Tuesday, October 27, 2020

US election choice: emo or eco(nomic)?


America has gone emo. I think it's a generation thing - every generation wants a big fight: 1914, 1939, the Sixties, the Fall of Soviet Communism - I'd have said every 25 years or so, except that Western women are having their babies later now so instead of c. 2014 it was a few years later this time.

Not just America, of course. The PC madness has taken hold of our educational institutions here in the UK, from primary school right up to Oxford University; liberal thinkers are being cancelled (the revolution eats its children), zealots are foisting Nuspeak on us so that Bad Things cannot be thought, and so on.

But emo it is. The Age of Reason is passing, and with it the rational political institutions that kept quarrelsome factions in some sort of balance. The common currency of our time is the scream.

Here, for example, is an image posted on Facebook by a highly intelligent and educated friend across the Big Water:


The Presidential election (like the one in 2016) has become a choice between God and the Devil, and any dissenters are to be threatened into silence in the way that the girls in Arthur Miller's 'The Crucible' manage it, 'seeing' the demons in the courtroom itself: https://www.coursehero.com/file/p4ofc5i/Mary-Warren-Lord-save-me-Susanna-Walcott-I-freeze-I-freeze-Abigail-shivering/ 

Funny, though, that some black people see no difficulty in supporting the Republicans, at least the Republicans as headed by that man of many sins Donald Trump: Thomas Sowell; Kanye West; Candace Owens, here most effectively rebutting attempts by old white men to misrepresent her - https://www.facebook.com/watchparty/195577945043970

Also funny that Hillary Clinton should have said recently that Republicans themselves don't want Trump:

"Most Republicans are going to want to close the page," Clinton says. "They want to see him gone as much as we do, but they can't say it publicly."

Now I don't know the lady personally, but I doubt that Mrs Clinton knows many ordinary Republicans personally either. I think her remark refers to Establishment Republicans, the types she'll have met, and I think I know why she said that: they're in the same game as the Democrats - self-interest and political survival. The difference is that the pseudo-Left throws scraps under the table to their supporters but never lets them sit on the bench with them; whereas the Right throw steaks at the faces of their supporters so they don't get eaten themselves.

And in came Trump the Disruptor, just when it had begun to dawn on the workers that their customary choice was between an enemy and a frenemy. For the choice is between two systems, only one of whch supports both mainstream political parties. 

The choice is between globalisation and national self-interest. The former is not sustainable for the West - the late Sir James Goldsmith (a billionaire entrepreneur) warned about this a quarter century ago, at the time of the GATT talks in 1994 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PQrz8F0dBI , and again in 1996 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RowLyW5X52A .

For a time the prosperity of ordinary people was kept going because even if real wages were no longer rising, goodies imported from China and other Third World countries lowered prices so e.g. it was still possible to stuff children's bedrooms with Christmas gewgaws from Toys "R" Us; but personal debts rose, unemployment rose, government spending on the Welfare State (and its US equivalent) rose.

Trump's catchphrase 'Make America Great Again' grates with some who cringe at the thought of nationalistic economic imperialism; but more honestly it should be something like 'Prevent America Becoming Destitute'. I attempted to graph the way the system works, eight years ago, and some on the Right didn't like it, but I think it's essentially correct: America's rich and powerful jumped at the opportunity to arbitrage massive differences between the developed world and the developing world in the exchange-rate-adjusted value of land, labour and nonfinancial capital; actually it was a robbery of their own people. 


Lately the elite themselves have begun to wonder if they can survive the smashup of the society in which they live, hence their purchase of boltholes in e.g. New Zealand.

Is Trump a liar, cheat, swindler, sexist adulterer etc? Yes; though as people are learning what's on Hunter Biden's laptop some are wondering whether his crazy behaviour is not symptomatic of something that went seriously wrong in his childhood. In any case, close examination of Biden Senior is beginning to characterise him as a grifter slowly going gaga. 

Some of the American Right seem to me like those heartless, money-mad eighteenth-century English grandees who claimed compensation for drowned slaves as lost cargo, on their maritime insurance; but the more vocal element of the Left is shrieking about history and trying to rewrite it, rather than improving the lot of the underprivileged today; and as I say, the party that claims to represent the interests of the 'minorities' has a stronger interest in the latter remaining in a semi-wretched condition so that they will go on voting for benefits rather than a better life. Similarly in the UK, I've wondered whether, if it could, the British Labour Party would wave a wand to transform the lives of the poor and so make their political 'pals' redundant https://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.com/2017/10/the-wand-of-collusion.html .

This Presidential election is a hard, hard choice, and I think it's significant that it's focused on personalities rather than macroeconomic and foreign policy. I fear that a vote for Biden is a vote for Business As Usual, with little right-on scraps thrown under the table to screaming supporters; with Trump it's whether the favours he grants to his Establishment crocodiles are outweighed by the systemic readjustments he appears to be engineering to prevent Joe Public wearing a barrel.

13 comments:

Paddington said...

