A Reason for Hope

Published at 12:59 on 11 November 2016

This has got to be one of the most straight-talking pieces I have seen an Establishment politican write. That there are voices inside the system that realize how profoundly different this transition is, and refrain from the standard rhetoric of transition, is encouraging.

Plus, there are reports that military and intelligence officers are contemplating resigning or engaging in internal resistance to Trump.

Governments do not exist as tangible entities. They are merely groups of people cooperating with each other. If those people choose to not cooperate, or to cooperate in ways contrary to the leaders’ wish, a leader can be rendered powerless.

Adolf Hitler would be a mostly forgotten, sad, and largely harmless footnote in history if at the crucial time great masses of Germans had simply refused to obey him. This is not hypothetical; the Nazis were given precisely this treatment by the peoples of both Denmark and Bulgaria, when they tried to implement the Final Solution, the result of which was that virtually all the Jews in both nations were saved.

It Gets Worse: Much, Much Worse

Published at 14:28 on 10 November 2016

Once there’s a convenient war going on, the repressive measures against “disloyalty” can be introduced.

Note that neither the war nor the repression need not be planned in advance. Trump could very well at this point in time have no inkling of a plan for a war anywhere. It’s just that, given the world we’re in, more terror attacks are inevitable. Once that happens, given Trump’s temperament, both the war and then the oppression become almost inevitable.

Garden variety American conservatism is of only very limited potential help in stopping either (and absent efforts from conservatives, given the makeup of Congress, effective efforts cannot be made). This is because conservatives tend to be patriotic and to conflate questioning in-progress wars with disloyalty to country.

The Risk of War is Very Real

Published at 12:38 on 10 November 2016

First off, Trump is careless and short-tempered. That makes it easy for him to carelessly embroil the USA in foolish conflicts.

Secondly, there may be something more sinister at play. This assumes that he’s going to make peace with the capitalist elite and the GOP establishment and rule as Bush v3.0. That means double-crossing the base that elected him and reneging on his promises to scrap free-trade deals. A conveniently-timed war could serve as a useful means for distracting the attention of that base.

The Economist alludes to the latter possibility here. Perhaps tellingly, increasing the size of the US military is a significant part of his platform. Note that he’s such an unpredictable character that making any definitive predictions is impossible. I’m merely laying out one possibility among many.

White Supremacy Is a Core Part of Trumpism

Published at 18:36 on 9 November 2016

That’s truly frightening. No disagreement there.

But it’s not the prime reason why all Trump voters supported him. He attracted the votes of a many less-educated Whites that voted for Obama. Voted for, bought the message of hope, only to find out that hope was mostly hype. And, when faced with an even more openly pro-Establishment Democrat candidate, decided to cast a big “fuck you” vote for Trump.

Some “racists;” they ignored race and voted for the first non-white presidential candidate in history… many of them twice!

To write all Trump voters as nothing more than “deplorable” is to make a grave error. Even Hillary didn’t do that. Her quote was:

“You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right?”

Who knows how accurate her 50% estimate was, but she was spot-on in her remark that only some but not all Trump voters qualify for the “deplorable” label.

Michael Moore Nailed It

Published at 18:25 on 9 November 2016

When he wrote this. Not that it would happen; as I’ve mentioned earlier, he didn’t actually say it would happen. Only that it might. And it did. Pretty much exactly as Moore said it would.

And today when he wrote this. The Republicans had a free-for-all primary. The candidate the talking heads said was unwinnable proved quite winnable, all the way to the White House. The Democrats had a more controlled process, and it wasn’t just controlled: Democratic voters tried to be “responsible,” paid more attention to the bullshit Establishment ideas of electability, and elected… a pro-Establishment dud of a candidate.

Had Bernie prevailed, there’s a very good chance we’d be talking about president-elect Sanders right now.

Postscript. Establishment pundits were wrong about Obama, too. In 2008 they were yammering on about how the “Bradley effect” (named after a successful Los Angeles mayor and failed California gubernatorial candidate) made Obama unelectable and that Hillary was the only responsible choice for Democrats.

How Will American Fascism Look?

Published at 07:33 on 9 November 2016

First off, not the same as German or Italian fascism. Those movements happened against the background of a growing tide of left-wing sentiment that worried the capitalist class and the traditional conservatives to the point they believed it was worth supporting fascism (in part under the mistaken belief they could control it). There is no strong socialist or anarchist movement in the USA; therefore, American fascism is happening under a different set of historical and political circumstances.

That said, these are still very dangerous and very uncertain times. Some things to keep an eye on:

Armed Private Militias

Both Hitler (SA) and Mussolini (Blackshirts) had organized paramilitaries acting under their command. Those militias played a key role in those leaders rapidly acquiring dictatorial powers. The right-wing militia movements in the USA are not centralized and under Trump’s official control. For many of their members, Trump wasn’t even their first choice of a Republican candidate. Therefore any sort of automatic widespread allegiance is far from a given.

Pay attention if Trump starts appealing to such groups directly in his speeches. Even an informal chain of command would be very worrisome.

Radical Islamic Terrorism

It’s here, it’s part of the world, and it’s not going away. There’s really nothing that can be done to absolutely prevent terror attacks from happening, so expect occasional attacks to continue. Such attacks could well serve as pretexts for “temporary” emergency measures to be enacted. In this way, terrorism could help serve as a replacement for the missing left-wing militancy.

