there was no one to vote for this time around, so by default decided she was great after all.
11/17/16, 9:51 AM
Professor Diabolical said...
"The KKK is really small. They could all stay in the same hotel with a bunch of free rooms left over...if they’re inflating the numbers by 1000x, and there were only about 14,000 news articles about the supposed Trump-KKK connection this election, there are still two to three articles about a Trump-KKK connection for every single Klansman in the world.
http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/11/16/you-are-still-crying-wolf/
11/17/16, 9:59 AM
Clay Dennis said...
11/17/16, 10:03 AM
Stephanie Ladd said...
Varun, I met you a few years ago at a Permaculture festival, although you may not remember me. But, you introduced me to ADR and I'm grateful for that. What are ways that I can keep in touch with you besides seeing your commentary here?
11/17/16, 10:24 AM
Bill Pulliam said...
In 1976, in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, Jimmy Carter defeated the incumbent (though never elected) Gerald Ford. Carter almost certainly won this election because of his outsider status, being an unknown on the national scale ("Jimmy who?" was the common expresion in the primary season). He was the governor of an obscure southern State known then in the pre-cable-TV-days only for peanuts, Scarlet O'Hara, and 360 miles of boring interstate that had to be traversed to get to Florida. Of course the parallels to Trump are not strong in the details here, but Carter was the biggest reach for a Washington Outsider the presidential electorate had ever made in my lifetime before this year. Reagan, in contrast, had been prominent on the National scale for many years, had run for president previously, and had been the highly famous governor of oen of the largest and most culturally dominant States.
Carter campaigned on Love and Trust, and was very short on specifics of policy or how "Love and Trust" could be turned into governing principles. He came into office with House and Senate also controlled by his party, but controlled by established party elites and their deeply entrenched structures. His advisers were derisively dubbed the Georgia Mafia. Congress would not work with him. In 1980 he faced a strong primary challenge to his reelection by uber-Insider Ted Kennedy, who lost the nomination at an angry and divisive convention, leaving the party split, the candidate weak, and the White House ripe for the pickings of Reagan and the nascient Neocons.
Again, the parallels are not strong, but the history of the established party structure failing to work with an outsider president from their own party rings like something that we may well be about to experience a second round of.
And before I post this, a note... some other readers here seem to be in the habit of assuming that because I present a scenario interpretation analysis etc. then I must actually personally support and approve of this scenario, and tag me with dismissive labels based on this. Get over it. If one cannot foresee possibilities or understand events of which s/he personally may DISapprove, s/he is poorly equipped to understand the past, present, or future. I did not vote for Trump or Clinton, in the primaries or the general election. In recent decades I rarely have voted for either of the major party presidential candidates. My dogs never even make it to the final fight.
11/17/16, 10:27 AM
onething said...
Trump said his campaign is "a movement comprised of Americans from all races, religions, backgrounds and beliefs who want and expect our government to serve the people, and serve the people it will."
There's a whole lot o' lyin' going on.
11/17/16, 10:29 AM
ebartlett said...
Always a pleasure to read your insights. This week's essay was spot on as usual. One thing I've noticed though is that in my area here in rural northwestern NJ the majority of people here voted for Trump (they still haven't even taken their signs down!), but most of them are anything but poor or uneducated. I work at a local feed store and I see these people drive up every day in their brand new shiny F350's and spend loads of money on their horses. Most of them are avid hunters too, so I know they must have plenty of leisure time. Most of them own a lot of high-value land. The majority of this land is either made up of horse farms (which cost a LOT of money to run) or is planted in GMO corn and soybeans (I find this ironic considering that their arch-enemy Obama just signed the Monsanto Protection Act into law last week). This is largely due to the fact that these land owners receive a huge tax break from the government for keeping their land in agricultural use. Not only that, but most of them have put their land under farmland preservation which means that it has to be farmed and can never be sold to a developer, something no self-respecting believer in American capitalism would do. For all of the political rhetoric about the dangers of big government, wasteful spending, and welfare entitlements, these folks seem to have benefited greatly from liberal tax policies and subsidies. Poor and uneducated? No. Hypocritical? Perhaps.
11/17/16, 10:35 AM
Mary said...
Europe would have a lot less to fear from Russia had the US not violated a promise made by Reagan/Bush to not move bases any closer to their border. Instead, we spent the last 25 or so years completely encircling Russia and China with military installations. Had Russia put such installations into central America and Canada, we'd be in total meltdown hysteria.
Moshe, Maine's ballot had a space for write-in votes, so either we were being deliberately misled or Maine does allow writeins.
To the poster who's friends have "been grabbed" (sorry, can't remember who now!) I have been grabbed as well. I chased the "grabber," in my dress and sandals, for a good mile, cornered him and beat him over the head with my Boston Globe. There are things a lot worse than being grabbed. Being bombed into oblivion comes to mind...
11/17/16, 10:49 AM
Myriad said...
One measure of that power that's commonly cited is the probability that ones individual vote swings the outcome. With or without the Electoral College, that probability is vanishingly tiny (though it's more so without the EC, by an enormous and yet for all practical purposes irrelevant factor).
Intuitively, those probabilities, being nearly impossible to distinguish from zero, don't seem a very useful measure. Yet the validity of the measure is difficult to argue with. Because if your vote didn't swing the outcome then it, well, had no effect on the outcome, so what power did it have?
To escape from this paradox I think one has to conclude that the mere act of voting itself actually doesn't have significant power and was never supposed to. Voting is not a gathering or exercise of power (though it's heretical to say so), but a measurement of power. You, individually, can't change things by voting, any more than you can charge a battery by pushing the needle of its charge meter toward the right. What matters is the thing that voting is measuring: society's support for the candidates and the parties and positions they represent. Democracy doesn't happen by voting; it happens by the social interactions that precede and prepare for voting. The power's in the voter's voice not the voter's vote. And you don't exercise that power by voting, but by social engagement in the numerous other quaint rituals of politics.
Why might this fine point of distinction matter? Because the long-term trend toward professional electioneering has whittled that social power away (hence the "quaintness"). Caucuses and conventions that used to be deliberative and sometimes raucous consensus-building social events have, in my lifetime, turned into scripted media performances. Stump appearances are now managed so as to exclude the merely curious or undecided (by, for example, making the audience queue for hours before and past the announced time) so that only ardent supporters appear in the TV news clips. The mass media, in particular, want elections to be a process where the voters passively absorb the narratives offered by each party or candidate (e.g. through the profitable business of political advertising), and then make a purely individual (and thereby nearly purely ineffectual) choice. Note the slogans emphasizing only that part: "Decision 2016!" ("We talk, you decide!") And while social media might seem to go against that trend by giving everyone new ways to participate, it also fragments the potential participating communities into echo chambers. The captive audience that used to exist at the barber shop, or when the public debate or the whistle stop was the only thing going on in town that day, or when the national party convention was the only thing on TV all week, has escaped.
11/17/16, 10:54 AM
Myriad said...
Against this general background, the two campaigns just concluded appear to have taken different approaches to public participation, whether or not intentionally. The Clinton campaign was clearly designed for a socially passive (consumer) audience. It emphasized that we knew what she stood for: just read the lengthy collection of position papers online. If you agree, click "like," but if you disagree with something, don't bother to call or write. Just consider whether there's more you agree with than disagree, and cast your vote accordingly. (The obvious next sentence is, "and that's what people did!" but I don't think that's true. I strongly suspect that most voters on all sides reading through the list would find more to agree with than disagree, but many voted based on other assessments instead.)
In my area at least (in Pennsylvania, which turned out to have some importance in the outcome), Clinton volunteers were not sent door to door to speak in favor of their candidate or discuss issues (they might say something off-message or offensive) but to distribute literature (i.e. deliver junk mail by hand) and urge people already in the database as supporters to remember to vote. The lack of outreach to people with different or disaffected points of view has been commented on ad nauseam (the only such effort I noticed was a late push on the "importance of stopping Trump"). The lack of any trace of invitation for anyone to "reach in" is more subtle but might be more important. People can sense that the same vote, cast and counted the same way, doesn't seem to have the same social power it used to, even if they can't quite sort out the reasons why. Why expect a candidate with 41 position papers to listen to your ideas or concerns?
Early on, I commented here that I thought Clinton's evidently better-organized "ground game" would be a big advantage. It didn't turn out that way. It failed to be engaging, in any sense of that word. Besides raise money, what was there for it to do? It seems as though every word was already scripted and rehearsed by then.
Trump's campaign, while I suspect being nearly as stage-managed as Clinton's, had several elements that created at least the appearance of lively public political involvement. Off-the-cuff comments (retracted later), acceptance of "unacceptable" public personages as allies, spontaneous-looking tweets including responses to critical media comments, the lack of clear positions on most issues, and even the incidents of disruption at public appearances early on, all contributed to making it seem possible that Trump would actually pay attention to voters. (Granted, it also made it seem possible that Trump would be a Hitler in a poke, especially to those accustomed to their vote being a passive purchase of a set of positions clearly listed on the box. Even though everyone knows what's actually inside the box usually bears little resemblance to the label in any case.)
It appears from numerous accounts that Trump supporters, in turn, reached out to their relatives and communities, building that "silent" consensus. I don't think many of them worried about whether they might harm their cause by accidentally saying something off-message or offensive in the process. Despite such details as Twitter and alt-right blogs, some features of Trump's campaign were retro, in ways that might have reminded many people, including those "older white voters," of how public politics and the power of the voter used to work.
11/17/16, 10:56 AM
The Somewhat Intoxicated Mr. Drunken Pundit said...
I didn't vote for either one of them, the buffoon or the bloodthirsty warmonger. I'll guess that just about everyone can figure out which is which.
Loved your last book, I read it on Kindle. LOL Isn't that ironic? Keep up the good work.
11/17/16, 11:10 AM
M Smith said...
That's almost exactly what the "advocates" at La Raza say about of nonbrown people.
11/17/16, 11:17 AM
My donkey said...
The aim of Divide & Conquer is to keep the masses so busy/exhausted fighting among themselves, they have no time/energy remaining to fight the ruling class, and it's still working like a charm after thousands of years. All they need to do is maintain focus on binary thinking (good/evil, republican/democrat, liberal/conservative, us/them, right/left, bluecollar/whitecollar, etc.) and the Average Joes/Janes apparently can't help but beat each other up.
Every US election for the past 150 years has been won by the Republican or Democratic party. Nowadays they may as well be two branches of a single MoneyPower party, to the extent that money and corporate power determines what gets done in US domestic and foreign affairs. But what can be done about it? For starters, banning money from federal politics (including ending that form of legalized bribery known as lobbying) would be a great accomplishment.
11/17/16, 11:22 AM
RUKidding said...
Trump promised to bring jobs back. These people have really suffered, and neither party has done bupkiss to address the real issues facing quite a large portion of our populace. I was so annoyed when the propaganda wurltizer kept spewing about "white working class men." How about working class people of color? How about working class women?
I still keep hearing how Clinton ran this well organized campaign. More propagand. She ran a crap campaign by ignoring the very people - in the rust belt - whom she should have focused. I did hear snippets from Trump's rallies, where he said "where's Hillary? why isn't she here? I'm here. I'm the one who's flying all over the country. why isn't Clinton?" Good questions!
Progressive voters need to start grasping the issues facing rural areas, and that, if the Democratic party wishes to remain at all relevant and vital, they need to stop being such sops for Wall St, the MIC and other corporate/banking interests. Voting in Chuck Schumer as Minority Leader leads me to doubt anything will change.
I have serious concerns about Donald Trump. I foresee another tax cut for the superrich and corporations. The middle class will see our taxes go up, not down. I'm skeptical that Trump can bring jobs back, at least not the type of jobs that he's spoken about. I hope that Trump can "fix" ACA, but I'm skeptical.
I regret Trump's demonizing of "illegals." Anyone who's seriously investigated the issues with illegal immigation know full well the big corporations routinely go to central America to recruit, hire and fly in undocumented workers to work in massively unsafe working conditions for pennies on the dollar. When ICE comes a-knocking, the undocumented workers get shipped back to their home countries, often losing their last paltry paychecks. But the business owners rarely ever even get a tap on the wrist. They just turn around and do the same over and over again. Trump never ever talked about this because he, himself, is guilty of hiring undocumented workers to build and work in his properties.
I find the whole kit and caboodle rather depressing, but I do agree that possibly we've averted a war with Russia. I'm not so convinced, however, that Trump won't be willing to become a war hawk, himself, if he's properly "incentivised." He's already talking about building up naval ships to be a bulwark against China, which I think is a massive, and costly, mistake.
11/17/16, 11:34 AM
pygmycory said...
But one way or another, we are going to find out what he's going to do. At least the TPP looks dead. I must admit, living in Canada means I'm not as worried as I might be if I lived in the USA. Things like trade agreements, and war mongering or lack of same, potentially affect me, but I'm not in danger of being denied an abortion if I were to get raped, or of being deported, or harassed for my election choices in either direction.
By the way, why do women get labelled as minorities? They're approx. 50% of the population.
11/17/16, 11:39 AM
Rich Brereton said...
I guess you and I are tuning into different segments of liberal and/or Clinton-supporting sentiment post-election. I'm hearing mostly grasping for some constructive action to take in the face of what they view as a disastrous result. It's a process of triage, and the actions that seem to be rising to highest priority are:
- to unify in opposition to Trump's campaign promises to build a wall, to pull out of free trade agreements, to pursue aggressive trade policy against China, to accede to the Syrian government and its Russian ally in their slaughter of their citizens, to roll back regulations on coal and oil & gas production, to deport millions of undocumented immigrants, to impose a ban on Muslim immigrants, to give our intelligence security forces free reign to carry out torture, etc. etc.
- to defend vulnerable people from the wave of public hate speech and hate crimes they suspect will arrive on the heels of Trump's hateful campaign rhetoric (and there are instances already in the news).
- to reject his ongoing demonization of the free press that began when he was offended by their negative coverage of his campaign, especially now that this demagogue who refuses to be held accountable for numerous lies, half-truths, misrepresentations and innuendos is the head of the executive branch.
In short, they want to hold Trump accountable for what he has said and done in the last year and a half and to resist his agenda for the next four on all fronts. If you deem that these motivations among people on the left and/or Clinton supporters (and I check both boxes) are simply the result of an ongoing demonization of Trump, then I respectfully disagree. I look forward to your thoughts as we proceed.
Best,
Rich
11/17/16, 11:52 AM
Bill Pulliam said...
11/17/16, 11:57 AM
Cottage Crone said...
11/17/16, 12:03 PM
onething said...
“One thing I most noticed as I was raised in a dictatorship that maybe some others may not have noticed. Trump's acceptance speech. He went out of his way to signal that the army is behind him - lists number of generals plus many decorated soldiers. Then he singles out the CIA (who ever mentions the CIA during acceptance speech?)and then the cops. The thing is, North Americans I talked to about this attribute this to law and order agenda. I am not at all convinced. The establishment he went against is extremely powerful - but perhaps Trump has the men with guns. Given the humiliation the various patriots who serve not greed but country, would it be surprising they were behind a strongman who promises to bring a semblance of honour back to the country? Watch him and not for the reasons everyone is discussing. “
I think I understand what you are implying, that he is letting the deep state know that he will rally the firepower to his side if need be.
Check out this brief video to see him speaking truth to power. The power to which I refer is not that of a mere billionaire, next to them he is nothing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYozWHBIf8g
And this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-8KgP5zhLQ
11/17/16, 12:10 PM
Noah said...
SA is a grassroots organization, but it probably should be building stronger ties with other community organizations, though there is a cold-start problem: If you do not have sufficient power, other orgs are not likely to give you the time of day.
Here is another perspective on the usefulness of peaceful protests:
"""
I've seen some people dismissing peaceful protests in my feed. I think this is fundamentally incorrect, for two reasons:
1) Chanting in large groups builds collective meaning/identity/solidarity, which is a resource you can then use for other things. Don't ask me why humans work this way. But it works for religion, it works for sports, it works for music, it works for politics. Celebrating the Eucharist "doesn't do anything" except it totally, totally does.
2) Even if you believe that all politics is fundamentally about violence and coercion. Hostile actors frequently resort to proxies (however rough) for who would win in an unlimited conflict to determine the balance of power - you can see this from arms races to elections themselves to sparring bucks. No peaceful protest that shows off its numbers, discipline, youth, and enthusiasm is actually peaceful, insofar as those are proxies for winning an actual confrontation.
This applies even to protests that are explicitly mobilized according to religious pacifism. Remember that scene in "Gandhi" where everyone lines up in a polite little row to get clobbered half to death by police? That's actually a pretty incredible show of potential force. It is, indeed, "virtue signalling," which is a fine and a real and a good thing.
The criticality points (which are fuzzy so it looks more like a gradient in practice) are:
1) Can you show that you would win in a street confrontation with a counter-movement? If so, you can dissuade them from enacting extralegal violence that the police might otherwise allow.
2) Can you show that you would win a street confrontation with the police? If this is the case then the state basically has to fold or at least incorporate you, although for that exact reason it's very very difficult to reach. (Katharine Chorley's "Armies and the Art of Revolution" should be sobering reading if your Plan A is to storm the barricades.)
Classical fascism relies upon extralegal but legally tolerated violence from rightist activists, so it's crucial that the trend of the last several decades of racist demonstrations being consistently met with larger counter-demonstrations (ideally with a contingent of fit punk kids boasting about their eagerness to fight, even if police prevent anything from actually happening) continue. Proving the power to assemble in large crowds independently serves the same purpose.
"""
11/17/16, 12:30 PM
unirealist said...
That, I think, is the well-spring of the emotions behind support for Trump: resentment, bitterness, and silent rage.
When people wonder why I voted for Trump, I offer the #1 reason you cited in your essay -- I want to avoid a nuclear war with Russia, which I suspect Hillary would precipitate.
But that's my rational mind justifying an emotional decision. Emotionally-speaking, I am incensed at what has happened to the rule of law in this country. Not only the free pass given to Hillary, and Lois Lerner and John Clapper and Jon Corzine, but also the stay-out-of-prison cards every banker and CEO carries in his wallet like a talisman. There are now two classes of people in our society, the ones to whom the law will fall in full force, and the ones to whom the law doesn't apply.
And honestly, it doesn't matter if Trump fixes everything else on his agenda. If he doesn't restore a common faith in the law, this country is headed for collapse, because government has lost its legitimacy in the eyes of too many of its citizens.
11/17/16, 12:40 PM
Ben Johnson said...
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/11/the_democrats_are_already_screwing_up_the_trump_resistance.html
11/17/16, 12:48 PM
jj said...
11/17/16, 1:20 PM
PeterE said...
To illustrate another point, there are two guys, each on their own proverbial desert island. One has a trillion dollar coin and the other guy is hoping he has enough change for bus fare when he gets back home. If these guys were corporations with stock, Wall Street would give a high assessment to the guy with the trillion dollar coin and write off the guy with chump change. The guy with the chump change knows how to distill sea water and the guy with the trillion dollar change doesn’t have a clue. A “week” from now, the guy with the trillion dollar coin will likely be dead. You, Martenson, Foss, Kunstler, and even Mish Shedlock, Karl Denninger, etc. are pointing out the dangers ahead to BAU from various perspectives.
“Distilleries” and shoe factories don’t get built in nanoseconds. The stock exchanges could trade a stock from once a day to once a week and I think we would better off.
My neighbor who voted for Trump (he wears a “Make America Great Again” ball cap) says he is tired of all the “Politically Correct” rhetoric. He wants every one to be treated equally with none of the sugar coating or kid glove treatment. He’s part of “fly over” America even though he lives in a fairly affluent area. He works the night shift.
Hillary won Los Angeles County by ~1.1 million votes and won the overall election by ~400K votes. In other words, outside Los Angeles County, Trump won the popular vote by about ~700K votes. Maybe the Electoral College got it right; not by overall vote count but by discounting highly concentrated “blue” [or “red”] political areas of the country.
I wrote in Bernie Sanders as the one who I “hope”ed would have “change”d the course of this nation. I voted my conscience. I’ll give Trump a chance until proven otherwise.
11/17/16, 1:31 PM
Grebulocities said...
I ask for a couple of reasons. First, the election results have finally provided an opportunity for me to break through and explain that the non-rational factors behind voting matter a great deal. This has provided me with a useful tool: when I stay purely on the plane of rationality, I can't convince Clinton supporters that Trump's working-class supporters were actually making a rational choice by choosing to roll the dice rather than tolerate the intolerable, but explaining how consciousness can be changed according to will might be a better approach. The other reason is that you managed to convince me that there's something to it; four years ago, I would have laughed off the whole notion that magic is anything but nonsensical superstition.
I've actually heard the notion that magic is the art of changing consciousness according to will from a couple of Bay Area types, so the idea is out there in a few upper-middle-class liberal circles, but I can't seem to pin down a source that explains it very well.
11/17/16, 1:31 PM
Justin said...
http://thefederalist.com/2015/07/10/why-white-people-will-always-be-racists/
A couple interesting pieces. The first article, especially. The racist-until-proven-otherwise thing is pretty frustrating. I'll once again mention the all-black gang in my town which is involved in prostitution and human trafficking that is frequently defended by "journalists" on the basis that the police investigating these crimes must be racist.
Another good article on Trump, and the state of serious racism and anti-semitism.
http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/11/16/you-are-still-crying-wolf/
In my mind the only serious argument against Trump that is evidence-based is the environmental arguments - and Clinton, really, is not much better even if she stuck to whatever she said she'd stick to.
11/17/16, 2:17 PM
Jasmine said...
I have a question for you. It is very possible that we might have another economic crash in the next few years and it is likely that the incumbent of the White House will get the blame for this. I have heard it argued that it would be better if Hillary had won, because at least the right people would get the blame. However if it happens on Trumps watch then he will get the blame and the Democrats will use this as an argument to get the neoliberals back in power. Now much as I dislike Trump, I don't think he would be responsible for any economic crash as the causes of it would date back to the decisions that were made when Reagan entered the Whitehouse and have continued to be made by every president since then. However if Trump is the man on watch then he will carry the can for it. I would like to know what you think about this.
PS over here in London lots of people are very depressed about Trumps victory. Many muslims I know are very worried about it and I think thats understandable. Personally I disliked both candidates. I have to say that if I lived your side of the pond I might have voted Hillary, but I would probably have needed to carry a bucket into the voting booth so that I could vomit after doing it. But then looking at her rhetoric about intervening in Syria maybe I wouldn’t have voted for her. Much as I dislike some of Trumps racist rhetoric, I would prefer that to a third world war. I some times get the impression that some on the left would be quite happy to have a president who would lead them into a third world war as long as that president was politically correct
11/17/16, 2:22 PM
aNanyMouse said...
You’ve referred to how so many Lefties diss Trump voters as racist etc., but I’ll add that this is just one manifestation of the degree to which so many of these Lefties wear their general upper-middle class snobbery (esp. toward working-class folks) on their sleeves.
I suspect that much of this snobbery owes to their having been raised on the Self-Esteem school of psychology, which holds that “Every human being, with no exception, for the mere fact to be it, is worthy of UNconditional respect of everybody else.” (See this school’s Wiki entry.) While those raised with this doctrine ought to have applied it to THEIR dealings with others, they mostly forgot about that part, and concentrated on expecting others to extend this respect to THEM, regardless of their (self-absorbed) conduct, thus widely earning the label Special Snowflakes.
On its face, this self-esteem Doctrine is revolting to many working class folk, and it was implicit but clear that Trump had no respect for it. I don’t recall you ever making clear reference to it; if my memory is correct, you may want to write a post on your view of its role in today’s US.
11/17/16, 2:22 PM
Justin said...
Agree and amplify is an incredibly effective way to induce cognitive dissonance and goad people into overreaction.
http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2016/10/06/university-michigan-invest-diversity-programs/91657770/
$85 million in diversity funding after a racist flyering campaign that cost $85?
I don't support the flyer-posters but I imagine they're laughing.
11/17/16, 2:39 PM
Armata said...
One of our boys showed up to the Portland protest and actually dismantled the whole thing live on Periscope. He spread a rumor that an open carry Trump counter-protest was on its way, and the whole thing collapsed in a matter of ten minutes as the organizers didn't know whether to fertilize their drawers or go blind. (He also blew out one of the vigil candles - absolute madman!)
That was fracking awesome! Sounds like we don't even need a "whiff of grapeshot" to disperse this unruly mob. Just a carefully planted rumor and the SJW's start running for cover like startled rabbits. Thanks for the TACINTEL.
11/17/16, 3:03 PM
Kheris said...
The activities of the transition team and the short list of possible Cabinet nominees are troubling. Trump is not an ideologue but he does have a thin skin, values loyalty, yet seems willing to put people in a position just to shake stuff up. There is little evidence of any forethought. Nikki Haley for SoS? Why? The appointment of Bannon to a significant position is not good news in my opinion. My guess is that Bannon will outlast Priebus.
Keep in mind the Paul Manafort interview in which he made it crystal clear that Trump saw himself as becoming "Chairman of the Board" not the CEO or COO. The VP was going to be responsible for foreign and domestic policy on an operational basis because, as I am sure you know, Board chairs do not do operational work. Kasich, in describing the call he got offering him the job, described the foregoing. I found the interview later. My guess is that Pence will get the 3 AM calls and Trump will validate Pence's decisions.
