Very true. What’s happened, though, is that economic concerns have come to the forefront as the postwar economic anomaly came to an end in the early 2000s. Inequality is more apparent, and so overt, overt racism becomes more of a lever for the merchant right to use to distract the marks from having their pockets picked (not that they haven’t used it since 1968, but until recently it’s been more the Lee Atwater dog-whistle variety). Educated people tend to understand this better than uneducated people – educated conservatives exploit it while Brahmin liberals deplore it.
If “they” are the merchant right, sure. If you’re talking about their suckers, that’s another matter. It was true of the marks during the good economic times when they could convince themselves they had a shot; now, not so much.
It would be an interesting analysis over a 40-year period. My guess, as a rule of thumb, is that when economic times are good and inequality is relatively low, it’s harder to convince the suckers to focus on people of other races as much of a threat. But yes, ultimately it is a grift: stealing $100 from Joe Duh Plumber thanks to “free”-market economics and then handing $1 back to him as a reward for being white.
I’m not saying that they only vote on the basis of economic self-interest; voting culturally plays a part as well, and the merchant right is constantly adjusting which message they’re pushing to the rubes. In good economic times it’s “stick with us and you too can be a mill-yon-aire like me”; in tougher times it’s “you’re suffering because the librul elites are giving free stuff to people with brown and black skin instead of you”.
However they’re susceptible to being conned, the Know-Nothing 27% are natural born suckers and ignoramuses completely in thrall to establishment conservatives (at best) and the far right (as is the case now). It does the Brahmin left no good to try to appeal to them on either an economic or a cultural basis (which still leaves a wide swath of non-elite working voters that they could appeal to if they had the will and as they once did before the 1980s – this is part of Piketty’s argument).
still, if anyone fits that bill, it’s the educated white folks. where else did libertarians come from? or the belief that we are post-racism? neither of these were the province of the working class; that’s all from college-educated whites.
the magical thinking is that economic policy will fix social ills. that it’s possible to have virtue without actually confronting pain.
perhaps people are finally waking up to the realization that corporate capitalism won’t work; but it’s all inception out in there. a con within a con. b/c politics is not an economic issue at its heart. not in america at least.
for sure. the failures of the policies are always placed at the feet of someone else. you don’t need someone to blame when times are good after all.
vis a vis: the rubes.
middle class whites still believe that economics will fix america’s problems
middle class whites still think they are not the ones to blame.
the rubes are always someone else.
initially, the only representation was for people who were white. and that’s remained true in many areas even until now.
how can any sound analysis of american voting patterns not start there?
While I love theorizing over all kind of BS, this is too far of.
Piketty jerks of on his interpretation of numbers, and those are mostly isolated data series.
He can’t distinct correlation from cause and just makes up stuff as he goes.
I even doubt the Brahmin left exists in the form he describes. To Piketty everyone go gains wealth, success has to turn away from a socialist approach on society.
This is his basic argument band there is no proof or stable theory basing that.
I have a shower-thougt theory as well: In a Gauss distributed ‘market’ the major parties converge to centrism and administrative(dodging all actions that would have actual consequences for the VOTERBASE). This in a time where every aspect of live becomes obviously more complex, this makes voters wanting easy answers and ‘guidance’ susceptible to leader figures and extreme authoritarian stance. And this is working on both ends of the “left/right” spectrum.
Open a stalinist left party, openly thinking (but not acting) to expropriate billionaires, lobbyists and send them to gulags for being enemies of the community and you get voted just like those caging in immigrants.
Isn’t the present Democratic Party already well on it’s way to an expression of this new alignment, as the party of Trump moves further and further to the paranoid style of the illiberal right? Does anyone really believe that Sanders or Warren will clinch the nomination, or that if one of them wins the Presidency there will be an about face and the oligarchy will relent? Haven’t we already seen this movie? Conservative moderates and intellectuals have long abandoned the GOP.; for all intents and purposes those that remain are fascists, or at least fascist enablers (and I don’t fret much about differentiating between the two). As the GOP self-immolates, it is only natural that in order for the Democratic Party to capture independents and disavowed Republicans it will remain in the center. Voila! Status quo achieved!
Come on. You mean to tell me the left won’t get the white working class vote (or the lower-middle class suburban vote for that matter) by prattling on about the patriarchy, gender neutral pronouns and the like?
It’s not either/or. I am not interested in getting rid of the old class system just to replace it with a new one. If someone throws me under the bus to gain more support then they are the enemy. I don’t care if they think they are left or right.
Who’s throwing who under the bus? Politics will always be about coalitions and compromises. Unless you like losing. But hey that’s what the left does best…find ways to divide itself into internecine factions…So you’ll be content with the status quo then? Do you ever respectfully discuss politics with people outside your progressive circle (and I’m not talking about rabid Trumpers; fuck them)? Sincere question.
@anon73430903
Furthermore, you took my smiley-face emoji away! That comment was meant to be tongue-in-cheek, and cheeky
On a strictly strategic note, and before everyone piles on en masse, as in please don’t take it personally (!), I am sincerely convinced that some of the excesses of progressive political correctness (for lack of a better phrase) are detrimental to the cause of creating a viable (as in electable) social democracy movement. Peace.
Me, personally? TERFs. Trans people have a long history of being thrown under the bus.
You can talk about coalitions and compromise all you like, but when certain groups want to reintroduce sluggish schizophrenia as an diagnosis for trans people they kill any possibility for me to do so. It’s a bit more life and death for me than it is for cis people.
