Blackcap Blog

Published at 08:01 on 8 March 2025

Or, “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” versus “peace, order, and good government.”

At least, that’s the dichotomy as it is commonly presented on both sides of the border. Or, should I say, it is so far as Americans are even aware of the second quoted phrase above, and most are not. It is a dichotomy that I disagree with. While it is possible to pick and choose examples that fall into that narrative, one does not have to try very hard to find counterexamples to it.

Zoning and Land Use Planning

I live in a neighbourhood of the sort that simply does not exist in most US West Coast cities. The sole exception is San Francisco, which is old enough to predate most planning and zoning laws. My neighbourhood does not predate such laws, yet it has a form more typical of neighbourhoods that predate such laws in the USA.

First, the lot sizes are a lot smaller. In the USA, supposed land of individual freedom and property rights, there was a government agency (the FHA) handing down dictates from above regarding, amongst other things, minimum lot size. Properties in nonconforming neighbourhoods would be not be eligible for government-underwritten mortgages, so not surprisingly, municipalities and developers caved to the demands. In Canada, supposed land of submission to good government, the Federal government was largely silent. The market dictated lot sizes, and since there was a market for 3500 square foot lots, such lots were platted and sold.

Second, a lot of the people who first settled here were immigrants from southern Europe. They were not wealthy. They could only just barely afford homes, and many of them couldn’t afford homes on their own; they could only afford them if they split their housing cost with some tenants. So they did just that. Now, this was against the law, these areas being at the time zoned for single family use. But then a curious thing happened: the City of Vancouver blanched at enforcing the law. These were people’s homes after all. These were individuals with property rights choosing to do what they wanted with their property. Is this the sort people we are, to come down with the mailed fist of authority onto individuals pursuing their own dreams with their own homes in their own way? So East Vancouver ended up becoming neighbourhood after neighbourhood of mainly duplexes. Eventually the city acknowledged reality and legalized such uses.

Americans have tried to do this, too. Sometimes it flies, but usually it doesn’t end so well. Neighbours notice other neighbours have too many cars parked in front, or have too many people entering and exiting, some routinely using the exterior entrance to the basement. A zoning violation gets reported. And the city usually comes down hard on such things. We have neighbourhood standards to enforce after all. Conform to the norm or suffer the consequences.

Policing

Independent police oversight, in which a third party investigates accusations of unlawful behaviour by law enforcement officers, is the norm in Canada and many other First World democracies. It is the exception to the norm in the USA, where police departments are generally trusted to police themselves. How this can be squared with Canadians having faith in government and Americans questioning authority is simply beyond me.

Incarceration

No nation locks up as many people as does the USA, either per capita or in absolute numbers. Not even China. Not even Russia. Not even Cuba. My guess is that North Korea should probably be number one on that list, but accurate data is sort of hard to come by when it comes to the Hermit Kingdom. Still, if your standards for a core human rights measure are “well, at least we’re better than North Korea,” let me suggest that your standards define the bottom of the barrel. Again, how this can be squared with Canadians being the ones more accepting of authority and submission to it is simply beyond me.

Prohibition

This one’s a little murkier. Both the USA and Canada went on an ill-fated experiment to micromanage which substances adults may or may not imbibe, and it went poorly in both countries. The difference is that when it started going poorly in Canada, it got repealed. Because of course it did: it was just like the illegal duplexes of which I wrote earlier. Do we really want to be in the business of policing what private citizens want to drink in their own homes? Is that the sort of society we are?

The USA doubled down. Respect authority! Obey! Time for a new, powerful, Federal police agency! Only after the doubling-down failed, and a Great Depression made people realize that a legal, profitable, alcoholic beverages industry might prove to be something of an economic shot in the arm, did the failed experiment finally end. In the meantime, Americans acquired a taste for Canadian whisky which led to one of Canada’s more profitable export industries.

On cannabis, some US states such as Colorado and Washington beat Canada to the game at legalization. Sort of. It’s still illegal on the Federal level, so what we have is a legal gray area where cannabis is illegal under Federal law but legal under State law, so the state and local cops won’t enforce what is a Federal matter. Plus it’s an all-cash business; banks are Federally regulated and don’t want to have anything to do with it.

