I know how Angela Merkel feels:
Ms. Merkel, who is balancing the imperatives of preserving the alliance with the United States and sustaining her re-election effort, took stock at a beer tent stop in Munich on Sunday.
“The times in which we could rely fully on others, they are somewhat over,” she said, according to German news media. “This is what I experienced in the last few days.”
Perhaps she is talking about the American elites who wield power in Washington DC and set policies and coordinate efforts with Europe. I’m talking about my fellow American citizens and the American system for establishing how power will be shared.
I’m willing to continue fighting in the political trenches according to whatever rules exist rather that the rules that used to exist or that I might wish to exist. But I’m getting to the point where I can’t make a very good case for others to do the same based on faith that they can rely on this to yield results.
Some things are still working. The Courts have been sending brushback pitches at both the Trump administration and the Republican Party (see North Carolina, for example). But the primary battle going on right now is between an intelligence/defense establishment and the sitting administration where it’s clear that the results of the election are in the process of being overturned (if they can be). This may be an easy battle in which to chose sides in one sense. The Trump administration is lawless, corrupt, unreliable, and incompetent enough to pose a threat to humanity, and that’s not hyperbole. But the system isn’t working when we have to rely on undemocratic forces to defend democracy from the consequences of elections.
People are going to lose faith in our system on all sides. On the Trump-supporting right, they’re going to see his removal from office as essentially a coup engineered by the Deep State, media, globalists, Obama stay-behinds, and weak Republicans who won’t fight. On the left, the continuing inability to win political power commensurate with their numbers will eventually cause more and more to seek remedies outside of any kind of civil process based on law and precedent.
This is all a recipe for a breakdown in order and for our systems for political accountability and the peaceful transfer of power. We’re already far enough along this road that a lot of people are beginning to conclude that the system is broken not only beyond repair but beyond having any moral claim to deserve repair. Maybe it’s better to work to accelerate its demise than to try to shore up an edifice that is beyond hope. Perhaps the most corrosive aspect of this is when it is applied not to the media or our elites but to the people themselves. Once you lose faith in the quality of our people, pretty much everything else collapses. We can perhaps devise new systems, but any system that isn’t premised on the will of the people won’t be a system worth having.
I guess what I’m saying is that I’ll keep fighting but I can’t say it’s going to work. I know some things that will make it less likely to work, and one of them is for left to respond to the dehumanizing language from the right with dehumanizing language of our own. We have enough problems and obstacles without adding to the sentiment that our people aren’t worth a damn and that their political opinions are so illegitimate that we can’t engage with them.
The last faith we can afford to lose is our faith in our people.
I have found an ally.
That’s a really good article. She has some smart ideas. Far too many Democrats think the white working class can and should be written off.
I think you need some Garcia. Keep the faith.
Serious mistake to write off the WWC.
It is incredibly easy to write off any classification of people if you do not personally know well anyone in the class.
I strongly suspect that the political elite of both parties only interact with the working class while those workers are doing their jobs (bringing meals to a table, driving limos, etc.)
Sigh
That works going both directions. How often do workers interact with those who have more education and wealth?
It is also incredibly easy…at least until one becomes truly famous nationally…to interact with just about any societal level in the U.S. short of the aforementioned rich and famous. You simply leave your dwelling and comfort neighborhood…whatever style and economic level that may be..dressed to pass as someone who would be in the area and culture in which you wish to immerse yourself.
Duh.
I do it all the time, both as part of my job and out of sheer social curiosity.
Even our “leaders”…up until the time that they became too famous to do so…have had every opportunity to get a good feel for the various cross-sections of the culture. The problem is that people do not do this. Or…when forced to interact with other cultures and/or other economic levels…they go in with a closed mind.
And on and on and on and on.
i read this type of ignorance time and time again from both mainstream politicians and their support staff/supporters. Trump won using this approach, and HRC lost using it as well…simultaneously being used by it.
Want to rediscover this land? I once again suggest reading Walt Whitman. In many respects he was the most complete “American” ever to walk this planet.
They’re still out there…singing their songs.
So is Whitman.
AG
i like his poetry, but it should be noted that Whitman was totally enamored of the rugged-individualist myth.
Per the author of the Times article:
“That’s the first step. The second is for Democrats to advocate an agenda attractive to low-income and working-class Americans of all races: creating good jobs for high school graduates.”
As the author implies, Democrats need to take a rising tide lifts all boats approach to this, rather than just focusing solely on the white working class. Their pain points, as the author directly points out, is a perceived loss of white privilege. Like the author, I am willing to concede that but I am not willing to pretend that middle/working class issues are exclusive to whites, and that members of this group of all races face the exact same problems.
