Will the US slip into Fascism?

Well, we survived another long American political campaign and tomorrow it will (we hope) all be over. I believe it is pretty simple, people who are voting for Trump are crazy and/or stupid. At this point I really don't know how to sugarcoat it. This is a racist, misogynistic, profoundly crooked, tax evading, violence inciting, serial lying, sexual predator, with the attention span of a gnat, and an anger management problem, who has actually called for nuclear proliferation. And if anyone thinks, at this point, that Hillary Clinton's faults are even vaguely comparable to Trump's they are deeply delusional.

Make no mistake, Trump could turn the United States into a fascist bloodbath. The scenario could play out multiple ways - here's one way: Trump comes to office and actually believes that he can deport the 30 million or more undocumented immigrants. He starts the process and it becomes clear fairly quickly that the US is not logistically prepared to undertake such a massive effort. To complete such a task the federal government would literally need hundreds of thousands of INS officers working around the clock, and even then it is not clear it could be done. In his frustration (an emotion that he seems to have in the same abundance as a three year old), Trump makes an off the cuff remark, maybe on twitter, that the government needs the help of patriots to complete the task. Armed vigilante groups appear overnight all over the country, but especially in the southwest. In their patriotic fervor they begin rounding up anyone who looks vaguely like they are from south of the boarder. In an effort to defend themselves, racialized people begin to band together in groups, some of them armed. Sporadic violence begins to break out. Many law enforcement agencies who clearly side with Trump and the vigilantes refuse to act in their roles as police. The violence quickly escalates and spins out of control. When it becomes clear that it is out of control, bang, Trump calls out the national guard and declares martial law under the NDAA. Now, provided that the military was willing to stand with him, this would be the beginning of a de facto fascist government.

If you have spent any time in the US, you know that this is not a wildly far fetched scenario, particularly given Trump's rhetoric so far. It's not complicated. It's fairly simple. It is already clear that Trump says that he will do things that he clearly has no right to do under the Constitution. You can't, for example, restrict people from entering the country based on religion. The president has no authority to build a wall on the border of Mexico. The president certainly has no authority to restrict press freedoms, as well as no authority to put opponents in jail on a whim.

I'm not saying that this is exactly what would happen if Trump were elected president. I'm saying that this is a perfectly believable scenario given what we know so far about him and the people he has empowered.

I don't know how the vote will go tomorrow, but I hope calmer heads will prevail. And even if Trump loses, it is clear that the US is teetering on the brink of disaster and the next decade or so will be a make or break point for the nation and maybe the world.

"President Trump"... History could bite us in the Ass. . . .

In the early 1930s many people in Germany and throughout the world were simply incredulous at the idea that Hitler would come to power. Mussolini had already come to power and more or less constructed a police state. But Mussolini was a bit of a buffoon and Italy, in its own right didn't really constitute a major military threat. Hitler, on the other hand, was no buffoon, and even though Germany had been badly damaged by the First World War, people in France, England, Russia, and the US, knew that Germany was a significant industrial power and could pose a significant and existential threat to many nations.

But Hitler's rise to power might be seen, in some senses, as inevitable. Many Germans felt deeply betrayed by their leaders and the Entente Alliance at the end of the First World War. Conservative Germans felt as though they were losing the Germany they knew; they felt that they were far too indebted to the Alliance, that they were being played, and that the Weimar Republic was degenerate and perverse. For conservative Germans, Hitler represented the old Germany, the good Germany of "law and order," of proper German culture and religion, as well as a resurgence of German industrial and economic power. In order to get power, Hitler traded on these nationalist feelings, he whipped up racism knowing that the Germans who felt that they had been hard done by a the end of the Great War would lap it up. Hitler promised to make Germany Great Again, and he used nationalist and racist rhetoric to sell that promise.

The sane people in Germany and elsewhere understood by instinct what Hitler represented. While the Western powers were far from perfect, particularly in the colonial efforts, Hitler represented a level of threat that arguably very different, and one that smart people knew was overwhelming.

I think that smart people understand what kind of threat a man like Trump represents. His rhetoric is shockingly similar to the fascist rhetoric of the 1930s. There is here, I believe, an existential threat to society, and it revealed by the rhetoric of racism, violence, misogyny. Like the fascists, Trump shifts the blame for social problems on outsiders and a supposed elite. He denigrates anyone who opposes him as a social enemy or a criminal. He talks of reinvigorating US industrialism and economic power but always against a backdrop of "foreigners" who "steal" American jobs and prosperity.

Trump is a profoundly dangerous man who may very well win the white house in 8 days. And just as people in the first two months of 1933 were incredulous and found it hard to believe that Hitler would really consolidate his power through the ballot box, many people at home and abroad today think that the words "President Trump" are just too hard to believe. But history is an ugly business.  

Trump vs. Clinton, different models of Conflict. . .

Both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton pose very real threats to Democracy and peace, but for different kinds of reasons.

The US has always pursued its economic/political interests in aggressive ways regardless of which party occupies the White House. The US has never shied away from supporting the worst kinds of dictators; and while for decades they used the excuse of "communism" as their primary reason for supporting leaders and regimes that clearly were not democratic, for the past couple of decades they haven't really used any excuse, they just know where their geo-political interests are and they act accordingly. Thus, during the Cold War they could support awful regimes like the Shah in Iran, or Suharto in Indonesia, and they did so as part of a supposed political struggle against Bolshevism or Maoism. But since the end of the Cold War, the US has continued to support a host of authoritarian regimes without any meta-narrative concerning Russian or Chinese aggression. These regimes include brutal governments in Thailand, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordon, Cameroon, Egypt, and many others. There is really no active excuse used by the US government for such support except the complex game of geopolitics.

Hillary Clinton (along with the past two Democratic Presidents, Bill Clinton and Obama) has played an active and integral part in this international attack on democracy. As a member of a very real two party oligarchy, Clinton has been no less of a so-called "hawk" than many of her Republican opponents.

