Crisis and Cure: Writing Both Political and Personal

This is an interesting article. I am not sure that I agree 100% with Wolfgang Streek's thesis that we are headed into a dark age, or that Capitalism is doomed. But that said, there is much here to consider. I am particularly struck by the idea that Capitalism is in peril because before it always had enemies to come in and fix it whenever it went wrong. But, now, it has triumphed...all its enemies are dead...and so it has no governors to restrain its rush to destruction. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/dec/09/wolfgang-streeck-the-german-economist-calling-time-on-capitalism?CMP=fb_gu

Okay, so this is going to be a little crazy. But bear with me. Here’s another idea for how to, well, fight back. Or at least prepare for the next four to eight (God forbid!) years. It is going to be a little odd, but please don’t just stop reading when you see it. There is a method to my madness. Here’s the idea: Join a church. No, really. I mean it. I know that sounds bizarre, particularly coming from me. I, mean, I am Mr. Secular Humanism.  But, here’s the thing. I seem to be involved with a local United Church of Christ (UCC). It is small, very liberal, and very activist. (A bunch of us from the congregation are headed down to visit the local Islamic Center for Friday prayers this very afternoon.) And here’s why I’m suggesting that you get involved with a church or synagogue or whatever. We need networks in this alien age. We need to be able to touch base with like minded people, and to find resources. Churches are tailor-made for that. They’re national and even internati

Hello, Everyone, Sorry for the delay. I had a brief medical thing—had a stent put in. I tell people the election broke my heart 👦 But the current issue of the Nation has some great articles on what to do next. Definitely check it out. https://www.thenation.com/issue/december-5-12-2016-issue/

Shortly after I posted my reflections on the Left/Liberal debacle of 2016, I received a note from an old friend and former professor, Harvey Green, heretofore of New England but now a resident of El Dorado, a small community outside of Santa Fe, New Mexico. He offered me his own meditations on the election, and on Liberalism’s failure. He has very kindly agreed to allow me to publish them here. ~ mjt Harvey Green In some of the states—particularly in the Midwest, evangelical Protestants broke heavily for DT [Donald Trump], in large part because of his stance on abortion their desire to control the Supreme Court.  There is not much she [Hilary Clinton] could have done about that, however.  But the real rub is this:   In the Midwest and states such as OH, WI, MI, PA, and FL the people who voted DT [Donald Trump] did so because he offered them some sort of vague notion that he could ameliorate some of the uncertainty borne not only of the economic crash of 2008, but also the tren

Hello, Everyone, This is going to be somewhat strange, but, basically, I am attempting to put together a document which will explore and explain the 2016 election. Then, it will attempt as well to suggest ways out of the mess. What happened, in other words, and where do we go from here? I say it will be strange, and that’s for several reasons—first, because it will not be entirely by me. I am looking to you to provide comments, thoughts, expansions, critiques, and even (perhaps) whole sections of the work. I am hoping to make it available to the world on the web under a creative commons mark. I suppose, then, it will be less a manuscript than a conversation. Second, it will be somewhat rambling and even, yes, incoherent. But that’s the nature of discourse and conversation. It is always a work in progress, and sometimes lacks focus even when it is making the most progress. Further, it will be broken up into three sub-sections, or perhaps the word I’m looking for is “sub-conversations.”

So what happened? Why did Trump, that “American Tragedy,” to quote the New Yorker , stun us all by coming to power? We all of us were so certain that he was ridiculous, and that no one in their right mind would vote for him, and that in the end he would be rejected by a landslide. Yet, on Tuesday night, he slid easy past the obvious winner, Hillary Clinton Many, many factors...obviously...are at work here. Changing demographics, changing sex roles, income inequality, all those play a role. Indeed, I hope that you, the reader, will offer on those factors and others that occur to you. But, I think there is a fundamental change at work here. Specifically, we are now at the end of the industrial age. Where lots of people used to be employed operating machines and building other machines, now the machines are operating themselves. Automation and off-shoring (which is a kind of automation, in that it requires large, semi-autonomous container ships to be effective) has vastly restricted indus

Okay, whether or not my analysis is correct of the economic situation is correct, the Liberal Left failed dramatically the last election...when it should have done very well indeed. Why? Alas, there are many, many things wrong with us as a social movement. But, I think, we failed chiefly because the Liberal Left had become a private club closed to new members, because it had embraced an ideology compatible with large corporations but not people, because it had divided itself into powerless grouplets based on gender and identity politics, because it failed to reach out to the young (or even taken them seriously), and, most of all, because it lacks a vision and a goal. Let me take these one at time. 1) Elitism and a closed shop within the Democratic party and other liberal institutions  Bluntly, the Democratic party, and particularly the DNC, along with more of the rest of the Liberal Establishment than is healthy, has become a private to which ordinary mortals are simply not adm

