It Gets Worse

When thinking back to what the political climate was like in the early years of Obama's presidency, one gets a sense of deja vu. Amid the Great Recession, most felt betrayed by the political and economic establishment and strongly desired to change it, but in a lot of cases, this populist energy was going in the wrong direction; a political vacuum had appeared, and as often happens with political vacuums, demagoguery filled much of the empty space.

That era, as you remember, involved a surge in support for movements like the Tea Party, the rise of divisive media figures like Glenn Beck, and (somewhat below the surface) a growth of membership in far-right groups. The country had seen phenomenon like that before in recent decades, but in this instance, one person had reason to believe that such events reflected a far deeper and darker societal trend than usual.

In 2010, reports Chris Hedges, Noam Chomsky gave a disquieting assessment of the state of the nation, saying that the current situation "Is very similar to late Weimar Germany," the regime which preceded the Third Reich. As was the case in early 1930's Germany, he explains, faith in established institutions and the ideological center was eroding due to widespread economic inopportunity, and that opened up the door for political monstrosities to arise.

"The United States is extremely lucky that no honest, charismatic figure has arisen," he said. "Every charismatic figure is such an obvious crook that he destroys himself, like McCarthy or Nixon or the evangelist preachers. If somebody comes along who is charismatic and honest this country is in real trouble because of the frustration, disillusionment, the justified anger and the absence of any coherent response. What are people supposed to think if someone says 'I have got an answer, we have an enemy'? There it was the Jews. Here it will be the illegal immigrants and the blacks. We will be told that white males are a persecuted minority. We will be told we have to defend ourselves and the honor of the nation. Military force will be exalted. People will be beaten up. This could become an overwhelming force. And if it happens it will be more dangerous than Germany. The United States is the world power. Germany was powerful but had more powerful antagonists. I don’t think all this is very far away. If the polls are accurate it is not the Republicans but the right-wing Republicans, the crazed Republicans, who will sweep the next election."

Such an event failed to transpire in the the election immediately following Chomsky's prediction, but ominous signs indeed began to appear. In the early stages of the 2012 Republican primaries, some abnormally extreme candidates like Michelle Bachman and Herman Cain were close to being the favorites at one point. It was only after then, of course, that things really started to get crazy.

Donald Trump, who may have become president in 2012 had he not put off running, is regarded by many as just the type of person Chomsky warned about. "Be very afraid," warned James Kunstler late last year. "Donald Trump isn’t funny anymore. He’s Hitler without the brains and the charm." Chomsky's reaction to Trump's victory is similarly dire: "For many years, I have been writing and speaking about the danger of the rise of an honest and charismatic ideologue in the United States, someone who could exploit the fear and anger that has long been boiling in much of the society, and who could direct it away from the actual agents of malaise to vulnerable targets. That could indeed lead to what sociologist Bertram Gross called 'friendly fascism' in a perceptive study 35 years ago. But that requires an honest ideologue, a Hitler type, not someone whose only detectable ideology is Me. The dangers, however, have been real for many years, perhaps even more so in the light of the forces that Trump has unleashed."

This may sound ludicrous, but I do not believe Trump is the person he's talking about.

Chomsky's assessment of the factors behind Trump's rise is entirely accurate; exit polls in both the primaries and the general election show that Trump voters are generally resentful towards the political (though not quite so much economic) establishment, and the promise of change was for the most part what lead to Trump winning.

In this piece, I'm going to explain why I think that Trump, awful as he is, is just the prelude to a larger horror that's looming on the horizon. And first on my list of reasons for this is the fact that Trump's intentions have more do to with satisfying his own ego than changing the country. As Michael Moore very plausibly claimed in August, Trump's decision to run for president was originally more of a publicity stunt than a scheme to usher in an era of tyranny:

Trump was unhappy with his deal as host and star of his hit NBC show, “The Apprentice” (and “The Celebrity Apprentice”). Simply put, he wanted more money. He had floated the idea before of possibly running for president in the hopes that the attention from that would make his negotiating position stronger. But he knew, as the self-proclaimed king of the dealmakers, that saying you’re going to do something is bupkus — DOING it is what makes the bastards sit up and pay attention.

