Blackcap Blog

Published at 09:45 on 7 May 2018

Since many centrists act like I’m some sort of starry-eyed idealist when I claim that Bernie could have won, I figure it’s time to prove them wrong by describing what I believe things would be like if Bernie would have won.

I am going to be utterly realistic here and describe a scenario operating under US politics as it actually is, not under how this anarchist might wish it would be. I am not going to assume any great increase in class consciousness; I am going to assume that the nonideological pragmatists which a Sanders campaign would appeal to would remain for the most part nonideological pragmatists.

First, the campaign would have been ugly. Trump would have tried to paint Sanders as a Stalinist-style communist, bringing up things like his trips to the USSR and 1980’s Nicaragua as evidence. However, and to the mystification of most Establishment pundits, this would have mattered far less than Trump (and the pundits) believe it would. Sanders would have proven amazingly resilient to the attacks, much as Trump proved resilient to the attacks against him based on his tawdry past actions.

Second, Sanders would have been really able to draw blood in his attacks against Trump, correctly painting Trump as a phony populist who was in fact a rich coastal elitist who inherited his wealth and who had a long track record of contemptuously screwing “the little people” over. This would have been the magic bullet that pushed Sanders to victory in November.

Third, in many ways the Sanders campaign and then the Sanders Administration would have been a left-wing mirror to the Trump campaign and the Trump Administration in the eyes of the Establishment. You have your Never Trump crowd on the right; well, there would be a Never Sanders crowd on the left. There would be prominent Democrat analogues to anti-Trump Republicans like Rick Wilson and Ana Navarro in the pundit world.

Fourth, the capitalist class would have been merciless to Sanders. There was some talk about a Trump victory prompting an immediate Wall Street crash; that didn’t happen. The unelected right-wingers that run Wall Street would however have been much more likely to destabilize a new Sanders Administration with such a tactic. The problems that are now only partway unfolded due to Trump’s annoying the capitalists with a trade war would be far more unfolded at this point in a Sanders Administration.

Republicans and the right wing of the Democratic Party would be blaming Sanders and Sanders alone for causing the Wall Street crash. Because there would not be any magical increase in class consciousness as a result of the Sanders victory, such blaming would carry real traction. The Sanders Administration would be in the toilet in terms of popularity in the opinion polls.

Fifth, Sanders would have inherited the same unfortunate part of the business cycle as Trump has. This recovery is already long in the tooth, and we are due for a downturn no matter who occupies the White House. When a downturn kicks in, the current administration always gets blamed for it, no matter how much or how little (typically the latter) it has to do with the downturn. This isn’t fair, it’s just the way things are (and long have been).

Add up the third, fourth, and fifth points and it’s obvious that a Sanders presidency would be a presidency under siege, much like the Trump presidency is. Many of the things on Sanders’ wish list would have gotten bogged down in Congress and gotten nowhere. There would much talk of a coming “red wave” in November—and it probably would come.

Sanders is, unlike Trump, not a corrupt or emotionally immature individual, so an early end to his term would be unlikely, but he would be a one-term president, to be followed by a GOP president winning in 2020 largely due to criticizing Sanders on the economy and blaming him for the recession. It would be a latter-day Carter Administration.

Still, and this is the important part, a latter-day Carter Administration would be a far better outcome than the Trump Administration we actually got, and whichever Republican succeeded Sanders would not be a fascistic populist like Trump. In the wake of the Trump loss, the GOP would have changed its primary process to make it less amenable to being hijacked by an outsider like Trump, most likely by instituting something similar to the Democratic Party’s system of superdelegates.

It is in no way necessary to believe that Sanders would have been perfect and would have ushered in a lasting new era of New Deal (or even more fancifully, democratic socialist) politics to believe that his presidency would still have been a vastly better outcome, and that he was the better candidate than Hillary.

Published at 09:07 on 6 May 2018

They’re still pushing candidates from the right wing of the Democratic Party, still using the lame pretext that they care about “electability.”

Towards the end of the segment linked above, they bring up how the Democrats did that to Hillary, and it didn’t turn out so well for them (or for the nation).

That’s quite true, but it goes beyond that. The right wing of the Democratic Party was all about Hillary in 2008, too. I remember running into obvious paid online trolls (they mysteriously vanished after Obama won the primary) peddling the now-old line about Hillary being the only realistic, electable candidate, and about how Obama had one of the most liberal records in the Senate and was therefore unelectable.

