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This Confounded State We’re In

This Confounded State We’re In

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One type of post I’ve made a lot on this blog is the “strategy review,” where I either review a theory of social and political change, or examine current events through the lens of such theories. Considering recent historical developments, I feel like it’s time for another one.

Over the years, I’ve gotten a lot of traction on this blog out of Philip Bobbitt‘s concept of the “market state” – a new constitutional order which he theorized was forming in the wake of America’s Cold War victory. In his framework, this was caused by changes in the security environment. With the ideological conflicts of the World Wars to Cold War era resolved, and free market capitalism ascendant, the state no longer derived legitimacy from controlling the economy and maximizing benefits to its citizens, in competition with other economic systems. Instead, it’s purpose was to keep its citizens safe and free markets functioning, to maximize economic opportunity.

This jibes with what other strategists, like Thomas P.M. Barnett and Peter Zeihan, have identified as the grand bargain the United States made with the world after WWII: we opened up our vast consumer market and invited other countries to embrace free trade, in return for which we stood as a bulwark against the Soviet bloc. Then we simply outlasted the Communists’ failure of an economic system. With Great Power conventional warfare a bygone in the nuclear age (the MAD doctrine), Pax Americana reigned over the Earth. Some even called it “the end of history.”

Things got messy after 9/11. It seemed history wasn’t interested in ending after all. The way Bobbitt understood it, in terms of his market state theory, is that in the new security environment, the threat wasn’t other nations making war on the West. Instead, it was transnational organizations taking advantage of the open networks of market state societies to infiltrate and cause harm – the 9/11 terror attacks being a spectacularly dramatic example. The point is, the market state had to adapt and develop countermeasures against these threats, with minimal reduction of economic opportunity for its subjects: that would be the test of its legitimacy.

The War on Terror and nation-building efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq could be thought of as the emerging market state’s efforts to assert just such legitimacy, led by the hegemonic “sole superpower” United States. We would just reformat failed states and turn them into free market democracies like us, with a few tricks (like Guantanamo Bay) to get around any legal concerns. It ultimately didn’t turn out so well, and we gave up after the Bush era, but arguably there were a lot of lessons learned about the shape of modern warfare that carry forward to this day (send in the drones!).

I’ve argued in other posts on this blog that what Bobbitt calls the “market state” is really just the zeitgeist of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries – an inner-driven, individualistic, commerce-minded social era. It was the age of neoliberalism, brought on by the Reagan revolution: a regime of free market principles aggressively pursued by government, on a global scale. The term “neoliberalism” is a bit fuzzy, and generally is used in the pejorative these days. Ever since the Great Financial Crisis of 2008, there’s been kind of a consensus that neoliberalism was a bad idea, that it wrecked the middle class, and that we need to turn away from it, and from globalization in general.

In other words, what could be called the “neoliberal market state” was a creature of a relatively prosperous and stable era, when it was conceivable to have faith in markets and be comfortable with low regulation and an open, globalizing society. It wasn’t the end of history so much as a reprieve, during which the United States basked in its Cold War victory and enjoyed peak global hegemony. But the mood has shifted now. The public clamors for a more closed and orderly society, and a retreat from global affairs, which every President since Obama has provided.

This takes me to the recent Presidential election and the curious return of Donald Trump. Didn’t the people know that Biden-Harris was rolling back neoliberalism already, and was the best bet for the middle class? That Trump’s plans to cut taxes on the rich and impose tariffs on imports would hurt ordinary consumers? That his adminitration will deregulate capitalism to the benefit of the very wealthy, one of the hallmarks of the neoliberal regime we are supposedly rejecting? So why did they vote for him?

The election result could just be attributed to the incumbent-punishing effects of seething populism: everything sucks, and heads must roll! Alternately, the market state viewpoint might offer another explanation: informational warfare.

What I mean is, in the new constitutional order of the market state, the citizen is primarily a consumer. That includes being a consumer of media; that is, of information. In our somewhat free-for-all media envrironment, dominated by social networking sites, consumer-citizens tend to get pulled into either of two media bubbles, each one replete with the messaging of one of the two political factions vying for control of the government. It’s like two different versions of reality fighting for control over the minds of the masses. I’ve described this before as the “red-blue wars.”

It seems that in the recent skirmish that was the 2024 election, the red zone faction prevailed on the information warfare front. I have read post-mortem posts (there were so many this year!) that state just as much. The red zone faction simply has a more robust media ecosystem, which gives it a significant advantage. And, as I’ve noted before, they might also have more “group feeling,” or solidarity of purpose – another advantage.

But here’s another way to think about information war: it could be waged from outside! Meaning that, with the open and global nature of the Internet, “bad actors” who are not subjects of your government can infliltrate your media networks and influence your elections. This is a true test of the market state’s ability to sustain itself – is it even possible to govern at all in a wide-open society?

You might recall that this was the big story after the 2016 election: it was a successful Russian cyberwarfare operation, as Timothy Snyder bluntly put it. It was the first step to installing a Russian-style oligarchy in the U.S., and it seems like the 2024 election might be the last. In this interpretation, it wasn’t that the blue zone lost to the red zone. Instead, the United States lost to a foreign adversary, and was defeated in a market state war. The Russians outlasted us in the end, and we became like them!