Canada took its time (and many Canadians were embarrassed that it took so long), but cannabis is now completely legal here. Pot shops take credit and debit cards, because of course they do, that makes life easier for your customers and the banks have no qualms about serving just another legal business.

One area that fits the popular narrative is that no province pushed the envelope the way any US state did and tried to legalize cannabis before the Federal government was ready.

Narcotics

Canada trusts me, as a responsible adult, to go to my local pharmacy and purchase narcotics over the counter. No, they are not very strong narcotics. Yes, I do have to go and ask the pharmacist for them. Yes, he does ask to see my ID, and does record my purchase, so if I become addicted, it will be evident to the authorities. But I still can do it. Not in the so-called land of the free.

The Draft

Canada has been very reluctant to conscript people into its military against their will. Doing so during World War I triggered rioting and a political crisis. It was the USA that drafted young men to go fight in Vietnam against their will, and it was to Canada that many of these men fled for sake of their individual liberty. It is hard to think of any greater violation of liberty than to force an individual into servitude, yet the USA did just that.

Slavery

And not just during the Vietnam War. For decades, enslaved Black Americans fled north to freedom via the Underground Railroad. It’s not so well known in the USA, but Canada had slavery at one time, too. It just wasn’t so economically important on this side of the border, and quickly ran into adverse court decisions (there was a famous one in what is now Quebec that proclaimed that while slavery was legal, there was no law against a slave running away from their master). It was the so-called land of the free that for decades made peace with slavery and rationalized it because it was economically profitable.

LGBTQ Rights

Sex between consenting adults became fully legal nationwide in Canada in 1969. It took until 2003 for the USA to get to the same place (via a court decision that could be reversed at any time now). Canada also beat the USA when it came to legalizing same-sex marriage (which again is the law of the land in the USA by virtue of a court decision that could be reversed any time now).

And Finally, the Elephant

You know, the decline in liberty accompanying the transition to fascism that most Americans apparently seem just fine with. And sorry, I don’t know any other honest way to interpret those poll results. If Party A is advocating fascism, and Party B is advocating something squarely within the bounds of small-l, small-d liberal democracy, and the overall public takeaway that Party A is approximately where it ought to be and Party B is too far left, well, it seems obvious to me.

But You’re Cherry-Picking!

Sure, there’s things that fit the narrative (I even pointed one out above). But come on now, the last few months should conclusively prove beyond doubt that something is rotten in the supposed Land of the Free and Home of the Brave. Some of us have been sensing the rot for some time.

I suggest it’s merely a commonly-believed narrative, and not any sort of accurate summary of actual political attitudes. The land of “peace, order, and good government” is quite often also the land of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” and such it has long been.

Published at 09:27 on 23 February 2025

Let me start by saying I have been nothing but satisfied with Digital Ocean, which I use to host this blog, so far. The issue here is not anything Digital Ocean has done, it is what Digital Ocean is highly likely to do in the future.

Digital Ocean is a capitalist enterprise based in a country undergoing a transition from democracy to fascism. The historical role of the capitalist class is to line up in support behind fascist regimes whenever they arise.

I do not know the politics of Digital Ocean’s top management and board of directors. It does not much matter. Even if both are dominated by political progressives, compliance with the rapidly-emerging fascist regime is highly likely.

In a capitalist corporation, management serves at the pleasure of the board, whose prime mission is to act in the interest of the corporation’s stockholders and their desire to maximize profits. Profits are not maximized by staking out adversarial positions to an authoritarian regime.

The above makes compliance the expected outcome, and the historical record of capitalism under fascism bears this theory out.

Yes, even under the Nazis there were businesses like DEF (Oskar Schindler’s firm) and Ernst Leitz GmbH (the makers of Leica cameras) that tried to do the right thing as much as they could. But even they were heavily constrained, and did a lot of complying (both manufactured materiel for the Wehrmacht). Even if Digital Ocean follows in their footsteps (and odds are against it, good guys like Leitz and Schindler are the exceptions that prove a general rule), they will still have to make a public show of being loyal Trump fascists.

