{"id":14013,"date":"2020-03-05T14:23:20","date_gmt":"2020-03-05T22:23:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=14013"},"modified":"2020-03-05T14:23:23","modified_gmt":"2020-03-05T22:23:23","slug":"the-day-america-rejected-social-democracy-and-chose-more-collapse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2020\/03\/05\/the-day-america-rejected-social-democracy-and-chose-more-collapse\/","title":{"rendered":"The Day America Rejected Social Democracy and Chose More Collapse"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Some (Grim) Lessons From Super Tuesday<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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That was quite a wild ride. Super Tuesday. <\/strong>After all was said and done, in a stunning upset \u2014 since he was on the ropes just a few weeks ago \u2014 Biden crushed the rest. What does it all mean? I want to quickly distill a handful of lessons. It\u2019s not going to be pretty. Let me say up front that I like Biden. He\u2019s a good guy. He gave a great speech after his win, about the need for character and decency \u2014 excellent. But he\u2019s the wrong man for the job of social transformation (I\u2019ll come to precisely why.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first lesson goes like this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was the day America rejected what was probably it\u2019s last and best chance at social democracy. <\/strong>The contest between Bernie vs Biden is a classic one of center vs left. In this case, the center took a resounding victory. But what is \u201cthe center\u201d in America? It\u2019s neoliberalism, of the Obama school \u2014 which Biden continues to promise.That is, markets for everything, privatization, deregulation \u2014 a theme I\u2019ll return to. And what\u2019s the \u201cleft\u201d? It\u2019s barely social democracy \u2014 though Bernie\u2019s painted as a socialist, he\u2019s barely a lightweight social democrat, in truth. What\u2019s the difference? Everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bernie lost because Americans rejected social democracy, en masse, in a collective wave of opposition to such an idea. Sure, he won California, which kept him competitive. But nearly everywhere else, voters rejected even the most lightweight kind of social democracy possible, which is what Bernie offered. Let me shade in the differences. Socialism: nationalizing industries like energy, healthcare, transport, finance, publicly managing them, building great public institutions, like a National Healthcare System. Social democracy \u2014 extending existing public institution, as in \u201cMedicare For All.\u201d Even that was too much for Americans, who preferred a return to yesterday\u2019s status quo \u2014 capitalism by way of neoliberalism, in short, via Biden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now let me shade in that picture even more. It\u2019s too generalized, so let\u2019s break down some differences between social groups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Young people talk a big game online, but they don\u2019t turn out to actually effect political transformation \u2014 and so their side loses.<\/strong> It\u2019s tragic, but counting on them is a mistake. <\/strong>Young people massively disproportionately support Bernie, and relatively old people, Biden. But young people didn\u2019t turn out nearly enough to put Bernie over the finishing line. Turnout was lower than 2016, in most places, amongst the young. Don\u2019t you think that\u2019s bizarre? Dangerous? I do. After all, it\u2019s young people who suffer the brunt of a collapsing America \u2014 they\u2019ll never retire, can\u2019t afford to move out, have less sex, no savings, lower incomes, fractured relationships, lower happiness, skyrocketing suicide rates, dismal futures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why didn\u2019t young people turn out? Why don\u2019t they\u2026ever? <\/strong>After so loudly and bombastically supporting Bernie\u2026online? One theory is that it\u2019s harder for them to vote. So what? This is the most crucial election of a lifetime. So here\u2019s another, I think better theory, which you won\u2019t like. It has everything to do with alt-leftism. In the alt-left\u2019s hierarchy of what matters, gender pronouns count more than genocide. The most important thing in the world is Twitter mobbing some celeb over their choice of politically incorrect turn of phrase \u2014 and \u201ccancelling\u201d them. That\u2019s what they\u2019ve been taught by their professors, their cultural figures, intellectuals. But when identity politics is the only politics \u2014 why bother turning out for the real thing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s not just an idle speculation, by the way. It\u2019s exactly what we saw in Britain. Young people support Corbyn online \u2014 but when it came time to vote\u2026they didn\u2019t. Bang \u2014 landslide for the conservatives. Precisely the same dynamics were at work: alt-leftism, that taught young people Twitter mobs and gender pronouns and identity politics matter most, and everything else comes a distant second. Like, for example, actually\u2026voting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whether or not you agree with my interpretation, the point remains \u2014 young people didn\u2019t turn out. And that cost Bernie the