The problem is that the Democratic party elite and the Establishment pundits who rationalize them are living in a reality-distortion bubble.

First, they are disconnected from what common voters actually think. Pundits, politicians in high office, and top party officials are virtually always rich elitists. They have little or no idea of the struggles most common people must go through.

Second, it goes beyond class. They assume that since they are strongly ideological people themselves (centrism is an ideology as much as any other), everyone else must be, too. Not so; most people pay little attention to ideology most of the time. A huge chunk of the masses may be best described as “nonideological pragmatists,” who value individual candidates and their messages much more than any set of overarching political principles.

Give those masses someone who can appeal to them with a set of ideas, be they left-wing ideas or right-wing ones, and that candidate can appeal to those nonideological pragmatists. It’s how Trump and Reagan won and it’s how Obama won. It’s also how Sanders has won statewide office in Vermont (which has a Republican governor, how ideologically socialist is that?), time after time after time.

At this political moment, the facts on the ground tilt the playing field in the favor of the leftists: we’ve had over three decades of a centrist-dominated Democratic Party, whose policies like NAFTA and TPP have helped widen inequality and create growing despair. And there’s no shortage of voters who realize that the Democratic Party establishment and its centrist politics have played a key role in screwing them over (as have the GOP’s policies of capitalism über alles). This is, of course, yet another part of the picture of why Trump won: he was able to successfully market himself as an outsider.

Get it straight: it’s not the party’s left that is most hurting the Democrats’ electability, it’s the party’s right. (And yes, Bernie could have won.)

Published at 06:17 on 5 May 2018

What this means—assuming it’s accurate, and it probably is—is that the end for Trump will most likely come fast, as some sort of tipping point causes his support on the GOP side of the aisle to largely and suddenly melt away. It’s an unstable equilibrium for Trump: even many in his own party hate him, but are afraid to say so.

In effect, their fear is self-justifying; a given Republican congressman is afraid of Trump because they all basically are, and if just one or a few defect, the defectors will be punished. However, once something prompts a critical mass to stop being afraid, suddenly the whole reason for the fear in the first place will evaporate․

Unstable equilibria tend to suddenly collapse; it’s in their nature. In a social system (as opposed to a physical one), the collapse tends to be particularly hard to foresee in advance; the status quo keeps lasting until one day it is insecure and the next it is gone.

Published at 16:05 on 4 May 2018

Seems the adult toddler has managed to hire an attorney who has almost as much propensity to run his mouth off half-cocked as his client does. This could be interesting while it lasts (but Trump’s attorneys don’t tend to last long).

Published at 08:36 on 2 May 2018

Really, that’s what his latest idiocy about slavery proves: that his judgement is so poor that he is capable of making such a statement. Either that, or he’s such a shameless publicity hound that he just spouts things without caring about their truth value.

West has just demonstrated that his opinions about anything should be dismissed as largely irrelevant.

Published at 08:54 on 1 May 2018

Remember all the heat that Trump caught (and rightly so) for proclaiming there were “some very fine people on both sides” of a fascist rally and the associated counterprotest?

Well, it turns out that liberals and centrists are guilty of false equivalence, too, and when referring to the very same event. There’s been a lawsuit filed in Charlottesville that makes no distinction between fascists and those who showed up solely to oppose fascists.

With “friends” like this, who needs enemies?

Published at 20:14 on 28 April 2018

The recent reforms in Saudi Arabia are like a house built on sand; they are fated not to last.

That’s because of all reformist measures enacted by governments, the recent ones in Saudi Arabia are some of the closest to pure reformism and the furthest from revolutionary change, and ultimately only revolution is capable of effecting lasting change. Absent enough popular passion to inspire at least some faint thoughts of revolt, a reform is nothing but a dictate from above that can be easily undone by an opposing and contrary dictate from above.

Lasting reforms in open societies are indeed a real thing, but they are almost never pure reformism. They are driven by popular demand and backed by an implicit, though often unstated, threat of at least widespread disruption and at worst (in the eyes of the ruling elite) outright revolution if not granted. The reforms are granted by the elite under popular pressure not to erode elite rule, but to preserve it, and the implicit threat from below serves to keep the reforms in place.