Even in the optimistic case, then, this site is likely to end up as collateral damage should it remain on Digital Ocean.

Hence, it is now time for me to move this site elsewhere, which brings me to the requirements for what “elsewhere” should ideally be.

1. As little US connection as possible. Ideally this would be an organization that is neither owned by US capital, managed or overseen by US citizens, based in the USA, nor physically hosted in the USA.
2. Cloud hosting that lets me run my own installation of WordPress on my own installation of Linux. I am not interested in sharing an OS installation or a WordPress installation with others; past experience has taught me that both are insufficient to my needs.
3. The ability to assign a static IP address to a virtual server.
4. A provider that offers an S3-compatible cloud storage service, since I use such to keep this site backed up.

Any suggestions as to the above would be greatly appreciated!

Published at 11:29 on 6 February 2025

Ironically, this is something which could be created by disbelieving in it.

Assume a widespread disbelief in the relevance of the Democratic Party, accompanied by a widespread rejection of Trump. Then, the most likely result is the pursuit of change outside the auspices of the Democratic Party.

Since the Party is, in fact, incompetent almost to the point of irrelevance, this would make the resistance more effective than one which pursues mainly in-Party strategies.

Now, while the Democrats are incompetent, they are also the lesser half of a two-party duopoly. This is part of the reason for their incompetence, in fact; the duopoly insulates the Democrats from the normal forces of ideological competition.

The same duopoly also makes it extremely difficult for any sort of new movement to gain true, effective party status. (The latter has happened only once in U.S. history, when abolitionists created the Republican Party.) The natural outcome, borne of Democratic Party opportunism and oppositional frustration, is some sort of merger of the new opposition with the old Democratic Party. This could then make the post-merger Democratic Party more relevant.

By contrast, a widespread continuation of belief in the Democrats’ relevance is likely to enable them to coast along in their current ineptitude, protected by the duopoly, as they evolve into an opposition in name only that serves mainly to legitimize a fascist state run by a Republican Party that dominates virtually all aspects of the political process.

Whichever option is chosen will, in other words, be a self-falsifying prophecy.

Published at 09:11 on 29 January 2025

China is probably key to halting this global rise in fascism. When will the world realize it? When will China realize it?

I think, in some sense, China already has realized it, but has chosen to word it all very diplomatically… for now. They don’t want to pick fights needlessly or prematurely.

Yes, China is a nasty dictatorship, with approximately zero interest in directly advancing the cause of freedom. But, per the link in the previous paragraph, it is a dictatorship that values stability and the international system, which is more than one can say for today’s USA. Plus, like every nation, China wants greater power and influence for itself.

The part about valuing stability and an international framework is important. It gives other nations something more than “USA #1, suck it, losers!” does. Sure, China is going to advocate an international framework rigged to China’s advantage. But it’s still a framework. There will still be commitment to it. This is still better for the rest of the world.

As such, good old-fashioned self-interest will motivate most of the rest of the world to prefer the Chinese option. This is precisely the sort of soft power that for decades led nations to opt for a framework dominated by the USA, despite that framework being rigged to the USA’s advantage.

In short: China understands soft power. The USA no longer does. This can be expected to work in China’s favour over the long run.

The old American empire is not coming back, either. U.S. allies could wave off Trump I as a one-off anomaly; Trump himself didn’t have any idea how powerful the presidency was, or have a very good idea of what to do with that power. Trump II knows both, and so far as U.S. allies go, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”

Plus, so far as the rest of the world goes, it always makes sense to not put all of one’s eggs in a single basket. In a world with two roughly comparable major powers (which is what it will soon be), national freedom of action is often best maximized by playing one power off another.

Europe is slowly getting over its post-World War II aversion to power, but too slowly to become the major power it might be any time soon. Plus, Europe has its own fascism problem.

So, for the medium term, China versus the USA it is. And China probably has the upper hand.

Published at 15:52 on 8 January 2025

The more I think about it, the more it becomes clear that Canada is going to face a reckoning in the next few months, and that most Canadians really have no idea of what is likely coming. It might completely reshape the political landscape before the coming Federal election can be held, it is that much of a reckoning.