win. That\u2019s a bleak point. Because the less young people vote, the less capable a society is of change, renewal, transformation. And America\u2019s young appear to have simply given up on the idea of ever having a functioning society again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That brings me to my next point. The politics of hostility and aggression don\u2019t work for the left<\/strong>. I like Bernie. He\u2019s passionate, I\u2019d say \u2014 not hostile. But his supporters? At least a very vocal fringe? Hostile barely begins to describe it. But that\u2019s become true of the left at large: it\u2019s been subsumed by the alt-left\u2019s belief that the way to bring about social change is through aggression, brutality, and hostility. Hence, cancel culture, endless Twitter mobs, policing people for thoughtcrimes like \u201cmisgendering\u201d\u2026conducting ideological purity tests\u2026attacking your own side..all while not caring very much about basics like healthcare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What this Super Tuesday shows beyond any doubt is that the politics of hostility as practice by the alt-left\u2019s fringe on more or less everyone else \u2014 Twitter mobs, attack groups, cancel culture, shaming, and so on \u2014 don\u2019t work<\/strong>. They alienate, not attract. They make people roll their eyes and walk away. Infighting and attacking one\u2019s own side do not build a coalition. When the people doing it are mostly young people who won\u2019t vote anyways, it\u2019s doubly a recipe for electoral disaster. The politics of hostility should be a non-starter \u2014 aggression and shaming and mobs are tactics of the right. When the left employs them, it has given up on its fundamental values. What can it win? When I say that, people think I\u2019m making some abstract theoretical point. But I\u2019m speaking pragmatically and plainly. Nobody much is motivated to vote for your side by Twitter mobs over Captain America\u2019s intersectionality and so forth. It\u2019s just student politics \u2014 at its dumbest and worst. The left wins through love \u2014 and Bernie failed that test, precisely because his supporters are too often hostile, not gentle and loving and kind. Who wants to belong to a group like that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That brings me to my third point. It\u2019s not just Bernie supporters who failed the test of coalition building, though.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Americans don\u2019t really care about what they say they care about.<\/strong> If you ask Americans what they care about most, they\u2019ll say, by a large majority, healthcare<\/a>. But guess what? Among voters who said healthcare mattered most\u2026Biden <\/em>won over Bernie\u2026despite offering the bare bones of a healthcare plan at all. What the? Do you see the point? Americans simply don\u2019t care about\u2026what they say<\/em> they care about. They renege on the promises they make to pollsters \u2014 and when it comes time to actually vote, they seem to be frightened and cowed into perpetually choosing exactly what they say they won\u2019t<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don\u2019t read that as a condemnation \u2014 it\u2019s an observation. People are complex. It\u2019s not as simple as imagining they\u2019ll reliably \u201cvote\u201d for what they \u201cprioritize.\u201d The human mind isn\u2019t that naive. The minute you step into that voting booth, things change. Your anxieties and fears and worries take over. Maybe you make an impulsive decision. Maybe you just can\u2019t bring yourself to do the thing you know is wise, smart, intelligent. That brings me to my next lesson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve been cautioning for months now \u2014 years \u2014 that America becoming a social democracy is going to be much harder than most think, probably impossible, at best improbable.<\/strong> It\u2019s not just about voting \u2014 but a profound and deep moral transformation, a permanent change in values. What does that mean? Well, in not choosing social democracy, Americans are also expressing a certain set of values. They\u2019re saying they don\u2019t care if their neighbors have healthcare, retirement, education, childcare, and so on. They\u2019re saying that brutality and cruelty are OK with them. They\u2019re putting selfishness first. They\u2019re saying they\u2019re indifferent to their neighbours\u2019 ill health, poverty, suffering, despair. Yes, really. What else does that \u201cvote\u201d really mean?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In that context, it\u2019s not too hard to see how Biden won. These are the same old American values that have always been. Americans don\u2019t like it when I say that \u2014 and yet it\u2019s easy to observe. America\u2019s the world\u2019s most individualist, materialistic, violent society, by a very long way \u2014 it always has been. Nobody else has bombed half the world, invaded country after country, or lionizes capitalism and Wall St as saviors to every social problem \u2014 the rest of the world finds all that bizarre and weird.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Values don\u2019t change easily, or swiftly. They change slowly \u2014 and step by little step.<\/strong> It\u2019s true, for example, that young people don\u2019t like capitalism, so they like Bernie. But it\u2019s truer that they\u2019re still wrapped up in selfishness and narcissism \u2014 like gender pronouns matter more than everyone having healthcare \u2014 so they just\u2026don\u2019t vote<\/em>. It\u2019s true that older people understand their society is failing \u2014 but it\u2019s truer to say they\u2019re still afraid of actually trying to change it, when it comes to actually cast that vote. Those old values persist, in other words, of selfishness and cruelty and brutality. And because they persist, Biden came out on top.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That brings me to my next point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