And as president, Hillary Clinton would continue to pose a threat not only to democracy, but to world peace. Clinton supported the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the two conflicts that have seriously destabilized the Middle-East and the world in general. And because Clinton is part of a long-standing geopolitical hierarchy that asserts certain perceived US interests against both Russian and Chinese power, she could easily nudge the world into a global, and possibly nuclear, conflict in a number of sensitive locations. Just yesterday the Washington Post was commenting about the dangers posed by a Clinton presidency, as Putin (whose power itself is shaky given the growing crisis in the Russian economy) threatens to use Russian aggression in Syria and possibly the Baltic States to not only "test" a newly inaugurated Clinton, but to use conflict with the West as a classic bait and switch on his own population which, predictably, would rally around the "motherland."

But while we have to acknowledge that Hillary Clinton poses a threat to democracy and peace (more or less a continuation of the threat that both the Democrats and Republicans have been posing for generations now), Trump poses an equal, albeit different kind of threat. Now, putting aside his sheer instability as a person and a potential leader (an instability that has manifested itself countless times during the past year), Trump seems more likely to cozy up Putin, an act that manifests its own kinds of dangers. For one thing, Trump has displayed radical anti-democratic tendencies. His talk of not accepting election results, of jailing opponents, his consistent attacks on the media (and his talk of gagging the media if elected), as well as his generally xenophobic and nationalist rhetoric, are all demonstrations of his threat to democracy. And Trump admires Putin, in part, precisely because he is a so-called "strong-man" leader who rules with an iron fist. Because of his admiration of Putin and the current de facto dictatorship in Russia, Trump is the type of man who, instead of generation conflict with Russia on an international scale, would very likely collude with Putin in efforts to control and subjugate burgeoning democratic efforts globally and simply pair up in a global geopolitical and economic effort to dominate the globe.

While the Democrat-Republican dominance of the US was far too ready to support dictatorships around the world in support of US interests, they also supported certain democracies and democratic efforts where they constituted a bulwark against their perceived enemies. US lawmakers and diplomates often knew that in some areas if they went too far in their anti-democratic efforts they always stood in danger of pushing people too far the other way, potentially towards Bolshevism, for example. But in today's geopolitical atmosphere, American collusion with Russia in places like Syria, the Baltic States, and other political hotspots would leave many nations extremely vulnerable and with little room to maneuver against such a brutal alliance. In other words, as bad as the US policies have been in the past under the de facto Democrat-Republican alliance, it would be unrealistic not to understand that the competition between the US and countries like Russia and China also acted as a wedge issue for some people to promote more democracy.

I suspect that Trump, in a surprising epiphany, has simply realized that it would be easier for the US to promote its interests of economic and political domination by just coming straight out with it and colluding with Russian aggression. From the point of view of a man like Trump, someone with clearly evident dictatorial ambitions, such an alliance just makes sense. In the past, when Russia represented a different kind of domination to the Western Capitalist Hegemonic variety, conflict with the Soviet Union was, perhaps, inevitable. But today, when Trump clearly would like to run the US in much the same way that Putin runs Russia, a geopolitical alliance would make more sense, particularly for those interested in straightforward economic and political domination.

Thus, it seems to me that Clinton and Trump both pose threats to democracy and international peace. So, from one point of view, there is very little to choose between them. On the other hand, if you are, for example Kersti Kaljulaid (the centrist, nationalist president of Estonia), or an anti-Asad rebel in Syria, Trump surely poses a more eminent threat.

Either way, the globe is presently a tinder box of conflict and democracy is under serious threat almost everywhere you look. What will happen next is anyone's guess.

Turning our Backs on Prime Ministers, the necessity of Protest. . . .

"When we revolt it's not for a particular culture. We simply revolt because, for many reasons, we can no longer breath." 

-Franz Fanon 

Years ago (so long ago that I can't even find the post anymore), I wrote about the democratic deficits of modern democracy. The argument went like this - though democracy in general, and capitalist democracy in particular, is supposed to function on certain principles of equality, it fails to live up to these because power inevitably infects the process in such a way that some people's rights are not properly appreciated, or more importantly governments becomes expressions of elite interests rather than an expression of some kind of generalized will. Democratic deficits are visibly more noticeable when governments and courts fail to live up to basic principles of equality before the law. For example, for generations Canada has failed utterly to adjudicate fairly on the rights of indigenous people. Instead of upholding the law, judges have expressed their own white privilege in the way that they have decided on land-claims, equality of funding, energy issues, etc. Similarly, for a long time, even after the Charter of Rights and freedoms was enshrined, Canadian courts and politicians failed to properly recognize rights of the LGBTQ community.

I wrote in my original post that where democratic deficits exist, I believe people have the moral right (and even obligation) to use supra-democratic strategies to make their cases heard. Perhaps the greatest example of this was the Suffragette movement. Women actively disobeyed the law in their struggle for the vote because they felt that this was the only way to make themselves heard. Men (and many women) criticized the suffragettes, saying that their antics demonstrated that they weren't fit to have the vote; that they were criminals, or idiotic, or childish. The problem is, of course, those with privilege don't usually suffer from the effects of democratic deficits so they are really in no position to judge how those who do should express their dissent. Today, the Black Lives Matter movement is in a similar position. It easy for privileged white people to say that these activist are overdoing it, are "going to far," are "trouble makers," etc. But when people are suffering from fundamental injustices, they necessarily decide for themselves the pattern of their dissent.

The kind of privilege that I am talking about doesn't only express itself in such extreme examples. As a white, well-educated, man I have access to the kind of "disinterested," rational argumentation that makes it relatively easy for me to express myself. I am part of a very long tradition of privileged white men who have access this kind of discourse. It would be easy for me to demand that other people conform to my standards of dissent and rebellion, but it isn't reasonable or revolutionary, rather it would be and expression of my privilege.

