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Thought Leaders
Umair Haque
Do Americans (Really) Understand How High the Stakes of this Election Are? ... Democracy’s Life is on the Line. But Do We Really Get How Much?
Peter Burgess
You don’t have to look too hard to see the parlous state of the American left. OK, it’s true — there’s not really an American “left”, so let’s just use the term lightly, to mean “Democrats.” Now, the stakes couldn’t be higher. Democracy’s life is on the line.
There’s a Prez who by now has fulfilled all the worst prophecies of people like me, and then some. Do you remember just a scant few years when a small group of us (and by us I mean intellectuals, public figures, authors, etc) began to warn that this was the path to authoritarianism and fascism? And today we have a Prez, who, according to pundits, has been “emboldened” by being impeached…which he says acquitted him…putting ethnic bans in place…retaliating and threatening revenge against political opponents…and all that’s after the concentration camps, raids, and purges? Whew. What a sentence to have to write.
And yet America’s situation couldn’t be more dire, or more real. Re-elect this Prez — and it’s game over for democracy. Yes, really. The sky’s the limit. Maybe he’ll try to abolish term limits. Maybe he’ll declare martial law. Maybe he’ll start a war and then declare martial law. Maybe he’ll start putting Americans in those camps. Maybe those Americans will be dissidents — critics, opponents, adversaries. All those maybes aren’t “maybe” in the sense that “maybe a meteor will hit the earth.” They’re “maybes” in the sense that climate change will definitely cause catastrophe after catastophe — we just don’t know which city yet. In the same way, we know this Prez and his minions and flunkies — that’s the entire GOP, by the way — will do all the following: wreck democracy both substantively and procedurally, shred norms of decency, attack the idea of a civilized society, and take apart what little’s left of a functioning social contract. Bang! Another term of Trump is all but a guarantee that America will be plunge into autocracy, with shades of authoritarianism and theocracy, irreversibly.
Seeing how high those stakes are — democracy’s life on the line — you might think that Dems would, well, get it together. You beautiful, naive fool. The Dems? They’re not exactly known for their political prowess. So let’s think about how fractured and bitterly divided the field is for a moment.
There’s Liz Warren — who should be feted and lionized as one of America’s most brilliant minds — being erased from the public sphere. Why? Because, well, America’s public sphere is notoriously patriarchal. Not even in a nation like Pakistan I think have I read a column like “women should be subjugated into sexual slavery so poor ‘incels’ don’t feel so bad”, which is what the NYT published, penned by Ross Douthat, that toad among toadies. That’s a patriarchal public sphere. It was predictable that Liz would get erased — bros look after bros in American public life. And Liz isn’t a bro. Her campaign made a huge mistake, not anticipating this — and yet that doesn’t excuse patriarchy’s vicious and complete erasure of her. That erasure is terrible for all of us, because she is a genius and a wise and thoughtful person and a fierce leader to boot.
There’s Bernie — who constantly faces the refrain, from the very same patriarchy — that he’s not “electable.” Wait, what? Do you remember just a few short years ago, when Trump was caught on camera literally saying: “grab ’em by the pussy”? And instead of his “electability” being questioned…it was treated as a) funny b) boys being boys c) a minor mishap or worst of all d) proof of his being a real man? That double standard is both patriarchy and capital at work.
Bernie’s “electability” is under question because he’s two things, at least to America’s jaw-droppingly ignorant, violent, and hostile class of pundits and politicians Bernie’s not electable because he’s a “socialist” — how dumb is that? Painfully, because Bernie’s at best a lightweight social democrat. He’s not exactly calling for the power grid and the auto industry to be nationalized. And Bernie’s not electable because he’s not a real man — he hasn’t proved his capacity for violence by serving in the military and killing people, or, like Trump, by being a misogynist and bigot. Hence, he’s feminine and weak, and those who are feminine and weak aren’t fit to lead. Leadership’s only for the violent and cruel and aggressive. How far has that gotten us as a nation? Our class of dummies masquerading as thinkers doesn’t bother to ask. But they should.
Bernie’s not just “electable” — at this point, he’s something very close to America’s last hope to join the civilized world, instead of go on collapsing. And the more we question his “electability”, the less we teach each other about that. But that’s the point of questioning someone’s “electability” — to undermine their legitimacy, by creating a kind of peer pressure: “I shouldn’t like that person because nobody else does, right?” That too is a kind of cultural violence — a thing that cheats us all of dignity and truth.
Meanwhile, Mike Bloomberg’s bought his way into the race. He’s thrown a few million — or is it hundred million — at ads and donations — and hey presto! He’s appearing on a debate stage. What the? A billionaire’s going to save America from imploding capitalism? Dream on. The best thing Bloomberg could do for America would to donate his fortune to average people — since it was earned in a predatory way: by selling data to “traders” who made a killing by ripping off average people…literally, towns and cities, retirements and municipalities. He wants to give back? Sure — throw a few thousand dollars into my bank account and everyone else’s Mike. But no sane American should want a predatory billionaire as a President.
