The End of Civilization?

The polls turned out to be spectacularly wrong. They severely underestimated just how many people want to "blow things up". I didn't realize how much hate is out there.

It's not just the next four years. We'll feel the impact for the rest of our lives.

I guess I could go on a long rant about what it means, but it's too depressing. In short, it certainly means climate change won't be dealt with and that alone brings us to the end.

To those celebrating: Be careful what you wish for.

Update (November 10):  In 2012, some Republicans thought the polls were wrong and some guy got noticed for "unskewing" the polls. Romney was supposedly surprised by the result. But I don't think there really was any problem. Nate Silver nailed it. So what changed in four years? Has the backlash against Obama been growing beyond what is was even back then? It seems we severely underestimated the strength of that backlash. And some asshole knew how to take advantage of the situation. It truly is the greatest con ever. Almost nobody saw it coming. Michael Moore did and I thought he was crazy. May this be my public apology. Moore:

[The] election is going to be the biggest 'fuck you' ever recorded in human history. And it will feel good.

Update (November 16):  Here's a thought experiment: What do you suppose would be happening in the country right now if the Republican had received 2 million more votes while Clinton had won the Electoral College?

Update (January 7, 2017):  Was it economic distress or racism?

Update (April 18, 2017):  Heather Digby Parton cites data suggesting that voters weren't angry about the economy.

[T]hroughout the Obama presidency, politics became more racialized, with non-college-educated whites developing less and less favorable attitudes toward African-Americans and moving toward the Republican Party.

Update (June 7, 2017):  Chauncey DeVega reiterates his contention that the election hinged on "a combination of white racial resentment, old-fashioned racism and sexism as opposed to some vague type of 'economic insecurity' ".

New polling data from the American National Election Study has provided even more ammunition to finally kill off this argument. As detailed by Nicholas Carnes and Noam Lupu of The Washington Post, white working-class voters comprised only 25 percent of his voters.

Update (June 17, 2017):  Anthony DiMaggio on the myth of blue-collar populism.

There is some evidence that economic anxiety was a significant factor in voting for [von Clownstick]. But most of the attitudes embraced by [his] supporters were of the typical Republican Party variety, indicating support for elitist, pro-corporate, and reactionary social agendas.

Danny Westneat reports:

Neither [University of Washington political scientist Christopher] Parker, nor the latest research, is saying that [von Clownstick] voters are all racists. Most voting is simply party-line no matter who is running. What they’re saying is that worries about the economy, free trade and the rest were no more important in 2016 than in previous elections, but racial resentment spiked.

Update (June 19, 2017):  Chauncey DeVega interviews Tim Wise who says we are suffering from a failure to confront white nationalism years ago.

One of the most highly correlated factors with [von Clownstick] support, on a county-by-county basis, is the level of opiate addiction. 

In a sense, [he's] the perfect candidate. Here is a guy who comes along and essentially is a walking, talking opioid. He’s somebody who comes along and says — just like heroin does, just like OxyContin does, just like all these opiates do, he says, “I can take away your pain.” Not only can I take it away, I can tell you what the source is and you just take me or in the case of an election, you vote for me and you won’t have to be in pain anymore. But just like an opiate, he doesn’t really solve the problem of these individuals. 

There’s a real discussion that needs to happen about this moment in American history where white folks more broadly are in a desperate search to be numb. Numb to other people’s pain, numb to their own suffering, seeking out scapegoats for their problems. Which of course is what addicts often do as well. To some extent if you become addicted to privilege, even if it’s not great wealth, you’ve just become addicted to the privilege of being considered what a “real” American is.

Update (June 21, 2017):  Cognitive dissonance will keep many voters from admitting they were wrong. And Democrats won't have a plan for 2020.

Update (June 28, 2017):  Jordan Kraemer considers the "reluctant [von Clownstick] voter".

Many on the left struggle to understand how devout conservatives voted for a glitzy New York real estate mogul turned reality TV star. But [von Clownstick's] election brings into stark relief the threats many white people perceive not just to their economic position, but their basic sense of self and belonging.

