For the past 12 years here, I've been trying to provide long-term perspectives on current events. During that time the great crisis in American life and world affairs has deepened. This paradoxically makes it harder to stick to a long term perspective, since one so easily becomes absorbed by the news of the day. But I am going to try to do so, partly by trying to post about the Trump Administration only once every two weeks. And today's post will involve a glimpse into the past and into the future, rather than a look at today's headlines.
It also involves the third-rail comparison between Trump and the current Republican Party on the one hand, and Hitler and the Nazis on the other. But I am not going to suggest that Trump plans to do away with our civil liberties, put millions of Americans into camps, or commit mass murder, or that he is going to unleash a major war, even though I regard that as slightly more possible. Instead the comparison will focus on one very important similarity between Trump and Hitler. Both have gotten into power largely by protesting against the impact of economic change. And my comparison goes to the question of whether Trump has any chance of actually restoring the economy that has slipped away over the last half century. As it happens, Hitler and the Nazis also promised to do that--but in practice, they did the opposite.
My text today is a remarkable book from the late 1960s, Hitler's Social Revolution, by a very fine historian, now retired, David Schoenbaum. Schoenbaum taught for decades at the University of Iowa and wrote at least three different works of modern German history, each concerned with a different era, as well as a study of US-Israeli relations. His place within the department has now been taken by a scholar specializing in gender and sexuality issues in modern Germany--a very typical change in today's history departments.
Germany in the interwar period was very different from the United States during the last two or three decades, but both societies included large groups suffering from the impact of economic change. In Germany, these included farmers hurt by low prices and international competition and a large new white collar class of clerks and retailers who often lived on proletarian incomes. By 1930, the year of the first big Nazi electoral success, Schoenbaum argued that the Nazi core was brought together by various fears: "fer of the department store, frear of communism, fear of the Poles, fear of further decline in the price of farm commodities, and 'the politics of cultural despair' [a reference to far right opposition to the modern world in general.] As I write this piece, I am increasingly troubled that no contemporary academic, to my knowledge, has produced a comparable breakdown of who is behind Trump, and why. But surely many of his voters were motivated by fear of further job losses, fear of immigrants, fear of Islam, and fear and hatred of political correctness. There is, by the way, one critical and somewhat encouraging difference between Nazi followers and voters and Trump's. The Nazis were disproportionately young; Trump supporters are disproportionately old.
Both coalitions were in part protesting long-term economic and cultural changes. In the German case these changes included the growth of great retail chains like department stores, the development of world agricultural markets, and the disruption of currencies caused, ultimately, by the First World War. The contemporary United States is at a completely different stage of development. Our small farmers and small shopkeepers ceased to be a political force decades ago, the working class has been devastated by foreign competition, outsourcing, and automation, and service workers, not office workers, are the fastest growing part of our economy. In addition, although both 1930s Nazis and today's Republicans rail against minorities, the immigrant presence in today's United States is much, much larger than the minority population of Germany in 1933. As a matter of fact, successive German governments had used high tariffs to insulate Germany from some of the impact of globalization for more than 50 years by the time Hitler took power, and the Nazis went even further in that direction by trying to create an autarchic German economy. The United States on the other hand has been moving towards freer and freer trade for about 80 years now, and it is very unclear whether Donald Trump will actually be able to change the role of trade in our economy to any significant extent.
Hitler, like Trump, came to power promising to help all economic sectors of the nation, and especially to protect those who had been losing ground. The Nazis had also stood firmly for the preservation of the traditional status of women, who had been advancing into the professions at a rapid rate. But none of these promises, as Schoenbaum showed at great length, came true, even before the catastrophe of the Second World War. "In 1939," he wrote, "the cities were larger, not smaller; the concentration of capital greater than before; the rural population reduced, not increased; women not at the fireside but in the office and the factory; the inequality of income and property distribution more, not less, conspicuous; industry's share of the gross national product up and agriculture's down." Traditional elites remained in charge of major institutions. Schoenbaum might have added, as I found in my own research on that decade, that while the Nazis had ended unemployment, the whole population had continuously to deal with shortages of basic consumer goods and foodstuffs such as butter because of tight controls on foreign trade. This undoubtedly caused enormous frustration among the Nazis' original constituencies and indeed among the whole lower half of the population. They could however no longer express their dissatisfaction either at the polls or in print, since they lived in a police state, and the war gave everyone new and much bigger problems to worry about.