Lets not switch one identity to focus on another. The democratic party should go back to its working class roots and become a workers party again, but this time, unlike in the post WWII days when racism restricted the class building programs to whites, lets focus on what we can for all working class peoples.
Implies the existence of a pre-WWII Democratic Golden Age.
Sometimes it’s just after Watergate, other times it’s right after WWII, sometimes it’s during the Vietnam War — but always the lost Democratic Golden Age.
It never existed. This pernicious myth needs to die.
I never implied anything — all your words, not mine, I am not hearkening back to some golden age — it never existed, and if it did, I wouldn’t be offering a solution that didn’t fit because of some bygone era. These are your ice cream castles, not mine.
I am just stating a common sense approach to an existing problem, which is simply this: Don’t black and brown people work and pay bills? Don’t they have issues sending their kids to college? Aren’t they also suffering from low wage positions, good middle class jobs having been outsourced? Then doesn’t it make sense to target all of these people, and not just the WWC?
Its a no obvious when you don’t over think the issue.
“Become a workers’ party again” isn’t an an implication, it’s a quote. Unless you’re using ‘again’ in some special way…
Wasn’t this Bernie’s message?
The article is OK as far as it goes, but it does not quite ring true to me as a critique or a blueprint for political action, for two reasons.
First, it locates the source of our failure to form a strong, progressive coalition that can win back the White House and Congress (and state legislatures, and … etc.) within ourselves: our attitudes toward the WWC, our condescension, the language we use to talk about people in working class jobs. Let’s concede that there is currently a large gap in privilege and income between members of the “coastal liberal elite” and the working class, white or otherwise. This gap was not created by condescending attitudes on the part of liberal elites; it was created by the economic forces of the last 40 years or so. The author concedes that changing our attitudes is only the first step, but we need to acknowledge that the problem is one of institutionalized economic privilege, not bad attitudes and hurt feelings. I truly doubt that there is anyone in this forum who does not share “a commitment to good jobs for Americans of all races.”
Second, the article relies on pat solutions that scratch the surface, but do not touch the underlying cause of the decline of the WWC. In the economy of the New Deal and the post-WWII era, the gains made possible by the rising productivity of labor (the increase in surplus value made possible by the increase in the organic composition of capital, in Marxist parlance) were shared to at least some extent with labor and society at large, through rising wages and investment in social capital and infrastructure, including education. Strong unions played a part in this, as did political leaders who were willing to vote for progressive taxation policies. For reasons I think we are well aware of, today’s captains of industry keep a much larger share of the profits generated by the workers whom they employ. The manufacturing sector today is incredibly productive; the problem is that the workers keep far too little of what they produce.
From my day job representing students in the public schools many of whom are transitioning to work, I am reasonably well aware of the certificate and job training programs that the author mentions. in my experience, the problem is not that such programs don’t exist, because in fact they do, in large numbers, but that they’re not affordable, especially for students who have to work to support themselves. A huge problem is the quality of educational systems that fail to teach the basic skills that young people need to learn a skilled trade. All the certificate programs in the world won’t help if students lack the qualifications to get into them.
Rather than advocating for superficial, pat solutions I think we have to dig a lot deeper to produce a shared analysis of the forces that currently result in transferring such a huge share of the wealth to people with high incomes, and then commit to policies that reverse this force and return a much larger share of the wealth generated by our economy back to the people who produce it. This isn’t easy. It would encompass, not just solutions that sound simple, like “better trade deals,” but a much wider range of policies including taxation, education and changes in labor laws. Just my two credits.
It’s not a ‘yes to this’, it’s a ‘Fuck Yes, to this’.
I find most conversations on the WWC to be tedious and superficial. I am a member of the WWC and I also find these conversations not a little condescending. I want to yell “Do you even know an electrician? A plumber?, how about a concrete man or drywaller, or mason, or how about the guy who DELIVERS everything?” And I don’t mean ‘know’ in he worked for you and you chatted a little.
It may be shocking……but they are not all the same…..and the vast majority where I work and live…..vote democrat.
.
The same is true of the WWC where I live. They vote Democratic, and they get out the vote.
Public school has a greater purpose than teaching job skills. A public school education should prepare students to understand the basics of geography, history, science, civics and the arts.
I agree completely. To me, the purpose of public education is to develop critical thinking skills. I feel strongly that all students should be enabled to participate and progress in the general curriculum (modified if necessary), including students with significant intellectual disabilities. That is probably another conversation for another day. The basic skills I had in mind were reading, writing and math. I’m thinking of a student who spent three years in a culinary arts program in secondary school but could not read a recipe nor use fractions to measure ingredients. No reason she couldn’t have learned that; she just wasn’t taught.
