"There is something deeply, fundamentally wrong with American democracy"
Sadly, I think there is something deeply, fundamentally wrong with America, and I don't see that it can be fixed any time soon. Even if Harris had won narrowly, the great majority of white American men would have chosen Trump as the representative of their worst selves. And white men remain the unmarked category of Americans, and the dominant group among them. As the fable of Solomon says, this too shall pass, but no one can know the day or the time.
What's wrong with America is the same thing that's been wrong with us for 400 years: the evil cultural influences of Borderer know-nothing thuggishness and Cavalier slavemongering authoritarianism. Their power relative to the Quaker-Puritan liberal coalition has waxed and waned and waxed and waned again, and this is a hell of a waxing. But that we have managed to do so much right in spite of them should give us hope. It's going to be important to study when and why and how we managed to push the Borderer-Cavalier evil back down for awhile to see what lessons that history can provide.
I have been pondering the economic effects of his win. He has the power to do what he said he would do. I was interested in how to safe the assets we have. Stocks and bolds and real estate. I think real estate will be hit hard. Last time we took advantage of the housing crash to sell high and buy low. We have a doghole to hide in waiting out the economic carnage. Should we sell our RE now and buy back in later? How should we play the stock market?
A sincere question: in the past when the Democratic Party has exercised power and been successful in moving the US toward social democracy (the 1930s and 1940s, the 1960s), wasn’t the Party an uneasy coalition of factions who didn’t fully trust each other (southern whites, urban white ethics, African Americans, progressive intellectuals, labor unions)? Why and how should we expect a party that wouldn’t have these kind of internal factions? What’s the difference between an effective combination of interests and a destructive one?
Wow, you and millions like you just don't get it! Yes, there IS something deeply and fundamentally wrong with America. You can see it in Kamala's closing message: Don't vote for Hitler?
The single most destructive act of Democratic Party leadership was the deliberate cultivation of Trump Derangement Syndrome in order to distract attention from the weakness, vice, venality, and corruption of Democrat elites in power. Trump Derangement Syndrome is closely related to Russian Derangement Syndrome, and the DNC married these two psychoses with its Trump Russian Collusion Hoax.
Show me where in history has a message so hateful ever resulted in a free and fair government. Hate is what has been deeply and fundamentally wrong with America and it started when Obama promised he would fundamentally transform America. Why did America need to be “fundamentally transformed” and what would that transformation look like? It's what we've been living through the last 4-years. Identity Politics to create class warfare. Read the substack article “How Marxism Subverted America” by David Josef Volodzko.
Yes, Harris closing message was Don't vote for Hitler. Trump's closing message? Time to restore the American dream. When did restoring the American dream become fascist?
I honestly don't understand the two takes "We don’t just need to learn from the other side, but to coopt some of their coalition so it becomes ours" and "And there is no getting around the fact that Democrats didn’t have a big enough coalition to win the election."!
Harris tried to peel off some of the Republican coalition, accepting endorsements from Dick fucking Cheney, the architect of the catastrophe in Iraq and the post-9/11 surveillance state, and from people who worked for Reagan!
And at the same time the Biden/Harris administration spent four years actively alienating leftists, especially in the last year. Heck, Matt Stoller argues convincingly that Biden's most popular policy was anti-trust, spear-headed by Lina Khan and when Harris' donors called for her to be fired, she didn't commit to her but kept mum.
Social-democrat parties in Europe have spent decades trying to capture voters from the right while alienating their left-wing supporters and it's never worked. I understand that from a strategic perspective, Democrats might consider left-wing voters a captive audience given the two-party system but it still strikes me as better strategy to firm up one's own coalition before trying to poach voters from the other.
Her book with John Ahlquist, In the Interest of Others, lays out the argument. She also has a forthcoming summary piece in Daedalus that should be freely available when it is published.
I could not agree with you more about learning from megachurches; the subject came up years ago in Klingenthal in a very different, more optimistic context. But it looks from where I am that the dominant faction of the American Left regards Christianity as a disgusting confession of failure and and a matter for shame. For the one thing the winners in America know is that they are not sinners. It is that smugness as much as anything else which has made democracy unworkable.
yes: winners meaning those who make money — who succeed. Which in America means all the people who run the Democratic party. They may not be rich like the richest Republicans, but they are separated by an abyss from the working classes.
Just a drive by 'you leftists' comment with little intellectual merit that I could see - so deleted. I'm happy with criticism/engagement - this didn't seem to be that.
"There is something deeply, fundamentally wrong with American democracy"
Sadly, I think there is something deeply, fundamentally wrong with America, and I don't see that it can be fixed any time soon. Even if Harris had won narrowly, the great majority of white American men would have chosen Trump as the representative of their worst selves. And white men remain the unmarked category of Americans, and the dominant group among them. As the fable of Solomon says, this too shall pass, but no one can know the day or the time.