Trump had begun talking to other networks about moving his show. This was another way to get leverage — the fear of losing him to someone else — and when he "quietly" met with the head of one of those networks, and word got around, his hand was strengthened. He knew then that it was time to play his Big Card.

He decided to run for president.

Of course he wouldn’t really have to RUN for president — just make the announcement, hold a few mega-rallies that would be packed with tens of thousands of fans, and wait for the first opinion polls to come in showing him — what else! — in first place! And then he would get whatever deal he wanted, worth millions more than what he was currently being paid.

And though this cynical tactic to exploit the political process has evidently morphed since then into a genuine effort from Trump to become president, given the information above I have little reason to believe that he intends to commit to the job-or to his campaign promises.

Firstly is the issue of trade. One of the few legitimate problems that Trump has promised to address, the injustice of having corporations abandon American workers for higher profits is something that has famously made Trump win over many people who feel it hurts the economy. And yet Trump's actions so far have not matched his words; his VP pick of staunch neoliberal trade advocate Mike Pence was the first sign that he can't be trusted to confront this issue, along with the fact that all of his economic advisors seek to serve the interests of the corporations that benefit from the current trade system.

And then comes Trump's promise to "drain the swamp" of political corruption. In addition to how Trump is the most corrupt presidential candidate in history, this claim is made very hard to believe by the cabinet picks he's made so far, which include numerous lobbyists and former corporate donors to his campaign.

Other things that Trump has vowed to accomplish but likely won't is deport all undocumented immigrants, which he's decided not to attempt since being elected, and impose a ban on Muslims from entering the country, which the system won't allow him to do whether wants to or not. None of this is to say that he'll be unwilling or unable enact the other sinister policies that he and his aides have embraced-a return of waterboarding, a strengthened police state-but for the most part, it seems the authoritarian strongman that Trump supporters are looking for will not turn out to be Trump.

But if these failures of Trump's principle and integrity don't turn off his fans, who are extremely committed to remaining loyal to him, his handling of the economy will likely be what does in his initial support. Those in the bottom 99.9% of the income bracket, who are already very much feeling the financial consequences of forty years of neoliberal policies, will predictably become even poorer under the economic policies of Trump and the Republicans in the House and the Senate. And finally, the most dramatic way that Trump will betray his promises to improve the quality of life of Americans is by failing to adequately regulate the financial sector, which is sure to cause a new financial crisis that's likely to hit sometime within the first half of his term.

In short, though whether Donald Trump is charismatic is a matter of opinion, he is certainly not honest in his intentions. He may be a tyrant-in-the-making, but his inexperience, poor judgement, and lack of core values all make him destined for political failure. I can easily imagine that in time for the next election cycle, a great deal of Trump's former supporters will no longer view him as the appealing outsider who gave them hope in 2016, but as exactly what he is: another establishment politician. As Chomsky said, most demagogues and deceivers ultimately defeat themselves, and Trump will be no exception.

Unfortunately, this is where the opportunity will appear for the rise of something far worse than Trump.

While the extreme unpopularity of Trump circa the 2020 election cycle will of course make it easy for the left to win against him, the same will be true for the extreme right. It's a real possibility that after Trump has politically destroyed himself, a new demagogue who possesses far more skill and principle will beat him in the 2020 Republican primaries (or even upstage him while running third party) and become the next face of the ever more sinister American fascist movement.

If this sounds implausible, think of what author Umair Haque wrote last year regarding the direction that the political environment has been headed in for the past several years: "If I’d told you last Christmas that the leading contender for President of the richest and most powerful country on the globe had openly said that he was OK with armbands, internment camps, extra-judicial bans, and blood rights, unless you were a card-carrying member of Conspiracy Theorists International, you probably would have laughed at me."

And we may well see such an upset again, except this time it will represent something that genuinely resembles the Third Reich. No one illustrates my point better than John Feffer in his piece The Most Important Election Of Your Life Is Not This Year, the following quote from which, though I've used it before, is entirely appropriate for this article:

The real change will come when a more sophisticated politician, with an authentic political machine, sets out to woo America B [conservative America]. Perhaps the Democratic Party will decide to return to its more populist, mid-century roots. Perhaps the Republican Party will abandon its commitment to entitlement programs for the 1%.

More likely, a much more ominous political force will emerge from the shadows. If and when that new, neo-fascist party fields its charismatic presidential candidate, that will be the most important election of our lives.