Along with basic skills and critical thinking, don’t forget a strong Civics curriculum. Everyone’s used to being told that it’s important to vote, but that’s generally where it stops.
I had one semester of Civics in iirc 1982, which I heard later was about the time that Civics as a subject more or less disappeared from core curricula in US schools. It correlates nicely with the ascendancy of Reagan and his “9 most terrifying words.” Instead of teaching the vital importance of a healthy functioning government, we’ve let successive generations grow up in an environment that reinforces the idea that government is designed to prevent good people from succeeding. The idea is now becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.
You write:
They already have, Booman.
They already have.
For now…
You also write:
i personally have not “lost faith in our people.”
I see them by the thousands every day in NYC.The real people. On the streets, in the subways and busses, in the grocery stores and coffee shops. I see them when I travel…as far as Alaska over the past several years, regularly hundreds of miles north and south and east from NYC by car. I see beautiful things. Loving mothers and fathers of all races and economic conditions wth their happy children, young people fighting to get an education and go out into society, working people on all levels of society. They’re not all geniuses, but neither are they idiots. There are plenty of idiots too, but they are outnumbered about 1000 to 1. I keep my eyes open on the streets and in public transit…I’m carrying several thousand dollars worth of almost irreplaceable musical equipment on my back most of the time and I have no defensive weapons available to speak of except my own street awareness. I see the bad guys…they’re not that hard to spot after 40+ years of living on the street…and I see all of the good people too. 1000 good to 1 bad. Everywhere I go.
Sometimes I feel like Walt Whitman, walking the streets of old New York and America.
These fools and troubles, these true heroes and heroines also shall pass, to be replaced by others.
Bet on it.
That’s the way it works.
Try to remember.
It’s only a matter of time…
AG
Bravo. That is exactly where we are.
The faith in our people means restoring trust in our most personal networks of family, friends, neighbors, and co-workers. For the most part, this operates at the most local, neigborhood level.
Many people have turned their activism to practical local activities to offset the coming national and state government austerity or collapse. (How long can Kansas, for example, keep pretending that tax cuts bring prosperity without eventual collapse?) Others are working on a variety of environmental mitigation projects from organizing non-point source property owners in massive efforts to prevent pollution from their small amount of property through rainwater retention, native plants (reduces need for -cides).
Others are local efforts to fill the deserts of commercial buildings and services that corporations have abandoned in order to keep the land development behemoth turning cash.
Others are creating cooperatives to be employers who focus on jobs and fairer distribution of profit.
This returns pure partisan political work to the periphery and hopefully will undercut at some point the total political campaign environment into which the major political parties have put the media audience.
The majority of time, politics should be about governance and listening to constituents. Both political parties in their top-down marketing have destroyed the ability to listen to individual constituents as individuals and not stereotyped demographics. That is what is turning voters off and allowing the manipulation of their anger.
Realignment means creating a new frame to replace the ideological framework that modern conservatism forced on American polity with the election of Ronald Reagan and the creation of the bubble conservative media. The US cannot become a parliamentary democracy with ideological parties; it seems that the UK and European nations that have actual parliamentary systems are also breaking down under ideological rigidity.
The interesting thing about the New Deal was that the federal government became the focus of standardized national programs of relief, infrastructure construction (providing the relief of real work), arts and humanities employment (providing the relief of real income to people working people didn’t think worked), conservation projects (providing relief to low population density rural areas), and farm programs (preventing producers from over producing and losing income to monopsony buyers). The federal government had to do it because in the Great Depression, civil society, local government, and state government were all overwhelmed, and corporations asserted it was not their problem. Now that the federal government is no longer willing to be the last resort, who is? From a practical perspective, that would be civil society associations and organizations that can operate without cash (what is really constrained in austerity) and deal directly with volunteer labor, donated materials, recycled materials, and informal agreements with property owners of grounds, plant, equipment, and tools for free use. Those local relationships can practically survive most forms of general collapse of the larger units of society by keeping a social compact going.
In related news, David Dayen reports that Trump signed an agreement with the Saudis to underwrite up to $40 billion in privatized US infrastructure. I don’t see any of that being high-speed rail or urban transit. Do you?
What does it mean to underwrite our Infrastructure?
To loan money to private companies that cut deals with state and local governments to build (in this case, most likely) toll highways that get repaid in tolls that retire the private debt. Spanish companies have already done private deals like this with private bank backing. I think this deal involves Blackstone as well as the Saudis (if there is much difference).