It is very likely, in my opinion, that Trump's followers will be similarly disappointed: that in four or eight years we will have fewer industrial workers, not more; that illegal immigrants will remain a huge presence in our economy and society, if indeed they have not been given some legal status; that the financial industry will be even more powerful than it was before; that health care will be harder to come by for ordinary Americans; and that the white proportion of our population will have continued to shrink. The question is whether the Trump Administration can keep dissatisfaction under control by continuing a daily propaganda campaign against its enemies in the media and the Democratic Party and by mobilizing resentment against political correctness and its political manifestations. It seems very likely to me that law enforcement will eventually by unleashed against demonstrators, but I do not foresee a police state. As in the case of National Socialism, those not belonging to our national community may face the biggest problems. There may indeed by large-scale deportations of immigrants, although in the long run I doubt very much that their presence will be substantially reversed.
Both the elevation of Hitler to the Chancellorship in 1933 and the election of Donald Trump represent tremendous failures of democracy in modern western nations. In both cases, a barely sufficient coalition of disaffected voters has put a dangerous man, leading a dangerous movement, in charge of a leading nation. While I continue to believe that our danger is the lesser of the two, it remains real enough. And Trump's inability to deliver on behalf of the men and women who elected him will only increase that danger.
Showing posts with label economy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label economy. Show all posts
Thursday, March 02, 2017
Friday, May 17, 2013
The turning point
This is a big month for yours truly, marking the end of my formal full-time academic career. But I suspect it will live in history as a critical month for another reason: the end of any hope that the Obama Administration will accomplish anything further, and, quite probably,. of the modern era of liberalism. Several years ago I made a new friend who spent some time reading through the posts I had made since 2004, and she complimented me that so many of my predictions had come true. I'm afraid the time has come for more predictions. The Republicans will gain a few seats in the House and Senate in 2014, and it's quite likely that they will regain the White House in 2016. The will precede to the final dismantling of the work of the Great Society, having finished off the New Deal some time ago.
Barack Obama entered office five years ago possessed of solid majorities in the House and Senate, and facing a national crisis that everyone had to acknowledge. But from the beginning, he chased an impossible dream: the restoration of a bipartisan spirit in Washington. He never had the slightest success, but he has not, as we shall see, given up the dream yet. And this was the key to the mistake he has made again and again. This quintessentially political young man, who had parlayed his considerable assets into fame, fortune, and high office at every stage of his career, based his proposals on what could easily be passed, rather than upon what the country might in the long run really need. Even if the stimulus was a much as he could get, he could have put more of it into infrastructure spending and less of it into tax cuts designed (hopelessly) to draw Republican support. He appointed an entirely centrist economic team, one that saw nothing fundamentally wrong with our finance-dominated economy. He did not realize that the whole future of his Presidency depended on improving the lot of the bulk of the American people by the time of the 2010 elections--the feat which Franklin Roosevelt accomplished in 1933-4. And he decided after the stimulus to put all his remaining capital into health care reform, even though it would be years before it had any measurable effect. That reform, too, was written so as not to offend any powerful interests, on the assumption that we could fix the real problems we face without offending them.
To be sure, even in his first two years Obama had much less to work with than it seemed. Both Republicans and Democrats in Congress are in thrall to financial interests. Democrats are very weak at the state level in much of the country. Nearly 35 years of constant anti-government, free market rhetoric have left the vision of the middle of the century behind. To make government effective again Obama had to revive them, and this he has never really tried to do. We will never know whether any one else could have, but it is worth noting that Obama brought many of the same people back into government that Hillary Clinton would have.
Despite Obama's re-election victory, the Republicans have been driving the national agenda since 2011. Their debt-limit brinkmanship forced Obama into the sequester, again on the absolutely mad assumption that today's Republican Party would shrink from actually implementing the cuts involved. In fact their only regret, as they see the federal government crippled and the country threatened with a new recession as a result, is that they did not go further. Destroy the government and the economy and blame the Democrats has been their motto for a long time, and they were not going to abandon it for him. The same drama is playing out in many states, although California is now back on a more responsible track. I was shocked that Obama actually told a New York fundraiser that he thought his victory last November would "break the fever" among the Republicans and make them start working with him. They will never work with him. They want to destroy him and, more importantly, everything he stands for.