This is not to suggest that I have no "right" to comment on the strategies or actions of a dissenting or marginalized group. What it does mean is that I have to be extra sensitive to the challenges that such groups face and make sure that I don't simply condemn the actions of others because they don't fit my own notion (as a privileged white man) of what constitutes "acceptable" dissent. It is really easy, even for progressives, to fall into this kind of tacit privilege. The extreme left has been doing it for generations, particularly in the intellectual Marxist traditions.

When any group is fighting for a more socially, politically, and economically equal and just society, I try to put my privilege and biases aside as much as possible and let them define their path of dissent. Because I know that even the best democracies are deeply flawed and protest and dissent are a necessary part of progress.

Politicians, no matter how much they smile, or claim that they are in favour of dialogue, or pretend to sympathize with a marginalized or progressive group, still represent the establishment in many ways. Thus they cannot always be spared from loud, messy, sometimes gut-wrenching protest just because it might not, at this historical moment, seem "appropriate."

I, for one, will try to remember this over the next few years as I watch millennials in particular find sometimes outrageous ways to overcome the democratic deficits that seem to have become endemic in our society. Others seem to have already forgotten the lessons of history.

So-called "Free Trade" and the Presidential Election. . .

Trade is one of the stranger political issues in recent years. For more than two decades now the left has been saying that the trade deals (even going back before the Uruguay Round of GATT negotiations), are not really "free-trade" deals at all, but are rather 'corporate rights' deals that are intended to strengthen the power of multinational corporations to set the economic agenda at national and international levels. There has always been plenty of evidence for this and the recent kerfuffle over CETA has demonstrated this remarkably well. These deals almost all contain clauses that strengthen the ability for foreign or multinational organizations to determine domestic economic and even social policy.

The main political parties in many Western nations have overwhelmingly supported these deals and done a great deal to hide the fact that these deals are not really concerned with open trade per se, but with the suppression of national governments' ability to institute policies that will protect their populations from outside forces. The Democrats and the Republicans in the US, for example, have always, with few exceptions, promoted these deals. Thus it comes as some surprise that a guy like Trump, who as far as I can tell never spoke against these deals until the past year or so (and has certainly taken advantage of these deals to increase his own wealth), is suddenly telling people that NAFTA and other such "trade deals" have been bad. (It is not, of course surprising that Bernie Sanders has spoken against such deals; he has been consistent on this issue throughout his career) It is predictable that much of the Republican establishment is upset by Trump's critique in this regard, given that the Republicans (even more than the Democrats) have promoted and benefited from these deals.

What is a little bit surprising is to see some Republican operatives (people who have supported so-called free trade for years or even decades) try to criticize Hillary Clinton for being in favour of them. Many Republicans have tried to use leaked speeches given by Clinton in which she talks of "open borders" as a strike against her, even though what she has actually said matches exactly what the Republicans have always said. The problem is, of course, that the phrase "open borders," a phrase that used to be associated specifically with the freer movement of goods and services, has now become associated with the movement of people. This is because of the way the rightwing in the US has been talking about the issue of undocumented workers and the perception among many Republicans that Democrats just want to fling open the borders with Mexico and let everyone stream across into the US. (Whether any Republicans actually believe that any Democrats sincerely want this, is somewhat irrelevant. What is important is that they have used the idea as a political tool) But when Ms. Clinton used the phrase "open borders" there is no reason to believe that she meant the free movement of people (in economic theory terms we can read the word "labour" here). Because with the exception of the European Union, no modern trade deal has ever included the free movement of people as individuals who are trading the commodity of their own labour power.  The kinds of deals that Clinton and the Republicans have supported for decades are never concerned with the most common and most traded commodity in the world: labour power.

Thus when Trump's various surrogates (particularly men like Newt Gingrich and Rudi Giuliani) criticize Clinton for 'secretly' wanting to open the borders to anyone in North and South American who wants to come the the US and work, they are knowingly misleading people, and being supremely hypocritical. They are fully aware that Clinton's agenda is the expansion of already existing "free-trade" deals that are concerned with a) reducing trade barriers, and b) (and more importantly) giving corporations and other nations the ability to suppress social and economic programs in other countries.  But even if Clinton were talking about a North/South American Union similar to the EU, where people were allowed to cross borders to work in different countries (and there is absolutely no reason to believe that she has ever promoted this), this would, in fact, be the logical outcome of any real notion of actual 'free-trade,' since to exclude the free movement of labour from a trade deal actually means to exclude the most important and commonly traded of all commodities.

Either way, if you look carefully, you can see Donald Trump's pant on fire.

What's a Progressive to do?

As much as I would like it to be otherwise, I really think that any optimism that the Liberal government would be significantly different from the Harper government on some of the most substantive issues, has turned out to be misplaced. I understand why a number of progressives are having a hard time letting go of their hope for Trudeau, but that hope is beginning to look increasingly naive. There is no doubt that Trudeau brought a different tone to government, and on foreign policy, though he has yet to face a significant test, he certainly seems like an improvement on Harper in a number of ways. However, on healthcare, energy and the environment, native issues (and this a particularly painful one to face), and on the neo-liberal trade approach, Trudeau is really so close to Harper that there is little to choose between them.

Here are some interesting stories concerning this difficult dilemma -

On the Economy - Thomas Walkom has some interesting observations.

On Progressive politics - Tom Parkin has this to say.

On the Precariate - Bill Morneau (who is married into one of the richest families in Canada) tells the rest of us we just need to suck it up.

On Native issues - Dene Moore reminds us that indigenous leaders are already giving Trudeau a failing grade. And you can hear Murray Sinclair saying that Trudeau is breeching the "Indian residential schools" settlement.




These are just the articles I found in a couple of minutes. Meanwhile, to see a startling example of how the Liberals are mimiking the Conservative's arrogance and total lack of concern for real people's lives, we only have to look at what Liberal MP Nick Whalen had to say.