Easiest to see with roads. Could also work with communications but those private companies are flush. Education and healthcare infrastructure are more complicated but still privatizeable in the Trump administration. Using foreign money sidesteps Congress’s necessity to appropriate. It also has some entangling effects on the US economy and government. From empire to colony in one administration.
Stealing the commons and we will guarantee it.
It doesn’t just retire the debt, it enables private companies to continue to make a profit from the people who use them. And if people need to pay tolls on the road they use to get to work, that effectively reduces their income from work by the cost of the toll. It’s the equivalent of a regressive tax, except that it goes to a private for-profit company, not the government. Much different from funding infrastructure through progressive taxation.
Sure and it may go to a foreign government. We pay them to build the road and then pay them to use it?
Here is a prime example of this kind of financing that appears to have failed.
https:/www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2014/10/03/the-indiana-toll-road-how-did-a-good-deal-go-bad#2
8161ffb2087
yes, nice example.
what is the mechanism for undoing those deals?
As cool as a functioning syndicalism would be, I’m not sure the total collapse of existing institutions is worth it to get there.
A long run for a short slide.
I’m not sure we have control over whether there will or will not be total collapse, given the coming pressure of global climate change and continued policies of austerity.
It is, in the present context, a hedge. Except for those communities already mostly devoid of cash and dignity. There it is an alternative to a criminal informal economy.
It is not as abstract an issue locally as you make it seem in your professed unseriousness.
Amen, brother.
I’m glad you’re digging in deeper in your thoughts and your writing on these vital subjects.
One of the things you are asking progressives to do is to be more careful in what we communicate. In that vein, I’d ask for a reconsideration of your claim that there is a “…battle going on right now…between an intelligence/defense establishment and the sitting administration where it’s clear that the results of the election are in the process of being overturned (if they can be).”
This isn’t clear at all. In fact, it’s untrue.
First, the results cannot be overturned. Even if Trump were to be impeached, he has installed a Supreme Court justice and a set of Cabinet officials, and the propagandizing of the American electorate by the Justice Department and the Russian Federation also helped elect a Congress under Republican control.
Second, and most importantly, we enter into dangerous ground when we claim that the goal of those sharing bombshell revelations about the actions of Trump and his campaign and Administrative staff is to overturn the 2016 election.
It appears to me the bombshells are meant to reveal unacceptable actions and to stop them from continuing. Claiming aggressively or obliquely that the leakings of information are all meant to overturning the last election and oust the President is damaging to our chances of completing a successful investigation and responding appropriately to its findings, because it supports Trump’s position that the bombshells are a liberal/Dem Party conspiracy.
Trump’s partisan claim is not only damaging, it’s wholly absurd. The “…intelligence/defense establishment…” is not an ally of the progressive movement and Democratic Party. Much the opposite, in fact.
Additionally, laying responsibility for the bombshell revelations entirely at the feet of the intelligence and defense establishment also ignores the fact that many damaging leaks have come from people working for the Administration. They were hired by Trump and they want their boss to stop doing what he’s doing.
I do worry about the vicious Congressional and State Legislative gerrymands. These have been incredibly corrosive to democratic governance. It’s helped lead to Frog Ponders and others in the progressive/liberal movement fighting each other about how to overcome circumstances which require us to win Congressional and State elections by total margins of 5 to 8 percentage points just to gain a bare majority of seats in Washington D.C. and State capitals. And we have to do this while a percentage of our vote is suppressed because of voter ID laws and sophisticated, targeted information warfare techniques.
This is not governance under consent of the governed. It’s a radical departure from modern political practices, and it could lead to the biggest problem you identify: people deciding that elections are not useful ways to create changes they want in their communities, State and Nation. We’re heading to that checkmate position, I fear.
The Russian government is illiberal, and is conspiring with illiberals in the United States and elsewhere to install governments and economies wholly controlled by oligarchs and social reactionaries. While they have achieved successes in the pursuit of this goal, the United States is not wholly controlled by oligarchs and social reactionaries at the moment. Those who want restorations of liberal/progressive governance should train their fire on the illiberals. They’re the true enemy.
The Russian government did not seek to partner with the Democratic Party to achieve their dark goals. No, in fact they are engaged in a long-term disinformation campaign to destroy the Democratic Party’s ability to win elections.
Very. Well. Said.
Thank you.
Michael J. Glennon points out the dangers of how the actions are being framed and the almost exclusive sourcing from the national security bureaucracy.
This is a nuance that progressives must be aware of if the results are going to preserve democratic institutions.
Tarheel…you link:
Sadly, Tarheel…we are already there.
