The
inestimable Matt Cotton asked me whether I wouldn't like to write a spot on his
blog, Wheat State Pravda. I found this confusing for any number of reasons, not
least of which is that I don't know what pravda means. My wife tells me it
means "truth". I feel I must believe her, as it would just be too
ironic if she were lying.
The
chief reason for my confusion, however, is that this is to be a
politically-motivated blog and, for the most part, Matt and I tend to agree. I
do love to read my terribly clever and erudite writing, however, so in
attempting to find something to write about, I perhaps naturally gravitated
toward finding those points on which we did not agree.
One
particularly telling example: to put words in his mouth, Matt believes in a
grassroots, electoral solution to the various woes facing our country1. I
believe that the only way systemic change will happen is if that system
collapses and is rebuilt, painfully and painstakingly, brick by brick.
Otherwise, it's simply too broken.
Something
like that. More so maybe that I’m willing to turn the mechanisms already in
place against the system, because I think that doing so is better than the
solution of violent revolution. I’ve been reading a lot about what it was like
to live in rubble lately, maybe it’s opened me to the idea of moving the
existing bricks around until we achieve the desired result. We’re playing two
different games of Tetris. But I agree that we have come to rather wobbly point
as a nation as a whole.
Most
people are stupid, apathetic, cynical, jaded, or some combination thereof. Most
of the rest are party loyalists. The kind of numbers and the necessary will to
affect real, needed change just don't exist. Consider that only six senators
have been elected to the US Senate as independents since 2000, five of whom
switched from one party or the other, the sixth of whom is Bernie Sanders.
Consider also that, on the state level in both Houses of Representatives and
State Senates, only 31 currently serve as third-party members (out of a total
of 7,383). Further, of the 34 states needed to call an Article V Constitutional
Convention to amend the document, only five cite campaign finance reform as
their objective2
The
illustrious interlocutor called Cotton also pointed out in his most-recent
entry Hillary Clinton's (hereafter: Hil-dog's) massive superdelegate lead on
Bernie Sanders3.
Without specifically saying so, Matt intimated his distaste bordering on
disgust with the Party elite exerting so much control on the primary process.
There is an argument to be made that the parties probably should serve the people, but the truth of
the matter is that they don't, and are not required to. The Democratic and
Republican parties (and any others, for that matter) are not legally obliged to
bend to the will of the people in the primaries. In fact, superdelegates exist
specifically as a potential check against such a situation as the party sees
fit.
I think you
actually make a really important point here. Party’s are political apparatuses
designed to secure and wield state power: it’s maybe useful to think of them as
“states in waiting,” and the state is always going to put it’s self-interest as
priority one. States are also a mechanism designed to chew up people and spit
out things powered solely by good intentions. The rationale behind
superdelegates this election has helped me understand through real experience.
It makes getting anywhere close to the real levers of power within the existing
system, you have to be will to put the interests of the party above the will of
the people. From a strict strategy perspective, I can understand it.
And
realistically, that's how it should be. There are any number of logical reasons
for this, very few of which are nefarious. The party wants to protect itself, and
put the most electable candidate up for the Presidency. Suppose closer to the
end of the primary season it is discovered that Sanders was being bankrolled by
Israel, and that he was going to use his position as President to declare war
on Iran. [I want to be very, very clear: I don't believe that to be true, at
all. It's just a hyperbolic hypothetical.] It looks like he's going to win the
nomination by popular vote: the only option for the party to take is to use the
superdelegates to overcome his lead. Remember: the party desperately wants one
of its own in the White House.
And by one
of their own, you mean a capitalist.
Consider
the matter also from the perspective of the party in a less extreme way: Bernie
Sanders is an avowed socialist, and that word and its concurrent ideas
(understood or not) are totally repugnant to the Right. What does that do to
the voter turnout, and the subsequent fortunes of the Democratic party in the
general election? Twist it around: if Trump gets the nomination on the GOP
side, would you not vote and encourage your friends and families to vote just
to help make sure that his presidency never came to be?
I do agree
here, no matter the outcome of the Democratic side, this country’s electorate
has to overwhelmingly defeat Trump in a general election. Until he is their
official nominee I will continue to be cautiously optimistic that the GOP will
nominate someone slightly less terrifying to nationwide electorate, though I
can’t help but think that the 80% of the country that aren’t his supporters are just licking their chops at the thought of him on a debate stage against a Democrat. If we don't get the chance to BOO him into a wide-eyed frothing frenzy that ends with him yelling “I’LL KILL
ALL OF YOU” before a hush settles upon the crowd (I give this 3:1 odds on this
exact scene legitimately happening if he wins the nomination, any takers?), I am going to feel just ever so slightly like we missed a golden opportunity for comedy. Yet
as much as I want his campaign to be some sort of joke or bad dream, it isn’t
anymore. There are people coming out of the woodwork to support him by buying
his hats and shouting at brown people that protest his rallies. As yesterday, he just won his second primary in South Carolina. This is the America in which we currently reside. This is going to be our lived history. It’s time we start at least having the conversation about
what the Trump campaign represents: American Fascism.
Fascism is corporatist—I think Trump’s record on eminent domain is enough to prove that—and revolves around a strong man persona. It also creates vast swaths of imagined internal and external enemies that deflects any blame away from how insane actual policies are. And with that in mind, I’m going to go ahead and make the comparison. I’m not comparing Trump to Hitler here; I’m comparing him to Mussolini.