The thorough rottenness of the American system is about to be laid bare, and it will become evident that Canadians as well as Americans have largely been living in ignorance of the full magnitude of this rottenness. This will send a real jolt through the Canadian political system.

If Canadians are willing to demonstrate to Trump that, as Jagmeet Singh recently said “If you want to pick a fight with us, it’s going to hurt you as well,” it is likely that Trump’s bluff will have been called. Trump is a classic bully, and bullies engage in bullying not because they are brave, but because they think they can get away with it.

Whatever the cost of standing up to the bullying, it will in the long run (and probably even in the medium run) end up being far cheaper than choosing to not stand up to the bully. It is not resistance but acquiescence that has the highest price attached to it.

Published at 10:12 on 14 December 2024

The Republic of Korea, more commonly known as South Korea, just demonstrated itself to have a much healthier political culture than the so-called leader of the free world. It’s not even remotely a close call.

President Yoon Suk Yeol, frustrated at a National Assembly that refused to do his bidding, declared martial law, accusing his opponents of being “communists” (a frequent screed launched by conservatives at their opponents, whether or not actual communism is at play).

It hasn’t gone so well for Yoon or his government since then. The National Assembly promptly reconvened (challenging soldiers who were attempting to block the entrance to its Proceeding Hall), and unanimously voted to revoke the declaration. Yes, a unanimous vote, including Assembly members who belonged to the same party as the president. None of this falling in line behind Yoon like the US Republicans fall in line behind Trump.

It’s not been a picture perfect response. The logical next step is to impeach the fascist who just tried to destroy democracy. On that, there was foot-dragging, due to opposition from parliamentarians in the president’s own party. But recently, enough of them were persuaded to cross the aisle to get the necessary supermajority for impeachment.

Advocates of martial law within Yoon’s administration are also being dealt with. And by “being dealt with,” I mean being treated like the accused criminals they are: arrested, detained, and charged with crimes in preparation for their trials. Not so much of the endless hand-wringing about whether or not the powerful should be held to account that plagues US political culture. The Republic of Korea is still apparently a nation of laws, not men.

I must point out here that there is no Get Out of Criticism Free card for the USA by virtue of its political polarization. South Korea is also a highly polarized society. Its president and legislature were deadlocked for months; this deadlock was in fact the motive for martial law attempt. Yet, in spite of the polarization, enough Koreans from across that polarized political spectrum have been able to unite in defence of the basic premises of an open and free society.

By contrast, the big news out of the USA is that Biden decided to pardon his own son and that Trump is highly likely to get virtually every last massively unqualified fascist toady he wants on his Cabinet.

That former point handily vindicates my earlier decision to be personally done with the Democratic Party. It is an institution that has proven itself time and again be not an opponent of democratic decline, but instead a willing co-participant in it. Any hope for the USA depends on the emergence of the sort of “none of the above” grassroots movement of which I have written earlier.

So please, spare me any garbage about American exceptionalism. The only things exceptional about today’s America are its low morals and advanced state of political decline.

Published at 09:25 on 8 December 2024

So, former UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson has been put into a forever box courtesy of an as of this time still unknown individual.

The snarky, irreverent tone of the above implies that perhaps I find it hard to be terribly saddened by the news. And that would be a correct implication, thanks to the general nature of the US health insurance industry, and the nature of this insurer in particular.

I am hardly the only one. You can’t swing a dead cat on social media without coming across memes that are much more explicit in their support of the shooting than I will ever be.

The thing is, politically-motivated violence, particularly politically-motivated killing, usually comes with some sort of manifesto on the part of the killer. Those who kill for political motives generally only do so because they care a lot about something, enough to literally kill over it. Such individuals are seldom quiet about their politics. Yet, no manifesto here.

Or maybe there is a manifesto (of sorts) after all?

The other thing I will say is that it all shows how class society values some lives over others. The news media has been talking about the shooting — and the search for the shooter — basically nonstop for days now. So much news coverage for one dead capitalist.

UnitedHealthcare has one of the highest claims denial rates out there, yet you don’t hear much in the news about all the deaths those denials cause.

Because of course you don’t. In any class society, some lives matter more than others.

Update: It was, as surmised above, a politically-motivated act. The suspect has been found, and he had a manifesto on him.