I think it likely that Ryan and McConnell, in league with Pence, will have far more impact than Trump on the ship of state. In which case I suspect the Trump voters will encounter significant buyer's remorse when Medicare is reduced to vouchers next year, Medicaid becomes a block grant, they find themselves paying even more for healthcare or health insurance, and discover that the automated jobs really won't come back and the rest aren't either. There is more I am sure that will come up in the process, including those things Trump can't undo as quickly as he'd like. In a year we'll know what can be done now as it will be done, and in two years we'll know if he has a chance at a second term.
11/17/16, 3:44 PM
M Smith said...
"Tell me, do American colleges have remedial reading and writing and arithmetic for "uneducated" freshmen?"
Yes, shamefully, they do. They also have specially designed courses of study where the professor may or may not show up and the TA will do your work for you - IF you can make the school lots of money by throwing a cylindrical object. See the Af-Am scandal at UNC-CH.
Yes, we taxpayers of NC pay for this. We also pay for illegal aliens and their children to get "free" educations.
11/17/16, 3:46 PM
Yupped said...
It seems unlikely, to me, that the Demos will take much notice or learn fundamental lessons from this defeat. They seem to be significantly ahead in the popular vote and will more likely stick to their mix of affluenza and identity politics than get back to their very-aged blue collar roots. They'll play along with Trump for a bit and assume he's going to provide them with a come back opening in 2018, just as the Republicans did in 2010.
It looks like Trump is going to try to party like it's 1981, which I don't think is going to work now, although it might improve things at the margins for some. I have a contact (my last remaining work contact in my old life of business consulting) who is closely connected to NY hedge fund money people. He is completely aware of the class dynamic running through all this and simply shrugged when I talked to him today, observing that the same already wealthy people are going to get as rich from Trump as the would have from Clinton. His rather cynical 2c, fwiw. It was ever thus, I suppose, at least until things get really serious.
So, overall, my guess is that neither the billionaires nor the Democratic Party are really shaken up by this election. Either way, I am beginning to wonder if Trump is going to be a bookend to the era of debt-fueled growth that started with Reagan. Maybe Trump tries to restart that fire with infrastructure investments/tax-cuts/deregulation but can't achieve take-off (because demographics, existing debt, various sources of depletion/blowback, etc) and then we find ourselves back in front of the choices we were beginning to contemplate in the late 70s. I know this is a romantic and highly unlikely outcome, but it would certainly show the principle of balance at work!
Thanks again for all that you do.
11/17/16, 3:48 PM
Jerome Purtzer said...
11/17/16, 3:49 PM
Patricia Mathews said...
11/17/16, 3:56 PM
cat said...
11/17/16, 4:00 PM
Revere T said...
https://pepethefrogfaith.wordpress.com/
There are some obvious parallels with Discordianism. I suppose Kek could be considered a representation of the Eristic Principle.
I had no idea that this stuff linked up to many of the topics you discuss on The Other Blog.
Maybe this question belongs over there, but what do you think of seemingly chaotic internet spaces being used as divinatory tools?
Fnord,
Revere
11/17/16, 4:08 PM
Janet D said...
I don't mind the protest marches. If Hillary had won, you'd be seeing double the protests and 10x the smoke. Complaining about people marching is silly. It's what people do when they are upset and, other than Portland, the protests have been peaceful.
I live in an area where 2/3 of the people voted Trump. I know many who voted for him. They are not racist or misogynist, not one of them. But just as it is inaccurate to paint Trump's supporters as racist, it is just as inaccurate to pretend racism isn't at least tacitly overlooked. Trump signaled this with the selection of Bannon. The Breitbart site and FB pages have so many hate posts*, including racist ones, that selecting the head of that organization as Senior Counselor (or whatever) pretty much indicates that he (Trump) is A-OK with it. See the Dallas News article this week, "For White Nationalists, Trump Win a Dream Come True". (google). Life just ain't feeling fun these days.....
*just hung out on both this morning, just to be sure.
11/17/16, 4:19 PM
Justin said...
Pygmycory, I have no idea why women are often spoken of as minorities - in the seats of power, sure, but they're half the population and are over-represented in some really important places - like public school teachers. I guess for a while the idea was they'd join the grand coalition against the White Whale - er white male - and usher in a bold new era of unlimited free trade and open borders?
Personally I think minorities who are in the USA legally, are not part of activist groups like La Raza or BLM and do not commit crimes will be fine. Similarly, I think the worst-case scenario for women's rights would be going back to state's rights on abortion and funding of birth control devices like IUDs. Obviously this isn't cool, but it is a move that will cost Trump a lot to no particular gain. So unless there is a fundamentalist revival and Americans decide to become pro-life and anti-abortion en masse and collectively choose these things, I do not think that women's rights will be significantly curtailed.
Jasmine,
I worry about that too. If the narrative becomes 'white people crashed the country', then things could get extremely ugly. Based on present evidence, I'm glad Trump won, but on the other hand it might be better for the ball to be in the other court.
Regarding Muslims who live in Western countries: The single best thing for them would be an immigration shutdown, at least for a few years. That'll let things cool off, and the government will already have the 'right' policies in place when the next 100+ casualty event happens in Europe (or North America). I don't expect Muslims to agree, because they nearly all demonstrate an admirable solidarity amongst themselves, which is nice, but it doesn't serve to ingratiate them with their new host societies.
Noah, the reason Ghandi used nonviolent methods is because that was his only choice. He has said that he would have no problem with a violent uprising, but a disarmed and untrained Indian populace wasn't going to be able to do it. So instead, he attacked the British self-image as benign colonists. The rest is history.
11/17/16, 4:24 PM
cat said...
This echoes what I have been hearing from people who supported Trump – that his employment of sexist, racist rhetoric was simply a political and rhetorical strategy and he would of course never implement policies that infringed people’s civil and human rights. This seems an entirely unwarranted assumption. Words matter. They matter especially when civil liberties have been at risk generally since 9/11. I agree with the critiques of the policies of Clinton and Obama and I do not think that “the US is awash with racists” (although there seem to be more of them than I had thought, judging from the uptake in hate crimes since the election). But Trump’s rhetoric is dangerous and his use of it to gain power is even more dangerous. His choice of close advisors is not reassuring. And it is very depressing if it is true, as you say, that insulting and reviling women and minority groups, and making veiled threats against them, is the way to “get the enthusiasm of the abandoned working class voters.”
11/17/16, 4:28 PM
Shane W said...
11/17/16, 4:31 PM
Kevin Warner said...
I've had to think about the attributes of tolerance without it being used as a blank cheque and can only think of the following scenarios as descriptive.
If you have an openly gay couple move into a small town and they then ask the locals how they feel about gays and the standard answer is "Don't know. Don't care!" then that is probably a tolerant culture.
If you have someone giving an unwelcome opinion only to be 'tone-silenced', 'dog-piled' and being told to 'check their privilege!' then that would have to be an intolerant culture.
If you have a town in the deep south a century ago where the whites and blacks were vigorously segregated in their activities all week long but on a weekend after nightfall the whites headed on over to 'darktown' to party and have a good time, then that may be called a pragmatically tolerant culture.
I realize that this is only a miserably brief list of scenarios but the subject of tolerance would be an essay in itself and I wonder if tolerance and manners may not be thought of the social glue that helps people get along. When you devalue it, that is when the trouble really starts as we are now seeing.
11/17/16, 4:43 PM
blue sun said...
http://thefederalist.com/2016/11/17/millennials-election-hell-politics-become-god/
It posits that the civil religion of Progress has taken the place of the traditional religions among many young “Millenial” age people. Many have placed their faith in the federal government instead of in a deity. Hence, the existential disappointment following this election.
I think there’s a kernel of truth to the idea.
11/17/16, 4:46 PM
Wizzrobes said...
Some examples :
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-trump-manufacturing-20161114-story.html
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/trumps-campaign-ignored-robots-and-automation-202156153.html
ABC News had a similar story right before the election, which they seemed to have taken down now. Hmm.
Don't really have much more to say than I find this interesting. Guess we'll see how it plays out.
11/17/16, 4:46 PM
CJ DeWitt said...
11/17/16, 4:48 PM
Janet D said...
Clinton? Trump? Honestly, maybe Mother Nature has her own gigantic *&(**-slap primed and waiting for us in the next four years and the last thing we'll have to worry about is what knucklehead is leading this country.
11/17/16, 5:35 PM
Chevaliermalfait said...
I forget if I offered this essay before
http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=2122
think it's apropos to the situation.
I think folks tend to over estimate the power of the office of president, perhaps a messianic complex? As a poll worker for about 2 decades, there's a large group of voters, probably 30%, give or take, that I call the four year'ers. They support a candidate for pres. but don't come out for what is probably a more crucial election, that of the mid term.
That's where the 'real juice' is. senate and house.
henry
11/17/16, 5:54 PM
Armata said...
“Gabby, some of my readers have noted the number of generals and admirals that supported Trump in the election campaign, and suggested that the military may have backed him as a way to stop Clinton from picking a fight with Russia that the US is arguably far from certain to win. Thus you may be on to something.”
I can tell you that a war with Russia would be a disaster for both sides and even if the war didn’t go nuclear, the US would suffer heavy losses even if it theoretically “won’. Russia and China are much tougher opponents than the third rate military powers the US has gotten used to beating up on. Moreover, the Russians and the Chinese have shown a willingness and capacity to take horrific losses and keep fighting. Just look at the casualties and devastation both countries suffered in World War II. Neither Russia nor China ever seriously considered surrendering during the war in spite of that. And Russia has specifically warned that open US military intervention against Syria would be considered an act of war. After the “accidental” air strike against Syrian Army forces in Deir Ezzor a couple of months ago that killed 83 Syrian soldiers and wounded more than 100, the Russians warned that any further attacks against Syrian government forces would be considered an act of war and that if there were further air strikes against Syrian military forces, the attacking aircraft would be shot down without warning by Russian air defense forces.
We have talked in the past about how vulnerable aircraft carriers would be in a shooting war against another major military power. Naval and air power would play a major role in any war between the US and Russia. The US Navy is much larger, has more firepower and has an overall advantage in quality compared to the Russian Navy. But the Russians have been working on asymmetric warfare strategies and technologies since the early days of the Cold War in order to counter the USN’s advantages. They would also have some important advantages, including fighting close to home, a formidable air force and submarine fleet and torpedoes and missiles that are downright scary. The Russians have a number of weapons systems that were specifically developed to kill aircraft carriers and other large warships.
Part 1 of 2
11/17/16, 6:11 PM
Armata said...
For example, every Russian cruise missile and fast attack submarine carries a half a dozen Type 65 “carrier killer” torpedoes in addition to conventional torpedoes and cruise missiles. The Type 65 is a nightmare weapon to counter. It’s fast, it has a very long range, it has a huge warhead and it’s what is known as a “keel breaker”. Instead of hitting the side of the target like a World War II torpedo, it dives under the target and detonates a few meters under the keel, aiming for the center of the ship. The resulting explosion not only generates a powerful shockwave (water is for all practical purposes an incompressible liquid, so the shock wave hits full force), but also generates a fast expanding, rapidly rising gas bubble that slams into the underside of the ship. A keel breaker can literally snap a ship’s hull in half with one hit. The whiplash effect is devastating. Any member of the crew not killed outright will probably be badly injured, so you probably won’t see many survivors. The Type 65 was specifically designed to kill aircraft carriers, battleships, super tankers and other large, damage resistant ships with a single hit. The Type 65 also uses a unique “wake homing” guidance system that is very hard to countermeasure. It’s worth noting that all of the newer Russian warships have “hard kill” anti-torpedo defenses that can attempt to intercept an incoming torpedo. We still don’t have anything like that in our fleet. The USN has been working on something similar, but it’s all just experimental prototypes and design studies and nothing is expected to be in service for several more years.
Another is the Kh-32 hypersonic cruise missile. This beast of a missile has a maximum range of over 600 miles, cruises at an altitude of 131,000 feet and has a cruising speed of Mach 4.7! When it’s almost over the target, it makes a steep, high angle dive onto the target. It was designed primarily as an anti-ship missile but can also be used against land targets. When it hits the target, its doing Mach 6 and will punch right through the deck (probably several decks) of an enemy ship before the 2200 pound high explosive warhead goes off deep inside the hull, causing massive internal damage. A single Kh-32 is more than enough to sink a cruiser or destroyer, while one hit would be enough to put an aircraft carrier out of action. Two or three hits would be probably be enough to sink a carrier. It’s normally carried by the Tu-22M3 Backfire heavy bomber, which can carry up to three of these monsters apiece. Bear in mind the Backfires will be attacking in squadrons or even entire regiments in order to saturate the enemy defenses and the attack will coordinated with cruise missiles from other sources like submarines in order to overwhelm the enemy air defenses. The combination of very high speed, very high cruising altitude, a steep terminal dive, an advanced radar guidance system and a built in jammer makes this a very difficult weapon to defend against. Again, the US has nothing even remotely comparable.
It’s for that reason that I agree with you about aircraft carriers. We should instead focus on submarines, small, fast missile armed warships and long-range land based aircraft armed with anti-ship missiles.
11/17/16, 6:17 PM
tolkienguy said...
Thing is, even 10 years ago, the national promenance of groups like the alt-right or BLM would have been almost unimaginable. It really does feel like race relations have gone sharply downhill recently, and it doesn't have to be this way. Furthermore, as JMG has discussed, the left and right in this country have completely lost the ability to talk to one another-being a grad-school alum in a very right wing area, and thus having contact with liberals and conservatives, I routinely get to hear both sides' fist-pounding denunciations of their opponents-or rather, the strawman caricatures they imagine their opponents to be. Both have about the same relationship to reality, and both need to stop, because I really can't see how America can go on like this.
11/17/16, 6:25 PM
Robert McGahey said...
11/17/16, 6:38 PM
Chris Houston said...
Trade
Immigration
Tariffs
Non interventionist foreign policy
War on whites
political correctness aka censorship
internet freedom
affirmative action which is anti-white
leftist lunatics in colleges
disaster Obamacare and fines paid to IRS
No banker went to prison, no hedgefund left behind
Supreme Court
11/17/16, 7:13 PM
Candace said...
I forwarded links to the post to several of my friends. One friend liked it so much she wanted to forward it using a gmail account and post a link to it on Facebook. Her friends have told her the links don't work. It could be a technical failure on her/our part, but I'm worried this is part of the website censorship mentioned above. So perhaps someone more technically savvy than I an could check it out?
@ Robert McGahey,
So you actually think the Paris accords are more than hand waving? I thought most of the stuff governments were doing pretty much fell into the category of Kabuki Theater. If people aren't willing to stop driving cars, why would this make a difference?
11/17/16, 7:39 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Maria, I thought you said you were stomping off in a huff! No, my post isn't based on assumptions; as I said rather more than once, it's based on what I heard Trump voters actually saying about why they cast their votes the way they did -- and if your assumptions don't fit that, you may want to rethink those assumptions.
Avery, true enough. I've come to think, watching the spittle fly, that the failure of the Great God Progress to deliver the goods in this election has a lot of people in deep cognitive dissonance.
Indian Blogger, nicely summarized.
Ares, maybe you're a safe white person. Most of the people I know in flyover country, white and otherwise, don't feel safe at all, and it's not, as you insist, a matter of bathrooms et al. It's a matter of not knowing if they're going to lose their jobs, be unable to afford necessary healthcare, or watch their kids come home in body bags from another Middle Eastern war. If those concerns seem unreal to you, then maybe, to borrow a phrase from the left, you should check your privilege.
David, the only reason they're denouncing the electoral college is that it didn't give them the present they wanted. Not that many weeks ago Democrats were gleefully talking about how the electoral college meant that Trump couldn't possibly get in. There's a word for that, and it sounds rather like "hippogriff."
Gregorach, it's unreasonable -- though very convenient -- for their opponents to use the actions of a few to dismiss the real concerns of the many.
Phil, the county I lived in voted for Trump 72% to 24% Clinton, so I suspect it wasn't a 50/50 split among the congregations!
Renaissance, I'm delighted to hear that your friends and neighbors realize that the US is getting out of the empire business. That's a level of clarity I wish I saw more often here.
Fudoshin, excellent! Any relevant quote from the original Kung Fu series -- the last TV series I watched regularly, btw -- is welcome here. ;-)
Kevin, I haven't kept links. Can anyone else provide factual links to Soros' involvement in paid protests?
Iuval, it was a choice between four more years of green tokenism that wouldn't actually change anything, but would convince people that they didn't have to take action, and four years of obvious neglect of the environment that might actually spur people to action. No major party candidate in decades has offered more than lip service to environmental causes.
Paul, as I've noted more than once, if Trump backs away from confrontation with Russia, tears up a few trade agreements, and reinstates the Glass-Steagall Act, he'll have done more good than any of the previous four presidents -- though that's a very low bar. Is his election going to change things over the long term? Of course not -- but the long term isn't the only one that matters. If this election shocks enough Democrats out of their echo chambers and gets them to pay attention to their former constituents in middle America, it could actually do some good; I'll talk later on about how that could play out.
11/17/16, 7:52 PM
Justin said...
https://www.rt.com/usa/366579-soros-orgs-driving-trump-protests/
http://www.infowars.com/proof-the-trump-protests-utilizing-paid-professional-protesters-financed-by-george-soros/
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-11-15/whos-behind-portland-riots-60-arrested-anti-trump-protesters-were-out-state-didnt-vo
http://www.inquisitr.com/2885453/george-soros-funded-moveon-org-takes-responsibility-for-violent-donald-trump-protest-promises-more-protests-are-to-come/
There's no gold-standard evidence here. However, I think there's enough to justify the belief that something is up, and that someone much like Soros is probably involved.
11/17/16, 8:00 PM
Justin said...
11/17/16, 8:02 PM
onething said...
"I've been having discussions with Clinton supporters about what Google and Facebook should do to combat "fake news", (it may be an actual problem, but the "solution" seems dangerous) and one thing surprises me... more than a few have used the Archdruid Report as an example of what they want to see removed. Not restricted, but altogether removed from the internet."
I've noticed for years that the concept of free speech is beyond large numbers of people and that often the biggest offenders are the leftward or liberal end of the spectrum.
11/17/16, 8:04 PM
Justin said...
Renaissance, if Trump actually does succeed in imperial disentanglement, I would imagine a lot of the left will think they did it. Either way, I'd be more than happy to blow smoke up various orifices of lefties if Trump manages to roll back empire without too much bloodshed.
11/17/16, 8:04 PM
onething said...
https://www.sott.net/article/334071-Trump-Probably-Won-The-Popular-Vote-Heres-Why
11/17/16, 8:18 PM
Kevin Warner said...
"Can anyone else provide factual links to Soros' involvement in paid protests?"
Not sure if the following links are of any help. There is a story at http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/democrats-soros-trump-231313 called "Soros bands with donors to resist Trump, 'take back power'"
The second link does not connect Soros directly so I cannot verify the authenticity of the article (including its creepy photo) but is of interest in itself if true. It is at http://truthfeed.com/breaking-less-than-a-day-into-trumps-epic-victory-soros-already-caught-orchestrating-chaos/34876/ and is called "BREAKING : Less than a Day Into Trump’s Epic Victory, Soros Already Caught Orchestrating Chaos"
Third link is at http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-11-15/whos-behind-portland-riots-60-arrested-anti-trump-protesters-were-out-state-didnt-vo and is called "Who's Behind The Portland Riots? 60% Of Arrested Anti-Trump Protesters Were From Out Of State, Didn't Vote"
Lastly there is a story at http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2016/11/heres-proof-soros-money-funding-anti-trump-leftist-protest-riots/ called "HERE’S PROOF=> That Soros Money is FUNDING the Anti-Trump Leftist Protest-Riots"
If this is all true, then I would imagine that this would be a case for your F.B.I. as they would have jurisdiction and I believe that the U.S. has laws on their books about outside entities trying to influence American politics.
11/17/16, 8:32 PM
Jen said...
11/17/16, 8:34 PM
onething said...
Send your younger brother the above linked article
http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/11/16/you-are-still-crying-wolf/
Keeping in mind that the guy who wrote it seems to loathe Trump but oh boy does he demolish the fiction that Trump is anti gay and racist.
And then ask him how he feels about the lies he has been told.
11/17/16, 8:50 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Sillybill, it's your indefeasible right as a citizen of this country to get out there and counterprotest the Klan, so go ye forth and do that thing. Do you know if the anti-Klan people who are organizing this have talked to the local churches? It was really impressive to see what a couple of thousand people singing together can do to the morale of a small group of angry men in bedsheets.
Lei, the United States has bankrupted itself playing global policeman. Have you been to this country? If not, and you go outside the well-off coastal areas, I promise you you'll be astonished and appalled by how rundown and dilapidated everything is. We currently pay nearly 70% of NATO's expenses, and many billions more every year in indirect costs, and sorry, but we can't afford it any more. The nations of Europe have a choice to make; either they can pay for their own defense out of their own budgets, or they can keep their mininature military budgets and make whatever deals they can with the Russians and the Chinese. Take your pick...
Fred, good heavens, nobody in America objects to being lied to if the lie is something they want to hear. It's the people who disprove the lie who come in for all the hostility.
WB, they're so threatened by unfamiliar ideas, and so incapable of coming up with arguments to defend their own opinions, that they're ready to throw away the last of their principles and embrace censorship? In that case, being included in their list of books (or blogs) for burning is really quite a compliment -- and yes, you can tell them I said that.
J. Gamer, I'm not sure that will wash, given the frantic efforts to stop him -- it's quite something, for example, when every single newspaper in the country gives its nod to somebody else!
Greg, I suspect people who read this blog know perfectly well that I'd simply delete any comment to that effect. Dismissing somebody's views on the basis of their race, gender, or sexual orientation is a bad idea, whatever race, gender, or orientation we're talking about.
Ben, as already noted, I think you and they are wrong. I understand that a lot of people are nervous, but we'll have to wait and see what happens.
Mister R., that's really impressively mendacious. Thanks for the heads up!
Donalfagan, and yet the risk of war was the one that was most often cited to me, and other people have reported the same thing. I think that deserves attention.
11/17/16, 8:59 PM
Justin said...
I think it's an interesting and worthwhile question to ask "why did Clinton become regarded as a war candidate?", given that the media was mostly in the tank for her. What information channels were involved? Why did people believe those channels and not the other ones. CNN would have people believe that Trump is likely to bomb or nuke people because of his fondness for creative insults.
11/17/16, 9:05 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Ursachi, thank you for the clarification -- I was relying on my recollections at the time plus what I could get from a couple of history websites. I certainly hope Trump doesn't turn out like Iliescu! My point, though, was that an attempt to turn the current round of protests into a regime change operation -- something that a couple of readers have suggested is possible -- is likely to run into the same kind of situation, except that our miners (and farmers, and laid-off factory workers, and vets on pensions, etc., etc.) are rather more likely to come to Trump's defense packing serious firepower, and prepared to use it.
Elderwoman, er, did you notice that this post was mostly about why people voted for Trump? To judge by the people I listened to, climate change wasn't an issue for them one way or the other, so I didn't discuss it in this post. (I've discussed it in many other posts, of course.) I know it's cold consolation to remember that Barack Obama has done precisely nothing to stop climate change in his eight years in office, and Clinton would almost certainly have done no more; at least this way, we don't have to deal with the sort of suburban SUV environmentalism that insists that the government will take care of it, so people don't have to change their own lives.
Thomas, thanks for the data point.
Leo, most of the best conversations I've had have been in private places, with people who aren't particularly gung-ho about Trump but chose him over Clinton. If you don't seek those out you might not be likely to hear them.
Moshe, interesting. Thank you!
Donald, yep. Again, there's a word for people like that, and it sounds a lot like "hippogriff."
Stu, I was also impressed by a lot of the local and state results. Those who pay too much attention to the presidential race are missing the politics of the future, which always start at the grassroots. (In this case, the -- ahem -- "grass" roots...)
11/17/16, 9:24 PM
Joe McInerney said...
Regarding war with Russia, here's a likely scenario. First, its possible that the Democratic establishment was correct in its attempt to manage conflict at the lowest level by pushing back on Putin. Second, that the result of Trump initially kowtowing to Putin will result in an American Republican backlash against Russian expansionism that is far more dangerous than the Democratic containment would have been. Republicans love an enemy to fight, and the enemy they love to fight the most is the Ruskies. Trump will follow his puppet masters into war just as W did. They are equally stupid and juvenile. Cheney/Bush laid the ground for a dystopia, Trump will accelerate and magnify. Collapse now and avoid the rush, indeed.
11/17/16, 9:25 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Fred, I see it in somewhat different terms. The American left has taken to using the people in flyover country as a blank screen onto which to project their own fears and unacknowledged desires -- those who crave power but can't admit that to themselves are always insisting that someone else is trying to take it from them -- with the usual results. My hope is that it's possible to break through the wall of prejudice and get the left to stop treating the working class as the one American minority it's okay to hate; still, I know that may not work.