Not formally, of course, but practically speaking? Yes. the intelligence bureaucracy is now in charge of everything except perhaps factions of the military. Last I looked, people like James Clapper and James Comey were never “democratically elected” to anything.
The previous two presidents were total tools of…and witting frontmen for, as well…the Permanent Government. So were almost all of the members of Congress. Bought and sold.
This is the “nuance” that progressives need to understand if any actions are going to preserve democratic institutions. And it is up to them…and others of different political persuasions but similar interests…to inform the electorate of what is really happening. The captive media is certainly not going to cooperate. It is owned by the same forces that control the government.
All of this of course is possible only if those “democratic institutions” have not already been so wounded that preservation is out of the question.
Embalming?
Maybe…
AG
We disagree on this. But until they come to pick you up and detain you, it is kinda hard to tell, isn’t it.
Not so hard, Tarheel.
Just change the categories a little.
AG
I was lucky. National Lawyers Guild was on the job. That’s why I disagree at the moment. A water protector was found not guilty on three felony counts in Morton County ND by a jury.
The door hasn’t slammed yet. But there are a whole bunch of people pushing on it every time people are killed by muslims. And silence when they are killed by white middle-class neo-Nazis. But the courts still function to a point.
Watch the details and don’t make generalizing assumptions. There is still resistance among the people in spite of the attempt at branding Resistance (TM).
Don’t forget the religious alliance of Russian Orthodoxy with the Russian state, essentially Russian Orthodox fundamentalism.
We are facing religious institutions advocating restoration of religiously-based illiberality.
A piece relevant to your point at Salon …
“700 Club“
There still is the 700 Club. And its CBN News.
David Brody, for example:
Mmmmmm? Ronald Reagan? George W. Bush?
OMG. I can hardly believe anyone would seriously write this. Except that it is so predictable.
Pat Robertson apparently pays very good salaries in Virginia Beach to folks who can write like that.
What a steaming pile of crap.
Donald Trump wouldn’t know God if He bit him in the ass. Which I hope and pray He is about to do.
Like Angela Merkel, reistance develops in the face of what some feel are attacks or abandonment or threats to their security or way of life. Whether that continues to grow depends on the reaction from those in power. Perhaps a Nazi Germany could have been averted with stronger opposition. So, while the IC and defense are not elected offices they may serve some use to reduce more extreme actions or to alleviate concern over them. For me it is a form of protest. At this particular time the Democratic Party opposition to all things Trump is ineffective, relying as it does on arm waving. Maybe more revelations can help return us to normalcy like feeding school children and providing health care, etc. This is not a normal time. So yes, I hope those bombshells result in a change in behavior by Trump. If it results in his leaving, all the better for the world. We need the help.
How do you measure effective Democratic party opposition? What would it look like?
Winning maybe congress or more states. Stopping the dissolution of the social network. Something.
Right, but I was referring to your belief that the current Democratic party opposition is ineffective. We won’t know until 2018, right?
There are some signs of a wave election but time will tell.
We very much need that wave election to stop at least some of the craziness. It is disturbing though that by then Trump will have passed his budget with all the anti liberal reforms.
When the presence of an organized party reappears in rural North Carolina and can win local (often in off years) and state elections.
In Congress and state legislatures, when they can exert enough power to dampen the crazy talk. And when there is not reporting in mainstream local and state publications about who they are taking money from that limits their support of their constituents views.
We used to have that sort of effective opposition so much that it could be taken for granted — and was.
I must admit, I’m a little flummoxed.
I am sure everyone here has heard of the horrible tragedy in Oregon. A white supremacist went after two women whom were apparently Muslims. Bystanders stepped in to protect the women, and while attempting to calm down the racist (who was a Sanders supporter, and did not vote for Trump), he stabbed them, two of whom died.
By the standards set by ‘civilization’,, these two men did what they were supposed to do…not what EVERYONE would do, but what they felt was right. In a societal sense, they did what needed to be done, because if NOBODY stood up we would not have a civilized society at all.
In other words…..when things start to go bad…someone MUST step up. This is as American as apple pie. It’s imbedded in our culture in many ways, from our movies to our music.
Yet progressive politics seems to require ignoring this could even happen with members of the intelligence community. It’s as though it’s assumed such members are, in their hearts, the types of people who enjoy watching the world burn. But of course IC is made up of the same people you see every day on the streets of NY. 1000’s of good to every one bad. Or maybe 10 to one.
Would it be better if they remained in their seat, and let the innocents get beat up, or stabbed, or in this particular case…watch the POTUS sell America to the Russians for 10 cents on the dollar…would it be better to remain seated when they KNOW it’s going to get bad?