What's wrong with America is the same thing that's been wrong with us for 400 years: the evil cultural influences of Borderer know-nothing thuggishness and Cavalier slavemongering authoritarianism. Their power relative to the Quaker-Puritan liberal coalition has waxed and waned and waxed and waned again, and this is a hell of a waxing. But that we have managed to do so much right in spite of them should give us hope. It's going to be important to study when and why and how we managed to push the Borderer-Cavalier evil back down for awhile to see what lessons that history can provide.
I have been pondering the economic effects of his win. He has the power to do what he said he would do. I was interested in how to safe the assets we have. Stocks and bolds and real estate. I think real estate will be hit hard. Last time we took advantage of the housing crash to sell high and buy low. We have a doghole to hide in waiting out the economic carnage. Should we sell our RE now and buy back in later? How should we play the stock market?
Thank you. Well said. With the exception of this quip: "We are all sinners, all equally undeserving". That part's not true. But thumbs up to the rest.
A sincere question: in the past when the Democratic Party has exercised power and been successful in moving the US toward social democracy (the 1930s and 1940s, the 1960s), wasn’t the Party an uneasy coalition of factions who didn’t fully trust each other (southern whites, urban white ethics, African Americans, progressive intellectuals, labor unions)? Why and how should we expect a party that wouldn’t have these kind of internal factions? What’s the difference between an effective combination of interests and a destructive one?
First thought: didn’t those factions have political leadership that could negotiate with each other and demand sacrifices from their constituencies?
I want to write a piece on 'partyism' bringing together the arguments of people like Chloe Thurston, Dan Galvin, & Schlozman and Rosenfeld that will talk to this - not in the sense that I have grand ideas but that there is a debate happening that people ought pay attention to. This gives a quick intro to some of it - https://static1.squarespace.com/static/540f1546e4b0ca60699c8f73/t/580e350559cc685a22cda90c/1477326086414/RosenfeldSchlozman+The+Hollow+Parties.pdf
Wow, you and millions like you just don't get it! Yes, there IS something deeply and fundamentally wrong with America. You can see it in Kamala's closing message: Don't vote for Hitler?
The single most destructive act of Democratic Party leadership was the deliberate cultivation of Trump Derangement Syndrome in order to distract attention from the weakness, vice, venality, and corruption of Democrat elites in power. Trump Derangement Syndrome is closely related to Russian Derangement Syndrome, and the DNC married these two psychoses with its Trump Russian Collusion Hoax.
Show me where in history has a message so hateful ever resulted in a free and fair government. Hate is what has been deeply and fundamentally wrong with America and it started when Obama promised he would fundamentally transform America. Why did America need to be “fundamentally transformed” and what would that transformation look like? It's what we've been living through the last 4-years. Identity Politics to create class warfare. Read the substack article “How Marxism Subverted America” by David Josef Volodzko.
Yes, Harris closing message was Don't vote for Hitler. Trump's closing message? Time to restore the American dream. When did restoring the American dream become fascist?
Democrats didn't force Trump to try and stage a self-coup and reject the will of the American voters in 2021.
I honestly don't understand the two takes "We don’t just need to learn from the other side, but to coopt some of their coalition so it becomes ours" and "And there is no getting around the fact that Democrats didn’t have a big enough coalition to win the election."!
Harris tried to peel off some of the Republican coalition, accepting endorsements from Dick fucking Cheney, the architect of the catastrophe in Iraq and the post-9/11 surveillance state, and from people who worked for Reagan!
And at the same time the Biden/Harris administration spent four years actively alienating leftists, especially in the last year. Heck, Matt Stoller argues convincingly that Biden's most popular policy was anti-trust, spear-headed by Lina Khan and when Harris' donors called for her to be fired, she didn't commit to her but kept mum.
Social-democrat parties in Europe have spent decades trying to capture voters from the right while alienating their left-wing supporters and it's never worked. I understand that from a strategic perspective, Democrats might consider left-wing voters a captive audience given the two-party system but it still strikes me as better strategy to firm up one's own coalition before trying to poach voters from the other.
I 'spose megachurches are more mass produced than Taylor Swifts.
The loss is explained by racism and Misogyny. Just like 2016. Same old same old.
Where is a good place to start with Margaret Levi
Her book with John Ahlquist, In the Interest of Others, lays out the argument. She also has a forthcoming summary piece in Daedalus that should be freely available when it is published.
I could not agree with you more about learning from megachurches; the subject came up years ago in Klingenthal in a very different, more optimistic context. But it looks from where I am that the dominant faction of the American Left regards Christianity as a disgusting confession of failure and and a matter for shame. For the one thing the winners in America know is that they are not sinners. It is that smugness as much as anything else which has made democracy unworkable.
Finding this hard to parse: "winners" meaning those with worldly success, yes, rather than those who won last night?
yes: winners meaning those who make money — who succeed. Which in America means all the people who run the Democratic party. They may not be rich like the richest Republicans, but they are separated by an abyss from the working classes.
Henry?
Just a drive by 'you leftists' comment with little intellectual merit that I could see - so deleted. I'm happy with criticism/engagement - this didn't seem to be that.