I used to joke, during Trump’s first term, that we were transitioning from the “market state” to the “mafia state.” It doesn’t seem so funny now. The U.S. Constitution, stressed by decades of partisan gridlock, is fragile and might not survive a second Trump Presidency. He has no respect for the rule of law, and is enabled by cronies in the other branches of government. So it looks like we might end up with an entrenched criminal oligarchy. The only hope I have is that Trump is unfocused and distractable. But, as Tom Waits puts it, if you live in hope, you’re dancing to a terrible tune.

Arguably, “change voters” who put Trump in office this cycle were hoping for some kind of shake up that would at least put us on the path to fixing our broken system. That’s the only credit I can give them. But what will replace the market state that ostensibly has been trying to emerge these past decades? Trump’s cabinet of media personalities and tech bros are like a perverse enshrinement of the Reagan revolution – conservative pundits and Ayn Rand aficianados large and in charge. Isn’t that embracing the neoliberal market state?

Well, no, since the new regime promises to pull back from free trade, globalization, and military interventionism – all hallmarks of the neoliberal order. And the oligarchs at the top of the economic pyramid, like Bezos and Musk, are not interested in free markets. They want monopoly power, and the new administration will surely not stand in their way. It really is looking like we are reverting to isolationism and the rule of robber barons – because, you know, things were so great during the Gilded Age in the 19th century.

Were voters not aware that this was the future they were choosing? I mean, isn’t MAGA supposed to be a populist movement? Why did it put oligarchs in power? That’s where the idea of rightwing propagandists scoring an information warfare victory applies. Democracy is the tyranny of the uninformed.

Alternately, maybe MAGAs did intentionally vote for this bleak new order. Snyder has invented a term for this type of regime: sadopopulism. This is a kind of government that inflicts harm, but then deflects blame to stay in power. Certainly on brand for Trump. MAGA voters might be willing to suffer, so long as other people that they blame for their woes (immigrants, queers) suffer even more.

An even bleaker prospect: MAGA is an alliance between criminal oligarchy and a vicious backlash from social conservatives against the multiculturalism of the post-1960s era. It wants to replace the market state with a new version of the nation state that yokes powerful business interests to White Christian nationalism. If the nation state was legitimate because it looked out for the people’s welfare, then the Trumpian White Christian nation state is legitimate (in some people’s minds) because it looks out specifically for white Christians – maintaining their privilege over the rest of society.

At what point do we just go ahead and call it fascism?

If a MAGA takeover is resisted, it might only be because our judicial system allows that, in the “emerging market state” in the United States, consumer-citizens are empowered to define at the state level what their particular constitutional rights are. So states that are in the blue zone could reject White Christian nationalism, and institutionalize rights according to blue zone values – obvious examples being abortion access or sanctuary for immigrants.

This would amount to a fractionalizing of the U.S. along red zone-blue zone lines, which sounds quite plausible in today’s political environment. The problem with this, which Bobbitt himself has reflected on, is that it goes against the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal rights for all citizens under federal law. This may well be the direction in which our state is evolving. For many citizens of the United States, that would be a human rights disaster. There are already women dying in red states from lack of reproductive healthcare, and God help us if deportation camps become a reality.

Another problem with fractionalizing along red zone-blue zone lines is that it denies the United States a national identity. Can we then truly be a nation? Each side in our partisan conflict has a different vision of how our national identity should be defined. The red zone’s vision is exclusive and looks backwards in time, while the blue zone’s vision is inclusive and confront’s the realities of today’s world. Obviously, I favor the latter vision. But until the conflict is resolved, one way or another, the definition of our national identity – and with it our understanding of what makes government legitimate – will be unclear. Until then, we can only keep dancing to that terrible tune.

Well, there you have it. Another long post that probably overthinks the politics of our time by trying to force fit it into theoretical frameworks. I mean, is “information warfare” really a feature unique to the new “market state” of the 21st century? Wasn’t propaganda a big part of the political struggles and wars of the 20th century as well? Haven’t other societies faced political conflict with an ideological dimension, where persuasion and the spread of ideas was a factor – for example, the Religious Wars of the 16th century, or the Enlightenment Era Revolutions of the late 18th century?

Theories are useful for making sense of events and for structuring narratives, but might also impose limitations on our thinking. And while the past can inform us of what is possible, it cannot be a perfect guide to the future. Ultimately, the shape of things to come is determined by our unique choices, based on our needs and perspectives, in our specific location in history. Whatever version of “the state” is coming into being, and whatever name we give it, it will be one that makes sense to today’s living generations.

All I know for sure is that everyone is getting a copy of this book in their stocking this Christmas:

Thanksgiving Debriefing

Thanksgiving Debriefing

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We’re back home in eastern Pennsylvania after what I termed our “Red Thanksgiving” road trip, so named because it took us through solid Republican-voting “red zone” country. Specifically, we drove through the western part of our state, plus Ohio, Indiana, and even a tiny bit of West Virginia.

One of our stops was at Fallingwater, the iconic house on a waterfall designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Aileen had already been there, but not me. As I had always wanted to see it, we took advantage of the opportunity afforded by the trip. It’s a lovely bit of architecture, but not exactly a cozy place to live.

The house is in a remote location (that was the point of it – it’s a mountain retreat) so we ended up in the “Laurel highlands” of southwestern Pennsylvania. This is the highest elevation region of the state, as was evident from the snow on the ground. It is clearly part of Appalachia – sparsely settled, rustic, with a bleak and run-down feeling.

In fact, bleak and run-down describes all of the territory we drove through. Granted, it could have been the season, as the foliage has turned its wintry brown color, the days are short, and it was overcast most of the way. Interestingly, if you follow Colin Woodward’s model of eleven regional American cultures, most of the territory through which we traveled falls into the region he calls “Greater Applachia,” so it’s not surprising that it all looked so similar.