Izzy, exactly. The people I know who voted for Trump don't actually care that much either way about the issues that gets the Left excited. Some of them will grumble or rant about political correctness and the unfairness of affirmative action, say, but those aren't issues that have a lot of traction when it comes to casting their vote. Thus the Democratic Party just has to stop insisting that everything's fine because the privileged are doing well, and embrace some policy changes that will help people in the flyover states, and they have a good shot at reversing their party's long decline.
Mary, you're welcome to post again -- your comments are always courteous and cogent, for which many thanks. You're quite right about the wall, of course -- and about the way that Trump let the media run with distortions, because it helped him with people who distrust the media.
Richard, you're welcome and thank you. To my mind, few things about the last eight years were more stomach-turning than watching the American left, which spent the previous eight years raging at George W. Bush for an assortment of antidemocratic policies, turn around and give Obama a free pass when he engaged in exactly the same policies -- and in a good many cases engaged in more, and more serious abuses than his predecessor. The sheer flaming hypocrisy of it quite literally turned my stomach on more than one occasion.
Izzy, oh, granted. That was embarrassing.
Owen, I don't think it's fair to label those luxury issues across the board. To people of color, racism isn't a luxury issue -- it's a harsh reality they have to deal with routinely. The rest of the -isms are the same way to at least some of those who have to face the ugly end of them. Certainly, though, to privileged white middle class urbanites, those are luxury issues, and you can see just how much of a luxury they are by watching what happens when anything threatens the -ism that really matters to them -- classism. In defense of their class privilege, the same white middle class urbanites who emote so readily about racism et al. instantly become as abusive as an old-fashioned Southern sheriff toward an "uppity" black person -- and that, of course, is another reason for the shrieking about Trump's victory; "those people" -- the scorned, loathed, and derided members of the working class -- deprived the privileged white middle class urbanites of the president they wanted, and felt entitled to get.
11/17/16, 9:42 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Jamie, thank you for the data point! That makes sense.
Owen, and that's a valid question to ask, of course.
Fred, I'd also be interested to know what the rate of hate crimes has been over the last four years, let's say. I wonder if any of my readers can point us to that stat.
Roger, that's a good point, since "uneducated" also means "didn't have enough money to go to college" and "didn't come from the middle classes," so it's a dog whistle for class prejudice -- a huge though usually unmentioned force in American society.
Edward, thanks for the data point! As already noted, the Long Descent waits for nobody, and even Stein, had some wild chance gotten her into office, would not have been able to make the changes that would be necessary to stave off a really ugly future; that possibility went whistling down the wind thirty years ago. So we try to find some option that will avoid a worst case scenario, and go from there...
Dammerung, fascinating. Do you happen to know if there are any significant number of people on /pol/ who know their way around practical magic? I've noticed some fairly sophisticated image and concept magic being worked by your side of things, and wondered if that was a matter of knowledge or independent reinvention. The business in Portland, for example, was pure genius -- seizing control of the narrative and shattering it by putting it in a wholly different context is a classic bit of magical tactics.
Zaphod, I use the word "left" because that's what a lot of these people use for themselves. If you want to get into sectarian quarrels, be my guest; from my perspective, like that of a Taoist considering the difference between Presbyterians and Methodists, they all pretty much look the same.
Samurai, exactly; I wrote it precisely because I thought it would be possible to get at least some people out of their echo chambers that way. As for the very rich, etc., don't fall into the trap of assuming that they all want the same thing. Elites are fragile alliances constantly shifting and reorienting themselves, and the neoliberal agenda has failed so badly that I think change is possible. More on this in an upcoming post.
Granny, I'm delighted to hear it. Take this and run with it; if the Green Party can figure out how to appeal to ordinary working class Americans, it may just send the Democratic Party off to join the Whigs and the Know-Nothings in the compost heap of American political history, and become one of the two main parties.
11/17/16, 10:01 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Onething, I admit I wondered about that as well.
Professor D., true enough. The Klan isn't even a single organization; it's a loose assortment of small groups with the reputation of the has-beens of the far right -- but oh, the media loves to pile on the hate!
Clay, that's the sense I've been getting. Please spread the word, if you will.
Bill, hmm! Yes, that comparison makes sense. To my mind, everything will depend on whether Trump can pull together an effective adminstration, accomplish some of his agenda, and stay on top of the inevitable crises. If he doesn't, no question, he could easily go the way of Carter.
Onething, that's one thing you can always say about US politics.
Ebartlett, interesting. Here in Maryland, if you look at a county-by-county map, Trump took the entire western part of the state, from Carroll County straight across to Garrett County; that contains some fairly well-off towns but also a lot of poor rural areas and dying mill towns like the one where I live. He also took the Eastern Shore, which is mostly well-to-do. The only counties Clinton took were the urban counties on the western shore of Chesapeake Bay, but those have so many people she took the state as a whole. Thus there are clearly well-off people who voted for Trump, but I can vouch for the fact that a lot of poor people supported him as well.
Myriad, I think you're on to something. Trump, and for that matter Sanders, ran their campaigns in ways that invited and encouraged participation; Clinton failed to do so, and that's one of many things that cost her. Ambitious politicians will be taking notes.
Pundit, thank you. Yes, taking the long view, this is just one more step along the Long Descent; I may do a post on that soon, to help readers who are having trouble putting it all into perspective.
Donkey, no doubt -- but then all of a sudden there's a mob with pitchforks and torches at the door of the palace, and everything gets ugly in a hurry for the elite.
11/17/16, 10:31 PM
jbucks said...
The other article discussed a discovery of a lot of oil in Texas's Permian Basin. If I remember correctly, you predicted that there is a fracking bubble, which would eventually pop - unfortunately, it doesn't look like it will any time soon...
11/17/16, 10:44 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Rich, if the Left wants to get its act together and try to counter Trump's policies with its own set of agendas, good -- in a still vaguely democratic system, that's what they should be doing. That wasn't what I was discussing, though, as I think I made clear in the post. I was discussing, first, the over-the-top rhetoric and public emoting that both parties engage in when they lose the White House, and second, the reasons why people I know who voted for Trump decided to do so. As a person on the Left, you might want to pay at least a little attention to the latter, since the GOP has no ownership of those issues, and a little attention to them could have won this election for your side.
Bill, I suspect this is something that varies from state to state -- another argument for a federal system! If the hillbillies in Tennessee (as well as the other residents of the state) want a single payer system, they should be able to have it, regardless of what people in other states want.
Crone, you're welcome and thank you!
Noah, from my perspective, peaceful protests can be a very effective element in a political campaign, if they're combined with grassroots organization and the other essential tools of politics. It's when they replace other political activity that they become aerobic exercise and nothing else. The ceremony of the Eucharist has power, but a lot of other things need to be in place to allow it to express its potential; protest marches are the same way. It's the lack of awareness of that point, in my view, that's played a large role in making the American left ineffectual in recent decades.
Unirealist, I won't argue at all -- especially with your last point. We are in a massive crisis of legitimacy here in the US, flouting of the rule of law by the rich and politically influential is a core reason for that, and unless it's stopped -- preferably with a bunch of perp walks -- you can stick a fork in the USA; it's done.
Ben, Slate's good at that. Warren and Sanders are doing the right thing -- trying to drive a wedge between the issues on which the Democrats can compete with the GOP and the issues it won't tolerate -- and the response is to insist that no such fissure exists...which means that the GOP gets the white working class vote by default.
JJ, again, I use the term "left" because it's commonly used as a self-description by the people I'm talking about.
PeterE, good. We'll just have to see what happens.
Grebulocities, I don't know of such a book -- and really, that's a question for the other blog, you know.
11/17/16, 10:54 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Jasmine, good question. A lot depends on how much of his program he can get through Congress, since several important elements of it -- in particular, reenacting the Glass-Steagall Act that forced a separation between consumer banking and speculative banking, and tearing up trade treaties that subsidize the offshoring of jobs -- could improve economic conditions in our "flyover states" sufficiently that a depression elsewhere might not hurt his support among the voters. Off the coasts, much of the US has been in a deep depression for decades, you know -- much like the condition of Britain's old industrial towns.
As for the militarism of the Left, unfortunately you're quite right -- Obama spent his entire eight years in office fighting wars in the Middle East, using the same brutal and ineffective tactics (such as drone strikes) that the Democrats denounced savagely when George W. Bush did them, and yet the Democratic Party acted as though it was just fine so long as their guy was the one committing war crimes.
Mouse, that's a very good point, and one I'll want to consider exploring here.
Kheris, well, we'll see, won't we?
Yupped, thanks for the data point, and you're most welcome! I certainly don't see Trump setting out to become a major force for change; it may be forced on him by events, but we'll see -- and a lot of rich people may be unpleasantly surprised by the way things actually work out.
Jerome, the party hacks that Clinton would have brought with her into power if she won would have been no better, you know.
Patricia, thank you! If I deserve a place alongside Mary Renault, I'm doing something right.
Revere, as with every other divinatory method, I'd say give it a try, check your results against what actually happens, and see how well it works.
Janet, as I noted back in January, deliberate violation of political correctness is one of the core ways that Trump defines himself to working class voters as "not one of the suits." We'll have to see whether any of it affects his policies; my guess is that it won't do so in any significant manner.
Cat, words matter; you won't find an author arguing about that! When words have been used as an excuse for class prejudice -- and I'd argue that a lot of political correctness is very lightly veiled class snobbery -- challenging the words is a good way to challenge the unspoken hierarchy that divides the privileged "good people" from those further down the social ladder. That's what Trump did.
Kevin, that's an excellent point. Tolerance and civility are essential, and when they break down -- whatever the excuses of those who discard them -- serious trouble usually follows in short order.
11/17/16, 11:14 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Wizzrobes, yes, I expected that. That's why I've already started talking about the ways the tax codes subsidize automation and punish hiring employees, so that the pushback against automation has some groundwork in place.
CJ, you know, it's not hard to find some very hateful people who endorsed Clinton -- Robert Kagan, the architect of the invasion of Iraq, comes to mind. I don't notice anyone insisting that a similar rule should be applied to her.
Janet, we'll be talking about that shortly. It's quite possible you're right.
Chevaliermalfait, that's a valid point.
Armata, I've suspected for some time that the reason the Russians have their one aircraft carrier in Syrian waters right now is to try to tempt the US into sinking it -- like putting a pawn en prise in chess. That would justify a Russian strike against any US carriers in Middle East waters, and it would take precisely one dead carrier to leave the US capacity for force projection and its reputation for invincibility in tatters. That would be a likely geostrategic goal for Russia, and if Clinton had been elected, I suspect it wouldn't have been too hard to goad her into making that one mistake too many.
Robert, if you take a moment to read the post, you'll find that it's about the gap between what the Left thinks motivates Trump voters and what actually motivates Trump voters. Climate change has nothing to do with that specific subject -- and yes, I've written about it in great detail already and will be writing more about it as we proceed.
Chris, thanks for the data point!
Candace, I'm not familiar with Facebook, but email programs often gunk up URLs and the like. Your friend might want to try cutting and pasting the URL straight off this website onto her Facebook page, and including a couple of paragraphs of the text to give people a sample bite.
Justin, thanks for this.
11/17/16, 11:30 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Kevin, many thanks for these.
Justin, based on what I heard, it was her own words -- when she started talking about imposing a no-fly zone over Syria, every vet I know said "Oh shale," or words to that effect. The flurry of stories about her reckless enthusiasm for regime change during her time as Secretary of State, which were mostly circulated online, also fed that.
Joe, it seems to me that your partisan loyalties are getting in the way of your reality testing. Sure, you can come up with a scenario; trust me, I can come up with a Clinton-starts-a-war scenario to match anything you care to offer, and base it squarely on her words and actions. What's more, Trump has already accomplished one of his campaign promises -- the TPP trade treaty is dead -- and the governments of Canada and Mexico have already said they're open to renegotiating NAFTA, so there's another promise on its way to fulfillment. Thus your claim has already been disproven. Perhaps something not quite so Manichean would be more helpful?
Jbucks, thanks for both of these. We'll see how much oil is actually in the Permian basin; if you want to count all the huge new discoveries that turned out to be not so much, you'll be busy for a long time. As for the upcoming price spike, of course that will happen; I suspect prices are being held down now as an instrument of geopolitical conflict, but that won't last indefinitely. More on this latter point in a later post!
11/17/16, 11:38 PM
John Michael Greer said...
11/17/16, 11:46 PM
Ursachi Alexandru said...
Well, hopefully there won't be any such attempt from the protesters, professional or otherwise. Obviously it would be a "yuuuuuuge" mistake, and if Trump does have Putin-like ambitions (for the sake of your country's democratic traditions, let's hope not), this would be the best excuse for a power-grab.
11/17/16, 11:47 PM
Rich_P said...
One endearing outcome of the election is how the old-guard media is pretty thoroughly discredited to an even larger portion of the population.
Even before Trump, newspapers (even the vaunted WSJ!) and cable networks grappled with a long-term secular decline in revenue. I suspect the rise of reddit, alt-sites of every stripe, etc. -- coupled with Trump's brilliant way of throwing the media off-balance -- will finally push them over the edge in the coming years.
Notice how Obama and Angela Merkel bemoan the rise of "fake news"? They recognize they've lost control of the narrative. Funny how only the Left thinks this way and employs their establishment politicians to remind us rubes about why it's a problem.
I much prefer rags and channels that wear partisan allegiances and ideology on their sleeves -- no more airs about being the journalistic equivalent of Lady Justice with blindfold and scales.
The First Amendment, after all, was ratified during a period when every newspaper was partisan! Yet Congress and the States still recognized the importance of the press, and this type of partisan hackery did not prevent papers from publishing brilliant works like THE FEDERALIST.
11/18/16, 12:19 AM
Lei said...
And second - the promise that NATO would not be enlarged is a myth, and the successive waves of extension of the alliance were debated with Russians who did not object, as well as they at the beginning agreed with such things as association talks of the EU with Ukraine. Moreover, all those countries east of the Elbe joined NATO not because they are eager to start a war with Russia, but because they (justly) feel threatened by Russia. As far as I can tell, at least the European part of NATO has never thought, after 1989 at least, of any aggression towards Russia, but not vice versa. This can be simply demonstrated on the fact that Europe has been cutting military budgets and disarming, whereas Russia has been doing the right opposite of that. Russia is equipped with infinitely more weapons of any kind, including the terrible arsenal of tactic nuclear weapons, but also tanks and whatever - why should she be afraid of Europe, whose last interest is, deplorably, to spend money on arming? This encircling of Russia is just a fairy tale for the consumers of Russian TV and various "alternative" webs featuring pro-Russian propaganda, sprouting all over the Western world, as well as Kremlin trolls in the discussions on news webs.
JMG: On this point, I fully agree with you. Still, it does not mean that it is not Russia who chooses confronatation. And, again, the consequences of resigning on holding Russia back won't be nice for the the USA either and will certainly negatively influence internal affairs of the USA as well. Can in fact the USA afford not being a policeman? What if the policeman sits in Beijing or Moscow? In any case, once again - Europeans should pay what is due and what is fair - no quarrel here.
11/18/16, 2:33 AM
donalfagan said...
11/18/16, 3:30 AM
Phil Harris said...
"Phil, the county I lived in voted for Trump 72% to 24% Clinton, so I suspect it wasn't a 50/50 split among the congregations!"
I find that heartening! I will be back for more. Wish I had seen it.
Your mention elsewhere of these 2000 hymn singers and the effect on a few car loads of KKK is memorable.
best
Phil H
PS The article by Peter Burfeind (h/t blue sun) is astonishing. I am still inclined to distinguish between the 'idealists' and those who like to stay on the right side of 'God' and to be 'onside' in whatever 'reality league' their team might be playing in at the time.
PPS Your thesis about Russian chess-play with their one (I did not know that!) aircraft carrier can no longer be proved, we hope. I still think USA is too dangerous to play monkey tricks with, and that a wounded unstable US would be danger squared, and that there is more to play for.
11/18/16, 4:21 AM
blue sun said...
Yes, Facebook has been caught censoring any news stories that don't support the "Demublican/ Republicrat elite":
http://www.mediaite.com/online/facebook-unblocks-dnc-email-leak-after-wikileaks-accuses-them-of-censorship/
Facebook has also pushed stories into the news feed, even if they weren't popular enough to qualify:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-05-09/facebook-workers-admit-they-routinely-suppressed-conservative-news
Twitter has also been known to "mysteriously" shut down the accounts of conservative activists:
http://www.breitbart.com/milo/2016/07/19/breaking-milo-suspended-twitter-20-minutes-party/
Google is also guilty.
In my attempt just yesterday to search for a "transcript" of Trump's speech at Gettysburg (because of course I've never been exposed to anything he actually said beyond a few sound bites), the first thing in the list to come up was not a transcript of the speech in question, but a derisive screed from The Atlantic telling me how hatefully hateful the things he said in that speech were. With no actual content from the speech, of course. Are we supposed to believe that there are no games being played on Google's part in this search result? Could this really be the top result for those searching the term "transcript"? Please.
And you know what I learned by reading the text of that speech? I discovered that Trump had some thoughtful things to say. The most insightful thing to me was how he said the mainstream media no longer practices journalism and is now a special interest. Of course I knew this but I've never heard anyone phrase it in quite that way. I've never before heard anyone point out that the media has become a special interest in itself. So at worst he hired a good speechwriter. I guess he's not the most evilly evil demon (and the dumbest dumb dunce) after all.
I also noticed the other day on my phone that in a Safari google search, when a link comes up to a website that's not on the right side of the politically correct divide, it no longer goes directly to that site.
In fact, it happened just now with the Mediaite link I posted above!! This one came up in a search along with a few links to Breitbart articles (the hated and "evilly evil" Breitbart). I was able to copy the web address to the Mediaite page, but not to the Breitbart pages! The web address shows up as "Google search string" instead! It does not allow you to go directly to the website.
I wouldn't be surprised to find that Google set that up intentionally to reduce the number of hits that Breitbart's website gets. (By the way, we'll all be hearing a lot of hateful things about Breitbart in the next few years now that their founder is part of the Trump leadership, so get prepared!)
I think most people have no clue the extent these large social media corporations go to to manipulate the information we take in. It makes me so sad because who can possibly keep ahead of all this manipulation? If I come across new traps every day, imagine how hard it is for people who aren't free to put that kind of effort in?? It's so much easier just to get your news via Facebook and simply accept it at face value.
11/18/16, 4:48 AM
Tidlösa said...
You are right. The zombies didn´t support Hillary Clinton. Usually, the Democrats get "the cemetary vote". This year, the Undead and Slightly Living decided to upset the status quo already before midnight. But then, they were Reagan Democrats in a previous life, so perhaps we shouldn´t be too surprised, LOL.
11/18/16, 4:51 AM
Fred the First said...
It looks like in any given year, about 50% of the hate crime incidents have a racial basis, no matter the actual number of crimes reported. I didn't copy and paste all of it, but its accessible at the FBI page.
In 2008, 13,690 law enforcement agencies submitted hate crime data to the UCR Program. Of these agencies, 2,145 reported 7,783 hate crime incidents involving 9,168 offenses.
Of the 7,783 reported incidents, 7,780 were single-bias and involved 9,160 offenses, 9,683 victims, and 6,921 offenders.
The 3 multiple-bias incidents reported in 2008 involved 8 offenses, 8 victims, and 6 offenders.
Of the 7,780 single-bias incidents reported in 2008:
51.3 percent were racially motivated.
19.5 percent were motivated by religious bias.
16.7 percent stemmed from sexual-orientation bias.
11.5 percent resulted from ethnicity/national origin bias.
1.0 percent were motivated by disability bias.
In 2000, a total of 11,690 law enforcement agencies in A48 states and the District of Columbia reported 8,063 bias-motivated criminal incidents (8,055 single-bias and 8 multiple-bias incidents) to the FBI in 2000. The incidents consisted of 9,430 separate offenses, 9,924 victims, and 7,530 known distinguish- able offenders. According to the data collected, 53.8 percent of the 8,055 single-bias incidents were motivated by racial bias, 18.3 percent by religious bias, 16.1 percent by sexual-orientation bias, 11.3 percent by ethnicity/national origin bias, and 0.5 percent by disability and multiple biases.
In 2012, 1,730 law enforcement agencies reported 5,796 hate crime incidents involving 6,718 offenses.
There were 5,790 single-bias incidents that involved 6,705 offenses, 7,151 victims, and 5,322 offenders.
The 6 multiple-bias incidents reported in 2012 involved 13 offenses, 13 victims, and 9 offenders.
In 2014, 15,494 law enforcement agencies participated in the Hate Crime Statistics Program. Of these agencies, 1,666 reported 5,479 hate crime incidents involving 6,418 offenses.
There were 5,462 single-bias incidents that involved 6,385 offenses, 6,681 victims, and 5,176 known offenders.
The 17 multiple-bias incidents reported in 2014 involved 33 offenses, 46 victims, and 16 offenders.
11/18/16, 4:52 AM
onething said...
Sure, it' crucial, critical, key, and obvious. Ever heard of Granny D? She ought to go down in history as a great American hero. Someone who sacrificed for the country. But who even knows what she did? Part of her plan was publicity, but she got none.
11/18/16, 4:54 AM
Mister Roboto said...
And you know what, donalfagan? I knew that the Democratic Party would go to a great length to demonstrate that it had learned absolutely nothing and do everything in its power to keep itself on the path of becoming an irrelevant rump-party. After all, I had supported them for many years before finally understanding that their entire purpose now is to get any serious opposition to the neoliberal/ neoconservative consensus to dutifully and enthusiastically march itself into the ocean.
11/18/16, 4:55 AM
Tidlösa said...
In general, I think it´s a common mistake among "liberal" elites to think that their lofty "ideals" (which are hypocritical anyway) can somehow trump bread-and-butter issues. Had I been a normal (not too political) and relatively poor person in the Appalachians - or in Baltimore for that matter - I would also have considered voting Trump. Voting for Clinton would have been like voting for the rope that´s going to hang you!
I also suspect that Bernie Sanders could have defeated Trump. He would definitely have defeated somebody like Jeb Bush! Unfortunately, the American left (or whatever they are) are currently making fools out of themselves by trying to kick start a color revolution á la Soros on the West Coast, while the Democratic party machine and main stream media simply continue as before, so I suspect Trump will win in a landslide in 2020, unless he walks back on virtually all of his promises...
11/18/16, 5:03 AM
Rich Brereton said...
Thanks for your thoughtful response. I agree that too much of the rhetoric by the Left is overheated and demonizing of Trump and his supporters. Not a constructive counter to a demagogue whose rhetoric is, well, overheated and demonizing. Many, many of us on the Left are having the exact conversations you suggest: why did so many people support Trump, what went wrong in the Democratic Party’s primary campaign, how can the Democratic party evolve to better address their biggest issues, and what set of agendas can we come up with to counter Trump’s agenda effectively? When the shouting dies down, you’ll hear us ;-).
My eyes and ears provide only one data point in exception to the notion that “[the Left is] cringing before the bogeyman they imagined, certain that it’s going to act out the role they assigned it and gobble them up.” But I stand by my previous post’s point that there is plenty to fear and oppose in what Trump has said and done, and most of what I’m hearing and seeing among my fellow denizens of the Left is responding to that reality. I'll be reading along with interest!
Best,
Rich
11/18/16, 5:07 AM
Owen said...
Whatever else you might think about Trump - the guy did work for it, if you kept tabs on his campaign schedule. Some days, it was nothing but fly and speak, fly and speak, fly and speak, in a relentless pattern all day long.
Clinton on the other hand wasn't even giving press conferences, much less flying and speaking. She went over 200 days without giving one. Just missing. Granted she had the whole media establishment shilling for her, but at some point you have to sing - your back up singers can't sing for you.
We can sit and argue about why she decided to have such a less aggressive schedule - some people claim it was due to failing health - but you can't argue that she just did not work for it.
In any case, I have no doubt that Sanders would've flipped WI, MI and PA back to blue and carried all the other blue states, and we'd be talking about Sanders as prez and not Trump. Hell, I might've even voted for him. After all, of the two - which is least likely to start WW3...
11/18/16, 5:47 AM
Owen said...
And Ford is keeping jobs in Ohio and Apple is asking its suppliers to look into what would be necessary to move iPhone production back to the U.S.
I remember Obama asking Steve Jobs, why he couldn't make iPhones in the U.S. and Steve Jobs patronizingly explained why this was such an impossible task. And now Apple isn't being patronizing at all, they're just doing it. Obama can't leave fast enough, as far as I'm concerned and I hope I never see him back in public office ever again.
You want the working class back you Democrats? You had better start working for it. You need to work for it like your survival is at stake.
11/18/16, 5:51 AM
Unknown said...
I agree on most points in this post. However, there is a common misunderstanding about the folks in the exchanges. While premiums are going up 22% on average (states vary wildly), subsidies are going up 25% on average. In a typical case the policy holders will see little or no increase and in some cases decreases in premiums. What gets whacked are the state budgets and by extension either the taxpayers or those affected by budget cuts in other areas like infrastructure. But even the whacks are not that large as the exchanges cover only 3% of the population.
States that chose not to expand Medicare have seen the largest premium increases. With a single exception, states that designed their own plans saw some of the best outcomes this year.
11/18/16, 5:58 AM
Grebulocities said...