I know a few progressives are desperately trying to give Trudeau and the Liberals the benefit of the doubt. But in my experience, governments veer further away from their promises as time goes on, not closer. I think it is little short of folly to imagine that Trudeau isn't another neo-liberal who, despite his smiles and selfies, is quickly making it clear that three years from now, working-people, indigenous people, and the environment will be little or no better off than they would have been under the Conservatives. (Granted, of course, that the Conservatives might have gotten considerably worse if they had actually won another election)

I am willing to give kudos to Trudeau for steering us away from the racist rhetoric that the Cons were, and still are, spew. On the issue of democratic reform, we will just have to wait and see.

Neo-Liberalism, Sexism, and the Presidential Dilemma....

I oppose Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton for some of the same reasons: I am a socialist and they are both part of the financial elite; they support the neo-liberal economic agenda; they have both supported radically pro-corporate trade policies (Trump acts as though he hasn't but he has for years), they both defend a capitalist, racist, imperialist nation that has, for generations supported dictators and undermined democracy and socialist efforts worldwide. I think these are pretty good reasons to resist the US and its politicians. You don't have to be that radical to say politics in the US is clown show with few alternatives from the capitalist agenda that has been helping to destroy the environment, suppressed democracy, and enshrined poverty in the very system itself.

But even as a socialist, you don't have to be wildly pragmatic to make an important distinction between Trump and Clinton. They both have records of corruption. But Trump's is much more dramatic than Clinton's, as John Oliver outlines here.

So while they are both corrupt, Trump is demonstrably more corrupt that Clinton. But Trump is also openly racist and promotes racism and conflict at the core of his political agenda. He is openly misogynist and has boasted about his sexual assault behaviour. Electing either Trump or Clinton as president will more or less continue the neo-liberal economic agenda, neither will do much for democracy, for poverty (at home or abroad), nor will they make the radical changes to environmental policy that are necessary. But as president, Trump will legitimize racism and misogyny through his beliefs and behavior. While they will both continue the same kinds of capitalist agendas, Trump threatens to open up a floodgate of violence and hate against women and racialized people. I think that even if you don't believe in the system, these factors make Trump demonstrably worse that Clinton. Some might say that the policies of both are a bit like someone rearranging the deck-chairs on the Titanic as it is sinking. That may be true, but that doesn't mean we should support the guy who is going to encourage people to beat the hell out of, and sexually assault each other as it goes down.

But there is another factor here that should be talked about. Clinton may have a dubious record concerning certain aspects of corruption during her time as a public figure, but if you compare that record to, say, the last Republican presidency, she's a paragon of purity. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney orchestrated illegal wars that killed hundreds of thousands of people. Tens of millions of dollars (if not billions) went totally unaccounted for as wads of cash were reportedly given out to terrorist group as bribes to stop them from undertaking violence. And Bush and Cheney benefited personally from all this through their oil interests, and through corporations such as Halliburton and Blackwater. To compare any contemporary US political corruption to what Bush and Cheney have been responsible for, de facto robs the very notion of corruption meaningless. If Trump supporters were interested in sending anyone to jail, they would never stop calling for the incarceration of Bush and Cheney, two men who destabilized the whole globe, made fortunes doing it, and, arguably, permanently undermined the status and legitimacy of the US as a democracy.

If, like me, you are a socialist with little or no faith in the political/economic system, it is understandable to be dubious about Clinton and Trump for the simple reason that they are both corrupt in various ways and they both represent the capitalist status quo. But if you believe in American capitalism and its supposed democracy, if you believe that, despite its blemishes, the US basically represents what is good in economics and human rights, then to portray Hillary Clinton as some kind of outlier of corruption is just hypocritical because as corruption and dubious behavior goes, she somewhere near the middle of the pack, and in my opinion she comes off much better than Trump.

I continue to believe that the angry, vociferous opposition to Clinton by many Americans is little more than simple sexism. She is not an atypical Democratic nominee in policy matters or in her dubious record. But she is atypical in her qualifications, in as much as she is unquestionably the most qualified candidate to run for president in living memory.

As most of us have heard many women defend Trump's predatory behavior over the past couple of weeks, it is easy to see just what a powerful thing sexism is.

Narcissism and the Growth of Hate Politics. . . .

David Brooks wrote an excellent op-ed piece for the New York Times today entitled Donald Trump's Sad, Lonely Life. Brooks recounts the genuine state of mental illness and isolation in which Trump lives. Most poignantly, Brooks writes:

 "Trump continues to display the symptoms of narcissistic alexithymia, the inability to understand or describe the emotions in the self. Unable to know themselves, sufferers are unable to understand, relate or attach to others. To prove their own existence, they hunger for endless attention from outside. Lacking internal measures of their own worth, they rely on external but insecure criteria like wealth, beauty, fame and others' submission."

Admittedly, it is difficult to feel truly sorry for a guy like Trump because his mental/emotional problems make him a mean and angry person. But his problems are, I am sure, quite real and essentially rob him of the kinds of human contact and affections that most of us enjoy. I remember as kid I knew a bully who finally tried to bully the wrong new-kid in class. After getting beaten up in front of a cheering school-yard crowd the bully just sat there weeping on the grass as everyone walked away. And despite the fact that I had been one of his victims, I felt a very profound sense of pity that has never really left me. Because I saw at that moment that this boy had nothing, his only sense of self-worth was gained by dominating others and I knew at that moment, even as a nine year old, that he was never going to know the real joys of friendship and intimacy. Brooks continues:

"Bullies only experience peace when they are cruel. Their blood pressures drops the moment they beat the kid on the playground. Imagine you are Trump. You are trying to bluff your way through a debate. You're running for an office you're completely unqualified for. You are chasing some glimmer of validation that recedes further from view. Your only rest comes when you are insulting somebody, when you are threatening to throw your opponent in jail, when you are looming over her menacingly like a mafioso thug on the precipice of a hit, when you are bellowing that she as a 'tremendous hate in her heart' when it is clear to everyone you are only projecting what is in your own."

I get what Brooks is saying here. It is right on point. Of course, I don't lie awake nights worrying about what a sad, pathetic, and lonely man Trump is. His racism and misogyny might be rooting in childhood trauma, but that doesn't make them any easier to tolerate, nor does that make Trump any more likable a man.