This is territory that was settled in the 18th century by people from “the Borderlands of the British Empire,” “proud” and “independent,” as Woodward puts it. And it is definitely Trump country now, with Trump-Vance signs all about and nary a Harris-Walz sign to be seen. That was probably the most Red State part of our trip – being inundated by pro-Trump messaging in a bleak landscape of decay and poverty.

The most Red State moment of all might have been briefly listening to a jingoistic radio station in Indianapolis that was first promoting American-made products, and then had Trump himself hawking watches. I wanted to barf (at the Trump ad). They might have radio stations like that here in the Philly area, but I wouldn’t know where to find them.

The most Blue State moment of the trip was probably when we detoured into Columbus, Ohio to see Wicked. We did it on a whim, finding the venue and purchasing the tickets online while we were on the road. Power of the Internet. The venue was an indie theater in the same building as a pub and restaurant, so we were able to get pizza and beer to go with our movie.

The place was jammed, there were so many people there to see the film. They had to start it late so everyone could get settled in. We got to enjoy Wicked in a large and diverse crowd of geeky fans. And what a fantastic film it was! It’s story hit hard, too, considering what is going on in the U.S. now (I won’t spoil it for you).

We visited Springfield, Ohio, too. We toured another Frank Lloyd Wright house, the Westcott House, which is much homier than Fallingwater. We also went to a Haitian restaurant (take that, orange guy!), where we enjoyed a delicious meal of fried chicken, plantains, and pasta, served with amazing black coffee. We were treated like VIPs by a sweet, gracious, middle-aged woman, who I think was the only one in the restaurant who spoke English. She told us they had been open for eight months.

Springfield isn’t exactly a bustling city, but it plainly had at least a little more diversity and culture than the surrounding country. Our experiences there and in nearby Columbus made it clear that they were the more “blue zone” parts of Ohio. Franklin County, where Columbus is located, did indeed go for Harris in the election, though the state of course did not. It just goes to highlight how the red-blue divide is a rural-urban divide.

The visit with family in Indianapolis was wonderful. Thanksgiving – that most distinctive American ritual – is about coming home, about return and reunion. We had a traditional turkey dinner, played board games, and caught up with relations we hadn’t seen in a while.

On Friday we long-hauled it back to eastern PA, and our life in the purple zone. It was snowing pretty hard in the mountains, but Aileen bravely got us through (I can’t see good at night, so we split the trip with me driving the first half, during daylight).

All in all, a fun and satisfying trip. The only thing I could have wished for to make the trip better was if it hadn’t been quite so cold, as we didn’t get as much walking in as I might have liked.

The Hattie Moseley Mural, in Springfield, Ohio
Red Thanksgiving

Red Thanksgiving

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This week Aileen and I are going take a long road trip to visit her sister in Indianapolis. We are calling it “Red Thanksgiving” as we will be driving through Red States. Even Pennsylvania counts these days. Sigh.

It’s the first road trip out West that we’ve done in awhile, since the days when we used to go to Chicago every summer for G-Fest. We plan to stop off at Fallingwater (since I’ve never been) and then to another Frank Lloyd Wright house in Sprinfield, Ohio. That way we can check on everyone’s pets, too. /s

I love a good road trip and I’m looking forward to it. Also to an alternate Thanksgiving, as it’s our first celebrating with Aileen’s sister and her family. We Americans make a big deal out of this holiday, as it is one of the customs that defines who we are as a nation. Don’t worry about the history, it’s mostly myth. Just enjoy the gathering with friends and family and the harvest-time feasting.

There’s a chance we’ll get caught in a winter storm at the end of the trip, so wish us luck! And have a Happy Thanksgiving!

We Almost Made It, America

We Almost Made It, America

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It’s been two weeks since the election, and we now wait with dread for the MAGA regime to take over and reformat, or at least attempt to reformat, American society. I’ve already written one post – I called it an election post-mortem, but it was really more of a reaction to the gut punch, immediate thoughts post. Like many of us, I’ve been consuming tons of post-election content as we all process this historic event. Here are some deeper thoughts, bringing in a little social theory.

Now that the votes are mostly counted, it is plain that Trump will beat his 2020 popular vote, by 3 or 4%. Harris will fall far short of Biden’s 2020 vote, which is the essential story of her loss. It’s a shame, given that she will likely have the third highest total of votes in Presidential election history, after only Biden in 2020 and her opponent in this election. As I put it earlier, she wasn’t unpopular – she just wasn’t quite popular enough, for a post-2020 candidate.

Assuming that there was no fraud (let’s not go down that conspiracy hole), the problem for Harris was clearly turnout, which then intersected with the brutal equation of the swing states and the electoral college. Where did those millions of Biden 2020 votes go, that might have tipped the balance?

One answer I’m reading goes back to that famous quote from 1992, “it’s the economy, stupid.” The narrative goes something like this: neoliberalism and globalization have hollowed out the middle class, and those corporate Democrats just don’t offer any solutions, instead pushing a bunch of woke nonsense.

This narrative doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Listen to historian Heather Cox Richardson explaining it. She states that Biden was actually stepping away from neoliberalism, and that Trump will take us back. The economy was working more in favor for the working class under Biden than it has in 40 years. Under Trump, it’s back to the old ways. The rich will keep getting richer and working class Americans will get the shaft.

