Where we are now.

My last few posts have attempted to put some of the historical ugliness of American presidential campaigns into context for understanding the ugliness of today. (here, here, and here) While it would be impossible to detail all of the empirical events of even one campaign, it is important to try and pull out as many comparisons as possible. What I would like to demonstrate is that the somewhat idealistic perception that politics should be about persuasion and democratic process, that politicians are better than schoolyard bullies, and that we as a nation are somehow now grown up is an illusion. The perception had some merit after WWII, divisive figures like Joseph McCarthy and Richard Nixon on his worst days could be seen as aberrations or exceptions to the rule of professional, mature leaders taking responsibility for America's place in the world. However, the polarization and breakdown of compromise, to say nothing of bipartisanship that has accelerated since 1980 makes the case that it is almost the opposite that is true. The New Deal coalition that saw us through the Great Depression, World War II and Cold War was the actual aberration.

So if we start at the assumption that politicians are corrupt and irresponsible, and that the special interests they represent are incompetent, greedy, selfish, short-sighted, and have no actual allegiance to the United States, then at least we have a basis or starting point. At the same time we should not fall into conspiratorial thinking, both-siderism, or fatalism that it is all just an act. This is just as dangerous as idealistic naivete. Then, if we find a leader who bucks the corrupt and cynical status quo it will be possible to raise expectations a little. But there is the strong possibility that the "establishment" or whatever the forces that restrain democracy happen to be called at the moment, will simply swallow anyone like that.

What then is the proper balance? There are obviously forces that resemble conspiracies in America, but degenerating into frothing-at-the-mouth Alex Jones disciples who see everything as a vast and coordinated conspiracy to destroy freedom or reduce you to slavery while ignoring the empirical reality that most of these conspiracies can be explained by simple greed or incompetence does no service to a good and just society. Alex Jones and his minions do a great job of keeping people distracted by "chemtrails" and lizard men though. People that might otherwise work toward solving problems more out in the open. You are not that clever fellas, so knock it off with all the false flag accusations.

It is both easy and frustrating to study "conservatism" in the contemporary United States. Because, simply put, there are no ideas. Intellectual historians half a century from now are going to look back at our last half century and be completely baffled. The Republican Party platform is the incoherent rambling of a mental patient, all their policy positions are utter failures and contradictory. Abroad the bullying swagger of militarism has not solved a single problem and at home the country is like a devastated peasant society as Noam Chomsky has put it. James Galbraith spends an entire chapter in his book The Predator State detailing how free market fundamentalism has been tried and has failed completely in every metric.

The entirety of the right wing message is deceit. They threaten the American people based on lies; on economics, "if we raise the minimum wage the economy will collapse!" on foreign policy, "ISIS is here already!" on elections ""if we don't make the right choice in November, then we will be attacked again". They lie about history "the civil war was not about slavery it was about taxes and overreaching federal power". They lie about ideology "it was the democrat[sic] party that voted against civil rights" and my favorite "it was called the national socialist party!" They have turned Christianity into a religion of war and hate, selfishness and greed. And now, finally they have proven that the "political correctness" tyranny that they constantly rail against is completely toothless by bringing racism back into the open and paying no price for it.

Then there are the rest of us, who have not been able to make a dent in the right-wingers delusions or hate. The majority, or nearly so, of Americans have remained politically inert. How many millions of regular Americans feel the hurt inflicted by corporate greed? How many of them then fall into the right wing trap of blaming government, their government, for the suffering causes by big business? Even with a vibrant network of liberal bloggers, pod-casters, and websites the voice of the left in this country is still a whisper in the hurricane of Fox News et al. One of the most interesting and least talked about aspects of political debates as far as I can tell is the collapse of the Republicans as the party of business. They seem to be less able or willing to cater to business' real needs and instead seem to have become the short-sighted and pale imitation of what a working class person thinks he would need to do in power to please businessmen. Or maybe the deepest, darkest id of the businessman. But government shutdowns and credit downgrades do not help private businesses. Though American business has been spectacularly incompetent, corrupt, and short-sighted in the twenty first century. At least at the top, these business leaders seem incapable of doing anything more than buying elections and stealing from the public to pad their enormous salaries. Maybe I'm wrong, it doesn't seem to be a topic of much interest. 

Democracy is messy, always has been. Democracy is hard, it is a continuous struggle. In an ideal world, democracy allows the best among us to compete for the honor of serving the public but we don't live in that ideal world. That is the play-land of an educated, secure, middle-class society that is both informed and active in politics. What we have instead is a frightened, angry, ignorant, and insecure mass of people barely making ends meet who are often falling prey to the worst among us. So, anyone reading this that cares about democracy and building a just society where extreme inequality is a relic of the past has their work cut out for them. But the future starts now. We can make the "good old days" the reality instead of the aberration but it is going to take sustained effort