Remain silent, the world burns, and then people say..’you knew and you did nothing?” Or step up, take the heat, knowing you very well might get stabbed in the heart?
Hard choices is what we all face. The republicans are failing the test..they have decided ‘party over country’. The IC, it appears to me, has chosen the opposite…’country over career, intelligent assets, reputation’.
Do you stay seated, or risk the knife in the heart?
.
A white supremacist went after two women whom were apparently Muslims. Bystanders stepped in to protect the women, and while attempting to calm down the racist (who was a Sanders supporter, and did not vote for Trump), he stabbed them, two of whom died.
Can we stop this nonsense? The Portland killer only supported Sanders in so far as he was the anti-establishment candidate, and given the killer’s well documented dislike of people of the Jewish faith .. well I hope you get the point. Did you know one of the people he killed was a Sanders supporter, and actually contributed to Sanders’ campaign multiple times? In fact, once Sanders was defeated in the primary the killer supported Trump. In fact, the killer had many prior run-ins with law enforcement. In short, don’t try and smear Sanders supporters with bullshit Al Giordano is peddling. I suggest you read this:
http://www.wweek.com/news/2017/05/27/the-man-accused-of-max-double-murder-is-a-portland-white-suprem
acist-who-delivered-nazi-salutes-and-racial-slurs-at-a-free-speech-rally-last-month/
Jesus Christ.
.
What’s your problem, asshole? Do you have a problem understanding that the Portland killer was trolling people re: his “support” of Sanders?
I’m a Portlander and live a short walk from the transit center where the murders occurred.
Mr Christian, the accused, has a criminal record. He’s a convicted felon. Please no spinning this whack job as a Sanders supporter.
The accused was making threats against people just a few hours before the murders.
I agree with this wholeheartedly, centerfielddj. Nothing can undo the last election, short of a military coup. The IC and people within the administration can leak and blow the whistle till the cows come home, and it is not going to overthrow the government. What they can do, and are doing, I believe, is giving us ammunition to remove this president’s majority in Congress and weaken him as best we can until he’s voted out of office,resigns, or is impeached.
The alarmist rhetoric about the power of the bureaucracy and the Deep State etc. is overblown, in my opinion. The growth in size and power of the executive branch has been a topic of concern ever since I was a first-year undergraduate in political science classes, and probably long before that. If people have an alternative, short of drowning the government in a bathtub, I’m all ears. Meanwhile, I’ll continue to be grateful for some very effective “bureaucrats” (many of whom came from academia or advocacy organizations) who served in recent Democratic administrations, and the excellent work they did in the Departments of Justice, Health and Human Services and Education. The dreadful people that the current administration has placed in those agencies motivates me to do everything I can, including working to undo gerrymandering in my exceeding gerrymandered state, to try to undo the damages in 2018 and 2020.
My alternative is to reduce the amount of ass-covering government secrecy and abuse of classification power.
North Carolina just had its gerrymandering undone, for now, with a lawsuit that went to the Supreme Court. That is another still open route.
The power of the Deep State is in its ability not to provide honest assessments of the threats Americans face and to use the worst case scenarios as the first strategy of operation, often scuttling diplomacy in the process. Recently that scuttling was driven from the State Department end of the Deep State.
The power of the Deep State is the power to nullify political decisions it does not like out of its institutional self-interest in ever-expanding covert operations and its decisions about how to shape history.
In my experience, the most effective bureaucrats were the ones most aligned with the mission of their agency within the context of a democratic society. They had a deep understanding of the interests of the general public that they served and did not approach their jobs as putting one over on the rubes. In style, they erred on the side of sunlight. The least effective were the most control-freaks, who effective bureaucrats often had to build procedural boxes around in order to get things done or avoid agency capture by special interests. The “good” people in the intelligence services are handicapped by not having the ability to call in sunlight except by breaking the law.
You are making an extremely important point, and you are absolutely right. We are NOT “overturning the results of the last election.” We are trying to MAINTAIN a constitutional government that the present administration doesn’t give a flying fuck about. If it has fallen to the IC to get these assholes in line, it’s because at this point they appear to be the only ones who are able to do it. Who else has access to that kind of evidence? Nevertheless, it is being done legally, unlike the Trumpsters, who show a degree of contempt for the law that makes even Nixon look like a boy scout.
Faith in our people ended not later than 1979, when the broad outlines of the Republican campaign against Jimmy Carter took shape. You may name an earlier date, but not a later one — unless you wish to be seen as simply not having been paying attention.