America\u2019s probably incapable of real change, lasting transformation. <\/strong>How \u2014 honestly, how<\/em> \u2014 can it be possible that the vast majority of Democrats preferred Joe Biden to Bernie or Liz? Let\u2019s take a look at the facts American life. The average person lives paycheck to paycheck, half of Americans work low-wage jobs, nobody much has decent healthcare, retirement, childcare, incomes have flatlined for half a century, 75% of Americans struggle to pay basic bills like housing and food, the average American will live and die in unplayable \u201cdebt.\u201d What the? In that context, you\u2019d think that people would back an expansive social contract \u2014 like one of social democracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Think about it this way: what else could it possibly take?<\/em> American life expectancy is falling at this point \u2014 unique among rich countries (except for it\u2019s junior partner in collapse, Britain.) Americans are literally dying younger and younger as a consequence of their failed society \u2014 as well as getting poorer, unhappier, angrier, and more isolated every year. They are the most exploited people in the world, in formal terms \u2014 as in, capital skims off the greatest amount of their labour of anyone, anywhere on earth, and profits most. What else could it possibly take?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The answer to that question is: probably\u2026nothing. There\u2019s no level of indignity Americans won\u2019t suffer. They are willing to be degraded and dehumanized and abused in any way, whatsoever \u2014 as long as that horrible \u201csocialism\u201d doesn\u2019t come anywhere near them. They\u2019re willing to be martyrs for capitalism, at this point, dying young. What\u2019s the difference between that and a jihadi, really? Sure, that\u2019s blunt. But is it false?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That, by the way, is why Bernie probably lost \u2014 he branded himself as a socialist, even though he isn\u2019t remotely one.<\/strong> Americans instinctively react violently against any mention of the term, unable to think it through \u2014 and so when it came time to actually vote\u2026Bernie\u2019s support simply vanished, and was nowhere to be found. In the polling booth, instinct and impulse override reason and logic and though. It was a huge mistake for Bernie to brand himself as a socialist \u2014 it energizes the kinds of nasty Bernie fans everyone\u2019s walked away from since they were annoying in college, but it alienated everyone else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That brings me to my last point. Who really won Super Tuesday? Not Joe Biden. But those old three forces of American history \u2014 the ones which led directly to American collapse. Patriarchy, supremacy, and capitalism.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Liz Warren \u2014 the best candidate by far, the one with a thoughtful and intelligent plan for everything \u2014 had a dismal showing. Why? Because patriarchy\u2019s against her \u2014 and patriarchy effectively controls America\u2019s thinking classes, it\u2019s pundits and columnists and so on. There\u2019s a reason why all those folks \u2014 Chris Matthews, Chris Hayes, Ezra Klein \u2014 are mostly bros: patriarchy. But bros protect bros. The band of brothers exists to defend its own. And so Liz was demeaned and insulted and mocked and ignored and erased. Instead of Americans being educated that she was the better candidate by far. And because Americans take their cues from elites and pundits \u2014 no matter how much they say they don\u2019t \u2014 they rejected her, instead of thinking things through for themselves. Patriarchy cost America the best candidate it had in this election \u2014 the kind of leader who comes along once in a lifetime.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why did American reject social democracy so furiously, so vehemently, with such a wall of opposition? The answer lies in supremacy. <\/strong>Centuries of supremacy \u2014 which then became Cold War thinking \u2014 told them anything collective must be bad, evil, intolerable, since some people are not really people at all.Slavery\u2019s toxic legacy is that it made it impossible for Americans to really value or develop public goods. The ruling mentality continues to be: \u201cI won\u2019t pay for their healthcare, retirement, education! Those dirty, filthy people! They\u2019re not like us!