From 1949, when President Truman appointed my father to be Assistant Secretary of Labor for International Labor Affairs, to 1981, when my father retired, his career depended upon the whims of the American electorate. When a Democrat won (Kennedy, Johnson, Carter), he received a diplomatic appointment; when a Republican won he had to find something else to do. That understandably gave him an all-consuming interest in the outcome of the next election, and being who he was, he identified his own fortunes with those of the nation as a whole. A Republican victory was, by definition, catastrophic both for him and for the nation. and our whole family accepted that view.
My father's view has now been adopted by the whole intellectual elite of the Democratic Party, which had convinced itself by 2000 that it was the repository of all wisdom and virtue. I still have never voted for any Republican presidential candidate and have no plans to do so, but I realized a long time ago that I could count on my fellow citizens to share my views. I have also concluded over the last sixteen years or so that the Democratic Party is now beholden to certain constituencies that have advanced policies that are not only unpopular but disastrous, and that it includes woke elements that essentially reject fundamental ideas of our civilization and think they can replace it with something better. I have explored that problem in many posts here. For that reason I cannot regard our current political struggle as a simple battle between good and evil. It reflects a much broader decline in our political, intellectual and cultural life--one which no one could stop.
In the current climate anyone who--like me--is trying to accept certain imminent developments as inevitable provokes an immediate backlash. A good liberal or progressive is supposed to believe not only that everything Trump wants to do is wrong, but that it cannot possibly succeed. For the moment our leading newspapers are printing story after story about the insuperable obstacles that Trump is bound to confront. No respectable historian, however--an endangered species, to be sure--can believe any such thing. History frequently goes wrong for long periods of time. Humanity has good and bad impulses, neither of which ever completely prevails. The relationship between reason and emotion changes over time, and emotion has been gaining ground for the last sixty years. Writing on the eve of a worse catastrophe than anything we have in store--the Second World War--William Butler Yeats kept his sanity by taking a very long view in one of my very favorite poems. It is in that spirit that I now try to get a handle on what to expect in the next year or so.
Trump and his coalition, it seems to me, are poised to have a first year in office that could only be compared in recent history to FDR in 1933 and LBJ in 1964-65. This Trump administration will be nothing like the first one, in which he tried to make use of establishment Republicans and senior military leaders. Eight years later he has a cadre of totally devoted supporters with whom he is staffing the federal government--and make no mistake, some of them are formidable individuals. Watching some of Attorney General-designate Pam Bondi's confirmation hearing, I wondered if we would have been better off with Matt Gaetz. Bondi is smart, attractive, charismatic, and clearly devoted to Trump. She is not alone. Trump's press office runs very smoothly, in sharp contrast to 2017. And he has used a cadre of Republican intellectuals to plan his first year in great detail, as we shall discover, it seems, on Monday afternoon, as soon as he has been sworn in. That by the way is not unique. Biden in 2021 issued an immediate round of executive orders focusing mainly on the two issues that probably brought Trump back into the White House: immigration and DEI programs. The New York Times also reports today that Trump has planned a massive raid designed to apprehend illegal immigrants in Chicago during his first week. Meanwhile, Trump also is working with leaders of the tech industry, led by Elon Musk, who have their own plans for reshaping America. They include drastic cuts in the federal work force, and the elimination of their job protections.
Trump does not, of course, dispose of Congressional majorities as large as FDR and LBJ did, but he may not need them. Because of his role in the evolution of the Republican Party he has the absolute loyalty of just about every Republican in the House and Senate, who are just as eager as he to set the United States on a completely different path. And few of them care, in all probability, that majorities of the national electorate oppose much of what they want to do. Curiously enough, the election victory that may resemble Trump's most closely is John F. Kennedy's in 1960. Kennedy defeated Richard Nixon with 303 electoral votes to 219 (and 11 for Virginia Senator Harry Byrd, unpledged electors from Mississippi and Alabama.) A number of key swing states, including Illinois, New Jersey, Minnesota, Texas, and California, were decided by very narrow margins. Kennedy won 49.7 to 49.6 percent. This was recognized as one of the closest elections in US history. Trump just defeated Harris in the Electoral College, 312-226. All seven swing states were decided by very close margins. He won the popular vote, 49.8 to 48.3. Last week, however, I heard Senator John Cornyn, while questioning Pam Bondi, describe this victory as a "landslide." It wasn't, but the slim Republican majorities are going to act as if it was. I won't be surprised if they at least find exceptions to the filibuster rule to get some legislation through the Senate--just as Democratic leaders were suggesting they should do to pass a law codifying Roe v. Wade. Since Newt Gingrich, more and more Republicans have adopted opposition to the status quo as their fundamental principle, and no respect for existing practices and institutions will hold them back now.