What Merkel is doing is sounding the first note of what will eventually be seen as a Churchillian campaign uniting the civilized nations against the new Axis (led by the US and Russia). Fortunately for the world, the US and Russia are empty shells that will crumble at a touch. Unfortunately for us, see the preceding sentence, plus which it is very far from a given that the victors will adopt a Churchillian posture of magnanimity in victory. They may instead realize that the central problem of the Modern age is weakness in victory, whereby the potential gains of all the wars since the Crimean War were thrown away.
From what ‘we’ do those ‘our’s’ come?
I took an oath to protect the U S Constitution years ago and as far as I am concerned that oath is still valid. I like many others are just waiting for the appropriate orders to be given to respond as deemed necessary.
I would prefer for all of the politicians in America to actually support America and not what they seem to support now “the almighty Dollar”.
This is all way too apocalyptic.
Not that bad things won’t happen under Trump: they are now.
But we aren’t close to revolution. We still have elections and will have elections. The rule of law is still in place. A special prosecutor has been appointed to determine if any crimes were committed.
Once troops committed to the destruction of the Union could be seen from the White House.
To pretend we face anything close to that peril is absurd.
The future of the Republic does not depend on Democrats winning elections.
There is another, longer fight. Lewis Lapham once wrote that there were really only ever two parties: the party of what is and the party of what might be. The party of what is, he wrote, almost always wins. And for good reasons: history is littered with the schemes of dreamers who have brought ruin.
These aren’t great days for the Party of what might be. It is internally divided. It struggles to articulate a realistic vision of social and economic equality.
But then I remember the people I worked with on the Sanders campaign. Young and smart.
And when I think of them, and how united their entire generation was in the primaries, I realize that this:
“The last faith we can afford to lose is our faith in our people.”
Is complete bullshit. And I remember the author’s passivity to the fight that was. How he tried to ignore it like most of the bloggers did.
And I think: too bad you didn’t fight when there was one to win.
Oh, that’s right, you were certain Bernie couldn’t win.
Like you were certain Trump couldn’t.
And that is the real lesson. You fight because it is the right thing to do, and because no one is EVER smart enough to know whether you can win.
Acceptance of the task, because it is right and honorable and just, and the humility to accept that you don’t know whether the task will matter or not.
That is all that is required.
All over the country people like this are trying. Who is to say they will win or lose.
But lack of faith.
Bullshit.
What you have in the White House is an alternative party of “what might be”. It is best to treat those future vision they have as other than reactionary although the language is clothed in reaction.
Yes, it is economic Coolidgism “the business of America is business” and Reaganism “ending regulations”, but it has a much more extreme future vision of a government incapable of checking arbitrary economic power.
Yes, in foreign policy it is the old Lindberghian “America First”, which is and abdication both of empire and responsibility. But its future vision is of the corporate feudalism and religious sanctimony of oligarchs brokered by a monarch with institutions of weak democratic sanction or checks and balances. And racial or cultural supremacy of a majority culture. And a nationalist-driven politics that somehow will magically result in alliances that bring peace and prosperity and make America great again.
The bromide, “The last faith we can afford to lose is our faith in people” is nonetheless an accurate depiction of the challenge we face in our personal networks, which have been polarized by politics and are now strangely beginning to heal under the reality of Trumpism. It is no different than the social media enforced demand to “Salute our Veterans” and remember what Memorial Day is really about–honoring the warrior culture. It’s just the progressive Kum Bah Yah version of solidarity until you realize those people all have some rough edges.
And because we no longer can depend on our representatives to actually represent our interests. We have to create the political pressure ourselves; this is the cost that 21st century politics has put on citizens everywhere; they have to work outside the formal institutions in order to pressure the formal institutions to start working again in their interest.
Contrary to what was commented (not by you) a few weeks ago here, we are not in a Praetorian Guard situation. It is about the non-exec branches of gov kicking in and doing their part
actually the courts have been doing their part, it’s about sheep and goats in Congress and getting them moving
“You fight because it is the right thing to do, and because no one is EVER smart enough to know whether you can win.” — Amen to that.
The “widespread revolt of working-class against the elites” (to borrow a phrase from your “ally”) is not primarily by people who are in economic hardship. This is a CULTURAL rebellion, mostly but not exclusively to do with race. So, if you want to reach some of these people for the purpose of turning them (back) into Democratic voters, you’ll need to address something other than their mostly non-existent economic privation. How will you do that?
Good question.. I’ve seen some sentiment from the fringe here that would favor a George Wallace type approach to immigration and Muslims.
Sanders style populism against Trump’s nativist populism would be an interesting experiment. I’m not convinced Trump wouldn’t win that argument because I’m not optimistic about our country and its people.