\u201d That\u2019s what the choice to reject a decent healthcare or retirement or childcare plan \u2014 like Bernie and Liz offered, but Biden doesn\u2019t \u2014 really says. There\u2019s no other serious or thoughtful interpretation that can be made. Americans don\u2019t want social democracy because supremacy tainted their values, limited to zero how much they are literally willing to invest in each other in simple, hard, dollar-amount terms \u2014 and still does. It\u2019s sad \u2014 but it\u2019s also lethally real and shatteringly self-evident. The amount most Americans still want to invest in each other is what it\u2019s always been: precisely zero.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What does that actual dollar-figure amount mean, in sociopolitical terms?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What do Americans (really) want? Capitalism, basically. More, harder. <\/strong>They might not say it or think it or know it. But that\u2019s what they\u2019ve chosen, in choosing Biden. But Biden doesn\u2019t have a plan for any of America\u2019s glaring deficits<\/em> \u2014 the fact that it has no functioning social systems at all, whether healthcare, retirement, childcare, elderly care. He simply doesn\u2019t care very much, because, like most of America\u2019s neoliberal elites, the idea is simply to \u201clet the market sort it out.\u201d Hence, stocks surged.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The market will sort out issues of public goods and social systems \u2014 in a predatory way. It will create artificial shortages \u2014 and then charge people through the nose to access what little they can. Hence, Americans pay the world\u2019s highest prices for drugs. \u201cRetirement\u201d is something you pay Wall St a fortune to \u201cmanage\u201d a \u201c401K\u201d for \u2014 and never really get. \u201cEducation\u201d is something that comes with crippling \u201cstudent debt.\u201d Healthcare is something that causes \u201cmedical bankruptcy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That mistake is why Americans plunged into lives of newfound poverty, of vicious precarity in the first place: capital taking over what should have been public goods. Why the middle class imploded, and became the new poor. The working class and old poor became the left-behinds. That implosion of a society\u2019s prosperity was then the direct cause of a surge towards a demagogue \u2014 people fled towards him because he promised them they\u2019d be Great Again. They felt safe and loved and valued and protected in his strong arms \u2014 from the anxieties and fears of becoming poor, alone, abandoned, neglected \u2014 and all they had to do, he said, was hate the subhumans, who were responsible for their plight, and wish violence upon them. Many of America\u2019s desperate and newly poor took that bargain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Poverty, in other words, causes fascism. Keynes made that great discover a full century ago.<\/strong> Poverty as in deprivation of the basics, which is what Americans suffer. Who else has to ration insulin and education and operations because there\u2019s never enough money to afford what you need? What the?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Electing \u2014 or even running \u2014 a Biden won\u2019t break the vicious cycle of poverty and fascism that\u2019s at the heart of American collapse. It will only fuel it.<\/strong> Because a Biden, like any good neoliberal, doesn\u2019t think people deserve basic things as human rights, whether healthcare or retirement. You are only worth what you earn. Nobody has any intrinsic or inherent worth. Exploitation becomes the only social law or norm or value left in operation. Bang \u2014 American collapse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet that is exactly why a demagogue can come along and makes people \u2014 who feel worthless, little, betrayed, angry \u2014 feel good and valued again. Biden is the status quo \u2014 but in a deep way. In the battle between a failed neoliberalism and an ascendant authoritarianism \u2014 how can the former win? It\u2019s a failed neoliberalism that sowed the seeds of authoritarianism, by dehumanizing and violating and abusing people, to the point that they sought to do all that right back to even more vulnerable people. That is how fascism is born, and why \u201cit\u201d happened here in America all over again.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Super Tuesday carries all those lessons. They will, I fear, go unlearned. But when has America ever been a country that wanted to really know itself?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Umair
March 2020<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eudaimonia and Co<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Eudaimonia & Co<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

WRITTEN BY<\/p>\n\n\n\n

umair haque<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

vampire.<\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some (Grim) Lessons From Super Tuesday That was quite a wild ride. Super Tuesday. After all was said and done, in a stunning upset \u2014 since he was on the ropes just a few weeks ago \u2014 Biden crushed the rest. What does it all mean? I want to quickly distill… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14013"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14013"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14013\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14014,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14013\/revisions\/14014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}