Part One: Why Did It Happen? The Economic Motive
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 industrial employment.
The theory was that we would move into “the information based economy” (i.e., white collar jobs) and/or the service based economy and that these would take up the slack. However, is that isn’t working out that way. Only so many of us can be waitresses or fold sweaters at The Gap.
Worse...far worse!...the white collar jobs are themselves increasingly subject to automation and off-shoring. Think of the number of help desks that are in India. Think of the amount of office work that is now being performed by machines.
The result of all this is larger and larger numbers of people who are either out of work, or who are at least threatened with unemployment, under-employment, and marginalization. (In some ways, I am one myself. The trade press world folded before the Web, which is a kind of white collar robot. The academy, which I then tried to enter, is no longer a place where anyone can earn a living as a teacher. It is a place where managers impose business-oriented solutions on an ever dwindling number of under-paid adjuncts and “teaching” is done by automated online system.)
Some form of social change was therefore inevitable. It was only a matter of time before we say some sort of political movement designed to ease the fears and pains of the most threatened within our society.
I had hoped that it would come from the political Left and from the young. I had hoped that Millennials and other groups would unite and work toward some sort political revolution. It almost happened, indeed, with Bernie Sanders. Unfortunately, the DNC was able to frustrate that movement and impose Hillary Clinton on the part. This will, I fear, go down in history as one of the greatest blunders in the history of American politics.
Still, I had faith. I was certain that Hillary would be our next president and that we would have at least four years for the left and the young to organize and push their own agenda. Alas, I was so very wrong.
What happened instead is that the Right took charge of the revolution. The RNC was less well organized, less well-connected, and less ruthless than the DNC. And it placed its hopes in candidates, like Jeb Bush, who had no personal charisma and were unable to respond to Trump’s bullying. It was thus unable to repress him the way the DNC strangled the Sanders campaign.
This meant that Trump was free to touch the resentments of the working class, the middle class, and many individuals who simply identified themselves as threatened . These people could and should have been included in a larger, anti-establishment coalition, but without intelligent leadership from the Left, they fell instead into the hands of a dangerous demagogue.
Indeed, it is very, very important to understand from whence is support is coming. Liberals and the established left have more or less completely missed the point. It has assumed that the Trump-supporters were all aging White Males who are already economically unimportant and will shortly be removed from the population by a combination of changing demographics and Darwinism. In fact, this is not the case at all. I’ve seen, for instance, that at least some studies indicate that over half of all white women, whatever their age and class, voted for Trump.
Simply put, Trump’s support came from quarters and included many people who Liberals assumed were progressive. Unfortunately, liberals and leftists had come to believe their own propaganda. We had come to believe that Trump supporters were a spent force and could be disregarded. This was simply not the case and we are paying for our arrogance now.
However, if the above analysis is correct, then an end game is at hand. Quite simply, if an unacknowledged economic crisis is the origin of the Trump presidency, then so too could that crisis bring the man and his government down. Nothing that I’ve seen in any of the proposals of the Trump people in any way seems to take heed of the real nature of the problem we face as a nation and an economy. Their solutions to the underlying mostly boil down to de-regulation and fewer taxes on the wealthy. This will not in any way make things better.
As such, I believe an economic crisis is in the cards. If Trump is unable to deal with it, then he will fall.
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 industrial employment.
The theory was that we would move into “the information based economy” (i.e., white collar jobs) and/or the service based economy and that these would take up the slack. However, is that isn’t working out that way. Only so many of us can be waitresses or fold sweaters at The Gap.
Worse...far worse!...the white collar jobs are themselves increasingly subject to automation and off-shoring. Think of the number of help desks that are in India. Think of the amount of office work that is now being performed by machines.
The result of all this is larger and larger numbers of people who are either out of work, or who are at least threatened with unemployment, under-employment, and marginalization. (In some ways, I am one myself. The trade press world folded before the Web, which is a kind of white collar robot. The academy, which I then tried to enter, is no longer a place where anyone can earn a living as a teacher. It is a place where managers impose business-oriented solutions on an ever dwindling number of under-paid adjuncts and “teaching” is done by automated online system.)
Some form of social change was therefore inevitable. It was only a matter of time before we say some sort of political movement designed to ease the fears and pains of the most threatened within our society.
I had hoped that it would come from the political Left and from the young. I had hoped that Millennials and other groups would unite and work toward some sort political revolution. It almost happened, indeed, with Bernie Sanders. Unfortunately, the DNC was able to frustrate that movement and impose Hillary Clinton on the part. This will, I fear, go down in history as one of the greatest blunders in the history of American politics.
Still, I had faith. I was certain that Hillary would be our next president and that we would have at least four years for the left and the young to organize and push their own agenda. Alas, I was so very wrong.
What happened instead is that the Right took charge of the revolution. The RNC was less well organized, less well-connected, and less ruthless than the DNC. And it placed its hopes in candidates, like Jeb Bush, who had no personal charisma and were unable to respond to Trump’s bullying. It was thus unable to repress him the way the DNC strangled the Sanders campaign.
This meant that Trump was free to touch the resentments of the working class, the middle class, and many individuals who simply identified themselves as threatened . These people could and should have been included in a larger, anti-establishment coalition, but without intelligent leadership from the Left, they fell instead into the hands of a dangerous demagogue.
Indeed, it is very, very important to understand from whence is support is coming. Liberals and the established left have more or less completely missed the point. It has assumed that the Trump-supporters were all aging White Males who are already economically unimportant and will shortly be removed from the population by a combination of changing demographics and Darwinism. In fact, this is not the case at all. I’ve seen, for instance, that at least some studies indicate that over half of all white women, whatever their age and class, voted for Trump.
Simply put, Trump’s support came from quarters and included many people who Liberals assumed were progressive. Unfortunately, liberals and leftists had come to believe their own propaganda. We had come to believe that Trump supporters were a spent force and could be disregarded. This was simply not the case and we are paying for our arrogance now.
However, if the above analysis is correct, then an end game is at hand. Quite simply, if an unacknowledged economic crisis is the origin of the Trump presidency, then so too could that crisis bring the man and his government down. Nothing that I’ve seen in any of the proposals of the Trump people in any way seems to take heed of the real nature of the problem we face as a nation and an economy. Their solutions to the underlying mostly boil down to de-regulation and fewer taxes on the wealthy. This will not in any way make things better.
As such, I believe an economic crisis is in the cards. If Trump is unable to deal with it, then he will fall.
Comments
Post a Comment