Neither Party is Expressing The Underlying Problem Clearly
But, the democrats will probably kill fewer people
Like many people a few weeks ago, I assumed a Trump victory was inevitable. Because of that, I skipped right past even considering the election seriously, and was only thinking about damage control on the other side.
Harris’ ascension has changed that, but it doesn’t change my understanding of the underlying situation.
While I was trying to understand the causes and conditions of the mess we’re in, and I started listening to this book End Times which I actually thought had a pretty compelling narrative about what has gone wrong. I’m not finished with the book, so I can’t really speak in detail about it, but to just give a quick summary of the parts I understand:
- Societies tend to go through natural periods of “growth” and “decline” and these cycles happen, like, every 100 years. We are in a period of decline.
- Many things can cause a “decline” but there are two big things impacting us now. One is, too many people who want to have “elite” positions in society (think politicians, rich people, etc.) and another is wide spread “immiseration” in the middle and working classes.
What happens, when you have too many “elites” who want to be in positions of power, but can’t get them, you end up with people like Elon Musk and Donald Trump. You get people who have a fair amount of money, power and sway, but not as much as they want, and these people are willing to throw a wrench in the system in hopes of increasing their own personal power. When there are fewer aspiring elites, such people have more respectable paths available to them (aka, if there are fewer rich businessmen, it’s easier for rich businessmen to transition to becoming politicians) but because we have too many elites, we already have too many people vying for those positions, so only some of them get to have them. So, now, maybe you not only have to be rich, but also well connected and able to schmooze with right people politically to have a chance of becoming a politician. And, people who are kind of rough around the edges — people like Musk and Trump — don’t really have hope of getting solid connections like that, so they get pissed off and feel rejected by the system.
Now, while there are many reasons why we may have too many elites today, the big one is, we’ve been effectively pumping wealth out of the middle classes, and giving it to the upper classes for decades. Some of it is stuff like Reaganomics, some of it has been the tech boom which allowed for the concentration of wealth in the hands of relatively few, but suffice it to say — the rich got richer at a cost to the middle classes. Maybe wealth creation doesn’t have to be a zero sum game, but in this case, it kind of was.
Anyway, I highly recommend that book End Times by Peter Turchin for a deeper understanding of the dynamic, but my conclusion so far (not his, I haven’t read his conclusion) is that neither political party is really talking about any kind of policies that would lead to a sufficient wealth redistribution that would fix the problem. Interestingly, in the past, we have had policies that did this. In part, this was why many people did economically very well in the 50s and 60s in America; after the great depression and WW2, the American public (and, most importantly, the American elite) were willing to support economic policies that would seem downright socialist by today’s standards. And, it’s important to note, the elite classes did lose wealth under those policies. There was wealth redistribution of wealth from the elite classes to the middle classes during those decades, However, after the catastrophes of the early 20th century, many of the elites were willing to make the trade off of being less wealthy, but also getting to be an elite in an orderly society.
Musk and Trump may win the power games they are playing, but it will be a pyrrhic victory at best, because they have no chance of ruling over an orderly society. The alt right will blame the inevitable increase in turmoil if Trump wins on the “radical left,” but they won’t be highlighting the deep cause. The simple reason is, both Trump and Musk support economic policies that will continue to pump wealth and resources out of the middle classes into the pockets of the elites. So long as we continue to impoverish working people in America, American society will be unstable.
Now, the left doesn’t really offer (to my mind) a full solution to this — though they at least do not seem to be wanting to increase the wealth pump currently impoverishing the middle classes. However, in my opinion, their policies are simply too tepid to make a significant difference in the short run.
Unfortunately, I don’t think America is ready for the types of policies that would be required to turn this situation around. Too many people have grown up internalizing the values of neoliberalism and Reaganomics to support the sort of “socialist” economic policies that propped up the middle classes in the 50s and 60s.
I think that Gen Z will be ready for them, but it will be a while until they have the political capital to make their will heard, and who fucking knows what state America will be in by the time we get there. But, we have to survive until then.
And, a major issue we have, one that impacts both parties, is an incorrect narrative of the problems facing America.
As far as I can tell, the right seems to think that liberal values and “childless cat ladies” or whatever have made it so that people don’t want to have kids. Look, cats are great, but they’re not greater than billions of years of evolution pushing life to procreate.
Simply stated, people aren’t having kids because they don’t have the money to have kids. The only reason a species won’t reproduce is because they are lacking the resources to reproduce. That’s it. Getting rid of abortion, stripping trans kids of rights or whatever, will not change that underlying reality that people don’t currently have the resources to form families.
However, the right wants to believe they can get the birthrate back up by implementing oppressive social policies, because they don’t want to change their economic policies. Elon Musk doesn’t want to face the fact that, his 200 billion net worth is part of the reason most people aren’t having kids. If you want people to have more kids, fund more schools. Put government grants towards daycare centers rather than oil refineries, or whatever. Like, it’s just really obvious if having kids was cheaper more people would do it.
But, you know, that would be socialism, so we can’t have that. Many people believe this is part of some master plan on behalf of the republican elites to keep the middle classes down, but I don’t. I think this is just a case of garden variety cognitive dissonance, where someone want two incompatible things, and they don’t want to accept that they don’t get to have both.
And, by the way, the libs are subject to some of this cognitive dissonance as well. One major place of mis-attribution, is that liberals put too much emphasis on Trump as a person for our current situation. They also overly demonize the conservative classes. A lot of liberals think America is in the sorry state it’s in because “conservatives are being bad people” but this type of populist behavior is inevitable when you gut the financial wellbeing of the working class. And, historically, the liberal class was supposed to be the party of the working class! Instead of admitting how centrist democrats (starting with Bill Clinton) allowed the economic elites to ransack the the wealth of the working classes, many liberals have preferred to misattribute the causes of societal instability to the lack of morals of conservatives. But, again, a lot of this really just comes back to money, and most Americans not having enough of it.
All that said, the democrats have policies that will improve the situation slightly, whereas the republicans have policies that will throw gasoline on the flames. Democrats are looking to tax the elites and get social programs out to help the middle class, all be it probably too little too late, whereas the republicans are looking to actively looking to double down on the policies that caused this situation in the first place.
The gentle way out of this situation, is to keep moving left until we can normalize similar economic policies to the ones we had in 50s and 60s — something I think Gen Z will be ready for. The hard way out of this situation, is to continue to impoverish the middle class by funding tax breaks to the rich and cutting services to the pubic, by limiting access to thinks like birth control and abortion (which will harm people’s ability to gain financial control over their lives) until literally so many people die, that there are fewer working class people to have to care for. And, that may sound dire, but it’s already happening. Life span has started shrinking for the first time in decades, and we could be seeing just the beginning of it.
AND! I haven’t even touched on the fact that Trump wants to be a dictator. But you know, that part isn’t great either.
Anyway; in case it’s not obvious, I’ll be voting for Harris. But the people who aren’t? Honestly, I’m not mad at them. They have a narrative that’s different from mine, and I can understand why their narrative is compelling to them. However, I believe Trump coming into power will make the country less stable, until the democrats somehow get power back, or until there is a fairly major catastrophe. I hope, at least, I have made a compelling argument as to why I believe what I believe. Even if you don’t agree with me, I just want you to understand my rationale. It’s not based in anger, or resentment for conservatives; I just genuinely believe Harris will lead to better wellbeing for more people, including working class people, than Trump will.