I predict that the immigration issue will create the biggest crisis of the next four years, a crisis in federal-state relations. States like California and Illinois are prepared to do whatever they can to block large-scale deportations of illegal immigrants. The Trump administration may use this as attempt to destroy much of their authority and discredit them completely. I don't understand exactly how or why the Democratic Party decided to defend the millions of people who have entered the country illegally. I certainly agree that the United States needs most of those people and that our immigration laws should be changed, but I don't think that acting as if our laws were irrelevant was the way to handle the situation--and it is clear that the Democrats have paid a huge price for that move. Deportations may not be popular, but active state resistance to them, I suspect, will not be popular either. The failure of the establishments of both parties to deal with the issue has led us to this point.
This administration will on some fronts do some good. The elimination of DEI bureaucracies and programs from the federal government is not merely desirable, but necessary. Some major corporations have begun doing this as well, and even colleges and universities may be forced to do so. DEI wastes money promoting destructive ideologies. Similarly, in the first Trump administration, the Department of Education rewrote the guidelines on sexual assault proceedings in colleges and universities to give the accused their basic American rights. The Biden administration rolled back those changes. Nor do I think that DEI programs are doing anything but harm within the US military--although I cannot say of my own knowledge exactly how far they have gone there.
I cannot predict what will happen in foreign policy. We will know one thing within a couple of months. Pressure from Trump, which shocked many Israelis, has in fact led to the cease-fire agreement in Gaza--but the key moment will come in 40 days when stage one of the agreement is over and the Israeli government has the option to resume the war. Trump might tell them that they cannot do so--while agreeing in return to a joint strike against the Iranian nuclear program. There is some evidence, too, that the Russians and Ukrainians both expect to be forced into a cease-fire shortly. What will come of Trump's blustering about the Panama Canal, Canada, and Greenland, remains very unclear. And a new crisis could arise at almost any moment: China continues to escalate its military pressure on Taiwan, and Xi has just declared that reunification must take place.
The administration will try to get the government out of the business of regulating the economy--especially its newest and fastest growing sectors. That could be catastrophic. Cryptocurrencies are likely to boom, and a bust could send us into another severe recession. We don't know what the effect of tariffs might be. There are areas, such as chip production, where the Biden administration took major steps down the Trumpian road towards self-sufficiency, and these will probably continue. In short, there are serious constituencies for much of what Trump wants to do. He has provided the emotional demagoguery and leadership--yes--to bring them into a powerful coalition, and it is already changing the United States.
9 comments:
Did a DEI program run over your dog or something?
I've worked for corporations with DEI programs. They aren't anything. They are attempts (probably sincere but not passionately committed) to make sure that people of all types and backgrounds can participate in whatever the program is part of. They're pretty weak tea.
On the other hand, the drive to get rid of DEI programs is led by the worst bigots of all stripes, bigots who want to make sure that people of all backgrounds *can't* participate in whatever the program is part of. And this is all stuff you should know.
I honestly don't know what you think you're doing here. Do you just not believe the right-wing types when they talk about what they want to do?
Well, you're not too far off. . .the philosophy behind DEI ran over my profession and left it in ruins.