In other news, Chelsea Clinton is apparently considering running in a special election in one of NYC's wealthy suburban districts. Just when I thought the Clintons might have been neutralized...
11/18/16, 6:05 AM
Jasmine said...
I hope you don’t mind if I ask you a couple of further questions about Glass steagall and free trade.
You mentioned in your reply to my previous comment about Trump re-introducing the Glass Steagall act. I want to ask if this is one of his stated policy objectives. If it is, then its something I’ve never heard about and may just reflect poor coverage of him in this country. It is certainly something that would make me warm towards the man.
Trump also wants to curb free trade. Now it is a truth universally acknowledged among the whole establishment in the UK that free trade is an absolute and totally good thing and that to deny this would be like claiming that the earth is flat. If I remember correctly, I think you have mentioned that countries that are economically successful have often grown their industry behind trade barriers, but that once those industries are fully established it becomes advantageous to that country to have free trade. Now I have noticed that it is a tendency in growing civilisations for the production of goods to become centralised. This can be a huge disadvantage in a declining civilisation as many areas which used to manufacture those good for themselves lost their ability to do this and never regain it. This means you get a situation where the standard of living in Britain was worse after the Romans left, than before they came. Free trade may be ok in an expanding civilisation, but in a contracting civilisation it is a disaster. This makes me wonder if all those rednecks in the US who voted Trump because of his stance on free trade are right. It does make me wonder if those rednecks who I am told are stupid, thick, homophobic, sexist, racist and transphobic have a better idea of how to run things, than the intelligent, politically correct and expensively educated economists who went to Oxford and the LSE. Maybe you can send a few of them over here to run this country. They couldn’t do any worse than the lot we’ve got in charge
11/18/16, 6:23 AM
donalfagan said...
https://donalfagan.wordpress.com/2016/11/18/policies-vs-identity/
11/18/16, 6:37 AM
Dammerung said...
11/18/16, 7:02 AM
Varun Bhaskar said...
Sweet, thanks!
I think it's past time the flyover left break from our distant cousins on the coasts. We live in different world.
Scotlyn,
And here I pictured a one legged man hopping around, liberating us from the coastal oligarchy. ;)
Stephanie Ladd,
I don't remember the name but I'll remember you if I see you next. You can message me here: http://bonesofourempire.blogspot.com/?m=1
Regards,
Varun
11/18/16, 7:45 AM
Pantagruel7 said...
11/18/16, 7:58 AM
Izzy said...
11/18/16, 7:59 AM
Matthias Gralle said...
11/18/16, 8:14 AM
Bill Pulliam said...
11/18/16, 8:18 AM
sillybill said...
I don't know about professional organizers, every time I've ever gone to mess with the Klan it's just the usual punk-rock-anarchist types I've worked with on enviro campaigns, someone hears about the jerks on the web (there are several anti racist groups that run volunteer sites helping to track them) - they call all their friends, we figure out who's driving, show up and make fun of them. No one gets paid, we pay for the expenses out of our pockets. Most of the time there is some church group or another that organizes a counter protest, usually offsite to avoid confrontation. There are always small organized groups that show up, like the New Black Panthers, and various socialist groups, but they are pretty small and aren't running the show or paying for others to be there. At the confederate flag rally in Charleston last summer there were also a large group of Bloods, and a black Christian motorcycle club, plus lot's of regular pissed off citizens and more annoyed cops than anyone would really be comfortable with.
You want to see diversity in action go to a Klan rally!
@Tolkienguy, The pigs in a blanket reference was a wish for specific killer cops to be incarcerated and face execution for murder, not a general statement. They could have been a little more diplomatic! 'Whites to the back of the protest' was them fighting the tendency of experienced white activists with big egos to hog the spotlite in any given situation (I've seen lot's of this over the years)
I agree with you totally about the inability to have a decent conversation with out slinging anger and bs. I hope it doesn't get much worse before it gets better. I'll try to be more even tempered with my comments.
11/18/16, 8:50 AM
Frank in Reno said...
11/18/16, 8:56 AM
Kyle said...
It seems at least one member of the 4chan community believes they have inadvertently used magic to create a pepe sigil through which Kek can operate.
11/18/16, 8:57 AM
Jerome Purtzer said...
11/18/16, 9:07 AM
Bill Pulliam said...
11/18/16, 9:13 AM
Tidlösa said...
>>>for people that believe in "Progress" Trump winning was sort of like a devout Christian realizing god doesn't exist. Tt hurts.
Evidently so!
11/18/16, 9:43 AM
Matt said...
you need to do a bit better than that to provide evidence of paid protesters. I followed at least 3 of your links (Kevin) and none of them showed any evidence of people being paid to protest.
Looks a bit desperate to me.
Matt
11/18/16, 10:54 AM
inohuri said...
"Preface: I’ve slammed Trump when I thought he might appoint bad guys. But there’s now cause for celebration.
Trump has purportedly offered General Michael Flynn a post as National Security Advisor.
This is GREAT news …"
"So whatever you think of Bannon on a personal level, he could – if his statements reflect his real beliefs, and if he champions them in the Trump White House – help fix our broken financial system …"
Great News On Trump Appointments
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-11-17/great-news-trump-appointment
11/18/16, 11:48 AM
Marie K said...
Here’s a quote on immigration from one Cuban woman who voted for Trump: "Everybody can come. It's too much. There has to be some kind of restrictions, even for us, for Cubans, for everybody."
That quote is taken from this short article in the LA times: http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/trailguide/la-na-election-day-2016-not-all-immigrants-are-voting-against-1478621533-htmlstory.html
Also, in spite of Trump’s rhetoric and all that Democratic fearmongering, Trump took a greater share of the Latino vote than Romney in 2012, and fared only slightly worse than McCain in ‘08. This article from the Pew Research Center has a number of other surprising statistics as well, and it’s worth a glance: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/09/hillary-clinton-wins-latino-vote-but-falls-below-2012-support-for-obama/
Yet another example of the disconcerting habit among minorities of holding very different priorities from the ones their privileged, self-appointed defenders think they should have.
11/18/16, 12:20 PM
unfrozencavemanguitarplayer said...
I understand your reasoning for identifying the corrupt neoconservative neoliberal warmongering corporatism of the current Democratic Party as "left," but that leaves those traditional leftists like myself - who bitterly oppose those policies and consider them right wing - without any shorthand terminology with which to identify ourselves. Calling oneself an anarcho-syndicalist is a great way to induce blank stares. Any suggestions?
Unrelated to the current post but related to a theme of your overall writing, I came upon the following gem in the comment section of Gail Tverberg's latest post:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/worldeconomicforum/2016/11/10/shopping-i-cant-really-remember-what-that-is-or-how-differently-well-live-in-2030/#580c63ae2954
I have never seen a more perfect example of your idea of “the religion of progress.” It even includes a heaven in the form of the futuristic urban techno-utopia for those who accept Progress as their Lord and savior (including a reverent fear of the Lord in terms of privacy concerns) contrasted with the purgatory or hell that awaits those lost souls who reject the progress god. I hope you find it as amusing as I did.
Thanks again for all your writing and insights.
11/18/16, 12:30 PM
Jen said...
The rednecks I am speaking of are definitely not suburban; they are mostly ranchers, rice farmers, gravel pit and oil patch workers out here in my rural Texas county. Many of our families have been in the area for hundreds of years, so these are people I know well who have spent all their lives making a living from this land, something that is increasingly hard to do. Almost all have been experiencing a marked difficulty making ends meet and a steadily declining standard of living, but thanks to oil money and Texas's semi-immunity to the ravages of the recession, I don't think things in Texas have gotten as bad as they have in Tennessee, generally speaking (although anyone around here crazy enough to buy a $40,000 truck can expect the scorn usually reserved for those with more money than sense). I don't know if local opinions on single-payer will shift with our sinking fortunes--I sort of doubt it, but time will tell.
11/18/16, 12:33 PM
Chris Larkin said...
I will admit I don’t know much about practical magic (or more likely the specific terminology used), but /pol/ is a scion of /b/ or 4chan culture which I know well. It’s descended from 90s and early to mid aughts hacker culture which had a strong Discordian and Church of the Subgenius influences. Since then, it’s undergone extreme evolution. They’ve been obsessed with memes in a very “succeed or die” environment for over a decade. There has been open talks of meme magic, which I suspect is the combination of image and concept magic, but that sort of talk didn’t start until 2014 in relation to Ebola-chan and /bane/. It however was heavily referenced during the Great Meme War, 4chan’s, 8chan’s, and /r/the_donald’s support of the Donald Trump campaign.
The idea of meme magic might have been bought in by outside knowledge. I came across this which may or may not be line in other magical thought (Very NSFW but be sure to check out the gallery: https://encyclopediadramatica.se/Meme_Magic). Even if that’s the case however, it was just a trigger in a “hey we had this power all along” way. The memes themselves or how they are used haven’t been changed much otherwise.
I agree with Dammerung that 8chan’s the better place these days even for boards outside of /pol/. It reminds me of the older ‘chan days. As for /pol/ itself, it’s a great example of the generalization of Poe’s Law that sufficiently advanced trolling is indistinguishable from sincerity.
11/18/16, 1:26 PM
latefall said...
I am not so much concerned about the budget here as I am about effectiveness, efficiency and the political side of things. It makes me very concerned when people (especially connected to the military industrial complex!) recommend a certain _level_ of spending - independent of aims and environment.
- For effectiveness you need to define a level of ambition (or perhaps more than one if you want to include an expeditionary force). For defense this would probably mean defense against Russia at the EU scale or similar. This is a relevant and short post: http://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.fr/2016/10/only-very-powerful-force-would-dare-to.html
"everything that's of use only against weak forces is of no use for our (collective) security."
- As for efficiency: F35, NH90.
Much of the (peace time) military trough crowd is in my estimation another magnitude more inefficient than the more inefficient end of public spending in general. There are some that perform well, which makes the "too big to fail" ones look really bad.
- Political: Support for defense integration getting better but is not a given. Even Finland would likely not go along. I would say the time for it is probably now or never. Overall circumstances are pretty good (perhaps with the exception of EU institutional performance and perception).
Here is some more reading on the most likely current threat scenario:
http://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.fr/2016/09/summary-enhanced-deterrence-and-defence.html
and here on spending:
https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.fr/2015/10/military-im-balance-in-europe.html
Russia + Belarus:
budgets USD 68.7 bn
personnel 0.89 million
manoeuvre brigades 58 (only 18 facing Europe!)
European EU and NATO members without Turkey:
budgets USD 256 bn
personnel 1.60 million
manoeuvre brigades 128
I think even if NATO drags on Trumps comments have unmistakably signaled what would plausibly/probably have been the US position 1-2 weeks into a successful major (nuclear backed) aggression towards Europe.
If NATO breaks up there are advantages in not being tied to an (in recent history) interventionist lose cannon (or two). The two aspects I would be most afraid of are
1. No automatic elite alignment through NATO which has helped keep Atlantic rivalries very civil. This is more of a long term concern.
2. Inner European conflicts of interest (perhaps leveraged) which fracture the political will of the continent once more - and increase the probability of escalation vs peace keeping (with an eye towards the Balkan).
Like Brexit I would file this under (potentially) beneficial crisis. Though with the backdrop of global weirding and elite failure the risks of all this are pretty substantial and unsettling.
11/18/16, 1:27 PM
Maxine Rogers said...
I just want to say how impressed I was to read about the Church congregations of JMG's town singing hymns to drive the Klansmen away. I think it is one of the most beautiful things I have ever heard of. Good on them and may they one day just have Churches instead of having Black Churches and White Churches.
I used to attend Saint Andrew's Roman Catholic Cathedral in Victoria BC and we had Poles, Italians, French Canadians, West African very black people, some Chinese people, Native people and some frank mongrels, myself included. Except for the obvious problems with pedophilia and Bishop Remi Deroo buying race horses, it was a great Church!
Yours under the red cedars,
Max Rogers
11/18/16, 1:34 PM
D Arms said...
11/18/16, 1:38 PM
latefall said...
The best I could find on the expansion issue was this discussion with Josh Shifrinson who is an assistant professor at Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University. Jump to 15:00.
http://seansrussiablog.org/2016/06/29/the-us-pledge-on-nato-expansion/
On the Syria issue I think it is interesting to consider the Yemen issue to round off perspectives (freely admit to whataboutery):
Discussion with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Cockburn perhaps start at 41:00
https://www.patreon.com/posts/radio-war-nerd-7212237
For a European "handler's" perspective on Trump win jump to 10 minutes:
https://www.mixcloud.com/ECFR/10-november-2016-as-the-dust-settles-what-does-americas-new-president-mean-for-europe/
11/18/16, 2:20 PM
Patricia Mathews said...
11/18/16, 2:28 PM
Jordan said...
Fans of irony truly have much to savor with your post this week. You treat Trump supporters as a diverse and misunderstood group, and then do a 180 and treat “the left” and “Clinton supporters” as a monolith, unified around a set of common values and policies. Perhaps what you meant to say is that the core of the democratic party has abandoned their base, but for my reading you do not make this very clear or leave open the potential that there are those of us on the left who do not support Clinton or the DNC - and in fact support many of the same policies which you imply only Trump backers are concerned about.
There is a large group of people on the left who have legitimate concerns with a Trump presidency independent of accusations of bigotry and independent of slavish and unthinking support of Clinton. As someone who has pointed out on this very blog the dangers of binary thinking, many of us on the left feel like a large group of Trump supporters have fallen into this very trap. I don’t support Clinton or her policies, so that makes her “bad”, but as you’ve pointed out previously that does not make Trump automatically “good”. In fact, he could turn out to be a whole lot worse than what we already have. And as someone who claims to be a Burkean Conservative I can’t help but be confused why you can’t see that many of us on the left simply voted for Clinton’s predictable policies over Trumps potential chaos. Sure it might not get better under Clinton, and it might even get a little worse, but that’s preferable to potentially getting a WHOLE LOT worse with a (small) chance that it will get better. Our tantrum and protest is not because our precious candidate lost and that means we won’t be able to exploit our way to prosperity, our concern is with the unpredictable nature of Trump himself, his lack of coherent policies, and the good squad he surrounds himself with.
Many of us lefties feel like there are legitimate reasons to believe that the chances are “small” that America under Trump will get better. Take his history of bankruptcies for example, his history of shady business dealings, his history of lawsuits, or his complete lack of government experience, his complete lack of military experience, his sheltered life far removed from the realities of the people in flyover country, and yes also his public and private statements of misogyny and bigotry, his pathological lying, and apparent narcissism. To us, Trump appears completely lacking in character and completely unfit to be president. And as someone who is the head of state, the face of the country in foreign affairs, and the commander in chief these are do not feel like irrelevant concerns as much as you might like to ignore them simply for his policies.
And his policies are another serious source of concern for some of us on the left outside of the Clinton umbrella which you seem eager to force us all under. Many of his policies seem incomplete, incoherent, inaccurate, or simply nonexistent. Sticking it to the bankers and Wall St. by cutting taxes on the wealthy, repealing Dodd Frank, and removing regulations – didn’t we try that already? Aren’t people in flyover country still waiting for their trickle down?
Abolishing Obamacare and replacing it with… what, exactly? Have I not looked hard enough because it seems like his whole plan is simply to get rid of it and then replace it with something “beautiful”. Sounds like more binary thinking.
Worried about war and Clinton’s hawkish policies? What does Trump bring to the table with his complete lack of military and foreign policy experience? I hope he surrounds himself with level headed and unequivocally anti-hawkish people. Oh wait didn’t he just appoint General Michael Flynn as National Security Advisor?? Off to a great start. /s
11/18/16, 2:58 PM
Jordan said...
Worried about bringing back jobs – many of us fail to see how a billionaire who has personally benefitted from neoliberal policies his entire life and has a long history of business corruption is suddenly a populist champion of the working class. You dismiss out of hand the hatemongering and drum beating rhetoric that Trump has used a simply a way to garner support amongst his base, but you don’t seem to entertain the possibility that all his talk about JOBS could very well be the same type of empty rhetoric (and you think Obama was cynical?). He has zero track record of standing up for the little guy, so excuse me if I don’t necessarily believe he’ll change now.
As for sticking it to the DNC, I don’t necessarily disagree, but there was an option to stick it to them and his name was Bernie Sanders (who I know you’ve mentioned). Given the above concerns, it seems like sticking it to the DNC by voting for Trump has the very real potential of sticking it to ourselves in a very big and very bad way if he fails to deliver. Again, many of us decided that Clinton’s predictable corruption was preferable to whatever Trump (and his cabinet, staff, and Supreme Court appointee) unleashes.
So, just as you’ve so clearly pointed out that not all Trump supporters are dumb, ignorant, bigots who hate everything and don’t know what’s good for them, not all Clinton voters are die hard elitist, neoliberal war hawks who don’t care one iota for the poors in flyover country. Many of us share the same grievances as Trump supporters, we just don’t think he’s the man to fix them and prefer Clinton for 4 more years so we can try again with another candidate in 2020 instead of plunging the country into 4 years of uncertainty under Trump. Quite simply, Trump is the wrong answer to the right question.
One final point, Obama ran on a campaign of “Yes WE can” not “Yes I can”, and yet you seem to place all of the blame at his feet. Never mind the economic disaster he inherited from Dubya, or the war he inherited from Dubya, or the complete lack of cooperation from Republican congress (remember that one time they shut down the federal government and threatened default just to avoid compromising with Obama?). What would Obamacare look like without Republicans trying to gut it every step of the way? What would our military look like if we hadn’t already been involved in messy foreign wars when he came into office? What would our banking regulations or infrastructure spending or job recovery policies look like without Republicans standing in the way at every turn? We may never know, but to place all of the blame on Obama seems disingenuous at best.
By accusing Obama, Clinton, and her ilk of being bad, you by omission of the points above, implicitly imply that Trump will be good or at least neutral, thus falling prey to the very binary thinking you advocate against on this very blog. By treating all of Clinton's supporters as a unified mass you are falling into the same trap you accuse them of. And I hate to say it, but by a reading of your blog comments it appears that you’ve also fallen into the very self-congratulatory echo chamber you claim to despise. I will continue to read you blog; I appreciate your unconventional ideas, historical insight, and erudition – this post just does not read like one of your best.
11/18/16, 2:58 PM
Armata said...
I suspect you are right on the Russian carrier. That would be a classic stratagem, one that has been used many times in history. It’s something straight out of Sun Tzu’s Art of War or the Thirty Six Stratagems, both of which are required reading for Russian military and intelligence officers and which few of our clueless elites appear to have ever read.
I have also long suspected that one of the reasons why the Russians have been reinforcing their forces in Syria and they and the Syrians have been stepping up their campaign to take East Aleppo is because they were concerned that Hillary Clinton would be elected, so they wanted to present her with a fait accompli, while warning her off. The Admiral Kuznetsov and her battle group set out for Syria not long before the US elections, so it may have also been a show of force to deter President Obama and Hillary from doing anything stupid.
I don’t think most American’s realize just how close the US and Russia came to blows after the Deir Ezzor incident. The Obama administration claimed it was an accident, but the Russians weren’t buying that, especially since American officials started talking about conducting air strikes against Syrian military forces less than a week later under the R2P (“Responsibility To Protect”) doctrine, which the US government has used repeatedly as an excuse for warmongering and military intervention in the last couple of decades. There was a lot of speculation in the Russian press that Deir Ezzor might have intended as a test run for further air and missile strikes and to see how far the Obama administration could push without provoking a shooting war with Russian forces. If so, the Obama administration miscalculated badly, because it provoked a stern response from the Russian government.
Shortly after the Obama administration starting talking about additional airstrikes against the Syrian military, the Russians announced they had substantially reinforced their air defenses in Syria, including the deployment of a state-of-the-art S-300V4 anti-missile defense system. It was at that point they also announced that any further American or NATO airstrikes against the Syrian military would be considered an act of war and that the attacking aircraft would be shot down without warning. That left a lot of people in the Western media scratching their heads.
A few days after that, Maria Zakharova, who is one of the top officials in the Russian foreign ministry and is widely considered to be a possible successor to Sergei Lavrov when he retires, disclosed the reason why: she claimed Russian intelligence agencies had gotten wind of impending US air and cruise missile strikes against Syrian air force bases and moved to head them off before the attacks begin.
Part 1 of 2
11/18/16, 3:16 PM
Armata said...
Those who supported Hillary might want to consider that one of her campaign promises was to impose a no-fly zone over Syria, something the Russians have already announced they would consider to be an act of war.
The Russian defense minister, General Sergei Shoigu, announced earlier this week that Russia now has no fewer than seven S-300 anti-aircraft missile battalions in Syria, enough to cover all of the key target areas against possible NATO air and cruise missile attacks, in addition to the S-400 battalion already deployed. He also announced that Russia has deployed several batteries of P-800 Bastion truck launched supersonic anti-ship missiles to Syria, enough to defend the entire coastline and has upgraded Syria’s S-200 and Buk long range anti-aircraft missile systems to the latest Russian standards.
At this point, I think US military intervention in Syria is pretty much off the table. The Russians won’t stand for it and they have enough firepower to deter an attack. President Obama just recently gave a speech in which he acknowledged that Russia is a “military superpower” with influence all around the world, instead of dismissing Russia as a “regional power” that “doesn’t make anything”, as he had previously claimed. I think its beginning to dawn on our senile elites just how badly they misplayed their hand when it came to Russia and that they have inadvertently set the stage for the return of Russia as a major power if not a superpower.
11/18/16, 3:19 PM
Justin said...
Some of the Kek/Pepe related coincidences are just too strange. For instance, there was the period in September when the media went nuts talking about a plague of Nazi frogs, and also the 9/11 collapse and the deplorables speech.
A consistent feature of the media's response to the alt-right (or teenagers who are posting cartoon frogs with swastika armbands because it's offensive and funny) is that the media always comes out of it less credible than before. For instance, New Balance recently got a lot of free publicity because a literal Nazi who I won't name endorsed them as "The official shoes of white people" because the CEO of New Balance talked about keeping manufacturing American.
As far as people who understand magic on half or fullchan, well, I wouldn't know how to judge it, but based on JMG's assertion that telling a leftist protest that an open carry protest is coming is a form of magic, then yeah, I would say that quite a few people there have some ideas about magic. And of course, we've known meme magic is real for a long time - how else would a Cantonese fly fishing board be able to choose the leader of the Western world?
11/18/16, 3:50 PM
gildone84 said...
While I think the "Establishment" definitely needed a wake up call, I'm not convinced Donald Trump was the right person to dial the phone. Nonetheless, the call has been made, so I feel like I have to try to see any possible silver lining(s) and muddle through like we all will have to. I think I may have found a couple (although I don't claim to be right): 1) All of Trumps hateful and bigoted rhetoric exposed the dark underbelly of racism that still exists throughout America for all to see. Perhaps bringing it out in the open will help the nation face up to it; and, 2) Due the amount of damage our political class (the "Establishment")has done to the country, perhaps this convulsion he created will help the country in the long run, even if his presidency turns out to be lackluster.
I'm not trying to "brightside" this as Barbara Ehrenreich has coined the term, just trying to find a way to assimilate it as best as I can since any chance we have to avoid the worst of climate change and peak energy is likely now gone. As the Long Emergency progresses, any help to muddle through psychologically is welcomed, at least to me. Cheers to all.
11/18/16, 4:00 PM
Kevin Warner said...
"you need to do a bit better than that to provide evidence of paid protesters."
Aaww mate, now you've got me all embarrassed and I hope that you are not just trolling me. Bit of background here. When we think of protests, they are no longer the type that you saw in the 60s with the hippies and the loudspeakers. The 198 Methods of Nonviolent Action by Gene Sharp (http://www.aeinstein.org/nonviolentaction/198-methods-of-nonviolent-action/) is very instructive on how this has been refined since then and even that piece is decades old in origin.
With a Soros, you are not going to find cheques with his name on it. The man does after all have form in trying to influence U.S. elections evidenced by the fact that even "during the 2003-04 election cycle, Soros donated $23,581,000 to various groups (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Soros#United_States)" to defeat a sitting president. And that was 12 years ago. Even way back in May of this year "The billionaire has already spent or pledged $13 million to help Hillary Clinton and other Democrats this year" (http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-03-15/soros-alarmed-by-trump-pours-money-into-2016-race). Any guesses how much cash has been dropped down that particular rat-hole since then?
There is a page at http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewSubCategory.asp?id=1237 which has a very long list of organizations that Soros and his Open Society Foundations has directly contributed to plus a smaller official list of those he has indirectly contributed money to and some of these are mentioned at https://www.rt.com/usa/366579-soros-orgs-driving-trump-protests/ where they talk about Soros-fronted orgs among groups calling for anti-Trump protests. It's a very extensive network so a lot of the protesters you see on the news is as phony as the White Helmet rescuers that you see in Syria. Good thing that we have a free and fair media that will dig out the truth for us - not!
11/18/16, 4:25 PM
EDGEOFNOWHERE said...
But wait, the greater horror of it is that it was all brought about by the false flag of 9/11 and its attendant lies perpetuated by a clique of insane Neocon/Zionist ideologues dragging a captive media through the bloody chaos behind them, all the while secretly creating the monster that they claimed to be fighting for the last fifteen murderous years!