Published at 17:17 on 29 November 2024

Really Now, You Didn’t See This Coming?

I don’t think Trudeau did. Pathetic, utterly pathetic. I mean, come on now: the polls showed this to be a close election for like months until Biden’s campaign self-immolated in the wake of the debate. At that point, the odds clearly favoured Trump. Biden dropping out and Harris jumping in evened those odds back up, but still: for months it was either a draw or distinctly in Trump’s favour.

As such, it was obvious that Trump could well win. And if he won, it was likely that he would do, well, basically what he is doing right now. Trudeau should have met months ago (in a low key fashion, possibly online) with the provincial premiers to start sketching out a response for this very easily foreseeable scenario.

Instead, the whole rushed, hair-on-fire nature of this response points out to it being a complete surprise to Canada’s ruling elite. These people should not be taken seriously when they profess to be experts at leadership.

Go ahead Punk, Make My Day

OK, it would be highly irresponsible for the PM to say that, but if he has even half a brain (dubious, see above), he should at least be thinking it. A famous economist (I forget who) once quipped that the essence of a trade war was both parties competing to do themselves damage. Which is not to say 25% tariffs on just about everything wouldn’t hurt Canada. Of course they would. The rub is, they would also hurt the USA. A lot.

So, for making this threat, Trump is either bluffing, an idiot, or both. It has to be seen as more of a negotiating ploy than a serious proposal. If it is a serious proposal, the economic harm it does to the USA is likely to be part of the backlash that erupts against Trump.

The logical way to use this fact is, again, not via public statement. Rather, use it implicitly at the negotiating table. “Such tariffs might hurt President Trump domestically by causing economic problems inside the USA. Surely his administration wants to come to an amicable resolution with Canada and avoid that risk?”

Both the Liberals and the Conservatives Suck

None of them saw this coming. The Liberals, because (like in most countries) the left in Canada has ceded thinking about threats from abroad to the right. The Conservatives, because Trump is a threat from the right and it is ideologically inconvenient for them to think their own side of the spectrum could represent a threat.

Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew is one of the few who seem to have been thinking about the implications of a second Trump term well in advance. Unfortunately, his office is at the provincial level, not the national one. Now, a given Canadian province has a louder voice than a given US state (for the simple reason that there are fewer provinces), but still, it is a disadvantage that Kinew is not a federal politician.

Hopefully, his foresight (in the midst of a crowd that lacked same) will by default give him greater influence. We shall see.

Published at 09:17 on 19 November 2024

One reason conspicuously absent from my postmortem is the economy. This is not an oversight. I do not believe the economy to be a significant root cause.

Oh, it’s a proximate cause, all right. Many voters cited the economy as a reason for voting for fascism.

However, if you look at the economic statistics, it becomes clear that the economy really isn’t all that bad by US historical or world comparative standards. Sure, it could be better for the working class. It always could be. But abnormally bad? Let’s-give-fascism-a-whirl bad? No, not by global historical standards.

The USA is actually doing better economically post-COVID than pretty much all of the rest of the developed world, yet it stands alone as undergoing a transition to fascism in that time.

Compare the USA with other countries that have historically gone fascist, and the comparison is even more stark. There is none of the extreme economic distress that preceded fascism in Germany, Italy, Spain, or Chile. An inflation rate that peaks at 8% per year? Try inflation in the thousands or millions or billions percent per month. Unemployment of 4%? That’s nothing. Try an unemployment rate of 25% or worse.

To reiterate, things could certainly be better in the USA. It’s a terribly inegalitarian society. Yet Trump was saying basically nothing about economic inequality. It was all about fear-mongering and grievance-stoking.

The USA stands alone, in a tiny circle of exceptional shame containing but a single nation, in going fascist after experiencing such minor economic issues.

The USA also stands in a slightly larger but still very small circle of shame in having gone fascist via popular vote: Hitler never got more than about ⅓ the vote in Germany and was appointed to the post of chancellor by the president, Mussolini likewise was appointed and not elected, Franco staged a coup and the Spaniards then fought a civil war to try and prevent their transition, Pinochet also got in via a coup, etc. Russia and Hungary have, in more recent times, gone fascist via popular vote, but again, their economies were significantly worse off.