But reading Brooks' piece got me thinking about what has happened to politics, not just in the US but in many places. The Conservative party in Canada, is no less pathetic than Trump; we have a host of Conservative leadership candidates who fall over themselves to say more despicable things about other leaders as well as the weak and vulnerable. England has a new Prime Minister who seems to pride herself on a lack of human empathy. But politicians are so often the worst kinds of people, people who are hungry for attention and power, just like Trump.

What of their followers and supporters? That is the question that keeps haunting me. It is relatively easy to see a pathetic man like Trump as not quite stable, perhaps a victim of some kind of trauma or mental illness. It wasn't even that hard, at times, to see Canadian Prime Minister Harper as a troubled narcissist who never really knew intimacy or friendship but only hungered for dominance and authority. But this new crop of "hateful" leaders are inciting a new generation of hateful followers; seemingly average people who revel in the vitriol and hate spouted by these pathetic leaders. This is, in a way, much more troubling than the leaders themselves. You only have to watch television or read internet comments to see that there are thousands, even millions of people who are getting off on this stuff, they love to see some politician legitimize their own hatred and anger.

What conclusions can we draw from this? Are we entering a new age of mass delusion, mass anger, and mass narcissism? Has it always been this way but just gets muted at some stages? Is there a prevailing sense of fear motivated by growing social insecurity and social shifts that are causing the weaker minded to lash out with anger and hate? I really don't know what's going on but it has, I am sure like many others, shaken me to the core.

Trump and the new Fascism. . .

John Ibbitson, the conservative shill who told us not that long ago that Harper's Conservative Party would be in power for a century, (to give you some idea of his ability to predict the future) wrote in the Globe and Mail today that "He'll likely lose - but Trump is the final warning to elites." The headline tells the majority of the story since, as with most of Ibbitson's articles, the rest of the text is a rambling hodgepodge of poorly written blather.

But what is the narrative that Ibbitson (along with Trump and many of his supporters) is trying to sell here? That Trump, despite being a billionaire who rubs shoulders with every kind of political and business mover and shaker is not an elite? Well, denying that Trump is an elite is obviously only for the most ignorant and simpleminded of the Trump audience. We know Trump is an elite. The unspoken narrative here is that there are two groups in society, on the one hand a "political elite" who have been running the political system and in the process lining their pockets and screwing up the system. This elite, so the story would go, is not telling it like it is, they are hiding behind a rarified field of money and assumed political correctness to maintain their power and continue to line their pockets. On the hand, the narrative would have us believe that over and against this political elite there is everyone else, rich and poor, who are getting screwed by this institutionalized political elite. Thus Trump (or Kellie Leitch for that matter) claim that despite being wealthy and powerful, they somehow represent everyone else who should be opposed to this supposed political elite.

The problems with this narrative are so many that it seems fascicle. For one thing, in most countries the political elite are active members of the financial elite. When was the last time, for example, the man who was elected president wasn't rich? Most of them start out rich, but if they don't they are rich long before they make their way to the oval office. This is true of the top politicians in most other countries too. Furthermore, the excessively rich, the so-called One Percenters like the Koch Brothers, for example, are very active in politics behind the scene and have been for as long as we have had modern politics. These ultra-rich are the actual source of the kinds of policies that politicians have been pursuing for ever. The neo-con agenda was formulated by the financial elite, and the political elite, being their proxy actors, were more than ready to oblige in instituting that agenda.

Trump has always supported these policies and the only time he began to badmouth modern trade agreements, for example, was when he decided to run for president. You see the only thing that has changed here is that the neo-con agenda pursued for so long by both the political and the financial elite has begun to break down under its own weight. It is becoming clearer and clearer each year that these policies have not only failed to deliver on the promise of general prosperity, but they have systematically made things worse. The left has always known this but only since a general dissatisfaction began to grow a few years ago did the mainstream political left (long in the thrall the neo-lib policies) begun to panic and try to address the issue is small ways. Meanwhile people like Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corben have come out and said point blank that the system isn't working and needs reform. The rightwing, on the other hand can never admit that the past forty years of neo-lib policies were never intended to deliver on prosperity for everyone but were, in fact, intended to increase economic inequality. This puts them in a kind of double bind. The rightwing response is once again the same as it has always been, divert the people's attention by blaming others for the failure of our system over the past decades. Their targets are painfully predictable - foreigners and the supposed elites. Both Trump and Leitch's approaches so far have been textbook; maintain the same financial policies that have brought us to this point and failed so miserably to deliver prosperity, but suggest that foreigners and some imaginary elite have screwed things up and that they are the only ones who can put things back in order, despite the fact that they are the ones that have been exporting jobs for decades and giving away their national sovereignty in corporate trade agendas.

In England the people have reacted more swiftly than the rightwing politicians believed that they would. As a result those voters who were foolish enough to believe that foreign workers had taken their jobs and foreign politicians had rigged the system against them, unexpectedly opted to leave the EU. This is a very temporary set back for the rightwing in Britain who will quickly respond by feeding this narrative to maintain their power. Because anyone who thinks that leaving the EU will help the average people in Britain (without a radical left government) has just bought into decades of neo-liberal lies.

As the model of capitalism that the rich and powerful have been pursing for decades begins to breakdown, the rightwing knows that they have a major problem; if the people realize what they have been up to for so long, the idea of actual capitalist reform will work its way onto the agenda. In a desperate effort to avoid this they are once again fanning the flames of xenophobia and pointing to an imaginary political elite. It is a strategy that can work, but only with the most dire of consequences. And in the end, the problems that they say that they are going to solve will only deepen until disaster results.

Unlike what Ibbitson would have us believe - that Trump is a final warning to the elite - what he really is is the first salvo in a new effort in modern fascism.

Our Era; enlightenment in reverse . .