Harris, in her bid to be elected, offered economic policies, with specifics, clearly addressed at helping working people – she calls them the middle class. Some examples, listed on her campaign web site, are a $6,000 Child Tax Credit, and up to $25,000 assistance for down payments for first-time home buyers.

On top of that, Democracts, including Harris, ran decidedly un-woke campaigns this cycle. I’ll let Jon Stewart take it away.

The fact is, President Biden handled the economy well, considering that his administration started in the midst of a global pandemic. As this MSNBC article puts it:

In what will be a generous gift to his successor, President Joe Biden beat inflation, brought down gas prices, created millions of jobs, spurred strong growth, boosted retirement savings and revived American manufacturing — just in time for Donald Trump to take credit for all of it.

But MAGA partisans on social media and the pundits in Jon Stewart’s video alike are echoing this “Democrats are too woke and are ignoring real-world problems” idea. Why are they falling for it? The answer in one word could be: misinformation. As the MSNBC article puts it: “Democrats need to realize that they have less a policy problem than a propaganda problem” – in other words, their messaging just doesn’t resonate.

Democrats have earnestly tried to steer away from identity politics and focus on the material needs of voters, but unfortunately for them, MAGA Republicans have been able to make the “too woke” label stick. As this excellent substack essay points out, Trump is the one who ran on identity politics, and for him it worked. His promise to his base is a future that is white and Christian, just like in the good old days. Nothing could be more identitarian.

Let’s face it, the partisan conflict was always about the right-wing backlash to the emancipation of women and minorities, and to the rise of multiculturalism, that came in the wake of the Consciousness Revolution of the 1960s. As another substacker starkly puts it, this race was about race. Whites will lose their majority status in the United States in the next couple of decades, and for many millions of them, that is too much to take. Hence their slogan, “take America back,” which they will now proceed to do, with a vengeance.

But then why did Trump gain support compared to 2020 from almost every demographic group, including non-whites? Even including undocumented immigrants, who presumably know he wants to have them deported. Could it be that misinformation thing – all that money poured into ads to undermine the Harris campaign’s messaging and the accomplishments of the Biden-Harris administration, with the help of Trump’s billionaire mascot (or is it co-President?), who owns one of the Internet’s largest social media platforms? But then what about all the money poured into the Harris campaign – she both outraised and outspent her opponent – was it not applied effectively?

Was it just a case of tactical errors in the info wars? I’ve argued on this blog before that in this partisan age, when most voters know where their loyalty lies, political messaging is largely about rallying the troops, so to speak. The specifics don’t much matter. Except they might, when it comes to those crucial swing voters, who are the ones who actually decided the last three elections. Trump’s crude identity attacks and simplistic points (he literally just called Biden and Harris “the worst” and “failures” and left it at that) might amount to a blunter but better instrument of information delivery. People have thick heads, after all.

Let’s allow, however, that average folks, while maybe not intellectual giants, are not complete morons, and understand what their interests are. As this election post-mortem article puts it, “politics are material and people actually do know their conditions.” Yes, the Biden-Harris administration made great strides in improving the U.S. economy. By the standards that are conventionally used to measure the economy – inflation rate, employment rate, economic growth – we’re on the right path.

But people are still feeling the pain of high prices. It was the rate of price increase that was tamed, not prices themselves, which are still higher than four years ago. And young people – the demographic whose loss may well have been the hardest for the supposedly Gen Z-appealing Harris – face a future where jobs do not pay enough to achieve major life milestones such as buying a home or raising a family. In the face of this hard reality, rosy economic statistics are not much of a palliative.

That last article from The Guardian makes another point, one I have not seen anywhere else, but it rings true to me:

I propose a different explanation than inflation qua inflation: the Covid welfare state and its collapse. The massive, almost overnight expansion of the social safety net and its rapid, almost overnight rollback are materially one of the biggest policy changes in American history. For a brief period, and for the first time in history, Americans had a robust safety net: strong protections for workers and tenants, extremely generous unemployment benefits, rent control and direct cash transfers from the American government.

Despite the trauma and death of Covid and the isolation of lockdowns, from late 2020 to early 2021, Americans briefly experienced the freedom of social democracy. They had enough liquid money to plan long term and make spending decisions for their own pleasure rather than just to survive. They had the labor protections to look for the jobs they wanted rather than feel stuck in the jobs they had. At the end of Trump’s term, the American standard of living and the amount of economic security and freedom Americans had was higher than when it started, and, with the loss of this expanded welfare state, it was worse when Biden left office, despite his real policy wins for workers and unions. This is why voters view Trump as a better shepherd of the economy.

It’s like the American people got a taste of life in a Scandinavian-type socialist society, then had the rug pulled out from under them, and for that they punished the incumbent. We almost got there, people! We were on our way to fully automated luxury communism! But then Biden did the bidding of his corporate masters, and back to normal it was. Only someone forgot to tell him that for most Americans, “normal” sucks.

For most Americans, normal sucks so bad that they were willing to vote in, or allow to be voted in, a convicted felon and known degenerate who is probably also a national security threat. Like some kind of Hail Mary play to shake things up and maybe, somehow, end up better off on the other side.

The Guardian article has an even more depressing take:

Perhaps most emblematic of this is at the heart of Trump’s campaign: his embrace of extremely online tech billionaires, crypto currency and online influencers. If the archetype of Trump’s win in 2016 was the left-behind post-industrial Rust belt manufacturing worker – or, perhaps more accurately, the car dealership or McDonald’s franchise owner in a left-behind post-industrial Rust belt town – this year it is the crypto scammer, the dropshipper, the app-based day trader, the online engagement farmer.