I am nowhere near the outlier that you seem to think I am. There are a great many articulate liberals who feel the same way about DEI that I do. And no, I do not think anyone is going to turn the United States back to where it was before 1964. Nor do Hispanic and black Americans, who are trending towards the Republicans in various degrees. The goal of the Republicans is to make the rich richer and the poor poorer--in both cases, regardless of race or gender.
The whole point of the post is that I do believe the right-wing types when they talk about what they want to do--that is what the post is about.
I think you are overestimating the unity of the Republican congressional delegations. What has been called the
roughly 20 member Republican “No Caucus” in the House will be a block on many of Trump’s spending plans. In the Senate, Collins, Murkowski, and even McConnell will have to be placated on reconciliation. Only on immigration does it appear the Democrats are going to help. Executive orders aplenty, but I think we will continue to have stalemate on many things the MAGA base wants.
The underlying tragedy of this era is that none of our world leaders really have any idea how to deal with the actual problems we face. No one is taking responsibility or steering the ship. Voters, leaders and the “opposition” have instead chosen to line up behind fact-denying narcissists who insist that ignorance is strength. Once they finish burning down the classical liberal values of reason, humility and peer-reviewed pursuit of truth, the scientific, technical, medical, economic and political achievements that those values sustained will collapse under the slightest wind. That is if the return to authoritarian competition doesn’t spark a new existential conflict first. We already know from history where these roads lead. But we seem determined to pretend we don’t know what’s coming, aspiring only to become the screaming victims in a disaster movie.
My own field began to face the wrecking ball over forty years ago when a "race consultant" told me at an all-college opening day meeting that I didn't teach English, I taught "white studies." The cancer has metastasized even to K-12 classrooms, where my 9th grade granddaughter's assigned reading was nothing in the great traditions of novels and short stories, but a YA trash novel with two troubled boys who, after a series of emotional and family struggles, discovered that all was solved after they "fell in love." All complexities and mysteries of human life reduced to a predictable DEI solution.
Oh, I don't think you're an outlier. I just think you're incorrect, and that the younger generations are changing things in a way that you don't care for, that this is leading you to mischaracterize their efforts, and that you're overlooking the worst motives--and the worst dangers--of the far right in search of allies in protecting the things you believe to be in danger. And I think it's too bad.
Are we living in the age of anti-modernity?
Or are we living in the age of anti-postmodernism?
Those who believe the latter believe that rule-based modernity was a good thing, but only for a group of people who had the privilege of belonging to the majority. That is why the rules needed to be improved. It was no longer equal treatment for all that was required, but rather preferential treatment for previously disadvantaged minorities in order to iron out their unfair starting position in life. And this ironing out of unfair starting positions led to a backslash from previously privileged groups who did not want to simply give up their advantages—they are anti-postmodern.
There is much to suggest that the MAGA movement embodies such anti-postmodernism, an uprising of the majority against preferential treatment of minorities and their views. But why do some minorities and disadvantaged groups also feel addressed by the MAGA movement?
There is a different way to see this. The post-modern correction of rules, the allowance of "compensatory injustice", could only go well as long as the rules of modernity were an accepted matter of course, and the corrections of post-modernity were only a kind of fine-tuning.
But for the younger generations it has become increasingly incomprehensible why rules that apply generally should be fair. For them, it has become self-evident that rules must be specifically tailored to respect the needs of groups. However, the rejection of general rules that take no account of class, race, gender or origin is essentially anti-modern. Why has Trump become a symbolic figure? Because there seem to be no rules for him. That's why authoritarian groups are enthusiastic about him. That's why libertarian rich people are enthusiastic about him. That's why minorities and poor workers are also enthusiastic about him. He is the embodiment of anti-modernism
Trump’s authoritarian, anti-modern populism promises an absolutized postmodernism that has completely detached itself from the impositions of modernity. Classical postmodernism was a dwarf sitting on the shoulders of a giant, modernity. From there, the dwarf could see further than the giant itself. But the giant has grown old and weak, tired like Joe Biden, tired like the generation that Joe Biden embodies. The dwarf believes he can easily reach the goals he sees up there, once he has got rid of the tired giant. He doesn't see the enormous drop.