The changes being wrought by Trump and the GOP:
elimination of all pensions,
elimination of all government-run healthcare,
elimination of overtime,
elimination of worker safety rules,
elimination of child labour laws,
elimination of science in the CDC and elsewhere,
elimination of public education,
elimination of unions,
elimination of safety rules on drugs,
elimination of environmental protections,
elimination of taxes on the wealthy (Mnuchin is pushing to completely eliminate Capital Gains Taxes)
sale of government assets to select parties at pennies on the dollar,
and so much more.

This is not to help any ordinary American. It is an attempt at a final raping of the whole country, as the US did in South and Central America, leaving a husk.

Paddington said...

By comparison, the Obama administration put many worker and environmental protections in place, and the official Democrat platform for this election includes strengthening unions and worker protections.

Paddington said...

Be careful about the Hunter Biden issue. No-one can verify most of it. The man who 'repaired' it is legally blind, and said in an interview that he could not identify who gave it to him.

Meanwhile, Rudy Giuliani says that it is 50/50 that he got the information from a Russian operative, and the (new) Russian tactic is often to plant things like kiddie porn on opponents.

Sackerson said...

I said it was a hard choice and that many on the Right are heartless crocodiles. The question is whether Trump is merely fooling the commoners or has to pander to the crocs to get enough support to make structural changes.

Protections, great; restoring an economy so that people don't have to treat welfare and other protections as a hammock instead of a safety net, even better. Keep one and advance the other - if that is possible.

HB - I have no comment on the kiddie porn allegation, but HB's military discharge for drug abuse is a fact. Having said that, he's not running for office; but there are questions about Biden pere's parental care of his children - and about JB's possinle involvement in Ukrainian grift. Neither candidate comes to the rostrum with clean hands.

What did the Dems think they were doing, putting JB up front? Really their best?

Paddington said...

That's what the voters chose.

As for Hunter Biden, the NY Times investigated the business transactions tied back to the claims, and not a single one connected to Joe Biden. In addition, they are from 2017. Meanwhile, three of Trump's children are busy making money off Chinese connections.

Personally, I think that Hunter was deeply affected by the death of his mother. His father's dedication to his boys speaks volumes to me about his character.

Sackerson said...

The voters, or the Dem hierarchy? What is/was so unelctable about Bernie Sanders this time and last?

Why on Earth doesn't the Democratic Party have a macroeconomic plan to make meaningful, self-supporting work available to all the people? Or if it does, please show me.

Sackerson said...

Btw that list in your first comments - aren't State legislatures capable of making their own rules? They can certainly turn their States into tax havens (Deaware, Nevada etc) on their own initiative.

Or is it that nothing will stop the callous greed of the powerful until society collapses?

Paddington said...

Yes, they are. But, thanks to extreme gerrymandering, most are controlled by the GOP. In addition, despite their love of 'small government', the GOP at all levels is very fond of passing legislation to prevent smaller bits (counties, cities), from passing rules that they don't like.

One state government forbade cities from establishing their own minimum wage higher than the state's. Ohio's prevented cities from enacting bans on plastic bags.

Paddington said...

I voted for Bernie in the 2016 primary. He is perceived as 'socialist', which here is akin to being in league with the Devil himself. There has been a long-standing propaganda battle, since at least 1918, against any help for regular people.

Jim in San Marcos said...

Paddington's reference to Trumps platform of elimination public education is mis packaged. Trump proposes free choice, public or private education. Public education is a boondoggle of bureaucracy that is worthless in many communities. Free choice allows parents to choose where they send their child. This free choice would end public schools in many districts. It would also end the teachers union, a very powerful political lobby that has always voted for the democrats.

Eliminated government health care is no big deal, free health care for the poor is not free. Most people don't feel the need for health care until their in their 50's. The democrats always pull out examples of people who have fallen between the cracks and want to solve everyone's problems.

I don't see Paddington's list as being relevant, its his view of the world from a politically manipulated perspective; he's a true democrat.

Paddington said...

In the middle of a pandemic, with tens of thousands (many younger) in hospital with COVID, you consider this unimportant?

Not to mention people having children. Even with insurance, and a simple C-section, my first son cost us $10,000 out of pocket in 1996, when I made about $40,000 per year.

US conservatives ignore reality and science, and refuse to see consequences of actions.

Jim in San Marcos said...

Paddington, young people are not dying from the corona virus or are even hospitalized.

My wife had a C section in 1992 for our son and it cost us nothing with her insurance.

I don't think you had any insurance as you claimed or she was pregnant when you got the policy and they put a rider on it.

Paddington said...

Calling me a liar is not a way to have a discussion.

We had Medical Mutual Insurance at the time, which was notorious for high co-pays. My job later moved to self-insurance, and my next son cost much less, even though he was in the ICU for some days.

At last count, over 800 'young' (under 50) people have died from COVID in the US.

According to https://covidtracking.com/data/charts/us-currently-hospitalized, there are about 48,000 currently hospitalized from COVID. According to https://www.healthline.com/health/how-to-make-a-face-mask-with-filter, 40% of those, or about 19,000, are under age 55.

You are not paying attention.