That embrace was Trump’s message, and at the core of his gains, especially with young men. Without civil society and without strong unions, people believe the only path to success is getting one over on someone else. And who is better at that than Trump?

While the core of the resurgent-left generation of Sanders was downwardly mobile college-educated professionals, selling their labor for wages without the prospect of buying a house or retiring on a pension, the second wave of newly aging-in Trump voters entered adulthood without even those prospects, hoping only to grind out a living through scams. But this is fundamentally an anti-social and anti-humanist mode of economic activity that contributes nothing to society and offers nothing but alienation to its victims. The result is people willing to vote for someone they know will cause immense harm to others, hoping it will help them personally.

In other words, America has thrown up its collective hands and declared, “fuck it, let’s all be criminal degenerates now.” If a toxic mashup of white supremacy and billionaire kleptocracy is the best we can get, then let’s tap into our inner Joker, embrace the breakdown of society, and get on with the Purge.

That’s a dark view of the American electorate, and the sense that it might be true contributes to the dread that Harris voters like me feel. It’s the real kick in the face to the almost 50% of voters – almost! – who rejected Trump. We thought our society could be both civil and multicultural. But enough other Americans decided, I guess, that those two ideas are incompatible.

I will now turn to generations and turnings theory. I note that the brief experience of the Covid welfare state came about because of an emergency. In the Crisis Era or Fourth Turning, the perception of emergency creates urgency and acceptance of the need for drastic measures, shifting power from the market to the state. This reshapes society, and lays the foundation for a new understanding of civic community.

If the public indeed got a taste of that during Covid and liked it, that just shows how receptive the living generations are to radical change, as well as to authoritative leadership taking control. It could simply be that Republicans prevailed in the election because they are promising both of these things – radical change and authoritative leadership.

The Democrats offered sensible policies that have a track record of actually working – but to a majority of voters, that wasn’t satisfactory. They wanted sweeping reform of the system. I’ll let Jon Stewart make the point for me again. He might be the commentator out there who gets it the most.

If our government is indeed, as Stewart puts it, “an overly regulated system that is no longer responsive or delivering for the needs of the people,” then no wonder the party that shows that it is willing to break the rules is the one that got the most votes. The MAGA Republicans are more attuned to the social mood, and more aligned to where we are in the generational cycle – whether by craft or by instinct, who knows.

This is also connected to how the non-college educated working class has been migrating to the Republican party, in what has been called America’s 7th party system. A political party realignment pretty much always happens in a Fourth Turning. In the last cycle, it was the rise of the New Deal coalition, which gave the U.S. its modern social welfare state, such as it is.

The new MAGA coalition, if that’s what is forming, wants to dismantle the New Deal and make the Reagan revolution – that is, neoliberalism – a permanent fixture of American life. They want to add a heavy dose of social conservatism, rolling back civil rights that have been hard-won over this generational cycle. And also tariffs, Trump’s way of giving the middle finger to globalization.

None of this will close the wealth gap between the working class and the wealthy elites. So why is the working class supporting it? It’s hard not to conclude that lower educated, less informed voters are simply more susceptible to the rightwing’s superior media ecosystem. Or just go ahead and call it idiocracy.

It remains to be seen if MAGA will fully consolidate their power. Their victory is no mandate; the margins are too thin, and there was support for progressive causes despite Trump winning the popular vote. But unlike in 2017, Republicans in 2025 will control all three branches of the United States government. There might not be any “guardrails” or “checks and balances” to contain the MAGA policy agenda. The Constitution is about to get a major stress test (save us, John Thune!) which it might not survive in its current form.

In 2016, Trump’s election galvanized the Democratic opposition, which launched a “resistance” movement, so that partisan conflict was always in the background during Trump’s first administration. Today, the mood among Democratic partisans is one of retreat to nurse their wounds. We’re all over on Bluesky, sharing tips on how to manage life under tyranny. I don’t see much coming from the Democratic party’s leadership, if they even have any at this point. Is it possible they will cave, and give the Heritage Foundation the bloodless revolution it wants?

I suspect not, given how radical the MAGA agenda is. MAGA’s definition of the emergencies which require an empowered state (immigrants! gays! reproductive rights!) mean they are prescribing fixes that will not be popular, including mass deportations, and – potentially – banning abortion and gay marriage nationwide. It’s hard to imagine this will all proceed without friction.

Could we have avoided all of this if only Biden had kept the Covid welfare state going, as the Guardian article suggests? He could have pushed the idea of an ongoing pandemic emergency and used it to instigate more radical change, and taken us to a better resolution of the Crisis. Instead, we’re going to create our own emergency here.

There’s no way to know what could have happened, so it’s beside the point. We missed our chance. The future ahead can’t be known either; we see through a glass darkly. All we can be sure of is that somewhere in that undiscovered country lies the climax phase of this Crisis Era. God help us to get through it.

This is possibly the longest post I have ever written on this blog. I keep going back to it and rewriting it. It’s been a lot to process these past weeks. Thanks for bearing with me, dear reader, in these trying times.

Welcome to the Club, Ricky

Welcome to the Club, Ricky

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I am interested in theories of historical cycles, particularly as they apply to this land of freedom in which I live, the United States of America. One idea I’ve come across is that as the U.S. has gone through its cycles of evolving regimes, it has gradually expanded the number of ethnic groups that get to be considered bona fide Americans.