What could be worse? I'll tell you what: the fact that the victims of this horror are blamed for being the "Islamic Terrorists" that we have created, while our sitting president gets awarded a Nobel Peace Prize! Khafka could not have done a better job than this. OK, here's the punch line: we absolutely do not care one whit about it. No, the recent election focused on genital grabbing, improper email use, the usual corruption, health care costs, LGBT non-issues and the economy of a narcissistic and disgustingly pampered slew of overweight and appallingly ignorant inhabitants. The victims, dead or alive, of our War on Terror were hardly mentioned. For them, death and destruction goes on. Ho hum. The "war" wasn't even an issue of merit.
Behold: Freedom and Democracy in action! Well, whatever justice is dispensed by the great Karmic wheel upon the perpetrators and enablers of this unspeakable event, it can never be enough to balance the scale.
SixToedCat
11/18/16, 5:04 PM
inohuri said...
We Cannot “Give Trump a Chance”
by Kshama Sawant (Seattle City Council)
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/11/18/we-cannot-give-trump-a-chance/
"Callers were surprised to learn that while I fiercely oppose Trump, I did not back Hillary Clinton (I campaigned for Bernie Sanders, and later Jill Stein)."
"On the night of the election result, my organization, Socialist Alternative began to organize protests around the country for the next day. More than 50,000 answered that call: in Seattle, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Oakland. Many more protests have followed, as well as dozens of student walkouts, including 5,000 Seattle students on Monday alone."
http://www.socialistalternative.org/
11/18/16, 5:48 PM
Armata said...
Personally, I think this is brilliant. Not only is Trump showing the mainstream news media exactly what he thinks about them and where they stand, but this is only going to cement his credibility and popularity with the masses. Few institutions in America are as widely loathed as the press, in part because most people realize how biased and bereft of professional ethics the modern news media really is these days.
11/18/16, 6:11 PM
Shane W said...
Regarding the environment and Trump, I see many ways in which his presidency could indirectly improve the environment. If he makes good on his trade/tariff promises and repatriates jobs, this could have a positive effect on the environment by reducing conspicuous, disposable consumption. American made goods cost more and are arguably better made than imports, so by depressing consumption, discarding and replacing, fewer resources are used. Also, all the oil that is burnt in freighters shipping goods around the globe will be reduced. If he makes good on some of his corruption promises and pops some financial bubbles and defaults on the national debt, this would also have a positive effect on the environment by reducing unnecessary consumption. Even throwing the salary class under the bus would have a positive effect on the environment because salary class people consume an outsized share of resources and burn a lot more fossil fuels that the wage class.
I'd read in a mainstream press article that the GOP had found a lot of dirt on Sanders, and that Sanders support would have crumpled in the face of it. I was wondering if that would have been true, or if Sanders would have had a much of a "teflon effect" as Trump, and his support wouldn't have wavered. The article was in Newsweek. The one great thing about Trump's election is that it signals an end to the whole "gotcha" politics of personal destruction that Gary Hart warned us of way back in '88. The electorate was numb to it all. There was nothing Trump could do or say that the media went into a tizzy about that that could daunt his support.
11/18/16, 6:13 PM
Shane W said...
Regarding bigotry, a rising tide lifts all boats, and I remember a study I'd read in college (university) that bias incidents increase during economically difficult times and decrease when times are good. Logically, humans are much more tribal and attuned to differences when times are tough than when times are good. It's no coincidence that the time of the greatest civil rights achievements were the postwar boom era of the 50s-60s. Therefore, if Trump is successful repatriating jobs and improving the lot of the wage class of all colors, it could go a long way towards reducing racial and ethnic tension. And it's not like there's a whole different set of policies to repatriate rural jobs vs urban ones. The same trade and tariff policies that bring jobs back to Lima bring jobs back to East Cleveland, as well. Trump may be adding black votes to his coalition if his trade policies bring jobs back to the inner cities. I think it was very conspicuous that the post election riots/protests took place mostly in wealthy, left coast cities rather than in inner city black communities. It's very telling. The black community may not have voted for Trump in large numbers, but they certainly don't seem that collectively incensed about his election to riot about it. It's very telling. There's a window of opportunity for Trump to add to his coalition there.
As a queer Trump voter, I smell a rat in the whole bigotry meltdown (in total contradiction to Trump's actual statements regarding the black and LGBT communities, in particular) The Democrats are desperate to hold their minority coalition together, and they're petrified Trump might peel off their most loyal voters.
11/18/16, 6:14 PM
Armata said...
This looks a lot like the tactics used in the other color revolutions that Soros has helped to organize. This particular effort will fail, in part because like John Michael has pointed out, if Trump finds himself in trouble, he can call upon a awful lot of well-armed supporters from flyover country to come to his aid. I might even go join them if Trump were to call upon his supporters to show up with guns and baseball bats in hand.
Personally, I am sick and tired of the SJW's and other assorted Special Snowflakes who are out there throwing temper tantrums because they didn't get what they wanted in the presidential election. I would prefer to avoid unnecessary violence, but I would not be too unhappy to see some of these people get a taste of their own medicine and I know I am far from the only working class American from flyover country who feels that way.
11/18/16, 6:29 PM
Ramaraj said...
Thanks for the incisive analysis.I noticed that several people are confusing the post with your personal opinion(even though it is clear and obvious that it is not). I saw a few posts saying things like,"How can you,a druid,support someone who thinks climate change is a hoax?",and so on.
This post is not about what you think is correct,but what the people who voted Trump think. If you are in politics and want power,the least you should be capable is to understand the problems and concerns of the people,the very same people you are seeking your votes from. That looks like plain common sense to me. It's comical and hilarious to see the coastal liberals screaming about their own concern and priorities while ignoring everyone else's outside their bubble.
A quote from To Kill a Mockingbird - by Atticus Finch, no less, came to mind: "You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view […] until you climb into his skin and walk around in it."
And I see several themes sketched out by Spengler and Toynbee playing out in politics. The whole earth-bound country vs rootless city, rise of caesarism, dominant (earlier inspiring) minority losing its grip on the state, resurgence of religion and conservatism,etc. I know things are still in flux,so I am closely watching to see what new variation history throws up in the general pattern. (Someday I hope to document all the present happenings and compare with Spengler's and Toynbee's works).
Ramaraj
11/18/16, 6:31 PM
onething said...
Thank you for that. I often feel I am screaming into the wind on this issue of killing people. Americans are quite jaded about it. Do we have to experience it ourselves to finally understand that it is real?
++++++++++++++++++++++++
Dammerung,
Where is this /8pol/?
11/18/16, 6:39 PM
Nestorian said...
I enjoyed your rant - I can thoroughly identify both with the content and the passion. JMG, thanks for putting it through.
11/18/16, 6:46 PM
Mary said...
As far as promises re: expansion of NATO, that is debatable. http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/nato-s-eastward-expansion-did-the-west-break-its-promise-to-moscow-a-663315.html
Mary
11/18/16, 7:03 PM
Moshe Braner said...
I do think that breaking the media-is-paid-for-via-advertising mold is vital to our future. Otherwise ALL "news" will be (already are?) "fake news".
11/18/16, 7:06 PM
Al said...
I would also chime in that I disagree w "The Cold, Cold Math..." article as it fails to use a different lens than the media when looking at these results. Nearly half of voters did not vote for Trump. Something like 2 out of every 11 Americans did. With such a large pool of eligible voters not voting, nearly a hundred million Americans, almost a third, did not vote, it is very difficult to predict what emotions are going to energize these people to the polls.
Finally, it is equally difficult to predict that Bernie would have won. We already know that the media would have shunned him. More air time was given to an empty podium where Trump was going to appear than Bernie's entire campaign.
I will leave you w this excellent article on Jacobin by Dan O'Sullivan which deserves attention on this thread.
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/11/donald-trump-election-hillary-clinton-election-night-inequality-republicans-trumpism/
11/18/16, 7:22 PM
Armata said...
This sort of nonsense is just going to alienate more and more people, while generating even more sympathy for Trump and his supporters. As if the American public school system isn’t already a national embarrassment and the worst in the industrialized world, now we have SJW’s using the public school system to indoctrinate students with overt hate propaganda using taxpayer money. Words cannot begin to express my utter disgust with these people.
Then again, this is San Francisco, the city that refused to cooperate with the Feds after an illegal immigrant named Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez murdered a young woman named Kate Steinle. Steinle’s murderer had multiple felony convictions and had been deported five times. Apparently, the City of San Francisco had more sympathy for him then the woman he murdered and has refused to reconsider its sanctuary city policy. I hope Trump cuts federal funding for these sanctuary cities, which are acting in violation of federal law, until they decide to change their tune. The family of Steinle is suing the City of San Francisco and two Federal agencies for failing to do more to stop atrocities like her murder by criminals who are in the country illegally.
By contrast, Trump is signaling he probably won’t deport all illegal immigrants, but he has said that one of his top priorities will be to deal with illegal immigrants who have criminal records, especially gang members and other violent criminals by deporting or incarcerating them.
The one good thing about news stories like this is that the American people get to see the SJW’s for exactly what they are, and it’s not a pretty sight. I think they will end up losing a lot more support then they gain, given their penchant for circular firing squads and self-righteous hate mongering.
11/18/16, 7:23 PM
Dammerung said...
Some of us commenters have already been insufficiently circumspect as it is. hate/pol/ is, more or less, the best kept open secret on the Internet. Anyone who really wants to find us can. Most people who do manage to come across our board take one look at what we're doing and then don't take a second, which suits us just fine. The moderators are all compromised and the only tools we have to police our signal-to-noise ratio is Nazi regalia; gore images; and half to fully naked cartoon women. You know every time I sit down and try to think about how to explain this to people I end up expecting men in white coats to pop out from behind every shrubbery. In all honesty it's probably best to not let your curiosity get the better of you, but what can anybody do?
Make your choice adventurous stranger
strike the bell and bide the danger.
Or wonder til it drives you mad
what would have followed if you had.
11/18/16, 8:30 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Rich, that's a good point. I notice along the same lines that a lot of news aggregator blogs are openly partisan, and do a better job of covering the news than the supposedly impartial media.
Lei, the choices open to the US right now are to stage a managed retreat from empire, on the one hand, and cling to it a little longer until we collapse, on the other. It really is that serious at this point. I'd prefer the former, not least because that would give European nations the necessary lead time to build up their own militaries again and provide for their own defense. I'll be doing a post on this in the not too distant future.
Phil, it was pretty impressive. I don't disagree with your point about the wounded US, and I doubt anyone in the Kremlin would, either; they've been preparing these last two years or so as though they expect to get a serious shooting war with the US whether they want one or not, so may be thinking of where and how to start it so that they've got the advantage.
Tidlösa, funny. I'm pretty sure Clinton got the werewolf vote, though. ;-)
Fred, if I have time I'll try to work out the rate of hate crimes and see if what's happened really is a spike, or if it's just that all of a sudden the media is blaming the normal background rate of such crimes on Trump.
Tidlösa, exactly. As I noted in an earlier post, pretending that all political disputes are about values is a good way to suppress talk about interests -- for a while.
Rich, if the people you know on the Left have gotten over the shock and are buckling down to work, all the better. You might show them this week's post -- as I noted, all the issues that were cited by Trump voters are things that Democrats used to stand for, and if you stand for them again, you know, you could win: not just the presidency, but also in Congress and on the state and local levels.
Owen, Clinton's campaign turned out almost entirely the way I outlined it in advance back in February: an attempt to treat voters like a vending machine that would cough up a presidency if only you put in the right coins and pushed the right button. Her absence from the campaign trail was, as I see it, just one part of a broader attitude of entitlement: the classic attitide of a senile plutocracy on the way down.
Unknown Michael, statistics are fun! In this case, as generally in the Obamacare debate, the use of averages makes it possible to avoid talking about the point I specifically made, which is that a lot of people make too much money to get a meaningful subsidy, and too little to afford premium increases that in some cases were well over 100%. If one person gets a million dollars and ninety-nine others lose ten thousand dollars each, remember, the average person breaks even -- but that doesn't mean that such an "average person" exists, nor does it make life any easier for the people who are out the money.
11/18/16, 8:31 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Jasmine, yes, Trump has said repeatedly that he plans on reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act in some form. As for free trade, funny that you should mention that; this morning, while brooding over the various free trade deals and their consequences, I realized why free trade schemes inevitably make the rich richer and the poor poorer, with all the economic troubles that this entails. I'd planned to write about something else next week, but this is timely, so next week's post will be titled "The Free Trade Fallacy." Stay tuned!
Donalfagan, fancy that. I wonder who first started talking about that in this election cycle... ;-)
Dammerung, the Kybalion? William Walker Atkinson (the guy behind "Three Initiates;" he was also Yogi Ramacharaka, Theron Q. Dumont, and Magus Incognito, among other pen names) would be delighted, as indeed am I.
Varun, if I may riff off your comment to Scotlyn, I'm reminded of a phrase my grandfather used to use: "Busier than a one-legged man at a butt-kicking contest." Go for it, and kick 'em.
Pantagruel, so would I. The TISA treaty is one of the pieces of paper I hope Trump shreds early and often.
Izzy, one of the nasty consequences of the fashion for political correctness is that a lot of people didn't change their attitudes, they just stopped talking about them in public, and learned the buzzwords well enough to pass. I suspect a lot of people on the leftward end of things are going to be surprised by just how little actual change in attitudes there's been. Unfortunate, but there it is.
Bill, of course. There are problems with every possible approach to any sufficiently complex political issue; that's why politics isn't as routine as tying a shoelace, you know. ;-)
Sillybill, interesting. I hope it goes well!
Frank, oh, granted. This time, reliance on identity politics cost the Dems big time -- do you recall all the people claiming that women wouldn't vote for Trump, as though all women had exactly the same attitudes and would all cast their votes the same way? I suspect that identity politics won't last long at this point, for exactly that reason.
11/18/16, 8:54 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Jerome, election-rigging is as American as apple pie, and both parties are equally enthusiastic about it. (I like to encourage Democrats who question this to read Seymnour Hersh's The Dark Side of Camelot, which details how Joe Kennedy bought the 1960 election for JFK; I don't happen to know a convenient book talking about a GOP victory-by-rigging, so if any of my readers has one to suggest, I'm all ears.) In this case, though, remember that Trump had the entire political establishment against him, so I suspect the rigging went the other way, and just wasn't extensive enough.
Tidlösa, hah! Another of my talking points begins to spread. ;-)
Inohuri, we'll see, but a couple of the appointments and a few of Bannon's comments seemed very promising to me.
Marie, square on target. Thank you -- and thanks for the stats, which confirmed what I'd suspected.
Caveman, if I may phrase things in marketing terms, you need brand visibility for anarcho-syndicalism. You won't get it by using a vague label like "Left," which allows people to confuse you with the Democrats et al.; you need to take your own label and get it out there, all over the internet, over and over again until people recognize it. You might consider using the shorter label "syndicalism," which doesn't get the knee-jerk response that anything referencing anarchism does -- but if you want your politics to have a voice in the collective consciousness, it's up to you to get the label into circulation. As for the Forbes thing, oh bright gods. Thank you; yes, that's, er, enlightening.
Chris, thanks for this -- especially for the bit from the Encyclopedia Dramatica, which shows me pretty clearly the roots of their magical approach. Thank you also for Poe's Law, which I hadn't heard before and which was definitely worth a laugh.
Latefall, exactly. Europe can certainly defend itself, and given time to respond to a staged withdrawal of the US military presence, there needn't be any vulnerabilities. You're right, of course, that mere expenditures aren't enough -- the US spends more on its military than most of the rest of the world combined, and that got us the F-35, the Littoral Combat Ship, and a vast assortment of other white elephants.
Maxine, it's moving in that direction; the Second Baptist Church, which is about three blocks from my house, has some white parishioners. (Note for those who live north of the Mason-Dixon line: in a lot of southern towns, the First Baptist Church is the white church and the Second Baptist Church is the black church.) That said, some churches are still pretty much white and others, like the African Methodist Episcopal church east of downtown, are pretty much black.
D Arms, no question, US healthcare was a pathetic mess even before Obamacare made it even worse. Reform is needed -- but Obamacare proved very neatly that not every change is an improvement!
11/18/16, 9:40 PM
William McGillis said...
now we have SJW’s using the public school system to indoctrinate students with overt hate propaganda using taxpayer money. Words cannot begin to express my utter disgust with these people.
and
Personally, I am sick and tired of the SJW's and other assorted Special Snowflakes who are out there throwing temper tantrums because they didn't get what they wanted in the presidential election. I would prefer to avoid unnecessary violence, but I would not be too unhappy to see some of these people get a taste of their own medicine
Armata,
Appreciate your military knowledge, but confused about something that shows up in your posts.
You really seem to like the term "SJW's." Seems like you think it refers to a single, obvious type of person and perspective that everyone understands and knows.
Seems like you're using it in a way that suggests that anyone with a brain holds these evilly evil terrible horrible people with the same disgust and disdain that you do. Even seems like you're welcoming violence against these terrible, horrible, despicable people.
Seems to me that you're using this term as a thoughtstopper, like you're referring to people with different ideas and motivations as a single, monolithic entity. Many on this blog have decried the characterization of Trump voters as all racist and sexist. Yet you are doing the same to people who may have very real, worthwhile concerns. Concerns that you may not share, but concerns that nevertheless might be important and worth considering.
I find your use of this term dehumanizing. I also find it sloppy and detrimental to clear thinking and clear communication. I see it as equivalent to calling all Trump supporters "fascist right wingers." Much nuance, specificity, and humanity is lost in these demonizations of the abstract other.
11/18/16, 10:10 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Jordan, you seem to have missed the entire point of this post. I wasn't saying why people ought to vote for Trump; I talked about why the people I know who did vote for Trump cast their ballots the way they did. You can certainly shout that down, but wouldn't it be more useful to learn from it? All the issues the Trump voters mentioned to me are issues that, once upon a time, the Democratic Party used to address; it's because Clinton did nothing to address them that these voters chose Trump. If the Democrats continue to ignore those issues, odds are they're going to continue to lose. As for your other claims -- that I treat the Left as a monolith, that I blamed everything on Obama, etc., etc. -- I'm frankly at a loss to figure out where you found those in my post. I really think you should consider reading it again when you're no longer quite so upset about losing the election.
Armata, I've lost the link, but there were extensive if unconfirmed reports after Deir Ezzor that a couple of Russian Kaliber cruise missiles targeted the base where US Special Forces personnel and their equivalents from several other countries were more or less managing the "moderate rebels" (i.e., the mercenaries we've armed and funded to try to overthrow the Syrian government). The reports I saw suggested that there were a lot of casualties. If that did happen -- and it seems likely to me -- that was Russia's line-in-the-sand moment. I think you're right that Russia and Syria expected full-on US intervention if Clinton was elected, and were gearing up for a shooting war -- seven S-300 systems and an S-400, plus the rest of the hardware they've got on the ground, won't have been put there for show. I'm glad we seem to have dodged that bullet!
Justin, magic and strategy have a lot in common, which is why Chinese generals used to use the I Ching as a textbook of military theory; for that matter, I know a mage who's interpreted the Emerald Tablet of Hermes as a guide to the principles of combat. What made the disruption of the protest march competent magic is that the person who disrupted it recognized that the protesters had a mental image of themselves ("heroic rebels marching bravely against evil evilness") that could be flipped around with infinite ease into another mental image of themselves ("victims being beaten and shot by the minions of evil evilness"), which would cause them to run like rabbits. "Know thyself," said the Delphic oracle; "If you know your enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the results of a hundred battles," said Sun Tzu.
Gildone84, from my perspective, any chance we had to avoid the worst of climate change and peak energy went by the boards a long time ago, and putting Clinton into office wouldn't have changed that. I know that's probably not the kind of encouragement you were hoping for, of course.
Edge, did you think I meant "policeman" as a compliment? Think of some of the common behaviors of policemen in some parts of the US these days and I think you'll get a clearer sense of the implications of that nicely ambiguous label...
Inohuri, interesting. I hadn't heard of Socialist Alternative until this week -- but there's no surprise involved. The GOP put so much time into denouncing every government program that helps people as "socialism" that it's no wonder some Americans are giving Marx a second chance.
Armata, yep. He knows exactly what he's doing, and he's doing it really, really well.
11/18/16, 10:11 PM
Synthase said...
11/18/16, 10:37 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Armata, er, cough cough politics of personal demonization cough cough. It's just as counterproductive when you do it, you know, as when they do it.
Ramaraj, thank you! Yes, exactly.
Al, as I noted in January, it could have gone either way -- but a lot of pundits were insisting right up to the last days of the campaign that Trump didn't have a chance.
Armata, I sometimes wonder whether the cities that are trying to use the nullification doctrine on Federal immigration law -- for that's what the "sanctuary city" business amounts to -- have really thought through what they're facing. It would be easy, for example, for President Trump to freeze all federal funds earmarked for San Francisco, and have the Department of Justice file criminal charges against the city government, as a body and as individuals, for conspiracy to prevent the enforcement of Federal laws. For that matter, when UC Berkeley declared itself a "sanctuary campus," did anyone think through the possibility that it would take one executive order to make the whole college ineligible for Federal student loans, Federal research grants, and every other program that sends money from the US government to universities -- and that Trump would sign such an order? I rather doubt it.
11/18/16, 10:44 PM
patriciaormsby said...
Very insightful response to Armata! I figured Putin had some plan in place for dealing with Clinton, based on her predictability, and I'll bet you called it. I hope it will be a moot point, though.
To build upon your response to Justin, I heard that in the second debate, when asked about a nuclear first-strike policy, Trump disavowed that, while Clinton simply did not reply. As Obama has refused to disavow such a strategy, it would be fair to assume Mrs. Clinton intended to continue with it. I think a real crowning moment in her Queen of Chaos glory, though, was her gloating and laughing over the violent death of her fellow statesman, Muammar Qaddafi. A lot of people responded viscerally to that. In short, Justin, we heard it from the old horse's mouth.
JMG, I am reading carefully through all of the comments this week (a job having fortuitously been cancelled), and I really appreciate how you let all sides of the issue have a voice on your blog, with the one rule being that of polite discourse. I disagree with many commenters here, but think it is important to know what they are thinking. It is the only hope for healing the rift. You are performing quite a service!
11/18/16, 11:09 PM
Kevin Warner said...
"...there were extensive if unconfirmed reports after Deir Ezzor that a couple of Russian Kaliber cruise missiles targeted the base where US Special Forces personnel and their equivalents from several other countries were more or less managing the "moderate rebels"."
You must be meaning the link at http://www.globalresearch.ca/u-s-coalition-intelligence-operations-room-inside-syria-destroyed-by-russian-missile-attack-thirty-israeli-american-british-turkish-saudi-qatari-intelligence-officials-killed-report/5547099 or one of the other links on the same story.
There is a rumour on Russian media that there were Russian ground controllers that were killed at Deir Ezzor and that this was clear payback for that attack by the coalition.
11/18/16, 11:14 PM
Ray Wharton said...
This 'fake news' story is quite telling. For my whole adult life I have been interested in some kind of fringe narrative. Several different ones over the years. As far as I can tell the fringes are differentiated based on what they pay attention to. Even very different fringes straight out factually contradict surprisingly little in contrast to how much their narratives clash. Simply focus on different things.
The Arch Druid Report is a fringe, Mr. Greer's wide and interesting interests define what it focuses on. Even though the commentators might disagree in countless ways, the shared stories that Greer's posts play with give a defining context. JMG, it is perilous to be in your place in such a fringe, and not because of any external danger. But enough from Lancelot to Galahad.
When treated as a fringe their is a degree of disconnect between the journalism and the reader. This is good. When journalism plays at being objective, it subjects its viewers to power.
The MSM has had the privilege of being the crowned power of truth, and yet even very square people have, for all my life, REALLY known better... even if they don't reflect that point. I think the crown is falling. A link here showed me some goof ball babbling about Trump and a restaurant, and some guy from Japan... there wasn't much form to the babble.
Objectivity is dead. And the Nietzschian horror is in view of a thousand objectives, each vying for their objectivity. Gods don't stay dead, some dang thing takes their place, or some fraction of what's left of their place.
I think the anti trump reaction a reaction to the abyss, the abyss as projected on to Trump. Trump is a perfect screen for that. Stimulating of petty disgust, and yet fascinating. But the abyss itself, that void left when the sense of a shared objective reality is ripped away, that feeling of being surrounded by monsters. Monsters whose objectives are horrifying in being unknowable, for their objectivity objects to your objectives. Dangerous to fight them, for you are a monster to them! So special An Abysmal Snowperson.
Trolling is a prime form of thaumaturgy, of course a people based on the prime would for composites. Summoning Kek... that's a wild thing to do. Impressive though. Their white supremacy schtick acting like a trap for the left's energy. Seems like dangerous business... even typing this is closer to such workings than I enjoy being.
Trump's election is disrupting the basic patterns many people use to maintain their images of reality. Both because he is an 'impossible president' as a symbol, and because the actually institution that constructs 'reality', journalism, is likely to have its power supply seriously altered.