Update (July 9, 2017):  Andrew O'Hehir analyzes Dear Leader's speech in Poland.

So what exactly the president means when he praises the strength and resilience of Western civilization is deliberately left unclear. Since he self-evidently doesn’t give a crap about any of that tradition’s cultural, philosophical and artistic accomplishments — and would no doubt deem most of them to be fake news and/or pretentious bullshit — we are left with other possibilities. It’s all about consumer capitalism and white rage, pretty much. The president of the United States sending angry tweets from his gold-plated toilet seat, with an empty tub of Häagen-Dazs beside him. There’s Western civilization for you.

Update (July 11, 2017):  Is this part of what it means to make America great again?

For the first time, a majority of Republicans think that colleges and universities have a negative impact on the country. Fifty-eight percent say that colleges “are having a negative effect on the way things are going in the country,” according to Pew.

Just two years ago, a majority of Republicans, 54 percent, rated universities’ effect as positive. As Pew noted, “this shift in opinion has occurred across most demographic and ideological groups within the GOP,” but in particular the poll found that positive views of colleges among Republicans under the age of 50 sunk by 21 percentage points from 2015 to 2017. While Republican views of colleges and universities remained largely the same throughout much of the Obama administration, 65 percent of self-identified conservatives now say that colleges and universities have a negative impact on the country. Positive views of colleges dropped even among Republicans who hold a college or graduate degree, declining by 11 percentage points during the last two years.

Democrats and independents who lean Democrat, on the other hand, continue to hold a positive attitude toward such institutions, with 72 percent saying they approve of higher education.

So now I'm not the enemy because of what I teach, I'm the enemy because I teach.

Update (July 15, 2017):  Cynthia Tucker Haynes makes it clear: "It's the racism, stupid".

Philip Klinkner, a political scientist at Hamilton College, has studied the [American National Election Studies] data and concluded that “the evidence from the 2016 election is very clear that attitudes about blacks, immigrants and Muslims were a key component ,,,, [Von Clownstick] did worse than Mitt Romney among voters with low and moderate levels of racial resentment, but much better among those with high levels of resentment.”

[His] appeal lies in his implicit promise to restore white hegemony, to put black and brown people in their place, to return America to a bygone era of racial repression.

That hardly means that every person who voted for [him] harbors racist views. In this hyper-partisan era, many rank-and-file Republicans held their noses and voted for the GOP nominee, even if that meant supporting a celebrity TV host with no clue about how to run a country.

But those garden-variety Republicans are still culpable, not just for [his] election, but also for the racial animosity that fueled it. For decades, the GOP has pandered to the fears and resentments of those whites who are uncomfortable with a country growing more racially diverse.

Many Americans had hoped that President Barack Obama’s election was a watershed event that signaled the transformation of American politics, that a nation once scarred by racism had overcome its past. Instead, his election sparked a furious backlash, as racially resentful whites saw more clearly the demographic changes that would bring an end to their cultural and political dominance.

Update (August 4, 2017):  A report from Cato Institute describes five types of von Clownstick supporters.

This analysis finds five unique clusters of [his] voters: American Preservationists (20%), Staunch Conservatives (31%), Anti-Elites (19%), Free Marketeers (25%), and the Disengaged (5%).

There is no such thing as “one kind of [von Clownstick] voter” who voted for him for one single reason. Many voted with enthusiasm for [him] while others held their noses and voted against Hillary Clinton. 

[Von Clownstick] voters hold very different views on a wide variety of issues including immigration, race, American identity, moral traditionalism, trade, and economics. 

Four issues distinguish [Fuckface] voters from non-[Fuckface] voters: attitudes toward Hillary Clinton, evaluations of the economy, views about illegal immigration, and views about Muslim immigration.

And a paper by Thomas Pettigrew lists five psychological traits von Clownstick supports share.

No one factor describes [his] supporters. But an array of factors – many of them reflecting five major social psychological phenomena can help to account for this extraordinary political event: authoritarianism, social dominance orientation, prejudice, relative deprivation, and intergroup contact.