In his book, The Next American Nation, which I’ve reviewed here already, Michael Lind is explicit about it. In the beginning, only Anglo-Americans counted – that is, the original Mayflower-descended W.A.S.P.s. Gradually, other northern Europeans got included, and then all Europeans (the melting pot). This is where it makes sense to think of an expanding concept of “whiteness” – “white” didn’t include Southern and Eastern Europeans at first, but then it did, and Italian and Polish surnames came to be thought of as American surnames.

In this cycle, with the Civil Rights revolution, we were on our way to a multiracial, multicultural definition of “American” that might have lived up to Martin Luther King Jr’s color-blind ideal. But then MAGA happened, which is not a racially inclusive movement, and if they win this time around, we might not be expanding the definition at all.

Except in one small way, perhaps. Take a look at Trump’s cabinet picks; there’s one member of an ethnic group famous for being staunchly Republican and anti-Communist:

That’s right, the Cuban-Americans might get into the club this cycle. Hell, if they were good enough for Lucille Ball, then they must be good enough for America.

Liberalism Gets Kicked in the Face

Liberalism Gets Kicked in the Face

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Obligatory election post-mortem post.

Like every blue zone household in America this past week, ours is reeling from the MAGA takeover in last Tuesday’s election. I am having a hard time coping as I find myself doomscrolling and contemplating the horrors to come. I’m not sure what stage of grief I’m in – possibly still denial. Maybe moving on to anger.

I don’t know if I can write my way out of this, but I’m posting this anyway, if only to get my thoughts down.

I’ve written a lot about the red v. blue wars on this blog, and clearly identified myself as a blue zone partisan. I’m not interested in living under a white supremacist Christian theocracy. I’m not entirely sure everyone who voted Republican this week realizes that’s what they voted for, but so it is in our klunky electoral system that offers so few options.

In a post I made in 2022, I invoked Ibn Khaldun‘s idea of “group feeling” (solidarity within a faction) to describe the ongoing partisan divide. Back then, I felt (hoped) that MAGA’s group feeling was waning.

Which faction is currently favored in the conflict? A few years back I would have speculated that the red zone faction, rallying around former President Trump, had a stronger group feeling. They really seemed to have a greater solidarity of purpose than the blue zone faction, split between its progressives and moderates. But after the failed coup attempt in early 2021, my sense is that the strength of their faction just wasn’t quite enough to achieve superiority, and now they are on the defensive. However, I would note, as Khaldun might put it, that the red zone has been more clever at manipulating the laws of royal authority to favor their faction.

As 2024 crept on and Trump ascended again, I joined the chorus of voices warning about Project 2025 and the dangers of giving the MAGA faction power. Their group feeling was clearly back, and they had a shot at returning to power.

The Supreme Court decision granting the former President immunity from criminal prosecution was just such a manipulation of the laws, as was the way they maneuvered their judges into position in the court in the first place. This does not bode well for the blue faction. Luckily, awareness of this seems to have galvanized Democrats, and Project 2025 is now all over the media. But awareness and fear are not enough; they must translate into action at the ballot box. We must not allow ourselves to be cowed by negativity from profit-seeking media outlets.

And still that hope was alive in the back of my mind – surely the majority would not be for mass deportations, the end of the Affordable Care Act, a federal ban on abortion, and the whole awful white Christian nationalist agenda. Surely the Democrats could muster enough group feeling to eke out another 2020 victory, and avoid a 2016 disaster.

What a kick in the face to be proven wrong.

The pundits are telling me the Democratic leadership screwed up the campaign in a myriad of ways, and eroded their base. They’re not responsive to the working class, which wants populism, not more of the same old corporate liberalism. The Democrats lost their chance when they rejected Bernie Sanders.

I really hoped that enough people would see the dangers of MAGA as a greater problem than the Democrats’s waffling inability to reform themselves. I guess I was in a bubble. Gee, thanks for bursting it, America.

The worst past is knowing that Trump grew his popular vote, and that he gained in all demographics. Was it really because of ignorance and misinformation campaigns on social media? Or have that many people given up on respect for the dignity of others and for the rule of law, following Trump’s example? That’s an awful thought to contemplate.

There is some consolation in knowing that over 70 million of us voted for Harris. She is the third most popular candidate in Presidential election history. Her popular vote total surpasses both Clinton’s from 2016 and Obama’s from 2008 (which was a record until 2020). She wasn’t unpopular. She just wasn’t popular enough.

So now we get right wing populism, run by billionaires and theocrats, a new brand of fascism. And the corporate media, which values money over truth, is ready to bend the knee.

The sexists, racists, homophobes and transphobes are already out there terrifying women and minorities. Aren’t women and minorities working class too, or do the pundits mean something else by “working class”? Makes you wonder.

Onward through the gates of history, which now look like the gates of Hell.

Election Time in the Purple Zone

Election Time in the Purple Zone

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I have posted before of how we live in the “purple zone” – that is, in a mix of the liberal Democrat “blue zone” and the conservative Republican “red zone.” Where we are is semi-rural, but also part of a broad commuter zone for people working in or near Reading and Philadelphia. Our district is safely Democratic, since most of its constituents live either in Reading or West Philly – that is, in urban areas. But here we are in the less populated section in between, surrounded by farmland. There are quite a few Trump supporters in our town; one house has been flying a “Trump Won” flag since 2021. They recently upgraded to “We Stand With Trump.”