I must admit that I thought Obama's decision to make a new stand on gun control might make political sense. His own Generation X voted for him in the last election, but his response to the school shooting might well appeal to that generation's hyperprotective parents and thus change the political calculus for some Republicans. Clearly, however, I was wrong. The NRA brushed the challenge aside and the House of Representatives wasn't even forced to vote on what was, once again, a very moderate bill. Even before the events of the past week I was very doubtful that Obama would get substantial immigration reform. Yes, the Republicans are losing the Hispanic vote over this issue, but they might lose it even worse if the President actually gave millions of Hispanics a path to citizenship. The mantra remains what it has been since Newt Gingrich: don't let a Democratic President accomplish anything meaningful if you can help it, because that will once again show that government can solve problems. By making it ineffective, we can kill public faith in it.
And now, three "scandals" have given the Republicans a new life. None of them is really very significant. The Benghazi accusations are made almost entirely of whole cloth. The subpoena for AP records is a troubling reminder that this is the hardest Administration on leaks in history, and it has alienated much of the Democratic base. The IRS scandal is a perfect reminder of Talleyrand's famous words to Napoleon: "Sire, it's worse than a crime, it's a blunder." It will re-mobilize the Republican base as nothing else could, and the Republicans, aided by the entire media, will drag it out for months and months, just as they did Whitewater. There is already considerable talk in the House about another impeachment of the President. Don't rule it out. And incredibly, no one has raised what seems to me a rather obvious question: why should Tea Party groups, or any other political organizations, receive tax exemptions as charitable organizations? I'd really like to know.
Another crisis is looming over health care. Republicans constantly declare that many businesses will cut their workers back to part-time status so as not to have to buy insurance for them--and that might well turn out to be true. The implementation of the reform may be a public relations disaster.
The United States has been in a second civil war since the election of Bill Clinton. The Republicans are winning perhaps it was because it was their historical turn--a subject for another day--but surely because they are the only side that has really been fighting. Clinton and Obama have been status quo Presidents, offering very little that was new and almost nothing that appeared to the mass of the American people to make their lives better. Again and again they have bee willing to compromise, while the Republicans never do. And the growth of Republican power has indeed reduced the federal government to ineffectiveness on many levels. A Democratic victory in 2016 is anything but assured. A recent study--and not a right-wing one--argued that only the black turnout won the election for Obama last time, and the next Democratic candidate will not be black. Nor can we be sure that Hispanics will continue to vote Democratic if the state of the country continues to deteriorate.
Obama, it seems to me, could do the country some good by talking, at every opportunity, about the economic steps the country really needs: more spending, not less; much higher taxes on the wealthy; a reduction of the influence of the financial sector; and better public services. The only thing he can do now is to position the Democrats for the moment when it becomes clear that things are getting worse again. Instead, he is more likely to look for a "grand bargain" that will implicate him and his party in a new series of disasters. Meanwhile, the younger generations are completely losing faith in politics. In my last full-time college class last week, I mentioned that Kennedy had inspired much of my generation, and Reagan had inspired Generation X. "Has Obama inspired you?" I asked the class, which was certainly composed mainly of liberals. A long silence followed. "Well, maybe until he was elected," one young man replied. That, in a nutshell, is the tragedy of Barack Obama--and of the present-day United States.
Barack Obama entered office five years ago possessed of solid majorities in the House and Senate, and facing a national crisis that everyone had to acknowledge. But from the beginning, he chased an impossible dream: the restoration of a bipartisan spirit in Washington. He never had the slightest success, but he has not, as we shall see, given up the dream yet. And this was the key to the mistake he has made again and again. This quintessentially political young man, who had parlayed his considerable assets into fame, fortune, and high office at every stage of his career, based his proposals on what could easily be passed, rather than upon what the country might in the long run really need. Even if the stimulus was a much as he could get, he could have put more of it into infrastructure spending and less of it into tax cuts designed (hopelessly) to draw Republican support. He appointed an entirely centrist economic team, one that saw nothing fundamentally wrong with our finance-dominated economy. He did not realize that the whole future of his Presidency depended on improving the lot of the bulk of the American people by the time of the 2010 elections--the feat which Franklin Roosevelt accomplished in 1933-4. And he decided after the stimulus to put all his remaining capital into health care reform, even though it would be years before it had any measurable effect. That reform, too, was written so as not to offend any powerful interests, on the assumption that we could fix the real problems we face without offending them.
