Introduction
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.” These will be:
1) What happened and why? What were the underlying mechanisms that led to the Trump win?
2) What is wrong with the Liberal Left? That is, why do we fail so spectacularly?
3) What do we do now? Given that we have what could be a genuine authoritarianism in power, how do we survive the next few years and fight back?
Finally, I should say that I do have a personal interpretation to offer (though not to impose). I believe that our current disaster is based in economics. Specifically, I think that the transition from an industrial to a highly automated, post-industrial economy in which there are few jobs and very little place for most people is where we find the roots of the problem.
And I believe that these same forces may be the source of our salvation. If the Liberal Left embraces the idea of “the end of work,” and what Erik Brynjolfsson called “The Digital Athens” (i.e., a social system in which machines do most or all of the hard labor and humans are free to pursue intellectual, artistic, scholarly, athletic, and other personal goals) then we would have the message and the utopian goal necessary to win back support.
Okay, ready? Good. Let’s go.
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.” These will be:
1) What happened and why? What were the underlying mechanisms that led to the Trump win?
2) What is wrong with the Liberal Left? That is, why do we fail so spectacularly?
3) What do we do now? Given that we have what could be a genuine authoritarianism in power, how do we survive the next few years and fight back?
Finally, I should say that I do have a personal interpretation to offer (though not to impose). I believe that our current disaster is based in economics. Specifically, I think that the transition from an industrial to a highly automated, post-industrial economy in which there are few jobs and very little place for most people is where we find the roots of the problem.
And I believe that these same forces may be the source of our salvation. If the Liberal Left embraces the idea of “the end of work,” and what Erik Brynjolfsson called “The Digital Athens” (i.e., a social system in which machines do most or all of the hard labor and humans are free to pursue intellectual, artistic, scholarly, athletic, and other personal goals) then we would have the message and the utopian goal necessary to win back support.
Okay, ready? Good. Let’s go.
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