Imagine my delight, when, on one of my walks, I discovered a Harris-Walz sign in a front yard. Not far up the street was another one, a banner actually. That’s two more Harris-Walz signs than I expected to see here, honestly. Here’s the banner:

Below is a Trump house in the neighborhood for comparison purposes. These houses don’t face one another, which is probably for the best.

I think the Harris house is more stately in appearance, with its one straightforward message, and a banner that is actually tied down properly so it doesn’t flap about in the wind. The Trump house has a bit more of a frenetic energy, with its multiple messages and banners that can’t keep still. Those banners say “NO MORE BULLSHIT” and “GUN OWNERS FOR” in case it wasn’t clear. The little sign is a shot of Trump in his iconic moment raising a fist just after allegedly being grazed by an assassin’s bullet.

Both houses are clearly committed and display resolution and courage, in my opinion. The lines are drawn and the battle is on! I just pray that it is a battle only at the ballot box.

Could There Really Be another Civil War?

Could There Really Be another Civil War?

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Recently we watched the new movie Civil War, written and directed by Alex Garland, and distributed in the United States by A24. It’s about a near future civil war in this country, and I had been wanting to watch it since I heard about it. I like Alex Garland’s work a lot, both his writing (for example Sunshine) and directing (for example Annihilation). I was also drawn to the subject matter, as I am very interested in history, and history is full of civil wars.

We even had one here in the United States once, in case you didn’t know. It’s both fascinating and appalling to think that we could have a second one. I admit I’ve given the idea some thought, and even have a set of pages up on my old Web 1.0 site where I consider different scenarios, based on pop culture depictions or on sociopolitical theories: USA Breakup Scenarios.

The movie Civil War doesn’t go into much backstory of how the war starts or its exact outlines. We know that there are secessionists who oppose the sitting President, who apparently has made a power grab and overreached. He only appears briefly in two different scenes and seems to be modeled after a certain unpopular recent President. The primary opposition is the Western Forces, which include Texas and California, and has enough resources to muster a formidable army.

The flag of the Western Forces

The story follows a group of journalists, so you only pick up on all this background gradually, as you travel with them on the wartime East coast. They encounter various militias and armed groups and it’s often not clear who is on what side, or exactly what is going on. The cinematography is amazing, and the mood varies from eerily apprehensive to terrifyingly tense to action-packed war violence.

The film isn’t a political thriller or a historical film; it’s about photojournalism during war – about that experience on the ground. As such, it reminded me of the comic series DMZ, set in Manhattan during another version of a Second American Civil War. The city has become a demilitarized zone, and the comics follow a reporter who ends up stranded there. It’s a dangerous place, with the people living there being the ones who were either too poor or too stubborn to evacuate. Again, while the war is there as a backdrop, the story is about the people living through it.

Both of these stories – the movie Civil War and the comic seres DMZ – invite their audience to consider what it would be like for Americans to experience the political collapse and devastating warfare that they have become used to seeing happen only in far away places, such as Iraq, Syria, Ukraine…the list goes on. There’s almost a feeling of schadenfreude coming from these storytellers, like they want to give Americans a taste of what their hubris and lack of foresight has done for people in other countries. Yeah, it could happen to you, too.

After watching Civil War, I added a page for it on my Web 1.0 site, as well as one for The Handmaid’s Tale, which in its own way depicts a civil war, or at least an insurrection. We’ve had decades now of speculative fiction about the U.S.A. breaking up. But how likely is that to happen?

According to current public sentiment, there’s a pretty good chance. The problem is having such a strong partisan split, where each side in the red zone-blue zone conflict simply can’t accept the other side’s perspective. Or the legitimacy of the other side’s leaders. If that’s the case, what choice is there besides war?

Is it possible that by speculating so much about civil war, we are in danger of bringing it about? A self-fulfilling prophecy, as it were. I may be guilty of this myself, what with my web site and all. Just to make the record clear, I do not believe that would be a desirable outcome. It would be an absolute horror. As these fictional accounts make clear.

I will also add that in the generational turnings theory of which I am advocate, we are currently in a Fourth Turning, or Crisis Era. This is an era of political upheaval which in retrospective are seen as “founding moments” in which America passes through the “gates of history.” The American Civil War was such an era. Does a Fourth Turning mean there has to be a civil war? No. But if there were to be one, it would likely by in a Crisis Era.

I hope we can find another way out of our partisan quandary. Having support for the two major parties split evenly between voters, leading to narrow margins in every election, is a huge problem. Only by overcoming it, one way or another, can we pass through the gates of history.

A Plea for Our Democracy

A Plea for Our Democracy

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I have argued on this blog already that we are in a political era of partisan conflict between two factions, in which the stakes are power and control and the arguing is essentially over. It’s all about solidarity now, what Ibn Khaldun called “group feeling.” That’s why it’s a really bad idea for one of the factions to be turning against their own candidate at the eleventh hour. I don’t think a Presidential debate was really necessary, but it happened and there is no going back. Seriously, Biden got flustered facing an opposing candidate who is a pathological liar and expert baiter. That’s all, get over it.

The MAGA faction now controls one of the branches of the United States government, the Supreme Court. They are close to capturing a second branch, the U.S. Congress. And they have a Presidential candidate who commands massive loyalty; it make no difference that he is a convicted felon and a disgusting human being. The point is the MAGA faction has the solidarity to potenitally propel their candidate into a second term as President, this time shielded by the Supreme Court and more prepared to implement policy.