So what do we do now? How to do we respond to this disaster called Donald Trump? That will greatly depend on exactly what sort a government Trump’s will prove to be. I have written on this as well and you can see what I suspect to be the various possible scenarios that we may face (ranging from Fascism to Chaos) here, "The Trump White House: What Are The Scenarios?" But, whatever we face, the Liberal Left will have to adapt. In particular, it will have to prepare for long years in the wilderness, re-organize itself as a vital and energetic organization, build bridges with those it had previously excluded, and, most important of all, seek a new Message...which, I suspect, will also be based on the same economic crisis which has already wounded us. To take it one at a time: 1) Prepare for the worst—it is entirely possible that we will be excluded from power for decades. I hope that is not the case. I hope that the Liberal Left will be able to get its act together and r

And that, basically, is that. As I say, I invite you all to make comments, suggestions, propose revisions, and even write whole sections for possible inclusion in this document. It is, after all, a living manuscript and one which seeks yet more authors. I shouldn’t be the only one here...and, of course, you will be credited in all that you do. So, please, give me your insights. And let us hope that we may move forward, no matter how insane the situation may seem, over the next few years. cheers mjt

What will a Trump White House mean for the nation? Frankly, I believe that this is no ordinary change of administrations. This is, indeed, a fundamental sea-change is the way the government is organized and in the way the nation is governed. The Trumpsters are too radical, too unusual, too inexperienced, and too vitriolic for it to be otherwise. So, we have several possible futures. Let me list some of them: A) Worst Case Scenario - we have something like a fascist dictatorship. I wish I could say that is an impossibility, but it isn’t. Given Trump’s dominance of the Republican party, and given the fact that the GOP now controls the Senate, the House, and the Executive...and given the fact that Trump could very well pack the Supreme Court with his own judges, it is entirely feasible that we have seen the end of democracy in America. Those who point out that there are constitutional limits on his power are willfully blind. The GOP in its ongoing war with Obama has already set

I propose a utopian goal for the Liberal Left. I propose that we set ourselves the national goal of an age in which all or most hard work is done by machines, and we humans would be left free to do as we please. Admittedly, this is utopian. At the very best, it would take long generations of work, much basic technical research, and might require that we severely limit our population. But, difficult as it would be to achieve, it is (I think) within the realm of the possible. And it would give us a goal, a message, that would far outshine anything that the right has to offer today. Let us embrace it, then. The alternatives are so much worse.

I very much fear that the Liberal Left (perhaps because of the fact that women play such an important role in it) have suffered from a serious case of Women Are Wonderful (WOW) syndrome. (It really exists, by the way. You can look it up on Wikipedia.) Basically, this has meant that we’ve assumed that women as a group will naturally support our positions — except, of course, for a few tragic cases, like Sarah Palin or whoever. Otherwise, we’ve said to ourselves, women will obviously see the correctness of everything we say, and vote our way. Except, guess what? By some measures, over half of all white women who voted do so for Trump. Why? I have no idea. But, I am guessing that the same economic factors that played a role in giving Trump white male votes played the same role with women. But, I don’t know that for a fact, and the question needs to be explored. We need to know what it happened, and what to do about it. And, whether or not we figure out their motivation, we need to prepare

I am about to say something now that is, in fact, unspeakable. It is a social crime to say what I’m about to say. It is something that will gain me endless enemies and few friends. But here goes anyway. I say it because we are now in a real crisis and it must be said. Feminism is at least partly responsible for putting Donald Trump in the White House. The Liberal Left is eager to point to misogyny as the reason Hillary Clinton did not win the election. But it is far, far less eager to consider the damage the Left itself did her chances when it actively and joyfully alienated men in general, and white men in particular, from all walks of life. Consider for a moment. Let us say that you are a poor, white male.  You are unemployed. You have no chances of employment. You have no chance of advancement. You have no future and you know it. And you look to Liberalism. What do you see? You see a movement that seems to be composed almost entirely of upper class women —women who regard

Elsewhere in this piece, I have written about the failure of the Liberal Left to reach many white males, and worse, that it has frequently alienated them. I’m not alone in stating that particular fact. Indeed, if there is a theme to a lot of the soul searching that has been going on after the election, the need to reach the white male and other Trump supporters seems to be a constant. I agree with that. I think we should make a much greater effort to reach white males, and particular poor ones. At the very least, the Liberal Left needs to stop insulting them on a regular basis. That said, I am not convinced that the Liberal Left can woo back white male or any other Trump supporters. I think we can reach a fraction of them, and that would be helpful and important. Given the narrowness of Trump’s victory in the last election, every vote could help. (Imagine, for instance, if just ten percent of his voters had gone our way.) But, look at the postings in pro-Trump regions of the web.

Credits This entire document is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. You may distribute it freely, but much provide proper attribution. The author of the basic document is Michael Jay Tucker. Additional authors are indicated in the relevant material. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License .