Mr. Britling, the title character of H.G. Wells’ 1916 novel Mr. Britling Sees it Through, is haunted by the reality of the First World War, a conflict that had been years in the making but which, with his optimistic and compassionate sensibilities, he had always publicly and privately denied as a genuine possibility. The arrival of war in Europe turns Mr. Britling’s intellectual and emotional reality upside down as he is forced to face the possibility that people are simply not as good as he believed, and that perhaps the race to which he belongs is not as mature as he gave them credit for. Though Mr. Britling is in his fifties, Wells’ novel is a coming of age story, an unexpected bildungsroman of a middle-aged man who has been living in the pleasant and quite bubble of Matching’s Easy, a sleepy English village in Essex county.   

For those of us born in the last years of the so-called baby boom, it is easy to empathize with Mr. Britling, for lots of reasons. In the wake of the War in Vietnam there was fostered a significant mistrust of the military adventurism of Western States. This mistrust gave rise to the era of largely covert militarism in the late 1970s and 1980s. Our rather childish faith that the public wouldn’t again be so easily fooled into supporting economically motivated wars, was quickly dashed in the early 1990s when we watched the first George Bush commit the West to a war for oil. In an ironic homage to George Orwell, the first Gulf War ushered us into an what seems to be an era of permanent war and the protests against Vietnam are little more than a distant memory of generation now over-leveraged and looking for a comfortable retirement in age when economic security is a thing of the past. Worse than this, the global insecurity which Thatcher and Reagan, the Bushes and the Clintons gave birth is now having the knock-on effect of reigniting the xenophobia and fascism of the 1930s, only this time it comes with the added complication of climate change, global food and water crises, and potential nuclear conflagration. As the late Kurt Vonnegut would have said, so it goes.

Karl Marx told us that History repeats itself, first as tragedy then as farce. If so, we are well into an era of farce, but one that promises everywhere to end in tragedy. But the unfulfilled promise that the anti-war movement of the Vietnam era left us, is more than an era of permanent war and shock capitalism, it is also an renewed ideology of “know-nothingism,” that strange pride that people take in their own ignorance and willfully offensive opinions and beliefs. And this know-nothingism is gaining speed and popularity against a monumental digital transformation of culture, a cultural transformation that can surely only be compared in significance to that brought about by the printing press.   

Our “Mr. Britling” moment is partly the realization that the progress of the human sensibilities is nowhere near what we had hoped and that if you give people a uniform, a rifle, and a marching band they will willingly follow you anywhere, blithely beating the drums of war. But this is our individualized “Mr. Britling” moment. At a wider, cultural level, we are witnessing a bildungsroman in reverse; a huge faction of our race that, though we tried to drag them forward into an enlightened future, is happily reverting back to quagmire of blissful ignorance, racism, xenophobia, and the active peddling of hate. Unfortunately, the wilful rejection of rational discourse and the adoption of childish, hate-filled, squealing (so well illustrated by political figures like Donald Trump), is happening against the backdrop of a digital transformation of culture that seems to be, counter-intuitive as it sounds, chipping away at literacy skills and undermining the kind of intellectual expansion that we once took for granted in the golden age of reading, when people sat down for long stretches not only to absorb the imaginative power of novels but read long, syntactically complex journalism and nonfiction, rather than simply clicking on a link, looking at a headline and then blathering some uniformed opinion in the comments section. What would Mr. Britling, a thoughtful essayist and cultural commentator, make of a generation that has an infinite amount of information at its fingertips but watches cat videos instead and happily, even proudly, follows leaders who make ignorance and hate-mongering their modus operandi?

Kellie Leitch and the generating of Hate. . . .

The roots of racism, those feelings of fear, resentment, and hate, run very deep in the human psyche. I don't believe anyone, no matter how benevolent or compassionate, remains unscathed. We are all, in one way or another, the victims of racism, whether directly or indirectly, because it poisons our society and generates division, anger, and violence. Those of us who are not racialized, and therefore not the direct victims of racism, are not only made poorer in every way by being in a society that harbours racism, but we also, sometimes unwittingly, have somewhere in ourselves lingering feelings in some aspect of our lives that have been generated by the racist milieu in which we have been raised and continue to live. Racism in our society against Indigenous people, for example, is still openly expressed and tolerated, and I'm not talking here just of the misinformation that so many continue to espouse and spread, but of the straight-up nasty, blatant type.

Many people, I hope the majority, who espouse racist beliefs do so unwittingly by reiterating things that they have heard (by our politicians for example) that are disguised as upright political opinion but are, in the bright light of day, really just veiled racism of one kind or another. Unfortunately, this kind of low-level attempt at disguising racism gains traction in our society, particularly among those who have some deep-seated fear or resentment that has been handed to them in their childhood, a childhood where white privilege was more or less unquestioned. And this back-ground of white privilege is really at the heart of this kind of racism because it is what generates the speciously justified claims that we need to exclude those who somehow don't fit with our "values."

Because straight-up, explicit racism no longer sells very well, it is this exclusionary narrative that is now being used by contemporary politicians. Thus conservative politicians (whether from real conviction or in an effort simply to garner votes from a group of angry whites) generates this narrative of difference and exclusion as a wedge issue that itself (again, whether inadvertently or not) generates real feelings of racism as well as opening the space for more explicit racism to be "legitimately" vocalized. The nuts and bolts of this kind of narrative is one in which politicians essentially tie entire groups with the most outrageous or egregious actions of people within that group. Thus last year when the Harper government was eager to ban certain clothing worn by muslim women, the narrative was not really about the burqa or the niqab, these articles of clothing were simply convenient vehicles for an effort to enflame feelings of fear and division. This effort creates in people's mind an association between some relative innocuous activity by members of a group with the very worst activities undertaken by a few, mostly distant and far-flung members of that group. Harper and his cronies thus victimized a very small group of women (and by extension the entire group) by creating fear of an entire religious and cultural community.