I don’t think I have had an IRL discussion with a Communalist outside of an anarchist bookfair, so yes I do.
Never heard of it. Positively draconian. That certainly wouldn’t be my opinion, or anyone I know or associate with for that matter; and that includes even a few rednecks and small ‘c’ conservatives, mostly white cis-peeps. But I live in Canada, and we’re a little more tolerant as rule I suppose…
The kinds of people who would subscribe to and/or enforce such reprehensible shit are our common enemy; history bears that out. That said I would not expect you to agree with me on everything, and I would not expect to agree with you on everything, probably not even very many things I don’t know! That’s what I mean by compromise. It doesn’t mean you have to compromise your values anymore than I have to compromise mine. After all, I might be just as stubborn as you. But it might mean that from a strategic point of view we agree to bury the hatchet on few points in the interest of our shared values and concerns, aware of the stakes as we both are.
I’d go a step further with that, even. I always tell my American friends that the entire political system in Canada is left of the US Democrats. Our most fringey right wing nuts in office couldn’t even get elected down here in the US for being too far left. I say that as someone who has clocked 20 years of residence in each country and it still amazes me what a different perspective Americans have on the world compared to every other developed democracy.
No doubt. A lot of this is a matter of terminology and recognising that this is about culture more than economic class. The bulk of Il Douche’s voters in 2016 were white suburban males with post-secondary credentials. Notice I don’t say “college educations”, which would be more accurately applied to your typical member of the Brahmin left. These are guys who saw college or vocational school as a nuisance they had to go through before starting real middle-class life as a permanent middle manager or interchangeable coding grunt or tradesperson.
Some in that group were part of the Know-Nothing 27% – virulently racist, Xtianist, neoliberalism’s losers, etc. – who happened to have a post-secondary certificate or diploma. Most, though, were just spite voters who don’t care as much about race or economics as they did just sticking it to the liberals.
I also left out “middle class” from the common description of these voters because it’s also misleading. While they may have the veneer of the middle class, most of them are deep in consumer debt to keep up appearances and keep the mortgage paid. They’re still living within your Inception model insofar as they think there’s an economic solution, but now that they’re starting to suspect that neoliberalism might not have delivered for them their “solution” is to go after the Brahmin left and (in the view of some) all the dark-skinned people they’re supposedly trying to raise up over the white man.
What these voters have in common, more than racism and more than economic philosophy, is that they see college either as a way to get a work credential while partying and going to games (at best) or as Marxist brainwashing camp (at worst) or sometimes both. Actual education is what makes for a real member of America’s evil elite in their view: someone who went to college to learn and broaden and truly educate themselves, and who makes more money than they ever will as a result.
That all goes to the merchant right elite’s anti-intellectual cultural viewpoint that makes it very difficult for them to ally with the Brahmin left in a political bloc (absent extreme duress, which we might yet see).
Just wanted to say this seems like a very perceptive analysis, and (as I’ve said before) the only solution is education - of the real and transforming kind. For some of these entitled, blinkered fuckwits, indoctrination may be the only way to ‘educate’ them. Kind of like some sort of anti-cult de-brainwashing programme used for those caught up in ‘religious’ cults or as used for de-radicalising right-wing or muslim radicals.
And yet one of the few relatively successful* examples of de-regulation, the elimination of the Civil Aviation Board, which had the power to approve or deny airline schedules and rates was done under the Carter administration.
*much lower prices for most travelers, but more crowded planes and less service to small cities. Also waves of bankruptcies and mergers among the airlines, but safety seems to have continued is slow, unsteady improvement.
I"ve said before, the Reagan’s innovation was the “Less Goveernment” dog whistle, which was heard by businesses as “fewer regulations and lower taxes” and racists as “No more federal interference in local and state racist policies.”
Racism isn’t everything in America. But it is part of everything. Economics, crime, education, religion…All have some sort of breakdown along a racial axis.
edited to add: Which is to say that it isn’t always a complete explanation by itself, but it is almost always a part of the issue.
You’re right, but hearing that they’ll just take that as confirmation that the Brahmin left wants to turn everyone into snowflake SJWs.
Ultimately, people who think like this only learn things the hard way. Worse, for a lot of them, the lesson is short-lived – just another old-style sitcom crisis that’s never referred to again in the rest of the series (even though similar crises happen again in other episodes).
In the end they’ll basically end up ignored by both elite groups in some version of the future Neal Stephenson describes in his latest novel; from a review:
There’s a gap of several hundred pages between Dodge’s death and his reawakening, and it’s mostly given over to the question of what it’s like for Dodge’s friends and family to live in a post-truth society after the “Facebookification of America.”
In this new world, America has split itself in half. In the rural parts of the country, there’s “Ameristan,” where the poor and uneducated live steeped in misinformation, hoarding ammunition for a war that will never come and crucifying those they deem to be heathens.
But the coasts and the cities are full of wealthy elites who pay to have professional editors weed out fake news from their digital feeds, and regard the rest of the country with a kind of disgusted anthropological fascination.
“Their fathers believed that the people in the cities actually gave a shit about them enough to want to come and take their guns and their property,” says one character of an Ameristan gun cult. “So they put money they didn’t really have into stockpiling trillions of rounds and hunkered down waiting for the elites to come confiscate their stuff.”
I’d add the exurbs into Stephenson’s Ameristan, and note that he doesn’t ignore the effects of climate change on the situation, but basically it’s a somewhat exaggerated version of the divide I’m expecting if progressives fail to get some political traction in 2020 and start making the changes (including tuition-free post-secondary education) that are needed to confront new realities.