Fascism is corporatist—I think Trump’s record on eminent domain is enough to prove that—and revolves around a strong man persona. It also creates vast swaths of imagined internal and external enemies that deflects any blame away from how insane actual policies are. And with that in mind, I’m going to go ahead and make the comparison. I’m not comparing Trump to Hitler here; I’m comparing him to Mussolini.
Which leads
me to my next point: now I’m going to compare him to Hitler. I’m not going to
comment on it in any sort of asinine 1:1 comparison, but I need him for the history
lesson. Because to play devil’s reactionary advocate here, we need not forget
the lessons of 1933. That’s right, what I really want to compare is the Weimar
Republic before that entity was destroyed following Hitler’s ascension to the
chancellorship and the United States in 2016. Trump’s disposition towards the
American Constitution seems to be no better than Hitler’s toward the
Republic’s. And the only reason he rose to power in the first place is because
the German left splintered into two camps—the militant and radical left. In
Joseph Stalin’s long history of foreign policy missteps, this was a big one,
the Comintern was directed to focus its energies on weakening the social
democrats rather than working together against the burgeoning right.
I’ve already come to terms that in November I have to cast a vote for Hillary
as a kill-switch to Trump in the White House, that’s something I can live with.
If we want to focus about making a political revolution short of violent
uprising, I’m all for it. If the Democratic Party as we know it doesn’t survive
this election cycle, I’m there, but it can’t be at the cost of letting him win.
This campaign is doing wonders of exposing the rot at the core of the DNC, and
it’s something 4 years of a Clinton presidency will probably drive home to
anyone paying attention. We need to be ready for the possibility that Bernie
isn’t going to get this nomination, and we need to start thinking about how to
channel the anger of all the people that are going to be pissed as hell at that
fact.
I think we are on the edge of something major, politically speaking, something potentially seismic. Parties will continue to operate in the current system exactly as you have described. Again, here we agree—parties are the state in microcosm, and in the language of states power is a 0-sum game.
I think we are on the edge of something major, politically speaking, something potentially seismic. Parties will continue to operate in the current system exactly as you have described. Again, here we agree—parties are the state in microcosm, and in the language of states power is a 0-sum game.
The
political parties don't exist to serve the people, they exist to protect
themselves. Even if the Parties or their leaders really believe they're
representing the best interests of their voters (which seems doubtful given the
current state of campaign finance law), their perspective on how to do that is
rooted in self-preservation. After all, in a two-party system, you win or you
lose. The superdelegate lead that Hil-dog has is understandable and, in a
perverse way, necessary. Which is worse, Hil-dog getting the nomination due to
superdelegates, or Sanders getting the nomination and losing the White House?
This might seem to be a false dichotomy, but in terms of electability, Hil-dog
is the better option. Why wouldn't the party try to protect itself?
Full
disclosure: if I vote, I'll be voting for Bernie, though not with a very clear
conscience. As stated above, even if Bernie is elected he will accomplish very
little of what he wants to do without a supermajority in both houses of
Congress. Electing him to office would essentially be voting for more gridlock,
probably even worse gridlock. What happens then? For my money, the only thing
that can defeat this immobility is a crisis of considerable proportions, one
which either causes or has the potential to cause a systemic collapse4.
Here again,
we’re in agreement. Jaron and I went to a rally here in Lawrence recently, and
I wasn’t much impressed. Bernie rallies that I’ve been to are more like really
bad music shows—a bunch of undergrads who’s political views were shaped by
memes on the internet. It’s an immature understanding of politics, and while
I’m glad they’re lending their support to the electoral math of the thing, we
need to have some serious talks about consumerism and how it pertains to their
day to day lives and political views. But I digress. I also am disgusted by the
Kansas political process, which makes me register as a Democrat to even
participate in the primary—the #BrownbackRegime has some of the strictest voter
registration laws too, so my wife and I will both have to show our birth
certificates to even register to vote in Lawrence.
I may
fairly be accused of cynicism, or a defeatist perspective. I'm no doomsday
prepper, yet even in the face of such criticism I would urge any readers to
keep a weather eye on the horizon. Be it the current slow-motion global
economic meltdown; the possible break up of the EU later this year when Spain
loses Catalonia, the EU loses the UK, Italy's largest bank Unicredit collapses
and plunges it into a deep depression; the destabilizing collapse of
governments around the world as their major source of income – crude oil –
remains alarmingly unprofitable; the inevitable food riots caused by a
combination of climate-change-driven drought and flooding and the UG-99 wheat
stem fungus; or some other sort of natural disaster or manmade disaster
intentional or not, a shock is coming. And when it does, things are going to
change, either out of necessity or human nature.
And with
that, we’ll leave off. Until next time, comrades!
Thanks
for reading.
1 In brief, these woes include elitism,
racism, corruption, the two-party system, Republicans, Democrats, Republicans,
and sexism, among other things. That's all just in the most recent entry, which
I strongly suggest you read if you haven't already.
2Currently,
29 states have "standing calls" for a convention; most want a
balanced budget amendment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_state_applications_for_an_Article_V_Convention#List_of_State_Applications_for_an_Article_V_Convention
3Matt
linked to a useful resource discussing what a superdelegate is, but if you're
unfamiliar with the term, a superdelegate is a higher-up in the party's
structure who can cast his or her vote for any potential candidate the choose,
regardless of what their state's voters decide. It's the party-level equivalent
of the electoral college, though superdelegates generally vote according to
their state's wishes.
4In the
interest of brevity, I won't try to make the historical argument for the
inevitablity of shocks or the benefits they provide (long-term) in this entry.
It is an interesting discussion, though, that I hope to take up later.