Cut forward to the deeply disturbing actions of Kellie Leitch, MP and now candidate for the leadership of the Conservative Party. Last year when Ms Leitch (along with another deeply objectionable MP Chis Alexander) announced their ill-fated "barbaric cultural practices tip line" she was engaging in precisely this sort of racism-generating associational narrative. Anything that one might have been legitimately reported on such a tip line was already a criminal act and it was therefore a rather explicit attempt at generating fear of the 'other.' Ms Leitch later tearfully recanted her part in this announcement (though she by no means condemned the principle). However, as we all know, Ms Leitch was back this week with her racism part two, another attempt to garner votes by generating fear and loathing. This time Leitch has attempted to generate fear of the entire group of potential immigrants by suggesting that she could vet them based upon some abstract notion of "Canadian Values." The implication here is, of course, that somewhere out there is a large group of potential immigrants who are just waiting to undermine society by bringing in offensive (and potentially violent) beliefs that they will then spread like a poison. I think that it unduly lends credibility to Ms Leitch to take up some in-depth conversation about what exactly are "Canadian Values." One only need consider the fact that Leitch represents a party that very recently opposed equal rights for lesbian and gay citizens, continues to oppose equal rights for transgender people, and did a great deal to undermine women's rights here and abroad. People like Leitch and her ilk want to drag us into a semantic maze of discussion about so-called Canadian values because such a discourse will only further promote the idea that there is a core group of "real" (old-stock?) Canadians on the one hand and a bunch of interlopers on the other who threaten our cultural purity.

It is because racism runs so deep in people's psyche that politicians are able to take advantage of it. And because white privilege has actually begun (very slowly) to whither, the fear felt by many people can be manipulated into racist action. What should be clear, however, is that people like Kellie Leitch by no stretch of the imagination represent the best of what we hope to be. Rather, Leitch represents the mean-spirited, narrow-minded, elitist and racist values that sew division and generate inequality, and will (if we are not very careful) be the real death of our society.

Two Candidates, same story???

I am not a big supporter of Hillary Clinton, but I believe that most of the ferocious, mainstream attacks on her are (whether consciously or not) motivated by sexism. The reason I say this is simple: Clinton is not only probably the most qualified candidate in recent memory (if not ever), but her stances and policies are completely in line with the Democratic candidates over the past thirty or forty years. It is easy and fair to criticize Clinton from a leftist point of view, and some of the public criticisms of her have been just this, something that is, I believe, a result of a rising tide of leftist politics in the millennial generation. But from the mainstream Democrats criticisms of her have been deeply hypocritical since her policies are not significantly different from Obama, Bill Clinton, Al Gore (when he was in the running), Dukakis, or even Mondale. Hillary Clinton is, in policy terms, simply an extension of the Democratic Party, a party that grew out of the Reagan years, a largely neo-liberal party (in economic terms) with a social liberal bent, that pays lip service to traditional left of centre issues. (Much like the Liberal Party here in Canada).

Now some people criticize Hillary Clinton by pointing to her scandals and alleged dishonesty. I am not going to take issue with every one of these issues because that would necessitate a longer blog than I have time for. But let me say this - for anyone who has been in public life as long, and at the high level that she has, her alleged offenses seem pretty much par for the course. I take it as read that Hillary Clinton is corrupt and dishonest to a degree, simply because I take it that the rich and powerful in capitalism are almost universally so. That is how the system works. It favours corruption and rewards dishonesty.

However, I find it hypocritical (or naive) in the extreme for people to portray Hillary as deeply flawed and dishonest and then go out and support Trump as though they are somehow doing something different. First of all, let's be clear, Trump has been a long time supporter of the same economic agenda that Hillary Clinton represents. That is a simple matter of record. But more importantly, to imagine that Trump is somehow outside of the establishment that Clinton represents is pure folly. Trump is a typically dishonest, wealthy businessman in a system that favours the rich and powerful. If he lived in a system that didn't economically and judicially favour wealth and power, Trump would be broke or maybe in jail. Like so many of the rich and powerful, Trump uses a corrupt system to shield him from prosecution, much like Clinton does. Trump uses his wealth to keep himself rich and to take wealth from smaller, more honest business people. (One simply has to examine his business history to understand this) It is simply ridiculous to think of a billionaire like Trump as somehow outside of the establishment of a capitalist nation. And his record of dishonesty is no less public, and arguably much worse, than Clinton's. But even if you think Clinton is uniquely dishonest as mainstream presidential candidates have been, it is ridiculous and blind to see Trump as any more honest or any less part of the establishment.

If someone was reluctant to vote for Clinton because she is too fiscally rightwing or too much of a foriegn policy hawk, I think that is fair enough. However, for someone to support Trump because they think Clinton is dishonest and too much part of the establishment would be as absurd as someone voting for the Neo-nazis because they think Trump is too racist and misogynistic. It is absurd. Trump's dishonesty is self-evident and obvious even without the huge amount of testimony from those he has cheated, his business failures are startling, and his support for the trade practices that he now criticizes has a long history.

So here's the thing - if I were an American voter and I was set on voting either Democrat or Republican, I would be choosing between the two generally dishonest, rich and powerful, neo-liberal candidates. Well, I would choose the one who isn't blatantly racist, misogynist, and hasn't been endorsed by the white supremacists. That seems pretty straightforward to me.

Where are the American Political Parties Going?

Wow! It's hard to believe a presidential campaign having a worse couple of days than what has happened to Trump in the past couple 48 hour. Yelling at babies, bad-mouthing the grieving parents of a fallen soldier, going after other prominent Republicans, joking about getting a Purple Heart the day after the NYT does a cover story on Trump's draft dodging, publicly musing about the election being rigged, repeatedly asking advisors why it's not ok to use nuclear weapons, etc., etc. NBC has an interesting article on the chaos here.

It seems to me (and quite a few prominent Republicans seem to agree), that it doesn't matter that much what your politics are at this point, Trump is coming off looking seriously unstable. And if it wasn't for the so-called Goldwater Rule, I suspect that a lot more people would be actively talking about Trump's mental state at this point. NBC has another interesting article on that issue here.