The economy simply can’t explain it. What can help explain it is a morally compromised political culture, one compromised enough to be so accepting of fascist values that fascism seemed like a reasonable answer to what are, by any reasonable comparative standards, some relatively minor issues.

Which is why my postmortem mentions moral decline and not the economy.

Published at 17:43 on 18 November 2024

Everyone has one. Most everyone has already offered one. The vast majority of the postmortems very conveniently excuse the postmortem author’s pet views and place the blame elsewhere. Also very conveniently, the blame tends to be placed on some camp the author has never liked very much in the first place. Mind you, this doesn’t automatically invalidate the blame being laid, but it does put it into context.

It is clear to me that there is more than one underlying cause. Following are what I see as the causes, in rough order from most to least significant.

A Morally Compromised Political Culture

This is the elephant in the room that not many people are writing about. Of those who have mentioned it, most are on the right of the anti-Trump movement, and those inevitably don’t get very far into it. It tends to be limited to short harrumphs such as “we are an unserious people,” or “we have met the enemy and he is us.”

Ideological convenience explains it all. Moral decline (and the foolishness of the many) have long been pet issues for conservatives. So they look for it, and they find it.

They find it because, of course, it exists. Despite all the criticisms that can be levelled at the Democrats and other actors in this historical episode, the fact remains that many people, across the political spectrum, were saying exactly what kind of person Trump was and what the likely consequences of a second Trump term would be. Some of these warnings were coming from those who had served in the first Trump administration and were based on personal experiences of interacting with Trump. The warnings grew to be very explicit, correctly identifying Trump as a fascist.

In response to all these warnings, many voters decided that fascism was just fine, or that all of this talk about of fascism stuff was simply overblown. The latter belief was generally driven by American exceptionalism (“don’t be silly, that can’t happen here”), which just goes to show how exceptionalist rhetoric itself plays a key role in the moral decline.

With the exception of the far left, American exceptionalism is a popular belief across the political spectrum in the USA. It is particularly popular amongst conservatives. And here we have the reason why, while there have been conservative voices pointing out this cause, they tend to touch on it only briefly. More detailed examination is likely to reach conclusions ideologically inconvenient for conservatives.

Not only is American exceptionalism largely a myth, a good part of the moral decline comes from neoconservatives, and it turns out that never-Trump conservatives are invariably neocons. Because of course they are: of all the flavours of conservative, it is the neocon for whom opposing Trump is the most ideologically convenient, since Trump’s isolationism directly conflicts with their belief in the necessity of an American empire. Yet it is their own advocacy of empire that led them to draw up the Project for the New American Century, to advocate that the George W. Bush administration lie its way into wars of choice, and to defend the use of war crimes such as torture and extrajudicial executions in that war.

Those who most tend to point out moral decline are, in other words, themselves the chief architects of that decline. Worse yet, it is the fallout from the wars of choice they advocated which helped make the isolationist aspects of Trump’s platform appealing to so many. (I know, I have talked to Trumpers, and they very commonly bring up isolationism and opposition to neoconservatism as some of the things they most like about their candidate.)

Social Media

Social media balkanizes people into echo chambers where information can circulate without any regard to its factual accuracy. It thus corrodes the political fabric by helping to destroy respect for (and even awareness of) facts. Facts allow at least some sort of shared social project to emerge. If, for example, budget deficits are increasing, you are going to get people talking about deficits, talking about whether or not they are too high, and talking about strategies for paying them down.

Absent fact-driven debate, there is nothing but warring camps, who will not tend to even agree on what needs to be talked about, much less what needs to be done. Debate becomes meaningless, democracy becomes meaningless, all that matters is for one camp to get enough power that it can force its will on everyone else.

Social media therefore aids and abets the growth of right-wing extremism. And it turns out that this is a testable proposition. One country, France, got social media well before (as in, decades before) the rest of the world did. And in France, right-wing extremism became a major political force well before it did in any other first-world democracy.

It gets all the worse when one of the largest social media networks is owned by a fascist who uses it to promote fascist beliefs.