In such a disruption, where the raw and irrational is brought so near the surface of public life, it would not be hard for dangerous stuff to happen. Maybe some jerk thing Trump says takes on a life of its own and causes a vast injustice; maybe some of the anger on the left forms into something dangerous. Or any number of things from the fringe could manifest in there horror... or just maybe in glory. That's the thing about the irrational, the Abyss, Pepe if your prefer, very very unpredictable and powerful so dangerous in that way that all things with both those traits are.
I feel a little distant from the abyss, I have been there a few times before, and didn't have any faith in the dead narratives to lose. News of dangerous times is just a weather report when your inner world is largely furnished with senerios how seeds can be bore through a dark age and scheduling between turkey butchering and herding sheep through a militarized Indian Reservation (not the Lakota though).
11/18/16, 11:52 PM
Pasha said...
Somehow, those issues that were so compelling to the white people of your town (wars, the high cost of Obamacare, and jobs) weren't enough to get people of color to vote for a racist jerk. Is that because people of color aren't affected as badly by wars, Obamacare, and job losses as white people?
No, it's because they are in a position to understand that for them, those admittedly serious threats are small potatoes compared to what they will now face due to having a blatantly racist President.
Yes, progressives should listen to the legitimate concerns of rural voters. But rural whites should also listen to the concerns of their bretheren of color. Maybe you don't disagree, but it sure sounds like you're trying to excuse rural whites' choice to vote for Trump.
11/19/16, 12:59 AM
Cherokee Organics said...
Have you ever wondered whether the fear being trotted out so reliably in your election campaigns is fear of the payback from the Golden Rule of: do unto others?
The funny thing is that the people in question making that claim are acting like victims when they are in it up to their eyeballs and it is worth mentioning that people don't generally hate people that they disagree with. In this regard, the word "hate" is to my mind, an overblown chunk of fluff when used in that context and it is utilised to cover up the simple fact that the people simply don't want to give any ground or perquisites. Perhaps the people making those claims of hate, actually hate themselves? You have to admit, that that is a possibility? Teaching people to hate an abstract concept can rebound on the practitioners of that particular act of magic with unpleasant consequences.
Being forced to consume insurance at considerable expense and under legal duress, that the people being fined cannot then partake of, really, really, annoys people. Obamacare! He may have forgotten to say who the interested parties were that were actually being taking care of... Just sayin! ;-)!
Your insights are cogent and I don't really have much more to add than the above. I hope people aren't still throwing emotions around using facile debating techniques?
Cheers
Chris
11/19/16, 2:07 AM
Cherokee Organics said...
Yup, Marcu above has advertised that the next Green Wizards of Melbourne meetup will be held at the farm here! It will be a fun and interesting field trip, and I should also add that nowadays I rarely - if at all - open the farm to casual visitors.
Of interest to aspiring Green Wizards, the house here is powered by off grid solar PV electricity. The house is super insulated and also constructed - by myself - to the highest bushfire resistant standards in the country. The water is heated by the sun and also firewood. There are chickens, bees, herbs, vegetables, berries, and about 300 diverse fruit trees. Not to mention the water systems and the ever fascinating worm farm that processes all of the sewage and waste water back into the top soil (look inside and take a deep breath, if you dare!)
The mysterious editor and I are planning to feed the people who turn up for lunch, so follow Marcu's advice and get in contact with him. We are considering picking up a number of people from the local train station so public transport is a good option (and it is only a zone two trip with your Myki card), but you have to get in early and arrange that option with Marcu.
Anyone who is still not happy with all of that above can simply get lost because you my friend are way too hard to please! Hehehe!
Hope to see the Green Wizards here.
Cheers
Chris
11/19/16, 2:24 AM
Shane W said...
11/19/16, 3:26 AM
MawKernewek said...
11/19/16, 3:48 AM
Fred the First said...
And then the chief tacked on that the city wanted people to know who were here on expired visas etc (he didn't use the term illegal) that they could be safe going to work and school and making their contribution to the city. And in my head goes ding ding ding - there it is - the signal to employers who contribute to politicians campaigns that their illegal immigrants who they employ at cheaper wages than US citizens "don't worry the police will protect your illegal immigrant and bottom line profit."
11/19/16, 4:21 AM
onething said...
"As a queer Trump voter, I smell a rat in the whole bigotry meltdown (in total contradiction to Trump's actual statements regarding the black and LGBT communities, in particular) The Democrats are desperate to hold their minority coalition together, and they're petrified Trump might peel off their most loyal voters."
I've been smelling a rat for a long time, and more sinisterly than the above. I'm suspicious even of some of the reporting of police misdeeds toward blacks. I do not believe that some of them have been reported accurately, and why all of a sudden? Regardless of how much the police are culpable, why all of a sudden? That together with the quite over-the-top reporting about racism in Brexit and the Trump election (again, see the article You Are Still Crying Wolf), it would seem that some faction of the elite are trying to foment increased hatred and lack of trust between the races. Racism had been a problem well on the wane.
11/19/16, 5:47 AM
onething said...
Another reason I voted for him. I knew he'd win my state and would generally have voted for Stein as I always vote 3rd party, but I figured he needed a landslide to overcome a dual party bias.
11/19/16, 6:13 AM
Justin said...
11/19/16, 6:19 AM
David, by the lake said...
Tangemtially related (by way of jobs), but I caught a bit of CNBC yesterday (at a pub, but only one -- very large -- screen, muted with CC turned on). The hosts were discussing the "Trump Effect" that has been hitting the markets since the election, particularly with respect to the possibility of massive infrastructure spending. There was a side story re McDonald's and its recent tech move introducing table-top ordering and the corresponding potential impact on jobs. One of the hosts mentioned that one (unnamed) owner he knew would like to "get rid of everybody and only have kiosks and robots," not b/c he doesn't like people but b/c of the labor, insurance, healthcare costs, etc. The host then observed that these jobs are "what you do when you can't get anything else," so what happens when these jobs get automated? The discussion ended with one out suggesting that hopefully the new infrastructure spending would create jobs to take up that slack.
One of the many thoughts racing through my mind was, who is going to be coming in to order food at your restaurant if no one has no money b/c their jobs have been automated out of existence? Each business owner attempting to maximize his/her short-term returns actually, when aggregated, destroys the very system on which he/she depends.
This will not end well.
11/19/16, 6:37 AM
Izzy said...
*Although I have threatened to call the cops on a couple guys who were "just being nice," and I will throat-punch anyone who tries the "how to talk to a woman wearing headphones" suggestions on me.
11/19/16, 7:16 AM
Patricia Mathews said...
http://time.com/4575780/stephen-bannon-fourth-turning/
I consider this to be worth reading, and not for his opinion of the various actors in this year's melodrama. Kaiser is a trained historian, his bias is out in the open, and he has only one really stupid (or blinkers-wearing) statement in the entire piece. Most of the people here will spot it in a New York Nanosecond; I doubt many of his readers will.
Off topic - I read a column in the local daily paper called Sports Speak-Up, just as I read all the letters to the editor on any subject. Today's Democrats are now sounding a lot like UNM Lobo fans. If one of the team drops the ball, the letters are all over him. If the Lobos lose a game, they're all over the coach. If they have a losing season, they cry "Fire the coach!" And if they lose to a school they thought any team could beat hands-down, they howl and weep and talk trash.
I was going to say, if the Lobos lost to the Backwoods Middle School Girls' team, but fans of the Lady Lobos don't carry on like that at all. They - and the Lady Lobos - show a great deal of class. For what that's worth.
11/19/16, 7:22 AM
gaias daughter said...
I happen to know a lot of people who voted for Trump, all of whom are well-educated, solidly middle class or better, and white. When I asked them why they voted Trump, these are the answers I’ve gotten:
Because he is a businessman. We need a businessman in Washington to run things the way they ought to be run. And because he will keep the Muslims out. Those people are cowards. They should stay in their own country and fight. People should always stay in their own country.
Because we need God back in the White House — then we can have prayer in schools again, get rid of Common Core, and say “Merry Christmas.”
Because I’m a Christian. Ever since the supreme court ruled in favor of gay marriage, God has withdrawn his support from the U.S. and we will be destroyed if that decision is not reversed.
Because if the Muslims take over America, we will all have to wear burkhas and I don’t think my daughter and my granddaughter could deal with that.
My point is that while a good many, perhaps a majority, of Trump supporters voted for him because they were concerned about the possibility of war (as am I, though I do not find Trump’s secret plan to annihilate ISIS in any way comforting), concerned about unemployment, Obamacare, or punishing the Democratic Party (none of my acquaintances were Democrats to begin with), the people I encounter and converse with on a daily basis had very different reasons for voting the way that they did. And while many, maybe even most, of the people who voted for Trump are not racist, misogynistic, xenophobic or any of the other deplorable terms that Clinton deplorably used in her basket of deplorables speech, the fact remains that those amongst us who ARE racist, misogynistic and xenophobic have been emboldened and validated by the Trump campaign.
So if you want to know why people are demonstrating in the streets, for many of us it is to stand in solidarity with our fellow citizens, those who are already being harassed and attacked in schools, in the workplace, and on the streets, and to assure them that they are not alone.
11/19/16, 9:20 AM
Jordan said...
You don’t have to post this comment, but I at least hope you’ll read it. My other hope is that this will come across as an attempt at mutual understanding and dialogue rather than simply my harping on points previously made. First, my apologies for being somewhat angry and accusatory, my writing is obviously not good enough to convey disagreement without a serious side helping of bitterness.
I think I understood, and understand your post, it’s simply not what I wanted it to be, which I realize is unfair as it’s your blog and you can write about whatever you want. As I mentioned, I know you’re not explicitly endorsing Trump, but I felt that by leaving those points out you were implicitly endorsing those reasons for voting for him whether you intended too or not. Perhaps I’m reading too much into it. And I think I have learned from it because I also support those reasons you mentioned, I just don’t think Trump is the right person to actually do anything about them. My point about treating the left as a monolith is that I don’t think the mention of Bernie Sanders’ potential general election victory was enough to convey that there are many of us on the left that don’t agree with Clinton’s policies and in fact agree with many of the policy concerns you attribute to Trump supporters in this post. Again, I would have made that point more clear, but of course this isn’t my blog.
I suppose the reasons for not voting Trump are already being made in many other corners of the internet, it just would have seemed particularly effective coming from you given your previous posting on historical parallels, Burkean Conservatism, and binary thinking (putting on my psychologist hat here, maybe that’s just what I wanted from you since I respect your opinion and perspective and so I would feel validated if you agreed with me, this seems likely to given my history of low self esteem and self confidence). It seems in this series of posts you’ve taken on the role of “detached observer”, and I was a bit confused and possibly disappointed that you didn’t take this chance to write about the pitfalls of binary thinking and potential revolutionary downsides as they relate to Trump.
I am not upset about “losing”. I was not excited about a Clinton presidency. I didn’t lose my mind when Gore or Kerry lost to Dubya. The reason I’m upset is because we’ve elected a man to be president who in my opinion is completely unprepared, terrifyingly unpredictable, woefully incompetent, and utterly lacking in the sort of character required for the job. I felt, and will continue to feel like these are important things to point out, but again of course this is not my blog so if you don’t want to write about them, then to each their own (I will admit this is starting to sound like harping on my part, can you tell that I just want my voice to be heard? I’m sure Trump voters feel the same way about not being heard).
11/19/16, 9:27 AM
Jordan said...
As for Obama, not in this specific post, but in others you have repeatedly mentioned (in at least the blogs linked below, and several podcasts, I won’t dig up all of them) the cynicism of Obama’s 2008 campaign and his rush to throw his voters under the bus as soon as he was in office, implying that this was some sort of calculated effort to get elected. If I missed the part where you simultaneously mentioned the economic and military messes he inherited from Bush Jr. or the complete lack of cooperation and Republican Congressional obstructionism as contributing to his apparent lack of success, than I apologize for falling victim to confirmation bias and will try to read more carefully in the future. I feel like these are important points to consider, and by not mentioning them it appears that you have some sort of agenda (not saying you actually do, just that it appears you do, and given some of your blog comments it also appears that many of your readers take whatever you write at face value, which concerns me) and are placing the blame for failure singularly on Obama, which seems like too simple an explanation given the depth and complexity on the rest of your blog.
Any feedback is much appreciated, I will try not to take it too defensively, but that’s something I’m still working on.
Obama’s cynicism:
https://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2014/07/smile-for-aliens.html
https://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-suicide-of-american-left.html
https://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2016/11/reflections-on-democracy-in-crisis.html
11/19/16, 9:27 AM
Juandonjuan said...
11/19/16, 11:00 AM
astroplethorama said...
Same goes for me with the environmental sanity vote: Here in MN, both senators (Franken and Klobuchar, both Ds) voted for the DARK Act (Deny Americans the Right to Know -- what's in their food), leading me to vow out loud that I would never vote for either of them, unless (MAYBE) they publicly repudiated their votes.
(Franken's main issue seems to be net neutrality, and Klobuchar -- beats me, maybe just being "middle of the road," as in nowhere.)
Ah, how I miss Paul Wellstone, who saw and related to regular folk doing unglamorous jobs.
11/19/16, 11:15 AM
Juandonjuan said...
The problem with SJWs seems to be that too often they come across as Selective Justice Warriors. We should all be defending equality of opportunity for everyone. Equality of outcomes has so many dependent and independent variables that its a much harder row to hoe. And a hard lesson to learn. To make it through the years ahead we will need everyone on board. Not always easy, but we need to prove their fears, based on propaganda, baseless -or we are what they fear.
11/19/16, 11:20 AM
John Michael Greer said...
Patricia, you're welcome and thank you. I honestly think that the lack of civil discourse between the various divergent factions in today's America is one of the most crucial problems we've got, and I'd like to see that bridged; thus, as per my usual formula, I start with myself.
Kevin, that's the one, though I didn't get it from Global Research. Thank you.
Ray, excellent. That has enough chaos within it to earn you today's dancing gold star. Yes, exactly...
Pasha, no, it simply demonstrates that African-Americans did the same sensible thing that rural white Americans did -- they voted for the candidate they thought would further their own interests. My point, which you seem to have missed entirely, is that the Democratic Party used to appeal to rural white voters as well as African-American voters, and in those days, it used to win. I'd encourage you, and the Democratic Party generally, to consider drawing the logical conclusion from that sometime before 2020 rolls around.
Cherokee, I wish they'd stopped. No, everything's still debating tricks over the top of endless histrionic emoting.
Shane, I wouldn't mind anything on your agenda but the last bit. I'd be a lousy president, and I'd hate the job. No, my dream outcome would be heading up a think tank with a big endowment to fund it, so I could hire a hundred or so smart, unconventional, ecologically savvy thinkers, writers, and researchers, and saturate the media and the collective consciousness of our time with the ideas and agendas that might actually get things of value through the Long Descent. If you happen to know any multibillionaires who would like to fund such a project, please tell them I'm available! ;-)
Mawkernewek, good. I'll be discussing some of that next week; the specific version of free trade I have in mind is the arrangement that allows goods and capital to cross national borders without restriction.
Fred, got it in one. Of course it's about the interests of employers, not about human rights.
Onething, that makes sense. It would be interesting to know how the vote would have turned out if we had an honest voting system in this country!
11/19/16, 11:58 AM
Justin said...
11/19/16, 12:00 PM
David, by the lake said...
I certainly don't disagree. Personally, I'd prefer that we returned to the Senate as a house of ambassadors sent be state legislatures.
11/19/16, 12:23 PM
John Michael Greer said...
David, exactly. I notice, though, that the federal policies that discourage employment actually got some air time. That's promising; once people realize that a lot of today's joblessness is produced by perverse incentives of that type, it'll be easier to push for a reorganization of federal policies to encourage employment rather than penalizing businesses for hiring people.
Izzy, cultural change is a complex thing, and it usually has to proceed by indirect means. By all means throat-punch away, btw; a shin kick is also a good response, as few people can walk well for a while after that.
Patricia, fascinating. To my mind, the article pinpointed the causes of Obama's failure -- his conviction that systemic change was out of the question -- and Trump's likely success. As for the major war, I'll be addressing that in an upcoming post, because the one way the US can win such a war is not to be one of the combatants. More on this as we proceed.
Daughter, as I mentioned in my post, I also know some bigots, and I'm sure you know why they voted for Trump. The point of my post was, again, to point out to readers -- and especially to those on the Left -- that a very large number of people who voted for Trump had other reasons to do so, and those are reasons the Democrats could have addressed and didn't. If you feel that protest is called for, btw, by all means get out there and march; that's one of your rights as a citizen of this country -- but please do remember that unless you back up the marching with grassroots organization and the other tools of political action, nobody, least of all Donald Trump, is going to listen to you.
11/19/16, 12:28 PM
John Michael Greer said...
As for Obama, I'll be frank. I consider him to be a political opportunist, who used one of the most monumentally cynical campaigns in modern history to get into the presidency, and then conveniently forgot about most of the promises he'd made on the campaign trail. That doesn't mean, as you suggested I claimed, that he's solely responsible for Clinton's loss, or for everything else that's happened in America on his watch. I'd argue that his presidency was a failure, that he came to power promising "hope" and "change" and then simply continued all the policies of the previous administration, and that his one big legacy program (yes, that would be Obamacare) was a complete disaster; I'd also point out that if he'd even made a serious attempt to do the things he promised to do in the 2008 campaign, the country would be in much better shape and we'd probably have a Democratic president-elect right now.
Did he inherit a mess from Bush? You bet -- and then he made it worse, by handing out even more government money to the big banks, and by refusing to bring charges against even the most egregious cases of financial fraud. Did the Republicans obstruct him? You bet -- and they could do so because his lack of leadership and the cascading mess of Obamacare left the Democrats floundering in the congressional races in 2010, 2012, and 2014 while energizing the GOP electorage and getting a lot of swing voters to vote Republican. History will not be kind to Obama; he had an opportunity to make important changes, and he wasted it on photo ops. But that's my opinion, of course, and you're welcome to disagree.
11/19/16, 12:33 PM
gildone84 said...
Here is the link:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/15EufIKKQvIaNMDTh2aoOD2QdeKI9JXSy0MfEfh2aKnA/edit?ts=582e4597
It should also be considered that this was proposed by one teacher for one high school in the San Francisco school system--Mission High School(yet your sources appear to assign blame to the entire teacher's union) in which the student population is over 90% minorities, which is why I think there is the emphasis on racism and discrimination in it that you'll see if you read it. Since Trump did in fact utter some racist and bigoted rhetoric during his campaign, for minority groups to be concerned about it post-election is not illegitimate.
Again, we can all be guilty of confirmation bias at times. I don't deny that I occasionally fall into that trap too. We just need to remain aware of it and push ourselves out of it when we find ourselves there. And, we should always try to go to the original source whenever possible (a good idea in the above case) rather than let any news source interpret things for us.
Again, cheers to all.
11/19/16, 12:48 PM
Fred the First said...
And whoever orchestrated it was brilliant because they knew by sending Pence in, the actors would do that grand-standing. They made sure to capture it on video and release it right away. Keeps everyone distracted and Trump can keep doing his meetings and appointments.
My favorite part though was when Trump used the left's language against them calling the theater "a safe and special place". Ba-ha-ha
11/19/16, 2:43 PM
Kieran O'Neill said...
Regarding the protests, CNN captured some protesters' reasons for demonstrating: http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/11/politics/trump-protests-key-demands/
I think the focus is on solidarity with the marginalised people who stand to get severely hurt by many of Trump's promised policies. Already there has been an outbreak of attacks by racists and homophobes emboldened by the election result, and Trump packing his cabinet with more and less closeted white supremacists bodes ill, even if he doesn't follow through on his more concerning promises. There's also a component of the left (as opposed to the centre left) feeling disenfranchised by the whole thing.
It remains to be seen whether the protests can put together the grassroots political organisation to effect change, but I've been hearing people talk about using these initial protests as a means of networking to that end, so I don't think it's impossible.
11/19/16, 2:51 PM
Unknown said...
I once worked in a trans national corporation with a very astute engineer whose favourite observation was "short term expediancy is always wrong in the long term"
That observation sums up the robotic approach to labour issues brilliantly, imho.
Edge, your view is one that is widely and well held outside the US, particularly in places like Australia, whose governmental head has been stuck up America's fundament for far too long. I am told by ex-servicemen from both NZ and Aus that the American military is regarded and a running joke.
JMG, one of the reasons I have been pursuing the idea of independent political representatives as a counter to the carcinogenic nature of party politics is because if independent representatives operate from a perspective of first representing, then determining the course of action, the full range of voices gets heard and the problems we are now discussing become far, far less likely.
Thanks for an excellent blog, and even more so for a great example.
Cheers
eagle eye
11/19/16, 2:59 PM
Pasha said...
I didn't miss your point, which I agree with. I was just making a different one.
You're right, progressives need to seriously address the concerns of rural voters (as I said). By 2020, Trump will probably have screwed them so royally that even modest noises in that direction could suffice for a Democrat to win back the presidency.
My concern is that by then, Trump will probably have embroiled us in some war of choice that might whip these same people into a patriotic trance that will have them wanting to re-elect Trump anyway--or, worse, that he keeps escalating said war until it triggers a nuclear holocaust, at which point it won't much matter who wins the presidency in 2020, if there's even enough civilization remaining to hold an election.
11/19/16, 3:13 PM
M Smith said...
You say that as if it were a good thing,or so it seems. Apology if I've mis"heard" you.
11/19/16, 3:57 PM
Bryant said...
I find it absurd that the liberals seem to believe that we don't exist. The truth is that the Left has done much to harm my dreams and my life, up to the point that someone online almost got me fired because she found that I favored traditionalism. I've had to deal with racism, but the truth is that even the explicitly racist have never treated me as badly, or with the degree of disgust that the "tolerant" have, simply for having the audacity for disagreeing with them.
My vote, and continuing support was anger at how I had been treated, and out of fear that I would be under ever more oppression if an explicitly "social justice" candidate won. As such, I voted against political correctness because in many ways, my life depended on it.
11/19/16, 4:56 PM
patriciaormsby said...
It looks like a real down-leg has hit America on the fractal slope of collapse. And while I knew to expect this kind of thing (with the 2011 tsunami/Fukushima meltdowns as a similar example in Japan) and to expect an irrational emotive response from the human beings involved, I am disgusted enough that I think I will simply stay off the Net and ignore the news for a couple weeks, during which I hope things will settle down somewhat, and I can get more work done. I might even get back to my novel a bit.
The response to Trump's election in Japan can be summed up as "Well, what a surprise! Okay." In every country I know people focus on local affairs, know pitifully little about what happens abroad and care even less, and that is fine unless your country is projecting its power abroad, in which case, it is disgusting and short-sighted. I am all in favor of equal rights for all citizens plus kindness toward anyone fleeing persecution. Has it ever occurred to you, though, that once a brown or black person steps back over the border, God help her? She may be incinerated together with her husband and children as part of someone's Tuesday morning chores. Shucks, another statistic. If Mr Trump's election spares you a personal acquaintance with that sort of reality, which is what it looked like it might come to, I will be happy.
(A quick note on people losing their heartfelt writing when hitting "preview" followed by "post": some of us are getting an error message. If that happens, hit the left arrow at the top of the page to go back, and your message reappears. Hit it twice, and it will restore the original window with your message.)
11/19/16, 6:24 PM
Varun Bhaskar said...
Your granddad had a way with words! Many butts shall indeed be kicked.
Regards,
Varun
11/19/16, 7:10 PM
Shane W said...
@Jordan,
funny you should mention GOP obstructionism. I campaigned for Obama in '08 and Kerry before, and had donated to Democrats regularly. Obama was carried into office w/a Democratic wave, for the first time since Carter, the Democrats had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate as well as a majority in the House. They controlled the presidency, the House, and the Senate. And then they proceeded to drop the ball and do absolutely nothing (except Obamacare). I was so disappointed. I fell for Obama, and thought he might be the second coming of FDR (foolish, I know) It was then, when they controled all three and did nothing that I resolved never to support them again. No more campaigning, no more donations. I would vote as I saw fit, which was Democrat until this year, and even this year, Trump was the only Republican I voted for, but if Trump follows through on some of his campaign promises, and other Republicans come up w/the same positions on issues as Trump, they'll get my vote, too.
11/19/16, 7:41 PM
Peter VE said...
As usual, an excellent post, and long, thoughtful, and courteous comments. It is a pleasure being part of this salon.
11/19/16, 8:28 PM
Auriel Ragmon said...
http://www.medievalhistories.com/enter-medieval-clan/
"This week we have experienced a shift in global politics, which we are still struggling to understand. One way is by imagining a post-liberal, clannish, medieval society.
When Donald Trump stepped up to make his first speech after his election to become president of the United States of America, he surrounded himself with his Barbie-doll family, including the “black sheep”, Tiffany. Here they were, all lined up looking like the plastic dream of any little girl from the Mid-West. It is surely only a short while before Mattel crumbles and refashions their dolls according to the precise measurements of the Donald’s wet dream of the perfect woman. We all know what she looks like: Ivanka."
read the whole article.
Jim of Olym
I sent this, but probably to last weeks' post.
11/19/16, 9:13 PM
Láthspell said...