One might argue, of course, that people who are challenging the political establishment are bound to be labeled by some people as "mentally unhinged." There can be, I think, some merit in this argument in as much as perceived radicals of any stripe are cutting against the grain, so to speak, so the will no doubt be the target of all sorts of criticisms. But we have a pretty contemporary comparison to Trump in Bernie Sanders, and though I heard the occasional wingnut refer to him as crazy, I think Sanders' overall stability and ability for polite and rational discourse, precluded him from being labeled as unstable no matter how radical a few of his policies might be viewed by some.

There is, of course, a lot of time to go on this campaign. And if history teaches us anything it is to expect the unexpected. However, given Trump's behavioural consistency when it comes to saying and doing wildly inappropriate things, it is difficult imagining him suddenly changing his spots, so to speak. It is hardly an insightful prediction that we are in for a wild ride for the next three months. But based upon just how wild the past couple of days have been, people have understandably begun to speculate upon all sorts of possible outcomes. Some pundits have predicted that Trump will drop out or somehow be forced to quit before the election comes. Short of some criminal indictment or some genuinely heinous act, this seems significantly unlikely to me for a couple of reasons, not least of which is Trump's ego. Can you really imagine Trump quitting this race after all that he has done? Others are speculating that even if he were to win he would quit soon after because he really doesn't have the kind of patience and concentration that it takes to do a 20 hour a day job, listening to hours of briefings that aren't just about you. This prospects makes some people plenty nervous because Mike Spence is, arguably, scarier than Trump.

I really can't even vaguely predict what will happen. The thing about someone as unpredictable as Trump is that, well . . . he makes things unpredictable. Some might say that Trump is predictable, in as much as, based on past behaviour, the next thing that he says is bound to be more inflammatory that the last. While that seems to be true, what I think we can't predict is how people will react to Trump. Frankly, it beggars description that I guy who started his campaign telling us that Mexico was sending us their "rapists," and then actively mocking a guy with a disability, could win the nomination. So I am, at the very least, ready for surprises.

But let's say, for the sake of argument, that Trump's campaign continues to unravel and he loses big. What will that mean, not just for the Republicans but for the Democrats also. Will the GOP finally begin to reevaluate those antiquated ideas that seem to be making them a party of the past? Or will they continue on as they did four years ago, and even double down on their old-world notions? Or will they factionalize into more than one party? Frankly this prospect would seem to promise even more chaos since the GOP at the moment seems to be several different parties at once: a traditional Republican party that has been overshadowed for some years, a whacko religious, tea-party Party that is really just a new style of establishment party but with a much bigger corporate agenda, and an angry, old, white-people's party that, in a state of naivety that boggles my mind, actually thinks that Billionaires like Trump will oppose things like NAFTA and will build a wall on the border with Mexico.

But here is a different, but equally important question: if Hillary Clinton were to win big, what will that mean for the Democratic Party? For the past forty years or so the Democrats have transformed themselves into a party of corporate globalism and bit money. It can easily be argued that on many economic issues Hillary Clinton, like her recent predecessors, is really just a neo-liberal in socially liberal clothing. However, the Sanders campaign has demonstrated that there is a large contingent of Americans who want the old Democratic Party back, the party of FDR and Harry Truman, the pro-union party that believed that the State has a significant role to play in making society more just and equal. But will a Clinton victory in this election allow the Democrats to ignore the shifting political winds and the desires of those that they will have to count on for support in the coming decades? This should be a serious concern for the Democrats who are smart enough to see the coming change, because victory has a way of breeding complacency.

I think we can depend on one thing. The next few years, even decades, will be, as the Chinese curse says, very interesting.

When Our Leaders Want to "beat people up," You know we Haven't come Far. . . .

Today, perhaps unsurprisingly, Donald Trump went on another one of his almost daily rants. This time he actively advocated violence, saying he wanted to "hit" several of the DNC convention speakers "so hard their heads would spin." (You can see a story in the Huffington Post here)

Personally I am entirely dumfounded by the idea of a presidential candidate in the 21st century who openly talks this way. And not only does he talk this way but his supporters lap it up. The irony of a guy who a few days ago tried to position himself as the "law and order candidate" talking openly about using violence on his opponents is too rich to make up. Comedians and Hollywood screenwriters must just be beside themselves at the professional goldmine that this man provides on an almost daily basis. But a good swath of Americans must surely be irony impaired, because they just aren't getting it. But oligarchs, dictators, and so-called 'strong-armed' leaders have always been this way. They talk about law and order but what they really mean is silence and obedience. Or Else!

In the words of one of my very favourite writers, Kurt Vonnegut, "So it goes."


By way of contrast, I was thinking today about the most popular and, arguably, the most left-leaning president the US has ever seen: Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Like any man, he had his faults. But when you contrast him with Donald Trump he seems almost saint-like. FDR was barely able to walk as a result of polio. And he went to great lengths to hide his disability from the public, a task that was conceivable in the age before television. Hiding his disability was understandable in those days. Even today, it is difficult to imagine a person with a significant disability getting elected president. But I suspect that FDR's disability is, in part, what made him the compassionate and socially conscious leader that he was.

One of the only photos of FDR in a wheelchair.

Trump lives in a world where men are still judged, by many, by their level of masculinity. His supporters, both men and women, like to hear him threaten people with violence because, in their eyes, it makes him manly and a good leader. Trump's popularity demonstrates how little we've really progressed in the past century.

The measure of person should never relate to how loud they speak, how angry they can get, how intimidating they can be. Physical courage can, indeed, be a useful trait. But without a conscience it easily becomes ruthlessness. Lincoln said, "No man is so tall as when he stoops to help a child." How is it that the first Republican president knew this lesson more than a hundred and fifty years ago, but the current Republican nominee has forgotten it entirely?

For some people, great leaders are people who have fought wars,  or did "what they said they would do" (no matter how terrible that act might be). But for those of us who actually want to move into the 21st century, great leaders must be defined by their compassion and their empathy. We know how Trump will be judged on this scale.