In contrast, what’s happening in Saudi Arabia seems to be coming almost entirely as a result of the dictates of a reform-minded king. They could be easily undone the next time a more conservative king ascends to the throne, and in all likelihood will be.

Now, if when that hypothetical king undoes the reforms there is unrest, and then the reforms are reinstated, then they will cease to be a house built upon sand. But only then.

Published at 00:22 on 24 April 2018

Marcon can’t bargain with Trump.

He thinks he can, but he can’t. Orange Julius Caesar will say whatever Marcon most wants to hear at the moment, then just change his tune and pander to his base after the visit ends. Marcon will end up looking like the fool he was for thinking otherwise.

After all, even members of Trump’s own cabinet have trouble working with him, because Trump’s line on what he wants keeps continually changing. Trump’s own well-demonstrated personal flaws make cutting any sort of lasting deal highly improbable.

It’s somewhat surprising a reasonably intelligent person like Marcon could think his effort will end up otherwise. I guess in some sense he has to make a good faith effort to try and save the doomed Iran deal; it would look really bad for him to just write Trump off from the get-go. It’s one of those pointless formalities that must be gone through.

On a different matter, so much for the idea that Rand Paul might act as something other than Trump’s dutiful lapdog. The lapdog might yap a lot and even let out the occasional growl, but it’s always the smallest and most pathetic dogs that are the most vocal.

Published at 06:51 on 23 April 2018

Even an Establishment paper like the Washington Post basically admits as such when they write paragraphs like:

Participation and enthusiasm appear to have slowed since. Several street rallies have been sparsely populated by white supremacists — but overwhelmingly attended by counterprotesters — and by the time Spencer ended his college speaking tour, few supporters were coming to his speeches.

You see, fascists (and that’s all “alt-right” is: rebranded fascism) aren’t interested in participating in the dialogue of an open society. They want to destroy open society and replace it with a totalitarian fascist dictatorship.

Fascists’ public appearances aren’t about debate, they’re about projecting an image of force and power, and attracting support based on that alone. Outnumbering fascists, shouting them down, shutting their events down, firing them from their jobs, disowning them from families and sometimes beating them up undercuts and subverts that message of force and power, replacing it with an image of weakness and powerlessness.

It may make nice liberals queasy and even pity the poor roughed-up fascists, but liberals aren’t the target group the fascists want to recruit from, anyhow. There really is a paradox of tolerance, and acting on this fact really does appear to work.

Published at 09:30 on 22 April 2018

Decades ago, well before blogs (or even the World Wide Web) existed, it was obvious to me that the US policy with respect to Cuba was a colossal failure: despite its stated aim being to drive Fidel Castro from power, his grip on the reins of state were as firm as ever. I predicted that he would never be overthrown and would die in office, the standard outcome for Stalinist leaders who are not overthrown.

Close, but no Cohiba; instead, he chose to retire. The Castro regime, however, survived, because he appointed his brother to replace him. (Monarchy, anyone?) And now the Castro regime itself is ending in a fashion planned by the regime itself, on that regime’s timetable.

Note how I wrote “ending” instead of “over;” this choice of wording is significant. Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez is merely being appointed president. Raúl Castro remains chairman of the Communist Party, which in a Leninist one-party state is the real position of ultimate power.

I was wrong on the particulars but the end outcome is still that the Castro regime extremely likely to fully survive the stated policy of overthrowing it. A large part of that is because the policy itself was ridiculous. It ignored certain realities of the Cuban Revolution; namely, that it was a genuinely popular expression of revolt against US-backed dictatorship.

Acknowledging the above, of course, means acknowledging the painful truth that the USA runs an oppressive imperialist order, and that’s just something that the political Establishment prefers to lie about and claim doesn’t actually exist. Trump is hardly the first politician to be blinded by his own ego; he’s merely the most egregiously obvious one.

As to what comes next, who knows? The goal of the Cuban Communist Party is to copy the example set by the Chinese and Vietnamese ones, and to continue the existence of an authoritarian regime, dominated by the Party, that survives and outlasts a transition to a more capitalistic economic order.

And just like in China and Vietnam, it’s certainly possible, because capitalism in no way implies the existence of freedom.