You can't teach someone not to try to take advantage of you by backing down; that just shows them that it's a good way to get what they want. The only option is to take both sides down in flames, and hope someone else points to the smoking wreckage and says "See? This is why you don't push people's backs to the wall!"
It's a brutal gambit, of course, but gloves-off realpolitik almost always is. Unfortunately, any game other than that one requires both sides to trust the other one to play fair... and as you noted yourself in a previous post, certain members of the progressive side chose to spend the past years using 'open discussions of the issue' as a lure to attract Persecutors for another round of the Rescue Game. As the old saying goes: 'Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.'
(I doubt many of the angry young men doing it are thinking quite this rationally, of course, but that's working-as-intended. One of the roles Mother Nature programmed us for is 'guided missile', and she's too smart to give those a self-preservation instinct when the mission's at stake...)
11/19/16, 10:15 PM
Hubertus Hauger said...
GMG: While, how I understand you do see the deterioration and its compulsory way down-spiralling, you nevertheless do propagate any activity to live now and do something helping surviving the worsening times to come. That makes sense to me.
While mostly you do advise a local subsistence engagement in solidarity with communities surrounding, you also do have a broader political perspective still. Preferring all initiatives which the aim at downsizing the infrastructure, in order to reduce complexity. With the hope still to enter a phase like Joseph Tainter pointed out as exceptional downsizing wilfully and such helping, in this case the Eastern Roman Empire, to survive the collapse. But historically a exceptional happening, so seemingly improbable.
Anyway, all what we do now, to approach a meagre existence voluntarily and intentionally will enlarge the possibility to survive as a society by meagre subsistence future-more.
On the other side, life is a contradiction. That is why for the broader perspective my view is as following;
Un-sustainability is our all fate. There is, there was and ever will be that we hungrily crave for live. However for one to live, another one has to die. For all of you: My dear ones; We can overlook the natural law, but we cannot change it. So, as I see it as a matter of fact, there is no Trump, no irresponsible greedy people to blame.
Life is a circle of blooming and rotting. We do not even know, how many human societies rose and deceased. It did not start with old Egypt 4000 years ago. Most probably it didn’t start with Gobekli Tepe 12.000 years ago. Might be that one-thousand civilisations came and went in the past 70.000 years, Think of it, that in deep time another 100.000 years from now another one-thousand civilisations will have appeared and disappeared, just like our industrial civilisation will have done. Only less industrialized. Within the timeframe JMG does estimate within the next 100 years..
Imagine, another one-thousand smith’s, miller’s and Jones’s, another one-thousand Trump’s, Napoleon’s, Genghis Khan’s, another one-thousand Leonardo da Vinci’s, Leonardo DiCaprio`s, Leonard Nimoy´s ... and so on and so forth ... ! Might be in the eyes of the universe we are just an immense swarm of undistinguishable cockroaches. From above what a crawling and spilling over is to see. But from our perspective below, each single of us does feel so unique, so important, so precious. And truly, such we are. Billions of us! In each of any millennia’s to come.
All a matter of perspective. Plenty more of us are in the pipeline of creation yet. While we contemporary ones shall soon be disposed and dissolved in that big maelstrom this earth happens to be. Another round for another game is going to start, and then … another, and … another ...
Let me close with my favourite poetic note in this context:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W33HRc1A6c
11/19/16, 11:45 PM
KL Cooke said...
"...note I'm reporting this indirectly, as it is my husband's chore to keep an eye on the TV, in case it tries anything..."
That's hilarious.
11/20/16, 2:10 AM
Londoner said...
11/20/16, 4:10 AM
Jim S said...
11/20/16, 4:15 AM
Walter Bazzini said...
Well done (as always), JMG; amongst all the hand-wringing and told-you-sos out there, a calm voice of reason and reality. I shall spread it around to those who may have a long enough attention span to plow through more than a paragraph or two.
Prior to November 8th I might have heard the term "flyover states" a handful of times. Since then, I can't put political printed words or talking heads in front of my eyes without hearing the words within five minutes.
The America that lives on either side of the nation (self included, upper right here) has been given a lesson. Whether we learn from it is yet to be seen. After all, we are masters at ignoring signs, professional at delaying the inevitable.
11/20/16, 5:30 AM
David, by the lake said...
11/20/16, 5:51 AM
Bill Pulliam said...
Democrats should not necessarily rejoice at this news, however. I suspect it may be likely to make their party just take a "step back and let him hang himself" attitude rather than a "we need to take decisive action to seize our traditional electorate back" approach. Which puts them in 2020 pretty much right where they are now.
11/20/16, 6:14 AM
inohuri said...
I filed this under Conspiracy Theories.
https://consortiumnews.com/2016/11/18/what-to-do-about-fake-news/
11/20/16, 8:03 AM
Maria Rigel said...
I think the election of Donald Trump will be seen in the future as the beginning of a death spiral for America. Of course I know that people who voted for him aren't likely to want to believe this. Most people are biased like that: "I approved of it, so it must be a good idea." Forgetting that we all make mistakes.
By a death spiral I mean that Trump probably didn't run for office with the intention of becoming a dictator, but he's likely to become one. That he doesn't intend now to kill vast amounts of his fellow Americans, but he will. And he doesn't mean to nuke Russia, but he's very likely to.
The reason I think this is because his behavior and that of people surrounding him matches quite closely what happens in countries in decline that are taken over by a dictatorship. I could describe the process, but if you are interested you can do your own research. I started doing my research five years ago, when I realized that if civilization is going to collapse due to peak oil and the limits to growth, you don't want to get your ideas about how the process may look like from fiction, but from history.
The quick and dirty explanation of it is: dictators tend to be clueless maverick outsiders. A dictator almost always makes things worse, so he needs to control his own people with the police to stay in power. He also tends to encourage tribalism among his people, because people's instincts are tribal anyway, and it creates a strong sense of cohesion and personal loyalty to him. Too bad for people who don't belong to his tribe. In the case of a highly militarized world power, it's a virtual certainty that he'll go to war and try to loot extra resources from somewhere else before allowing things to go downhill too far.
And if you believe this is not what we're seeing and this is a hysterical overreaction, please do explain what would it look like if somebody with the potential to become a dictator became president. Taking into account that history books are written well after the fact, with the historian having access to all sorts of documents that wouldn't be public knowledge at the time.
11/20/16, 8:17 AM
inohuri said...
It is always there. The change is that attention is being directed that way.
In Seattle ask people how far they live from a Trident Base. They are likely to say "What's a Trident?". Try again asking about a nuclear missile nuclear submarine base (AKA Ground Zero) and they are still unlikely to know. It's about 14 to 25 miles to the City.
IT IS STILL 3 MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT
http://thebulletin.org/timeline
11/20/16, 8:21 AM
inohuri said...
This is BS that deserves little attention. The "policy" can be changed any time for any reason and may not be what our fearless leaders are telling the world.
I lived in Frankfurt Germany 1962-64 as a teen age US Army civilian staff dependent. Somehow I became curious about the movie "Dr. Strangelove". It was not showing at the Army theater so I went downtown and viewed "Wie ich Lernte, die Bombe zu lieben" (German subtitles). I found it upsetting.
The problem is that we have a weapons system that is too capable. That others have a similar system and are likely to shoot back makes this system only useful for suicide. Suicidal maniacs are not much different from the elite that run the show.
Until the Nuclear Weapons Systems are abolished for real (includes Pakistan, India, Israel and other non nuclear treaty nations) this will be ever present whether or not our attention is directed that way.
Notice how badly Iran has been treated. I have seen nothing that credibly said they broke the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. They followed the rules. If the treaty is only used as a cudgel...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_the_Non-Proliferation_of_Nuclear_Weapons
That a weapons system is expensive makes it more desirable for profiteers. Note that nothing nuclear happens without government subsidy, especially insurance which is not commercially available.
Your taxes at work.
11/20/16, 9:20 AM
Bill Pulliam said...
11/20/16, 9:37 AM
Degringolade said...
As an antidote, read this and think back to your days in Physics for Scientists and Engineers (Phys 171)
http://arc.aiaa.org/doi/pdf/10.2514/1.B36120
Wouldn't it be great if these folks actually proved that there might in fact be a "Luminiferous Aether Wind" that could be manipulated.
Michelson and Morley might be just a touch miffed. Newton would just sit back contentedly
11/20/16, 9:44 AM
Cherokee Organics said...
I was reading comments yesterday in between working on a video. Mate, I feel for you having to reply to some of the comments here. I often wonder whether reading comprehension is being lost along with cursive script? The problem with using screens is that they can be very heavily mediated (thus the derivation of the word "media" if anyone put any brain cells towards that thing) and so few places are free of that nowadays that clear thinking can be hard for most people. In fact, I do believe that it is an over used tool.
Anyway, on a lighter note, the summer has kicked in here early after a cool wet spring. Today will reach past 100'F and I put up the fire shutters over the windows. You know what though? The solar hot water is absolutely rocking and toasty hot! Solar hot water is an awesome and simple technology.
Cheers
Chris
11/20/16, 12:59 PM
zach bender said...
http://www.americanbanker.com/news/law-regulation/trump-is-unlikely-to-bring-back-glass-steagall-1092394-1.html
11/20/16, 1:11 PM
Bill Pulliam said...
As you know well, you are less sensitive to the emotional subtext of speech and writings than is the average person. This makes me wonder if perhaps you are taking the things you hear and read at their word, and missing the dog-whistle level of prejudice and xenophobia that might underlay the words, for which the words might be at least in part a rationalization. Having lived as a white southern male much of my life NOT within the liberal urban and educational enclaves, I hear these dog whistles in nearly every word that is said in a political campaign. It is a sImple fact that when the average white male of certain age and class hears a rich powerful white male say "make America great again" part of his brain hears "make America white again," or at least the emotional vision this triggers in him is generally of an American populated by happy white people in control of things, in heterosexual marriages with smiling white children. No one will speak this out loud in public anymore, but it remains as a powerful stratum underlying everything political and sociological.
A vast number of things that were said about Clinton were seriously emotionally charged with sexism, in that they would not have been said or not would have resonated at the same level if isaid about a man of similar age and status. And this dates back to 1992, not just 2015.
This always makes me wonder if you are too inclined to believe the motivations that voters and politicians claim for themselves, and miss the emotions that might actually affect their decisions as strongly as to these rational statements.
11/20/16, 1:50 PM
The other Tom said...
It is true that the Democrats ostensibly had 60 votes in the Senate if you include Joe Lieberman of CT who had switched his affiliation to Independent. Although he caucused with the Democrats his vote was unreliable at best. At the time he was trying to transform himself into a national candidate and separating his positions from blue state Conn. Until the last minute the Democrats didn't know which way he was going to go on the AFA, which is why they were trying so hard to get Susan Collins of Maine to support it. Obama never had carte blanche even in the first two years.
11/20/16, 2:47 PM
escher said...
People vary in their willingness to admit that Hillary had flaws. Most admit at least some, though I'm assured by my wife (who uses Facebook; I don't) that this is far from universally true.
All of them seem to have bought the media narrative about Trump hook, line, and sinker (even people skeptical enough to have seen the media's attempts to slur Sanders and his supporters for that they were).
I've been gently suggesting to people that they open up their narratives about why people outside liberal enclaves might have voted Trump, but results are mixed.
11/20/16, 2:52 PM
Armata said...
I would like to thank all of you for the feedback. That is one of things I most appreciate about this site: being able to carry on an intelligent conversation and getting great feedback from other participants.
I apologize if some of my rhetoric about the Left was a little over the top. I am against discrimination and in favor of LGBT rights. I am a working class white and a conservative, but like John Michael, I come from a multicultural family. I have had friends from just about every race and ethnicity there is in America and have friends and relatives who are LGBT. By and large, I am a very tolerant and laid-back person by nature, even if I don't always give that impression here. But this an issue I feel very passionately about.
My beef with the so-called "social justice warriors" and the Political Correctness crowd stems from their behavior: the bullying and intimidation tactics, the vilification of those who don't toe the current party line as "racists"/"sexists"/"homophobes"/"Islamophobes"/whatever, the attempts to censor perspectives and views they dislike, the name calling and the use of character assassination as a socio-political weapon, the self-righteous hypocrisy, the penchant for engaging in hate propaganda while loudly accusing the other side of racism and other sins, and many other things.
There are a lot of people in flyover country who feel the same way and are really getting tired of the behavior of the radical Left. There are a lot of us out there who have legitimate grievances against the PC Left and I won't apologize for calling a spade a spade. However, in the interest of civility, decorum and respect for other commenters on this site, I will attempt to tone things down, exercise more restraint and try to maintain a greater sense of perspective in the future when commenting on controversial subjects like this one.
Like our host and some of the others who comment on this site regularly, I have Aspergers and so social skills have never been my strongest suit and are something I have had to work hard at. Clearly, I need to work some more on both my social and writing skills.
This leads me to another great insight that comes to the fore as I write this. Eric Hoffer once observed that if you fight against something long enough and hard enough, you run the risk of turning into that which you fight against, something both the SJW's and their opponents would do well to bear in mind. Friedrich Nietzsche's famous saying that if you stare into the abyss long enough, the abyss stares back at you comes forcefully to mind as well.
11/20/16, 4:37 PM
Armata said...
I too had heard rumors of the Russian cruise missile strike after Deir Ezzor. That would be a classically Russian approach: done quietly and without any fanfare in the press, but an unmistakable signal to their enemies that they've gone too far and that any further acts of aggression would be responded to in kind. The KGB dealt with the kidnapping of several Soviet diplomats in Lebanon by a Hezbollah related terrorist group in 1985 in a very similar fashion. Word didn't get out until many years later, but according to Israeli and Russian sources, the KGB's response was both ruthless and spectacularly brutal. After that, no one in the Middle East dared to target Russian interests until Daesh blew up a Russian airliner in 2015 as an act of revenge for Russian airstrikes against them in Syria. We all saw how the Russians responded to that particular atrocity.
Naval Spetsnaz operatives resorted to a similar stratagem to deal with Somali pirates and deter further attacks against Russian shipping. After a Russian merchant ship was seized by pirates, a Spetsnaz detachment stormed the ship and captured the pirates without any Spetsnaz or Russian hostages being harmed. They then took the pirates back to their own mother ship, tied them up, packed their ship with explosives and then detonated the explosives by remote control once they were safely back aboard their own ship. Needless to say, there haven't been any Russian ships hijacked by pirates since then. Like the other two incidents, this one wasn't publicized in the press, but the story of what happened eventually leaked out.
There was another incident that happened around the same time as the cruise missile strike referenced in the Global Research article that was equally telling. A pair of Su-34 tactical bombers attacked a hippogriff ("moderate Syrian rebel") training camp near the Jordanian border where several American Special Forces trainers were present. There weren't any reports of American casualties, but apparently the hippogriffs suffered heavy losses. The US Navy scrambled two F/A-18 fighters, which arrived on scene and warned the Su-34's off. The Su-34's left the area and waited until the F/A-18's were low on fuel and had to return to their carrier. The Russian planes then returned and resumed the attack until they had expended all of their bombs, again causing heavy casualties to the hippogriffs. The Obama administration protested the attack vehemently, protests the Russians pointedly ignored.
These are definitely not people you want to start a war with, as the examples of Hitler and Napoleon can also testify.
11/20/16, 4:42 PM
zach bender said...
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/11/better-off-before-obamacare/507650/
do you find "mendacious"?
11/20/16, 4:47 PM
Armata said...
11/20/16, 5:02 PM
Armata said...
The Russians have clearly been preparing for war since the latest coup de etat in Kiev (the so-called "Maidan Revolution") in 2014 and the increasingly belligerent tone adopted by the Obama administration. It seems pretty clear to me they considered it a very likely possibility that Hillary Clinton would win and that there would probably be a shooting war if that happened. As an former military man and one who pays very close attention to military matters, I am relieved that Trump won. Now we can step back from the brink.
Again, I don't think most Americans realize just how dangerous the situation was and how we really dodged a bullet on that one. The policies of the Clintdubyobama administration towards Russia were reckless and stupid in the extreme and could have resulted in a truly horrific tragedy for not just America and Russia but all of humanity. It's too early to tell how Trump will turn out as President, but I for one am convinced that the election of Hillary would have had catastrophic consequences for America and the rest of the world and on multiple levels. The stakes are that high right now.
The Russian military preparations weren't just in Syria either. The Russian Aerospace Force has placed big orders in the last couple of years for Su-30, Su-35, MiG-29 and MiG-35 fighters, Tu-160M2 strategic bombers, Su-34 tactical bombers and Mi-28, Mi-35 and Ka-52 helicopter gunships. The Russian MOD has accelerated key development projects, including the PAK FA stealth fighter, the PAK DA stealth bomber, new hypersonic missiles and ABM's, and the development of marine gas turbines to replace those the Ukrainians refused to deliver after 2014 coup. They have been rapidly modernizing their nuclear deterrent and air defense forces and have been pushing through a major reorganization and military reforms based on the lessons learned in Georgia, Ukraine and Syria.
The Russian Army is forming two new armored divisions and three new motor rifle divisions. They announced the first three of those divisions are expected to be fully formed and combat ready by early December of this year and the other two are expected to be ready to go early next year, which suggests they saw Inauguration Day 2017 as their deadline. The Russian Army is also organizing a new reserve army modeled after the American National Guard and the British Territorial Army. The goal is to have 100,000 trained reservists permanently organized into brigades, regiments and battalions in the near future. Eventually, several "territorial reserve armies" will be formed with a total strength of several hundred thousand. The Russian Navy is buying large numbers of submarines and corvettes and plans to build 20 Admiral Gorshkov class frigates and twelve Leader class destroyers over the next decade. The Admiral Gorshkov herself was commissioned last year and the first Leader class destroyer, the RFS Yevgeny Primakov, was recently laid down. In the longer term, the Russian Navy plans to build several aircraft carriers and amphibious assault ships. Combined with the expansion of the VDV (Russian Airborne Forces), that will give Russia a major power projection capability. There have been reports of a systematic effort to expand and modernize Russian shipyards and maritime related industries, including the development of advanced gas turbines and diesels comparable to the latest Western models. It sounds like Russia is laying the groundwork for a major shipbuilding program in the future.
Part 1 of 2, continued below
11/20/16, 5:07 PM
Armata said...
Speaking of engines, the new T-14 tank has a state-of-the-art 1800 hp turbo-diesel that is said to be lighter, more compact and more powerful than Western tank engines. And the Russians are planning to use the new variable cycle turbofan they are developing for the PAK FA stealth fighter as the basis for a whole new generation of machines, including commercial aircraft engines, marine gas turbines, natural gas combined cycle power plants and industrial turbo-pumps. Western sanctions have been painful in the short term, but they are forcing the Russians to become more self-sufficient, push through reforms and rebuild their industrial base.
Arnold Toynbee's discussion about Challenge-and-Response, particularly his discussion about "The Stimulus of Blows" and the "The Stimulus of Pressure", readily comes to mind. I have been reading A Study of History and am currently about halfway through Volume 5. Toynbee points out that attacking or putting pressure on a civilization, particularly one that is still up-and-coming, often has the effect of strengthening it. Oswald Spengler pointed out that while the West is already in decline, Russia is a still a young and virile civilization in its late Pre-Cultural phase of development. Attempts by the US government and EU to bully Russia into submission are having the opposite effect, just like Toynbee would have pointed out if he were still alive. We have scored a huge own goal in our attempts to screw the Russians over after the end of the Cold War and ended up making them much stronger, while paving the way for Russia's return to superpower status. Oops!
11/20/16, 5:10 PM
latheChuck said...
Secondly, they introduce a list of electromagnetic nomenclature at the start of the paper (in accordance with the AIAA style guide, I assume), but then this nomenclature never appears in the bulk of the paper! (See wikipedia: Chekhov's Gun.) I get the impression that the either the equations that needed them have been omitted, or the nomenclature section is just decorative.
I'm also very curious as to how the dimensions of the test article were derived. Of all possible asymmetrical resonant cavities, why that one?
But let's not hijack the thread. Follow-up (if you like) to "my handle", at the popular service that starts with "gmai".
11/20/16, 5:15 PM
latheChuck said...
11/20/16, 5:25 PM
Kevin Warner said...
Thought that you might be interested in another interesting fact how the Russians send messages. Several weeks ago Russian forces launched 26 Kalibr missiles against terrorist targets from the Caspian Sea.
Immediately after, the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt sailed out of the Persian Gulf (http://www.presstv.com/Detail/2015/10/10/432800/US-warship-Persian-Gulf) leaving this area uncovered by a US carrier for the first time in nearly a decade.
Of course it is only a coincidence that Theodore Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States.
11/20/16, 9:36 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Kieran, the people I know who voted for Romney in 2012 mostly talked about Obamacare; since Romney put in a similar program in Massachusetts, I think they were probably just being hopeful. As for the protests leading anywhere, "networking" isn't anything like enough; that's been the mantra for decades, with results that are rather too clear. If they go beyond that to systematic grassroots organizing, they might get some traction.
Unknown Eagle, fair enough. Go ye forth and organize a movement around that!
Pasha, given Clinton's track record as secretary of state, I think a war of choice was far more likely with her in the White House. Still, we'll see.
Bryant, thank you for speaking up -- as you've pointed out, diversity of opinion will get you into all kinds of trouble with the very people who insist that "diversity" is a good thing.
Varun, he did indeed. Get kicking!
Shane, that's a significant point. I'd also factor in the decrease in the use of transport fuel as fewer products get shipped halfway around the world.
Peter, true enough. Thank you!
Auriel, thank you for the link.
Lathspell, the problem with your analysis is that it treats the game as a two-player game. In a debate with an audience who can be swayed to support one side or the other, if one side engages in obvious cheap shots (demonization being one of those), and the other side points this out crisply and shoots holes in it but does not engage in the same behavior, the audience will begin to discount everything the demonizer has to say, and so will tend to move into the camp of the other player. One consistently winning strategy in that kind of game, in fact, is to lure the other side into venting lots of negative emotion, while (a) remaining calm and civil and (b) calmly and civilly challenging the venting; your listeners come to think of you as the reasonable one, and the other side as unstable, immature, and potentially dangerous. One of the easiest ways to short-circuit the Rescue Game, in fact, is to call it what it is -- again, calmly, pointing out the bad logic, and showing your audience that it might be aimed at them next.
Still, you're right about young men -- but the t-shirt comes to mind: "Old age and treachery will overcome youth and skill."
11/20/16, 10:16 PM
Janet D said...
I have followed the events closely there & have friends on site there and what I hear is unbelievable (and not in a good way). Water cannons were turned on protestors tonight, infiltrators are regularly sent into the camp to pose as protestors to try and incite violence, beatings and rubber bullets are dispensed frequently against unarmed protestors, crop-dusters are flying over the resistance camps at night spraying some unidentified substance(s), women are routinely arrested and strip-searched for misdemeanor charges, etc. And of course the media has largely been silent other than front-paging the one time a few rogue protestors burned some tires.
Anyway, don't mean to divert the focus, but is sure seems like the future is here, now, and because it's some brown people in the middle of nowhere, the media are largely bypassing it.
11/20/16, 10:18 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Londoner, understood. Unfortunately, as you know, a determined and well-funded minority of your co-religionists is trying to start a religious war between the Muslim world and the West, and it's hard to see how they can be stopped without the same kind of measures that, say, Britain took against German sympathizers during the two World Wars -- and of course innocent people also got caught up in those measures. I would urge you, and other Muslims of good will, to continue to oppose the violent in your own religious community, as I oppose them in mine.
Jim, no doubt. Pity that so many ideas of value won't fit in a tweet.
Walter, thank you. I hope the message does manage to get past the filters!
David, it's wryly amusing to watch the people who insisted Trump should concede once he was defeated doing everything possible to avoid conceding.
Bill, yes, I saw that. It'll be interesting to see how all of this works out.
Inohuri, thanks for the link.
Maria, your argument might have some plausibiltiy if every single president in my adult life hadn't been assailed by the identical accusation by his enemies. Every. Single. One. People on the Left insisted, in exactly the same terms you're using now, that Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II were going to scrap the Constitition and impose a dictatorship; people on the Right said the same thing about Clinton and Obama. Do you recall the story of the boy who cried "Wolf"? If not, you might want to read it, as it has a moral of some importance just now.
Degringolade, you're in the minority; every post I've made on politics has attracted a readership much larger than usual.
Cherokee, thinking's uncomfortable, and a society that's fixated on making itself as cozy a world as possible has little tolerance for it. Glad to hear that summer's there! Up here, we had our first light snowfall yesterday.
Zach, well, we'll just have to see, now won't we?
Bill, that may be true. On the other hand, another side effect that Aspergers Syndrome has is that it makes people who have it much more resistant to groupthink than others -- and there's a fantastic amount of emotionally charged groupthink sloshing back and forth over the subject of the election. One way or another, events will show who's interpreted the situation correctly.
11/20/16, 10:55 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Armata, thank you for a gracious response! I know how easy it is to get carried away in a situation like this one, where passions are running riot and a lot of people are doing the same thing in one way or another. My position toward the middle of the political spectrum gets me hate speech from both ends; I treasure the week when I was called a fascist bigot by an activist on the left, while a bona fide neo-Nazi insisted that I must be Jewish -- I think he thought that was the worst insult he could come up with. (As JRR Tolkien said in response to a not dissimilar question, "I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people.") My personal experience suggests that there are roughly equal numbers of hate-filled people on both ends of the political spectrum, and there's not tuppence to choose between them.