And then there’s the baby and the golden boy of the race: Mayor Pete. Pete is that most charmed of things. A white dude. From Harvard and McKinsey. Who’s served in the military. Wow! To the establishment, there’s no surer bet than Pete. That’s because Pete passes all their tests. Does he buy America’s crackpot economics? Yup! That’s the Harvard part. Will he sell out for a few bucks? Sure! That’s the McKinsey part — they run concentration camps, by the way. Is he capable of violence — yup! Awesome! h
That explains, too, by the way, why Pete gets so much media coverage, disproportionately — and so much of it is so glowing, too. Pete’s a bro. He’s a bro among bros. He loves the kind of American economics that masquerades as exploitation, he’s willing to kowtow to powerful institutions like McKinsey and do their bidding, and he’s happy to say violence is necessary, not even a necessary evil. Those are the precise and exact values of patriarchy and capital — exploitation, hierarchy, supremacy, violence. Pete doesn’t just express them — his life has been one long, proud enactment of them. The establishment knows they can count on Pete to keep those same old poisonous values really running things behind the scenes. That’s why he’s lionized in article after article. Bros look after bros — because what we’re all really looking after, ensuring the primacy of, what our bands of brothers really exist to protect and defend and preserve, is the toxic values of patriarchy and capital.
But no sane American should want a President who expresses those values, either — because they are the precise and exact ones behind American collapse.
Mayors Mike and Pete, at this juncture in American history, should be seen as precisely what they are. Died in the wool neoliberals. Some people dispute that. But I think it’s eminently and obviously true. What’s a neoliberal? Someone who wants levels of public investment never to rise, because public goods should never be invested in, since the private sector can always do it better.
A capitalist, in other words — just one who can couch it in equations and theories. And Mayors Mike and Pete are hardcore neoliberals in that truest of senses. They both want levels of investment by people in each other never to rise. Hence, Mayor Pete doesn’t support public college and healthcare and retirement and childcare, and neither does Mayor Mike. Guess who does?
Bernie and Liz. Hardly a coincidence that they’re the two social democrats in the race — and they’re the ones being vilified, demonized, and attacked. Or that between them, the woman is the one who’s been erased almost completely. Nor is it a coincidence that those who don’t want America to ever become a social democracy — Mike and Pete — are being lionized and applauded and cheered, in weirdly glowing terms. America’s elites recoil from horror at the thought of social democracy — and so everyone in the in-crowd, pundits, politicans, lobbyists, columnists, and so on, hates Bernie and Liz with a passion that they once hated communists with.
But all that’s incredibly foolish.
America has no future outside social democracy. No society does. Not because I say so. But because, well, look around. Welcome to reality: here are the outcomes of being the world’s most capitalist society — 75% of Americans struggle to pay the bills, 80% can’t raise a tiny amount for an emergency, half work low-wage jobs, most will never retire, and life is a daily dystopia, made of “medical bankruptcy” and “lunch debt”, while billionaires like Zuck grow ever richer for not having contributed a single thing of value to society, ever (Yes, really. Facebook makes people unhappier, not happier.) All those are direct and plain consequences of America’s failed paradigm of political economy.
Every sane and thoughtful American should want — desperately — America to become a social democracy. To join the rest of the rich world as social democracy’s last lagging member. The alternative is now. Capitalism, imploding into fascism and authoritarianism, as it only produces more and more anger, resentment, bitterness, division, inequality, mistrust, anxiety, and despair. When people feel all those things, they turn to demagogues to give them feelings of strength — and they begin demonizing and scapegoating those more powerless than them for their problems, too. That way lies the very sam implosion of a Weimar Germany or a Soviet Russia. If America feels a lot like those societies, that’s because… It is.
The stakes are real. Democracy’s life really is on the line. Trump — or one of his weirdo kids — could very easily be America’s Putin. Or worse.
Democrats need to understand that. And unify against it, despite their differences. And Americans need to understand that, too. And choose, from this baffling field, in which all the spectra of politics seem to be represented — from neoliberalism to social democracy — the wisest choice.
Americans should ask themselves: of these ideas, which ones have already failed? And which ones have worked out in the rest of the world so powerfully that people in, for example, Europe and Canada enjoy history’s highest living standards, ever? The answer to that question should be obvious. The better answers come from the place that capital and patriarchy doesn’t want you to go — not from the places it keeps telling you to go, it’s bros, whether senior ones, like Mayor Mike, or junior ones, like Mayor Pete.
The better answers to American collapse — the only good ones? They come from the old man who’s not considered a “real man”, weak, frail, womanly. From the woman who they never let you hear from, because she’s even less than him. But they are the ones who are courageous and wise enough to carry the dying ember of America’s torch, through the storm of stagnation and collapse. That flame is fast being snuffed out, by the winds of authoritarianism.
The rest, I imagine, is up to you.
Umair Haque
February 2020
Eudaimonia and Co
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