Update (August 5, 2017):  Chauncey DeVega explains the attraction of evangelicals for von Clownstick.

Faith, after all, is a matter of believing in that which cannot be proven by normal or empirical means. This definition is a perfect description of both movement conservatism and the Christian right.

Update (October 1, 2017):  The debate continues. Justin Gest argues that the "white working class" had nothing to lose by voting Republican.

I don’t think white working-class people thought the Democrats gave a damn about them in 2016. You know what the truth is? They were right. I don’t think white working-class voters are necessarily "low information." The truth is, they could easily discern that Republicans didn’t care about them. They were right, which is why they voted for someone who is effectively neither a Democrat or a Republican. That is why I bristle a little bit at the narrative that white working-class people vote against their interests. They are just not voting in their material interests. They’re voting in their cultural interests.

Update (October 15, 2017):  Richard Wolff's take.

[T]he powers that be paid a heavy price for the social quiet they purchased with Obama’s presidency. Sections of the white working class plus broad swaths of right-wing and conservative populations recoiled from the Obama administration. The 2008 crash had hurt them too. The trickle down recovery likewise largely bypassed them. Badly needing help, they resented “others” who seemed to have captured the government and would use it exclusively to help themselves. Indeed, those “others” included people they had long feared and/or hated: major parts of old party establishments coalescing with non-whites and “liberals.”

Bitterly, they seethed over symbolic slights, policy changes, and what they increasingly perceived as an America abandoning them to lower incomes, poorer jobs, and lower overall social status than they believed they had earlier enjoyed. Fearing to blame capitalism (and lacking even the vocabulary with which to think or articulate such blame), they undertook instead a classic selection of scapegoats: Mexico, China, North Korea, immigrants, ethnic and sexually identified minorities, Jews, women, and insufficiently nationalistic corporations. The different targeted scapegoats suffered according to their vulnerability: immigrants a great deal, China next to nothing. [Von Clownstick], many Republican politicians, and rightwing organizations surged. They saw and grasped a moment of real opportunity for what they each represented.

Update (October 30, 2017):  Joy Reid says Republican voters don't really care about the economy.

His supporters don’t care that he is vulgar- they are actually glad that he is vulgar and crude.

They just want him to crush us.

Update (November 26, 2017):  Adam Serwer says that most white Americans are not confronting the role of racism in the election.

When you look at [von Clownstick's] strength among white Americans of all income categories, but his weakness among Americans struggling with poverty, the story of [Fuckface] looks less like a story of working-class revolt than a story of white backlash. And the stories of struggling white ... supporters look less like the whole truth than a convenient narrative—one that obscures the racist nature of that backlash, instead casting it as a rebellion against an unfeeling establishment that somehow includes working-class and poor people who happen not to be white.

Update (January 14, 2018):  With Bannon out of the way, the Administration is following a pretty traditional Republican agenda. Removing the president from office is a fantasy, and while Democrats might have an advantage is this year's swing of the pendulum, Matt Grossman says Republicans are hardly facing a crisis.

Republicans can recover from in-party challenges to their president or an unpopular presidency. After losing both a president and vice president to scandal under Nixon, incumbent Gerald Ford barely survived a challenge from Ronald Reagan—who won the presidency only four years later. In 1992, President George H. W. Bush faced both a primary challenge from Pat Buchanan and an independent challenge from Ross Perot (which also drew Republicans). But Republicans regrouped to take back control of Congress two years later and elect Bush’s son six years after that. George W. Bush’s popularity also dove while in office, culminating in an unpopular war, a botched hurricane response, and the largest recession in decades. Yet Republicans again had to wait out only one presidency before returning to power. A few dissenting senators under [von Clownstick] (especially complaints from those entering retirement) is hardly a sign of an imminent breakup or division that cannot be survived.

Update (April 7, 2018):  Neuroscientist Bobby Azarian explains why von Clownstick supporters may be beyond reach.

The Dunning-Kruger Effect
Hypersensitivity to Threat
Terror Management Theory
High Attentional Engagement

Update (June 17, 2018):  Rick Shenkman suggests the von Clownstick cult is built on the human need to avoid cognitive dissonance.