From https://x.com/mmpadellan/status/1809638465073516561

The MAGA faction has a plan should they take the Presidency, which you probably have heard of if not seen – Project 2025. It essentially rolls back the New Deal and aligns the federal government to Christian beliefs. The project’s leader has stated that “[W]e are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.” Meaning they understand the stakes.

If what you want is a dictatorial President persecuting minorities and enforcing religious law, well I guess you know which faction you are in. If you are in the other faction (full disclosure, that’s the one I’m in) then I must reiterate that what is needed now is solidarity. That’s what it takes to win this power struggle.

Let me repeat what I wrote in an earlier post on this topic, written in May of 2022:

Which faction is currently favored in the conflict? A few years back I would have speculated that the red zone faction, rallying around former President Trump, had a stronger group feeling. They really seemed to have a greater solidarity of purpose than the blue zone faction, split between its progressives and moderates. But after the failed coup attempt in early 2021, my sense is that the strength of their faction just wasn’t quite enough to achieve superiority, and now they are on the defensive. However, I would note, as Khaldun might put it, that the red zone has been more clever at manipulating the laws of royal authority to favor their faction.

The Supreme Court decision granting the former President immunity from criminal prosecution was just such a manipulation of the laws, as was the way they maneuvered their judges into position in the court in the first place. This does not bode well for the blue faction. Luckily, awareness of this seems to have galvanized Democrats, and Project 2025 is now all over the media. But awareness and fear are not enough; they must translate into action at the ballot box. We must not allow ourselves to be cowed by negativity from profit-seeking media outlets.

Probably if you are reading this post you are in the blue faction, as I am, based on my social network and who is likely to see this in their feed. Or maybe you think of yourself as not in a faction; but let me tell you, this is not the time for voter apathy or for a protest vote. Save that for a calmer era.

At this time, we need common purpose to resist a MAGA takeover. Should they win both the White House and Congress in this year’s elections, it is over for democracy in the United States. There will be no way to vote them out after that.

If you are reeling from the danger that we are in, that’s understandable. Remember that this is all part of a generational cycle. We are in a Crisis Era, a phase in the cycle in which the external world is reshaped. This includes political institutions, which is exactly what we are witnessing happenning. The MAGA faction has their plan to reshape the government, plain to see.

If you would rather have a government that upholds the rights of women and minorities, and respects the separation of church and state, then you must resist now, while you still can. You must vote for Democrats in the 2024 election. If you are not registered to vote, please register and vote Democrat. It is the only way to save our nation.

On Group Feeling and Group Conflict

On Group Feeling and Group Conflict

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As part of my general sociological research on the Crisis Era and the recent pandemic, I have been studying the topic of ingroup solidarity and outgroup aggression. Essentially, this is the social theory of group identification and the idea that people are more likely to support those whom they perceive as belonging to their group and to be hostile to those whom they perceive as being outside of their group.

I’ve browsed some academic works, which typically define the ingroup and outgroup in either nationalistic or ethnic terms. The studies find support for the hypothesis (idea) above, with interesting twists. For example, level of support can be affected by perceptions of status difference and whether one’s own group’s status (privilege) is threatened, or whether an outgroup is perceived to be particular hostile to one’s ingroup. Both of these perceptions will lead to increased hostility towards an outgroup. With each of two groups perceiving the other in this way, they can get caught up in a vicious cycle of mutual hostility, certainly a recognizable phenomenon in many of the conflicts in our world.

Two groups caught up in such a vicious cycle may well be the political parties in the United States today. The degree of partisanship and rancor between the two factions has become legendary. I’ve been blogging about it for a long while now, and recently speculated that we have social media bubbles to sustain “group feeling”, in the words of Ibn Khaldun. To put it differently, social media bubbles serve to maintain ingroup solidarity, and sometimes even to encourage outgroup aggression.

I found this one fascinating paper which speculated that Trump’s election victory in 2016 might well have been because of greater group solidarity among Republicans than among Democrats. The resisters like to mock the MAGAs for acting like they are in a cult, but really MAGAs are just exhibiting stronger group feeling. This will only help them in the ongoing conflict. Link to the research paper follows.

Another source I studied as part of this little project is the book Tribe by Sebastian Unger. In this brief work, the author argues that one reason for so much anxiety and depression in modern life is that we are removed from our evolutionary past, in which we lived in small, cohesive groups (tribes). In other words, by nature, we have a deep need to experience group feeling. In times of war and disaster, this atavistic experience returns. And though no one wants to be in a war or disaster per se, those who do, such as veterans with PTSD, often report that they miss the feeling of solidarity they had with their group while they were in the midst of hardship and danger.

An interesting tidbit that I got out of Junger’s book is that personalities who tend towards aggression, while not well adapted for ordinary life in peaceful times, become an invaluable asset when survival is at stake, such as during wars and disasters. This is hardly surprising to learn; I only mention it in the context of the previous discussion of ingroup solidarity and outgroup aggression. To whatever extent people in one group (say, a political faction) feel that their status (privilege) is threatened or that they are targets for another group (faction), then aggression will be seen as a valuable survival trait.

I don’t want to end this post on such an ominous note, so I’ll also mention that in the research papers I looked at there was evidence for factors that mediate against hostility between groups. One, believe it or not, was simply persuasion. So maybe your social media posts aren’t all just shouting into an echo chamber. Another is the perception of a shared common fate with outgroups, or a sense of belonging to the ultimate group, “all of humanity.” If these factors can be encouraged, maybe there is hope for us after all.

For those who are interested, I’ve put links to the research papers below.