It is an illusion to think that class resentment is a matter of economic privation even though the causes of resentment are about how economics is working for those who are resentful.
What white people have been told by their managers when minorities are hired for any reason is “We had to do it because of the federal government.” That sets up the perception that the minority hired was not qualified (or as qualified as the existing white workers). That has been a deliberate managerial form of resistance against desegregation. It has not been consistently punished because only those victimized (minority employees) can bring suit and winning requires overwhelming evidence.
What caused resentment against Latinos in the construction industry was white employers using Latino workers to break wage levels downward. That is privation to existing workers supporting families. When Latinos pooled resources and created their own companies in old-fashioned loan club fashion, white workers were even more disadvantaged, not having the trust and community to do similar loan pooling. In addition the increase in firms allowed more monopsony among construction clients. H1-B visas functioned the same way for contract temporary workers.
To the extent that white working class people supported Trump it was because of this or more frequently that they had been reliably Republican since Nixon’s ethnic strategy to break the Southern Democrats and northern ethnic Catholics off from the FDR coalition.
Race has to do with economic class markers. Being “uppity” means acting beyond your economic class. “Exclusive” housing developments had the cache of economic class but the covenants excluded whom?
The revolt of the working class against the elites is a matter of resenting the college-trained people who are line and staff to management and who find ways to reduce the number of workers and the wages while their salaries, until now, have largely been unaffected. This working class-educated class resentment has been there for a very long time, but unions held their members in the Democratic Party until Nixon. And the college-educated were mostly Republican until Vietnam and the GOPs suicidal anti-communism and tactical nuclear weapons. Likely with the Reagan generation, that returned; most native-born college-educated Gen-Xers I know tend to be more often Republican.
The other issue with college education are the large number of working class and rural parents who feel they have lost their children when they go to college and start having uncoventional ideas and interests in foreign or avant garde cultures. Kids who go to Duke and lose their Methodist religion was a longtime rap on Duke among the church that at one-time financially supported it in part and had a seminary there. That was a class issue; it wasn’t the Duke grad churches that were spouting this but small town and suburban churches.
Reaching these voters means working their racism out of them, and that is a difficult but not impossible task so long as you don’t treat them as “deplorables”. Now it is much easier in local interactions to talk seriously with people about hard issues than it is when national media are shaping and sabotaging messages. This is not about messaging and marketing.
There are newly repentant racists coming out every day; it is slow; it is hard; but it is happening. A part of the Trump panic is that their youngsters are not adopting their racism and are even crossing race lines for social activities including proms — even in the Deep South. The same was happening with Latinos and other cultures — thus the drive to deporting.
It is a sense of cultural, economic, and political moving backward over time–relative deprivation, no absolute privation.
The perversity of it is that the GOP has capitalized on the world and misery they have created.
I too at times wonder about where the present situation is leading, and I think of John Brown’s last words: “I John Brown am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty, land: will never be purged away; but with Blood.” He was right — and he was proven to be so quickly and completely, to such an extent that Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address drew on the same concept. We are moving in important ways toward a Second Civil War, with racial animus an important force in that movement as it was in for the first. As various commenters have made clear, we do not have to reach that result, and there is yet hope we will not.
In this situation, we need to remember that striving for the right is independent of the prospects for immediate success. African-Americans have understood that for a very long time; from Albion Tourgee to Martin Luther King Jr., they fought the righteous fight for racial equality when the forces arrayed against them were even more imposing than those against us. Even if there were no chance of success at all (which is far from our case), we could still try to measure up to the standard set out in the 11th-century poem “The Battle of Maldon” (Tolkien translation) about Anglo-Saxon warriors in the course of losing a battle to the Danes: “Will shall be the sterner, heart the bolder, spirit the greater as our strength lessens.”
The United States has taken a very long time digging itself into the present hole, and some of the most powerful forces in our country are still excavating it. Getting out of the hole is going to require many changes and take quite a while. It is also going to cost more than a few lives — such as the lives sacrificed to prevent that violent white supremacist from assaulting Muslims. But we have an obligation to our country, our posterity, and ourselves to do that work to whatever extent we individually can. That is our duty — which, as Robert Heinlein’s “Starship Troopers” put is, “is the basis of all morality.”
This is lovely. May I share it?
Of course — and thank you for the compliment. It comes from meditating on governance (in part while obtaining a Ph.D. in government) and practicing government (as a Foreign Service officer) for about 50 years so far, and I’m pleased it has some value.
Please leave Robert Heinlein at the curb. Starship Troopers, the novel you mentioned, promotes the idea that only those who serve in the armed forces should be allowed to vote.