We all want to believe what we believe is true. That’s the Perseverance Bias in action. Once we settle on a view of the world, we are inclined to persist in it. If forced to confront inconvenient facts ... we are capable of going to great lengths to explain them away.

Update (July 29, 2018):  Fuckface voters were overwhelmingly "ordinary" Republicans. But Clinton failed to turn out many Obama voters. Meanwhile, the world burns.

Update (November 12, 2018):  More from Bobby Azarian--14 traits of von Clownstick supporters.

Update (March 11, 2019):  Chauncey DeVega interviews David Smith and Eric Hanley on how their research shows that "what unified [von Clownstick's] voters was not 'economic anxiety' but prejudice and intolerance." Smith explains:

[W]e seem to have two opposite forms of emotional blindness. Many liberals can’t believe that large numbers of people are vindictive while many conservatives scoff at the idea that liberals are not vindictive. Liberals often make excuses for people who show signs of intolerance. Right-wingers, in contrast, often laugh at claims to "feel your pain".

The bottom line is that bullying rhetoric won tens of millions of white votes in 2016. That, not financial worry, is the reality we face. We can’t explain away the fact that, after nearly two years of insults and abuses – children in cages, excuses for white supremacists, the Muslim travel ban and so much more – nearly 90 percent of Republicans support [Dear Leader].

Update (September 17, 2019):  A study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research finds a big problem with the Electoral College.

In presidential elections in which a candidate wins the popular vote by less than 2 percentage points, or about 2.6 million votes (based on 2016 turnout), there’s about a 32% chance they will still lose the Electoral College. These mismatches, called electoral inversions, become more frequent when the race is even tighter: There’s a 45% probability when the race is decided by less than 1 percentage point, or 1.3 million votes.

Update (August 6, 2020): Alan Blotcky, David Reiss, and John Talmadge think a psychological understanding of Fuckface "devotees" might still change some minds.

Multiple psychological factors seem to influence and explain his supporters. We have divided these factors into four major categories: Rebelliousness and Chaos; Shared Irrationality; Fear; and Safety and Order.

Shared irrationality includes the Dunning-Kruger effect, magical thinking, obsession with celebrity, and shared omnipotence. Fear includes brain reactivity to threats, fear mongering, and conspiracy theories. Safety and order includes social dominance orientation, and authoritarianism.

[S]upporters are tied to [Dear Leader] based on multiple and complex psychological principles and phenomena. To continue to respond to them as if they are psychotic or evil is a grave mistake and will not lead to change. Identifying the category or categories of psychological influence for each person can be a much more productive strategy.

Running Out of Time

There's a stark contrast in this year's election and my vote, in part, is somewhat defensive. As always, Collapse of Industrial Civilization remains focused on the threat of climate change.

The biosphere is collapsing under the weight of 7.5 billion people living off the combustion of a one time endowment of ancient carbon energy, from the factory-farmed produce they eat to the petroleum-based medical supplies that keep them alive.

We’ve been fooling ourselves for a very long time about what is truly sustainable and will continue to do so as the system falls apart, geoengineering fixes are applied, interstellar space colonization fantasies are dreamed up, and wars are fought for what remains. Humans have constructed a reality incompatible with the well-being of the natural world and the stability of the biosphere, but we won’t be able to escape the rules of physics, chemistry, and biology. We’ve spent generations making the bed we’re going to be lying in, never realizing it’s also our death bed. Time is not on our side.

According to United Nations Environment Programme chief scientist Jacqueline McGlade, the Paris Agreement is

just too little, and it’s not happening quickly enough. If we don’t see emissions peaking by 2020, then the chances of getting to 1.5 degrees is vanishingly small.

Update (April 27, 2018):  Referring to John Ehrenfeld, Aleszu Bajak highlights the problem with purely technological fixes for climate change.

Tackling a problem as deeply ingrained as global warming ... will require humanity to face an existential question that geoengineering alone cannot address: Are we willing to sacrifice growth to ensure the survival of our species?