Furthermore, the leopard will not be able to change his spots. Trump will continue to open his mouth and stay stupid and inflammatory things. And it may well go beyond mere words. If Muslims start getting singled out for officially mandated discriminatory treatment, the motives for terrorism will be radically increased.

The Business Class

There is no powerful socialist, anarchist, or labor movement for the business class to want to crush. This removes an aspect of utility for Trump to them. Moreover, Trump’s anti-globalization and anti-immigrant stance threatens their profit maximization. Finally, the markets like certainty, and Trump represents anything but certainty. So there’s definite room for a wedge to be driven between Trump and the business class.

On the other hand, there is still some utility in Trump to the business class, because he also and paradoxically promises deregulation. Hitler made a bunch of left-wing proposals to seduce the working-class vote, then turned around and stabbed the working class in the back once he got power. Trump’s the biggest liar in the campaign, so he could easily have just been lying about being anti-NAFTA and anti-TPP. Time will soon tell on the latter.

Urban Unrest

Like Islamic terrorism, it’s here, it’s part of the world, and it’s not going away. Plus, the biggest spark for urban riots is and has always been the brutality of local police officers. The Federal government has very little to do with local government agencies, so even if Trump wanted to fire all bad cops (and had a magic way of smoking them out), he would not be able to. “Keeping America safe from riots” is is another potential motive for “temporary” emergency measures. (And recall what I said earlier about the leopard not being able to change his spots.)

It’s All Over; Clinton’s Fucked

Published at 20:02 on 8 November 2016

She’s probably going to win Michigan. She’s trailing, but not by much and the votes in Wayne County (i.e. Detroit) are being counted slowly, there’s a lot of them, and Detroit is of course heavily Democratic.

In Wisconsin, she’s losing by a bigger margin, and Milwaukee County counted its votes faster than the norm for the state. I don’t see a way for her to make up her deficit there, and if she loses Wisconsin, she loses the election.

She could pull a rabbit out of her hat and make up for Wisconsin by winning Arizona, but odds strongly disfavor that on an evening where it’s become clear that the polls underestimated Trump’s strength.

I wrote long ago that the lesson in the Bush Regime getting away with lying its way into an Iraq war (and torture, and extrajudicial executions) was that the rule of law was now irrelevant in the United States, and the lesson in that was that leaders can ignore democratic norms and get away with it.

I wrote less long ago that Hillary’s tone deaf pandering to the Establishment wing of her party could end up proving very costly to her.

Looks like both predictions have just been proven all too correct. Though I will admit that going into this evening I expected Hillary to win despite them.

Personally, this really sucks for me, since the capitalist class doesn’t like Trump, either. That means they will probably have self-fulfilling expectations that will cause a recession. And I’m currently between jobs.

Not Looking Good for Clinton at All

Published at 19:09 on 8 November 2016

She’s almost certainly lost Florida, though none of the major media outlets have to my knowledge been willing to call it yet. And she’s probably going to lose Ohio, too.

She’s narrowly winning in Virginia, and will probably widen that lead a bit given that most uncounted Virginia votes are in the Washington, DC suburbs. But it wasn’t forecast to be close there at all, and it is. Given that, she’s almost certainly going to lose states that only occasionally swing Democratic, like North Carolina.

That means she has to carry Michigan and Wisconsin, or she’s fucked. Who would have thought Michigan would be a key swing state?

Ludwig von Mises, Supporter of Fascism

Published at 10:19 on 25 October 2016

Von Mises is one of the political economists the “libertarian” right is particularly fond of. They often point to his anti-fascist sayings in an attempt to refute any criticism that his ideas pose a right-wing threat to freedom.

Well, it turns out those sayings are mostly a case of selective editing and after-the-fact buyer’s remorse. Back when fascism was a shiny new thing, von Mises was a happy buyer. That doesn’t mean he was himself a fascist, just that like many on the non-fascist right he believed fascism would prove to be a temporarily useful iron fist with which to smash labor unions, socialists, communists, and anarchists.

He believed that fascism would prove self-limiting and thus ultimately refrain from pursuing the many of the other destructive and dangerous things it advocated. The end result would be a (in his eyes) beneficial purging of social elements he found to be distasteful and which threatened the power and ascendancy of his beloved capitalist ruling elite.

In that, his views were proven to be even more dangerously naïve than the standard view of most conservative enablers of fascism, which was that the non-fascist right would somehow be able to control and limit the the fascists once the latter gained power.

Trump is Back to Being Trump Again

Published at 20:57 on 30 September 2016

I was about to retract what I had posted earlier about the leopard (Trump) not being able to change his spots (lack of self-control). Trump has, up until the debate, managed what is for him an extraordinary streak of self-control.

While that was contrary to what I had predicted, I had also alluded that if he could do that, his chances would improve markedly. And true to that claim, Trump rose in the polls.

Now it seems to be over. Hillary Clinton calculated — correctly — that she could use Trump’s lack of self-control to her advantage in the debate.

It will be interesting to see how the two next debates play out. My instinct is to doubt that Trump will ever cease to be so easily provoked, but my instinct also doubted he’d be able to stay on message as much as he did the past month or so.

Ms. Clinton needs to start strategizing what to do if her baiting fails to achieve the desired result in the next debate. It’s foolish to assume that one’s enemy is incapable of learning from experience and thus will remain vulnurable to what previously proved a successful tactic.