As long as America B is left in the lurch by what passes for modernity, it will inevitably try to pull the entire country back to some imagined golden age of the past before all those "others" hijacked the red, white, and blue. Donald Trump has hitched his presidential wagon to America B. The real nightmare, however, is likely to emerge in 2020 or thereafter, if a far more capable politician who embraces similar retrograde positions rides America B into Washington.

While I used to think such an event would only materialize if Hillary Clinton had won, I now realize that the dark political energy capable of producing it has the ability to manifest itself regardless of whether a Democrat or a Republican is in charge. Either way, the factors which are causing these fascist, reactionary sentiments will continue to antagonize the public, inching the nation ever closer to tyranny.

And when it gets to that point, we'll no doubt look back fondly on Glenn Beck and the teabaggers.

Make No Mistake, The Democratic Party Is Dangerous

It was October 1, 2008, and the senate vote on whether banking oligarchs would be allowed to further dominate the economy  and eventually crash it again was being discussed. The problem was that the measure had the name "Emergency Economic Stabilization Act," which most in the House and the Senate were taking at face value. Among the supporters of the act were the majority of Democratic officials, including Barack Obama.

Obama made a seemingly solid case for the bailout when his time to speak came, explaining how he was satisfied with the terms that the administration had agreed to about making the banks pay back the appropriate amount of money to taxpayers. But as Senator Bernie Sanders sat behind him, he remained unmoved in his opposition to the measure, and he delivered an indisputable argument against the notion that it would help the interests of the people.

But most of the Democrats refused to listen, and two days later, the bailout was passed. As a result, the big financial institutions have become so large that they're no longer possible to sufficiently regulate, the five biggest banks control $15 trillion in assets according to the latest estimation (to put that in perspective, all of the wealth in the U.S. is $10.5 trillion), and the events that led up to the 2008 financial crisis have been repeated, this time with even worse consequences expected. And all because those Democrats in the House and the Senate gave in to the wishes of their donors in the banking industry.

In an infamous Democracy Now interview, Noam Chomsky once offered a scathing assessment of the Republican Party:

We should recognize—if we were honest, we would say something that sounds utterly shocking and no doubt will be taken out of context and lead to hysteria on the part of the usual suspects, but the fact of the matter is that today’s Republican Party qualify as candidates for the most dangerous organization in human history. Literally. Just take their position on the two major issues that face us: climate change, nuclear war. On climate change, it’s not even debatable. They’re saying, “Let’s race to the precipice. Let’s make sure that our grandchildren have the worst possible life.” On nuclear war, they’re calling for increased militarization. It’s already way too high, more than half the discretionary budget. “Let’s shoot it up.” They cut back other resources by cutting back taxes on the rich, so there’s nothing left. There’s been nothing this—literally, this dangerous, if you think about it, to the species, really, ever. We should face that.

And he's right. Though the mission of the Republican Party is to maximize the profits of banks and corporations, not intentionally exterminate an entire race as the Nazis wanted to do, because the logical extension of the Republicans' goal comes with ignoring the potential destruction of the planet, they are the group with the ability to do even more serious damage.

But as Chomsky would also agree, Democrats are not far behind. He said in another instance that

There used to be a quip that the United States was a one-party state with a business party that had two factions: the Democrats and Republicans—and that used to be pretty accurate, but it’s not anymore. The U.S. is still a two-party state, but there’s only one faction, and it’s not Democrats, it’s moderate Republicans. Today’s Democrats have shifted to the right.

As with the GOP, the threat that the modern Democratic Party's ideology poses is not that it explicitly promotes violence, human suffering, and environmental harm, but that it consists of a series of rationalizations which keep those enamored with it from recognizing that they're supporting these things.

When Democrats fail to pass universal health care despite being in control of the White House, the House, and the Senate, it isn't because they care more about the profits of insurance companies more than the lives of the uninsured, it's because they need to be realistic. When Democrats go along with Republicans'  disastrous idea to invade Iraq, it's not because they care more about the public opinion polls than the consequences of war, it's because they felt like the (easily disputable) evidence for WMDs at the time gave them no choice. When Democrats decide to stick to their story about the Wall Street bailouts helping ordinary Americans despite clear evidence to the contrary, it's not because they're beholden to their donors in the banking industry, it's because they need to compromise with the administration.