To be sure, even in his first two years Obama had much less to work with than it seemed. Both Republicans and Democrats in Congress are in thrall to financial interests. Democrats are very weak at the state level in much of the country. Nearly 35 years of constant anti-government, free market rhetoric have left the vision of the middle of the century behind. To make government effective again Obama had to revive them, and this he has never really tried to do. We will never know whether any one else could have, but it is worth noting that Obama brought many of the same people back into government that Hillary Clinton would have.
Despite Obama's re-election victory, the Republicans have been driving the national agenda since 2011. Their debt-limit brinkmanship forced Obama into the sequester, again on the absolutely mad assumption that today's Republican Party would shrink from actually implementing the cuts involved. In fact their only regret, as they see the federal government crippled and the country threatened with a new recession as a result, is that they did not go further. Destroy the government and the economy and blame the Democrats has been their motto for a long time, and they were not going to abandon it for him. The same drama is playing out in many states, although California is now back on a more responsible track. I was shocked that Obama actually told a New York fundraiser that he thought his victory last November would "break the fever" among the Republicans and make them start working with him. They will never work with him. They want to destroy him and, more importantly, everything he stands for.
I must admit that I thought Obama's decision to make a new stand on gun control might make political sense. His own Generation X voted for him in the last election, but his response to the school shooting might well appeal to that generation's hyperprotective parents and thus change the political calculus for some Republicans. Clearly, however, I was wrong. The NRA brushed the challenge aside and the House of Representatives wasn't even forced to vote on what was, once again, a very moderate bill. Even before the events of the past week I was very doubtful that Obama would get substantial immigration reform. Yes, the Republicans are losing the Hispanic vote over this issue, but they might lose it even worse if the President actually gave millions of Hispanics a path to citizenship. The mantra remains what it has been since Newt Gingrich: don't let a Democratic President accomplish anything meaningful if you can help it, because that will once again show that government can solve problems. By making it ineffective, we can kill public faith in it.
And now, three "scandals" have given the Republicans a new life. None of them is really very significant. The Benghazi accusations are made almost entirely of whole cloth. The subpoena for AP records is a troubling reminder that this is the hardest Administration on leaks in history, and it has alienated much of the Democratic base. The IRS scandal is a perfect reminder of Talleyrand's famous words to Napoleon: "Sire, it's worse than a crime, it's a blunder." It will re-mobilize the Republican base as nothing else could, and the Republicans, aided by the entire media, will drag it out for months and months, just as they did Whitewater. There is already considerable talk in the House about another impeachment of the President. Don't rule it out. And incredibly, no one has raised what seems to me a rather obvious question: why should Tea Party groups, or any other political organizations, receive tax exemptions as charitable organizations? I'd really like to know.
Another crisis is looming over health care. Republicans constantly declare that many businesses will cut their workers back to part-time status so as not to have to buy insurance for them--and that might well turn out to be true. The implementation of the reform may be a public relations disaster.
The United States has been in a second civil war since the election of Bill Clinton. The Republicans are winning perhaps it was because it was their historical turn--a subject for another day--but surely because they are the only side that has really been fighting. Clinton and Obama have been status quo Presidents, offering very little that was new and almost nothing that appeared to the mass of the American people to make their lives better. Again and again they have bee willing to compromise, while the Republicans never do. And the growth of Republican power has indeed reduced the federal government to ineffectiveness on many levels. A Democratic victory in 2016 is anything but assured. A recent study--and not a right-wing one--argued that only the black turnout won the election for Obama last time, and the next Democratic candidate will not be black. Nor can we be sure that Hispanics will continue to vote Democratic if the state of the country continues to deteriorate.
Obama, it seems to me, could do the country some good by talking, at every opportunity, about the economic steps the country really needs: more spending, not less; much higher taxes on the wealthy; a reduction of the influence of the financial sector; and better public services. The only thing he can do now is to position the Democrats for the moment when it becomes clear that things are getting worse again. Instead, he is more likely to look for a "grand bargain" that will implicate him and his party in a new series of disasters. Meanwhile, the younger generations are completely losing faith in politics. In my last full-time college class last week, I mentioned that Kennedy had inspired much of my generation, and Reagan had inspired Generation X. "Has Obama inspired you?" I asked the class, which was certainly composed mainly of liberals. A long silence followed. "Well, maybe until he was elected," one young man replied. That, in a nutshell, is the tragedy of Barack Obama--and of the present-day United States.
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