Democratic Party Incompetence

Just look at the basics of the current situation. We had a clown car of at best minimally-suitable candidates in 2020. Eventually an elderly man with delusions of a past era of consensus and unity still existing came to the top of the heap, and by some miracle managed to prevail in the general election. The administration of the resulting presidency operated in large part under that delusion, refusing to acknowledge the reality of ascendent fascism and its historical mission in dealing a death blow to that fascism. As such, the crimes of the fascists were insufficiently prosecuted, and the fascists politically survived.

All the while this was going on, the elderly man grew increasingly elderly and began to exhibit signs of senility. The response of the Democratic Party was to gaslight the nation about the senility, close a circle around the president, and run him for reelection, as if nothing untoward was going on. It all collapsed spectacularly with the worst performance in the history of televised debates, and the party was forced to patch together a last-minute alternate strategy. Which, not entirely surprisingly, proved inadequate to the task.

I have said it before and I will say it again: the Democratic Party is one of the world’s most incompetent major political parties.

Sometimes the incompetence gets bad enough that I doubt it is purely coincidence. And indeed, it is probably not a coincidence. Having the more left of two major parties be incompetent is valuable to the bourgeoisie, as it means advocates of left policies will lose fights that they really ought to have won. And given that egalitarianism is the prime motivating force of left-wing politics, this helps preserve the wealth and power of the bourgeoisie. The USA has a largely privatized political funding system, and an ineffectual left party is likely to be better at selling itself to well-heeled potential donors than an effectual one.

Activist Left Incompetence

Of course, this is the camp I identify with the most, and it is politically convenient for me to rank it as the least significant factor. But I honestly believe it is, for the simple reason that the activist left is not very large in the USA. Heck, the left in general is not very significant in the USA, which stands alone as the only major democracy in the world without an electorally viable social-democratic party.

But still, the activist left has a problem. Its rhetoric has degenerated to the rhetoric of the academic left, mostly geared to pursuit of in-group status, and increasingly irrelevant to those not already existing within its inward-looking circles. I have written about this before.

It is possible to evaluate this economically, in much the way as I did for Democrats above. As with an incompetent Democratic Party, an incompetent activist left is valuable to the bourgeoisie. Left activists exist in capitalism and as such are also motivated by economic self-interest. Perhaps the most lucrative career available to a leftist who wants to make a career out of their leftism is to become a tenured professor at a major university. Salaries and benefits are generous, and the principle of academic freedom valued by liberal society means that one’s unconventional views will be tolerated, even respected.

The academic left has been a thing since approximately the Seventies (it was a natural destination for a subset of the student left of the Sixties). It has been producing volumes of literary output of dubious value, largely inscrutable to outsiders, ever since. It is only relatively recently, however, that its values have become so dominant in the activist left generally. I suspect social media to have played a role in this.

What It Was Not

Right now, the debate largely seems to be within the Democratic Party itself, as to whether the centrists or the progressives were at fault. A pox on both their houses. It is my contention that a competent candidate from either camp could have prevailed if backed by a competent party, and in a political culture that was not seriously morally compromised. Either a centrist or a progressive would have had pet items in their platforms to tiptoe around (they would be different pet items, of course), but a competent candidate would be able to do that, particularly if backed by a competent party apparatus.

One thing in particular it was not, and that is a refusal to go full Trumper against identity politics. The latter has long been part of the Left (it goes back at least as far as Engels writing about the importance of ethnic self-determination for the Poles in his 1892 preface for the Communist Manifesto). Suppose the Democrats successfully managed to become as anti-trans as the Republicans, then what? Well, the Republicans were the genuine article, and could campaign against the Democrats as a cheap knockoff of it. Plus they would pick some other identity politics thing and go big against it. There would always be something to drag out.

Again, a competent campaign could have retaliated in kind. But it should at this stage be abundantly clear that we don’t have a competent Democratic Party.

What we need to do is to address the real causes, and given how these lie at the very roots of our political society, this is not going to be either easy or simple. It is certainly not going to be accomplished by having the weaker of the two parties of a dying political order settle a soon-to-be-irrelevant intraparty spat about which of their two major factions is most at fault.