The list goes on and on. But what seems to occur in every one of the Democratic excuses for participating in a version of Republicanism is pragmatism. It isn't selling out when a Democratic politician accepts campaign contributions from the very same corporations and banks that Republicans do, refuses to stop a war, or pushes for a neoliberal trade deal; it's working within the system. "We all believe in economic opportunity for everybody," Delaware Democratic Governor Jack Merkel once said. "The difference between myself and senator Sanders and senator Warren is that they think that's not happening because the system is rigged, and I think it's not happening because the system is changing."

The problem with Merkel's Democratic worldview is that instead of recognizing the fundamental problems within our government and economy so that they can be addressed with the urgency and aggressiveness needed to solve them, it always encourages caution and negotiation as the best approaches. While such an incremental method is indeed necessary in some cases, to assume it's an inherently good governing approach is anything but rational.

Surrendering to the vastly powerful forces of neoliberalism whenever possible and then calling it incrementalism-which, overall, is a decent summary of what the Democrats have done-is, in a way, more dangerous than the open regressiveness of the Republicans. The only result of accepting this political philosophy, as we've seen this year, is that the Democratic Party becomes ever more militaristic, oriented towards the interests of big business, and even less progressive on social issues. And if this trend continues, the next step will be an official merging between the two parties on those crucial issues that Chomsky mentioned. They will both put the profits of fossil fuel companies above the stability of the climate. They will both be solely focused on redistributing wealth to the top. And they will both want to instigate and escalate military conflicts, perhaps even to their logical conclusion of nuclear war.

Because as governor Merkel implies, if the system changes, you need to change with it.

The good news is that the party will be out of power before it has the chance to enact such an agenda. In April, when faced with the question of whether Democrats have a future when so many young people and liberals are growing deeply dissatisfied with the direction their party has taken, DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz replied,

Look, I mean, I think both political parties, through time immemorial, have had a spectrum, a range of views across a spectrum, but we're a big tent party, so we have the ability to absorb and be unified with people on the far left and on the center right, and have the same people call themselves Democrats.

She's doing nothing but echoing the outdated Democratic model of political triangulation from the 1990's. This is not the same country as it was the last time the Clintons took over the Democratic party; public opinion has turned very far to the left. Income inequality has reached an unprecedented point in American history. In the last eight years, Democratic membership has gone down by at least 6%, and the number of independents has gone up by at least 14%. The writer Seth Abramson describes this radical shift in the American political landscape as Clintonism having been defeated by Sandersism, a worldview which he says consists of this:

In Sandersism you negotiate with any and all parties of good faith up until the moment doing so requires sacrificing a principle. If, under those conditions, not enough parties of good faith remain, you spend all your time and resources writing executive orders and working for an end to gerrymandering and the defeat of all bad-faith politicians in local, state, and national primaries and generals. In Sandersism politics is an arena where ideas, not bank accounts or special interests, are contested; every American is given every possible opportunity to vote; corporate practices that maim or kill living humans are outlawed; those few economic practices that can terminally endanger basic economic justice are adequately regulated; and we spend as much money making sure our criminal justice system and law enforcement apparatuses are actually just as we do ensuring our military is capable and appropriately fearsome. Sandersism is a “we” and an “us” movement that transcends the artificial divisions of the party era and the atomization of persons and communities. A Sandersist spends the minimum amount of time running for office and the maximum amount of time doing the difficult work of governing — and in both roles places transparency ahead of political exigency ten times out of ten.

The Democratic Party as it has existed for several decades and will, in all likelihood, continue to exist in the years to come, in no way fits this model. And as Sandersism looms increasingly large in the court of public opinion, the party will die out and be replaced by something else.

In the meantime, though, we'll be forced to reckon with the consequences of our Clintonian past. Because of that bailout bill, another recession is coming, this one possibly even bigger than the last one. And when that crash hits, Obama and the other establishment Democrats will go right along with the Republicans on bailing out the now even more concentrated banks.

Whether they succeed again is uncertain. But this time, when Bernie Sanders is watching Obama push for another policy that so shamefully represents the Democrats, he'll know that the party's time is about to run out.