The thing to keep in mind is that demonizing the opponent is a source of weakness. Sun Tzu again: "When you know your enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles." Knowing your enemy requires getting past the anger, even if that anger is kindled by very real abuses, and becoming aware of their virtues and strengths as well as their vices and weaknesses. I know, I'm preaching; it comes naturally after twelve years at the head of a religious organization. ;-)
Yes, I heard about the business in 1985. As I recall, family members of the terrorist faction were abducted by Spetsnaz personnel, and, ahem, body parts were mailed to their next of kin in the terrorist group. There was also the business some years back when a bunch of Chechen terrorists seized hostages in a movie theater in Moscow, I believe it was, and the Russian security forces went in with guns blazing anyway, killing all the terrorists and a lot of the hostages. Russian public opinion backed the decision to do that: an important reminder of the deep and too often unnoticed cultural divide that separates Russia from Europe.
As for Russia's rearmament, no question, they're serious. The thing a lot of Americans forget is just how often Russia has been invaded and ravaged by foreign enemies, going back most of a millennium. When NATO parades troops and tanks on the Russian border, the generals in Brussels think of it as a gesture; the people in Moscow remember family stories of the Great Patriotic War and think of it as an existential threat. We forget that at our peril.
11/20/16, 11:16 PM
Enki Reed said...
Neoliberal/neocon foreign policy is a disaster. I'll be thrilled when our politicians of all parties finally tire of using their time in office to establish (again) that the US military can stomp any other military around. Yup. Still bad-asses. Still completely useless for doing anything but turning new military equipment into scrap and soldiers into casualties.
The issue with healthcare is that there is no Republican proposal to solve anything about healthcare. Except for Obamacare when it was Newt's proposal to solve the free rider problem and the Republican alternative to Clintoncare. Then the Republicans had some ideas. Of course, Obama saying he liked those ideas meant that the ideas had to be abandoned as socialism, but that's a different rant...
As everyone now realizes, Obamacare does not solve the cost issue. It wasn't supposed to. It solved the issue of the poor being unable to get insurance.
As an aside: was cost control ever actually promised? If so, I must have instantly assumed that everyone knew that providing universal insurance would not solve health care costs and ignored the claim, since free riders and healthy young people have very little to do with health care costs in the US. IIRC, I thought the CBO projected that Obamacare would keep costs lower than not using Obamacare, but that's not the same as keeping costs steady or even under control. So costs going up... shouldn't have surprised anyone.
The big problem for Republicans is that the only proposal which actually has a shot at solving the deeply broken health-care market pricing problem is a third-rail for Republians: single payer. They can't propose the only solution that has a chance. But now they've got two (and probably four) years of majorities to do what they want and the ball is fully in their court. I'm curious to see if they do anything except make the issue worse, and continue to blame Obamacare for every worse outcome that comes along.
I'm most concerned with employment and what's possible, what's promised, and what's pure fantasy. The manufacturing jobs only went overseas for a few years. Then in many cases, the overseas jobs went away too. Manufacturing has come back to the US in a big way, but is now highly automated. The blue collar jobs at the mill are fading memories of an earlier economic generation. There's no decision to be made to bring the mill back to life, and pining for that or even worse, promising to deliver it, is a long wait for a train that ain't coming. So what are Democratic politicians to do? Lie even more appealingly about how they'll do a better job of creating fake demand for fake jobs?
As I type this, I wonder about that exact proposal. UBI may require some sort of "make-work" just to keep people feeling productive, so it may actually be that we start arguing this whole thing from the other side: you've got your income, but now the argument is about which side will structure the work to be more compelling and fulfilling. Unfortunately for the here and now, I think that those campaign promises are most of a generation down the line. Well after the current autocratic regime has spent itself imploding the US and something else is rising from the ruins.
11/20/16, 11:57 PM
Lei said...
In any case, though we may converge on most facts, we differ as to the motivations of Russia's rearming. I don't have the slightest reason to believe that is for their defense - nobody has been willing to fight with Russia, Europeans having their own problems and no appetite for war at all and Americans moving their "pivot" to Asia. It is after all Russia who for the first time after WWII annexed a part of territory of another sovereign country by force, and is still engaged in the war against eastern Ukraine. The European leaders usually do not have warmongers and perverse ideologues like Alexandr Dugin as their advisors, and do not excercise attacks on Russia.
As for the unintentional strengthening of Russia by the pressure exerted on it - so what is the solution? To let Russians do what they want? To increase their appetite? Resign on holding them back and take what they wish? How was it the last time the West opted for appeasement?
JMG: Talking about the parades on the Russian border, one should take into account that is only an extremely feeble response to the huge Russian exercises near the borders of NATO, which typically come unannounced and there has been substantiated concerned that these exercises could "go wrong" and turn into occupatian of the Baltic states, for example. If the states on the Western border of Russia are to feel at least a bit protected, you can hardly do that without NATO troops there. Given their numbers, it is just a gesture of good will of the allies to support the Baltics. You are very partial here, because the people in the Baltic states remember very well too what Russians did to them during 20th century, so for them, the Russian parades across the border are not fun at all either, and for them, the Great Patriotic War has had a completely different flavour.
What should people in Estonia think about a minister of defence to be who has claimed that Estonia is just in the suburbs of St. Petersburg? Is he not Pro-Russian? Or is he just disloyal to the allies of the USA? Or does he just choose appeasement politics?
11/21/16, 3:29 AM
Fred the First said...
What are your thoughts on why we have been in Afghanistan and Iraq for so long? I thought it was incompetence for the longest time, but now I wonder based on what you shared if its not the annoy the Russians or to have a forward base for a future conflict in the area.
11/21/16, 5:23 AM
Bill Pulliam said...
11/21/16, 5:27 AM
Fred the First said...
Each time the press falls for it, they discredit themselves as impartial journalists who cover the facts. The cover personalities, people's looks and who said what about who and that's about it.
11/21/16, 5:32 AM
Robert Gillett said...
11/21/16, 5:40 AM
Bill Pulliam said...
http://www.theverge.com/2016/11/17/13667630/global-sea-ice-concentration-graph-science-twitter
11/21/16, 6:01 AM
David, by the lake said...
I ran into the term LGBTQIA+ recently and was wondering seeing if anyone could interpret the latter portion (my understanding stops at "Q")? I've lost a linkage, I guess, with the fine-tuned identity politics going on in the leftward end of things...
11/21/16, 6:03 AM
Láthspell said...
What I am saying is that the 'big stick' half is there for a reason, and that "I'm sick of these people, and if they keep this up I'm ready to stop talking and start thumping" is not necessarily a counterproductive stance. (Whether saying that out loud first is a fair warning or a tactical error I leave as an exercise for the reader...).
As to your proposed alternative, I'll grant that that's a far superior strategy when it works. However, I'd argue that one of the biggest contributors to both Brexit and Trump is that it's not always feasible.
Unless both the speaker and the listener have a common framework of assumptions that they both agree on, laying out an argument that will actually convince anyone is difficult-to-impossible. If the speaker makes a claim based on an assumption the listener doesn't buy, it's just going to be dismissed as obvious nonsense. That's always been true, but modern society has reached a point where firstly, different sections of the population have wildly different basic assumptions about how the world works, and secondly we have no tradition of setting out assumptions before making an argument. As I understand it, the ancient Greek rhetoric schools required a speaker to literally ask the listener for permission with every assumption he made (the origin of the phrase 'I'll grant you (...)'); these days, it seems like only a tiny fraction of the populace even knows what 'begging the question' originally meant. Combine that with the modern taste for 140-character soundbites, and you have a task fit for Hercules himself.
11/21/16, 6:43 AM
Bruno Bolzon said...
11/21/16, 8:34 AM
Bill Pulliam said...
How about the Clinton Foundation?
;-) backatcha! Or actually in our case ;-{>>>>
In reality more along the lines of the Gates Foundation or the Carter Center (though Gates has a lot more money that Prez Jimmy does, I think...)
11/21/16, 9:05 AM
zach bender said...
obviously it is true we will have to "wait and see" what emerges over the next two to four years. with specific reference to glass-steagall, my point was this.
repeatedly in these comments you have cited this one data point. among a thousand other things we are maybe not supposed to take seriously, trump said x about glass-steagall. no one else in his campaign picked up the line, and we are hearing nothing about it during the transition -- though we are hearing he intends to repeal dodd-frank, which would seem to be a different path.
it seems "obvious" to someone with my particular set of confirmation biases that the glass-steagall line was meant only as a dig at clinton's complicity in the growth of the financial sector at the expense of everyone else. in other words, calling out her hypocrisy -- but not expressly stating a policy position of his own.
this seemed to me, as it unfolded, to be almost the entire methodology of his campaign. sound the dog whistles, but frame no actual, concrete policy proposals.
the previous clinton administration did other stuff that has left those at the very bottom of the economic scale in much worse shape, but you did not hear trump talking about the evils of, for example, "welfare to work" -- because this would not have played well as sound bites for the constituency he was trying to reach.
as an unreconstructed sixties leftist, i do not find what we are seeing in the transition -- steve bannon, jeff sessions, mike pompeo -- at all encouraging.
11/21/16, 9:35 AM
Fred the First said...
If Trump did declare the truth about our economic mess, it would be such a relief. Just knowing that the president wasn't acting to deceive citizen's and use obtuse language would give me comfort. It doesn't change what's going to happen but at least we aren't the band playing as the Titanic sinks.
11/21/16, 10:38 AM
donalfagan said...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWMmBG3Z4DI
Schiller sounds like a mainstream Democrat, but Blyth is as interesting as before.
11/21/16, 11:46 AM
William McGillis said...
Armata, thanks for your response. I also appreciate being able to read and participate in a forum with multiple, intelligent perspectives discussed in a civil way.
And I continue to find your military-related comments fascinating. I don't know much about military affairs, but the background you provided about Russia's capability seems really important for Americans and the higher-up's in our government to consider.
11/21/16, 12:06 PM
Izzy said...
@zach: Seriously. I'd like to believe JMG about Trump, but...Bannon and Edell and Meese, oh my. Not a good sign starting out. And there are rumors about Milo Y.* as press secretary: I cannot describe my reaction on this blog, as I can't use profanity. :P Suffice it to say that at least the alcohol-producing sector of the economy looks to be taking an upward turn under this administration.
*For those mercifully unaware of Internet ridiculousness, he's one of the leaders of the dregs-of-4chan group. Speaks for the sort of guy who simultaneously says that "SJWs" need to toughen up and then throws a tantrum because the new Spiderman isn't white.
11/21/16, 12:44 PM
Jen said...
11/21/16, 12:52 PM
Unknown said...
"Coming in January, the Bubble is a planned community of like-minded free thinkers, and no one else."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKOb-kmOgpI
11/21/16, 12:56 PM
Armata said...
Love and best wishes to all!
11/21/16, 1:09 PM
Patricia Mathews said...
Whether it will be repeated next year is an open question. But - yes, such are my priorities - I see all of this as my bounden duty as a grandmother and mother. May the post be interesting (it will be) and the readers, civil.
But ... unless they are free with letting me use their computers, I won't have a chance to read your Wednesday post until Sunday evening at the earliest.
11/21/16, 1:10 PM
Shane W said...
11/21/16, 1:56 PM
Bill Pulliam said...
I am not making any of this up BTW
11/21/16, 2:20 PM
olivier64 said...
11/21/16, 2:33 PM
Sven Eriksen said...
"[T]hinking's uncomfortable, and a society that's fixated on making itself as cozy a world as possible has little tolerance for it."
Manly P. Hall comes to mind: "The more we have, the more we want to enjoy, and the less we want to think."
11/21/16, 2:54 PM
donalfagan said...
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/LGBTQIA
and speaking of intersexual, if you're looking for a Xmas present, Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides is hard to put down:
https://donalfagan.wordpress.com/2016/05/19/intersex/
11/21/16, 3:20 PM
Armata said...
I am not sure I have an answer to how Eastern European countries should respond to the threat of Russian imperialism. It’s a very serious concern and as with many of the topics we have discussed on this blog, it’s very likely a predicament, not a problem with a solution. I don’t envy the position of many Eastern European countries, caught between a declining American Empire and a resurgent Russian World, to use their own term for their civilization.
From much of I have read and seen, it seems to me that a lot of what Russia is doing is in response to what they perceive as Western bullying. Both sides need to take the legitimate security interests of the other into account. The Baltic states see provocative Russian snap exercises on their borders and view the NATO armored brigade being stationed in the Baltics as a deterrent against Russian aggression.
The Russians look at the NATO forces, particularly the NATO armored brigade, being stationed in the Baltics and they see a hostile military force within striking distance of St Petersburg and other major Russian cities and they remember what happened last time they had a hostile army on the doorstep of St Petersburg. The Russian press noted the presence of German troops as part of the NATO brigade. They pointed out, not unreasonably in light of their own history, what happened last time a German military force was within artillery range of St Petersburg. As John Michael pointed out in his response to one of my comments, Russia has been invaded many times in its history and has often suffered terrible losses as a result. They are understandably leery of what they see as an existential threat to their national security. I think the inclusion of German forces was unnecessarily provocative, perhaps even a deliberate provocation, in light of what happened in the first half of the 20th century.
After the Cold War, the Russians bent over backwards to make peace and be friends with the West. The response of the American government was to treat Russia as a defeated enemy to be kept down and turned over to Western business interests for wholesale looting as punishment for having had the temerity to stand up to the West during the Cold War. America’s European allies went along with this policy, willingly or otherwise. Now, we and our European allies are reaping the whirlwind as Russia returns to great power, perhaps even superpower, status.
@ Kevin Warner:
I had not been aware of that particular angle, but I am not surprised in the least. I remember when the USS Theodore Roosevelt high-tailed it out of the Persian Gulf in a hurry after the Russian cruise missile strike against Daesh and the speculation that her sudden departure was in response to a Russian warning emphasized by the cruise missile strike, but had not heard about the specific number of missiles being fired as a symbolic gesture. It makes a great deal of sense once you think about it. Again, that would a classically Russian response, with a subtle but unmistakable signal being sent to the American elites that the press never picked up on and most people were blissfully unaware of.
11/21/16, 3:26 PM
Armata said...
http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/boo-hoo/
11/21/16, 3:27 PM
David, by the lake said...
Much obliged. I may still have to talk with my daughter (who understands these things far better than I do) for clarification on some of those, but that helps. My two dimensional binary matrix (two genders x two preferences = four possibilities) is apparently out of date.
11/21/16, 4:20 PM
Shane W said...
if it happens again, it won't be the first time the US threw Eastern Europe under the bus. Eastern Europe is very peripheral to US interests. As JMG says, we're a dying empire, and we simply can't afford it anymore. It's either hand Europe over, or have it pried from our cold, dead hands. I'm not sure you're aware how close we are to splitting into 9 or more nations right now...
11/21/16, 4:43 PM
Timberwolf said...
http://nypost.com/2016/11/21/donald-trumps-media-summit-was-a-f-ing-firing-squad/
11/21/16, 7:18 PM
Timberwolf said...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/business/media/trump-summons-tv-figures-for-private-meeting-and-lets-them-have-it.html?_r=0
Trump's latest update on YouTube. He seems to have a real talent for using new forms of media to get his message across and bypass the traditional media.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7-9-_zQPoE
The Burning Platform has a series looking at Trump through Strauss and Howe's generational theory and suggesting that Trump may indeed be a transformational leader on a par with George Washington, Abe Lincoln and FDR, as some have speculated here.
https://www.theburningplatform.com/2016/11/19/grey-champion-assumes-command-part-one/
https://www.theburningplatform.com/2016/11/20/grey-champion-assumes-command-part-two/
11/21/16, 8:13 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Enki, Obamacare was sold to the American people as a way to cut health care costs. If you've forgotten Obama saying in so many words, in more than one speech that most people's costs would go down, I haven't. That turned out to be false; so did his claim that people would be able to keep the plans they liked, keep seeing the doctors they wanted, etc., etc. -- I could go on for quite a ways. Those broken promises played a large role in costing the Democrats the election.
Lei, I was simply trying to explain to a mostly American audience what our actions look like from the Russian side of the border. Yes, I'm quite aware that all the other nations of eastern Europe have their own ghastly historical experiences, and will be reacting to those just as Russia is reacting to its own history.
Bill, understood. Here again, though, all we can do is wait to see what happens.
Fred, no question he's playing the press, and it's in keeping with his general strategy of getting elites to attack him in ways that attract ordinary voters to his side. I don't know how things are where you live, but here the national media is profoundly despised. I recall listening to a conversation in which one guy called media people whores, and another objected, since prostitutes are honest about taking pay.
Robert, why not do something to make it more than aerobic exercise -- say, helping to organize a political movement to make the changes you want to see made? That way your exercise might actually do some good.
Bill, I saw that. If that's confirmed, we may be less than a year from a blue Arctic Ocean, and dramatic climate shifts.
Lathspell, nah, you don't try to convince the person who has completely different values than yours. You bounce your arguments off the other person, so they affect third parties who are listening in. If there are no third parties, you shrug and walk away. Didn't you larn nuthin' about rhetorical judo? ;-)
Bill, funny.
Zach, Trump's people got the reinstatement of Glass-Steagall into the GOP platform and he included it several times in his campaign speeches; put "trump glass-steagall" into your favorite search engine and you'll get links to those, as well as to Wall Street's hissy fits about it. It's a gimme for him strategically, if he can get it past Congress, because it plays to his base as well as to a lot of moderate voters who might swing his way in 2020. Still, we'll see.
11/21/16, 11:37 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Donalfagan, thanks for the links.
Jen, I'm delighted to hear it. The man who first encouraged me to become a Freemason was also a Lion's Club member, and got a lot out of his membership; I hope you have the same experience.
Unknown, yes, I saw that. Hilarious, and spot on.
Armata, a few deep breaths ought to be enough.
Patricia, you do what you have to do. Have a good trip.
Olivier, thank you! Interesting.
Sven, excellent! Hall's always worth reading, and reflecting on.
Timberwolf, yes, I heard about that. I wonder what shoe is going to drop next.
11/21/16, 11:43 PM
Whispers said...
https://medium.com/@MaryKoCo/the-faithless-electors-movement-bc11aaf28e#.vvwgtfl6m
11/22/16, 2:16 AM
Somewhatstunned said...
actually in our case ;-{>>>>
That made me laugh out loud - speaking as someone who is merely ;-{>>
11/22/16, 4:31 AM
Happy Panda said...
Here is a webpage that explains LGBTAIA+ succinctly.
http://lgbtqiainfo.weebly.com/acronym-letters-explained.html
11/22/16, 9:50 AM
ksc said...
11/22/16, 10:04 AM
DE Prof said...
11/22/16, 11:21 AM
Patricia Mathews said...
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/109880240641/sciences-biggest-fail
11/22/16, 12:07 PM
Wendy S. Delmater said...
11/22/16, 12:48 PM
latheChuck said...
11/22/16, 3:53 PM
Pantagruel7 said...
"According to Bill, the great way to remember all the letters is "QUILTBAG" queer or questioning, intersexed, lesbian, bisexual, allied or asexual, and gay. Sometimes they add on another "T" for "two-spirit", a native term meaning "of both sexes". It started with plain old "gay", which used to refer to men and women, a lot of women used to be okay w/being called a "gay woman", and we just kept adding letters because heaven forbid anyone should be excluded."
Seems to me that they left out the "S" for straight people. Somebody mentioned "Middlesex" by Jeffrey Eugenides - I agree it's a good read, and a Michigan novel as well.
11/22/16, 4:40 PM
Varun Bhaskar said...
Those people will never learn. Speaking as a non-white Midwesterner, the idea of someone else doing or speaking for me kinda makes me sick.
Regards,
Varun
11/22/16, 4:41 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Ksc, I didn't say they actually opposed military adventurism. I said that they offered a less militaristic foreign policy to voters; the fact that they never came through on the offer is a mere bagatelle. ;-)
DE Prof, and the longer they remain fixated on that, the more often they're going to lose. Let me be more specific: unless the Democrats wake up and get a clue, they're going to be handed their backsides in the 2020 election.
Patricia, too true.
Wendy, doesn't surprise me at all -- that way, your friends can pretend to speak for another group of "victims," and in the process, keep them from speaking for themselves. No, I don't imagine Midwesterners will put up with that!
11/22/16, 7:07 PM
Justin said...
Although I completely support LGBT+ rights, I do think the excessive focus on an ultra-minority is a good way of ignoring real issues.
11/22/16, 7:25 PM
inohuri said...
I have been waiting to sneak this into comments but have not seen an appropriate place. My sense of appropriate is lacking, I'm working on it.
Negative Interest Rates and the War on Cash
Nicole Foss
https://www.theautomaticearth.com/2016/09/negative-interest-rates-and-the-war-on-cash-full-article/
11/22/16, 8:57 PM
Láthspell said...
I don't see how a sane person who was awake during their history lessons could argue that that's true, but I would have said you were both of the above. Did I miss something?
11/23/16, 1:56 AM
Matt said...
Trump has played this supremely and - after getting mentally adjusted based mainly on this blog and its commenters - it has both been instructive and amusing to watch the media and Trump's opponents pick up on each new 'outrage' in turn, proclaiming it to be 'the one' that would sink Trump's hopes.
But there are two sides to this coin. Whilst It treats the 'uneducated', rural or unskilled as a racist, sexist, homophobic mass, it also gives a pass to those with social graces, taking them at face value and assuming no taint of racism and so on. But clearly there are racists among them, and abusers, women-haters and homophobes. Often, all we glimpse of them while they in the public eye is the odd slip or, if they want to take advantage of these currents in society, the dog whistles.
So whilst I disagree with Clinton's supporters about where they put their hopes, I do not discount the fears that many have voiced. Like you say, JMG, we will have to see how this pans out.
Matt
11/23/16, 7:30 AM
Mister Roboto said...
The Obama Administration accomplished this first by continuing the bulk of Bush Jr.'s policies and thus causing split between Democratic voters who either blindly drank the Kool-Aid or walked away in disgust, and second with Obamacare doing more harm to the working class than good and thus causing a devastating string of defeats at the ballot box. Hillary Clinton made sure the destruction was complete by stealing the nomination from Bernie Sanders thus further splitting the party's base, and her supporters are filling in the last few shovelfuls of dirt to the grave by blaming everybody but themselves and being as oblivious to how they sound as they were during the campaigning season.
Even if the Republicans blatantly stole the election as the exit polls tend to suggest, an election has to be very close for it to be successfully stolen. So one must wonder why the Democrats can only win by such razor-thin margins that just end up being stolen away from them? And one must also wonder why the party who habitually perpetrates said stealing in the past sixteen years is always allowed to get away with it by the party from whom it is habitually stolen with nary a whimper?
I think the Trump years may herald the death of the Republican Party, but this may take a bit longer as the Republican Party has grown very formidable over the past 24 years and will be a tough nut to completely crack. In the self-destruction of our two institutional political parties, it makes sense that the Democratic Party would go first because by its own volition and by its predisposition to stupid mistakes, it is by far and away the weaker of the two.
11/23/16, 9:27 AM
Susan J said...
I can recommend an insightful essay by Paul Arbair on his blog:
https://paularbair.wordpress.com/2016/07/05/brexit-the-populist-surge-and-the-crisis-of-complexity/
It is certain that our misguided belief and commitment to growth, itself an artifact of capitalism, has led us to the current state where continued efforts to prod growth will continue to fail. It is the underlying value that is wrong. Our political “leaders” have no ability nor interest in admitting this, let alone looking for solutions. I am sure there is no quick fix. I also suspect that dragging a nation the size of the USA through efforts to abandon the growth hoax and establish a workable, sustainable way of life for all is unlikely. I want to believe it can be done on smaller scales.
11/23/16, 11:27 AM
Toro Loki said...
Ferrett, Ferrett burning bright...
In the forest of the night...
At least you don't have Little Prince Justin running( ruining) your country.
11/24/16, 11:45 PM
Mary Carson said...
11/25/16, 11:49 PM
Wizzrobes said...
Apologies if this request isn't allowed in the comments. But I am eager to follow JMG's advice and join a fraternal order/service club of some kind.
11/26/16, 4:48 PM
Jen said...
I will be attending my first Lions Club meeting this coming Thursday and beginning the application process, so I will know more then, but generally you must be invited by your local chapter, which in my case involved hunting down a local member with whom I was acquainted and asking him to be invited and to sponsor me--which was a bit rough on my sensibilities (the way I was raised, it was considered extremely uncouth to wrangle for an invitation), but it worked! The Lions Club website also has a form you can fill out indicating that you are interested in membership, and they will supposedly forward it to your local chapter, but when I did that, nothing came of it (perhaps I did not wait long enough) so I was forced to pursue a more direct route.
You are welcome to contact me by email at: jennifer dot ann dot richardson at gmail dot com for further discussion.
11/27/16, 10:17 AM
Robert Jarrett said...
Just curious.
12/6/16, 2:21 AM