Modernism: Abstraction, nobody will be special
Postmodernism: Representation matters
Anti-modernism: Everyone will be special
One side seems to have gone too far in one direction and the correction will obviously exceed equally in the opposite direction. It has become a joke that Oscar winners or the films are often if not always about some odd minority or disability for example and that all films have race, sex quotas which disregard daily realities. Ok so that is Hollywood but when the military, local schools, etc all are enforcing the same line then it is a caste system. Men then say they are women or fake a Latino accent or say they are part black or native American to get a job. Beyond this nonsense lots of disorder as in big cities where crime is not prosecuted or in California where a shrub protection prevents cutting firebreaks to stop wildfires. I recall 1980s big abortion conflicts and this is now DEI and forcing trans rights on kids, sports of women. Can the US prez stop wars just by stopping arms delivery to allies? Sure. Why should everybody with problems force the US to solve them? Israel and Ukraine is like Angola war, endless proxy war. A clear vision of a leader is certainly more beneficial than muddle through and let everyone in the country, world do as they please, boss us around. Obviously the left led by intellectuals, entertainers, think tankers, CIA operatives have each had their hand in the pie trying to get done what they think is right. Now the techies, middle class family midwesterners, religious, etc will have a turn at the helm. What the Canada and Greenland initiative is about is clearly copying others. South China Sea, Black Sea, Donbass, Taiwan are considered backyards. Trump could see America stirring up a hornet's nest by trying to dictate into people's inherent family affairs in these areas. A greater Anglo-Saxon sphere like the EU for US,NZ, AUS, Canada, UK, Ireland perhaps and a Greenland association could buffer us against Eurasia while allowing them to live as they please. Having military everywhere and a big chip on our shoulder by every occasion is going to run into difficulties as others become more powerful and assertive. It is recognizable that the agenda of regime change is equally applicable within our own borders as against foreign tyrants. We just need disagree with the politics , demonize them. Even Bernie Sanders and RFK Jr had no chance as they, though lifelong Democrats were not chosen by the deep state, politburo, what have you. This is not really democracy when a demented president serves and the establishment installs the unpopular, incompetent VP unquestioningly. A robust press would have challenged things like Hunter's s corruption and not hounded Trump to death over invented legalities. There is no more ethics in the press than at a P. Diddy sex orgy.
I understand your main point, that the right-wingers should absolutely be believed when they talk about what they want to do. That said, I read your post in the same way Matthew E did.
With respect to immigration, I think it goes too far to say that Democrats in general and the previous Democratic administration have acted as if the law was irrelevant. We agree that immigration will be the dominant domestic issue for the next four years, but we should also agree that it is a complex and multi-faceted problem. Previous administrations have managed those complexities in different ways, but none felt the need to devote anywhere near as many resources to seizures, detention, and deportation as this one. While important and serious, there is no existential threat: immigrants don’t bring more crime, they don’t take jobs from citizens (at least not jobs that citizens want), and there is no “invasion.” This change in policy is built on lies, and puts lives at risk for the sake of very dark theater.
As for your comments on DEI, I accept that your experience with actions taken under an umbrella with that label were negative. Still, I believe to my core that diversity, equity and inclusion are desirable - and necessary, especially in government and the military (I am retired from both the military and Federal civil service). The nation’s servants ought to look the nation they serve. Where that is not the case, I see nothing wrong with taking appropriate action towards roughly proportional representation. And just proclaiming that the playing field is level is does not make it so. In this vein, I was disturbed by the news that the USAF removed references to the Tuskegee Airmen and the WASPs from training materials as a consequence of the recent Executive Order on DEI. This is positively Orwellian.
Ultimately, my point is that our new far right wing administration has much more in mind than merely making the rich richer and the rest of us poorer. They also want to fundamentally change (irrevocably, if they can manage it) the nature of our government AND our society. Yes, I agree that this far right coalition is already changing the United States. But that concluding line is understatement “like nobody has seen before.” Sure, we had a Civil War, but only some states went fascist / oligarchic. This time, it could be all them.
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