On the Cliff of Despair

While a margin of six million votes is decisive for President-elect Biden, I find it depressing to accept that 74 million people voted for the piece of shit who will go down as the worst president in U.S. history. I struggle to see the justification for that choice. I feel far removed from that part of America.

Peter Montague examines the notion of "deaths of despair" quoting Atul Gawande.

When it comes to people whose lives aren’t going well, American culture is a harsh judge: if you can’t find enough work, if your wages are too low, if you can’t be counted on to support a family, if you don’t have a promising future, then there must be something wrong with you. When people discover that they can numb negative feelings with alcohol or drugs, only to find that addiction has made them even more powerless, it seems to confirm that they are to blame. We Americans are reluctant to acknowledge that our economy serves the educated classes and penalizes the rest.

So what happens as that reluctance starts to shift? Montague:

Hopelessness and helplessness join with pain and anger, which are also widely felt. In 2019 an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll reported that 70 percent of Americans say they feel angry "because our political system seems to only be working for the insiders with money and power, like those on Wall Street or in Washington." [Fuckface] promised (falsely) to take down those insiders and restore power to the people.

In an interview with Paul Rosenberg, Jack Goldstone discusses how societies handle organizational failures and how that can lead to revolutions.

The breakdown, the polarization, the divisions of American society are not about [Dear Leader]. They are about people rejecting the actions of an elite — both conservatives and liberals, it really didn't matter; it was both New York elites and Texas elites — rejecting a notion of a society in which winners take all and government should be starved, with no provide benefits or support for communities that are in trouble, and basically leaving people on their own.

[W]hen things are bad enough for a large portion of the population, they are much more easily recruited to movements that say, "We gotta get rid of everything. These are bad people in charge. Things are never going to get better until we get them out of the way." That's how you recruit a mass movement for rebellion or revolution.

Meanwhile, we're speeding toward the largest organizational failure of all and potential collapse. The neoliberal ideology that benefits the few at the expense of the many erodes social cohesion. Goldstone says problems fester when the government's ability to respond is damaged.

How close are you getting to the edge of the cliff? We can't tell exactly where the edge of the cliff is, because you could say it's shrouded in fog. It depends on lots of particular circumstances. But we know there's a cliff out there.

[I]f the moderates cannot work together and cannot get anything done, that strengthens the extremists on both sides.

The polarization will be worse, the anger will be worse, the recrimination on both sides will be vicious and nothing will have been accomplished in four years.

The interview doesn't end there. Rosenberg asks about democratic reforms and Goldstone says there are many ideas to help pull us away from the brink. He insists that we don't just want partisan solutions. But I'm afraid that if we have to rely on the likes of Mitch McConnell for bipartisan cooperation, we just might already be over the edge.

Update (November 23):  Andrew O'Hehir considers where we might be heading. Dear Leader has shown us the sharp conflicts in U.S. politics.

[H]is cruelty, his vulgarity and his open contempt for democracy, the rule of law and constitutional order woke many of us up — and I don't entirely exclude his voters and supporters — to the deep wounds in our society, the lack of any shared understanding of reality and the profound apprehension about the future.

But Democrats are generally unwilling or unable to offer much more than "we're not crazy". 

Rhetorical gestures toward abstract ideals of justice, equality and democracy may have been just about enough to defeat a widely despised and famously incompetent president, but they are not nearly enough to defeat a surging fascist movement built on white nationalism, cultural dispossession, economic stagnation and anti-elite rage.

One political party in America now has a clear agenda and a loyal following, and has now taken a low-risk dry run at seizing and holding power without regard for laws or rules or standards of decency or those famous "democratic norms." That party didn't go all-in on that effort this time around, but it now sees that with the right leader and adequate planning — not to mention the necessary level of force — the task can probably be managed. The other party is against all that, gosh darn it! But it still doesn't know what it wants to be when it grows up, and it may not get the chance.

Update (November 25):  Amanda Marcotte maintains that the 74 million Republican votes are not about the candidate so much as a movement representing the rise of American fascism.

That the most powerful country in the world is being held hostage by an authoritarian, racist minority drunk on conspiracy theories is the biggest story in politics. It's part of a larger story about the entire world in the grip of rising authoritarianism. Their power will define Joe Biden's presidency. Their ability to cripple him will matter more than any of his Cabinet picks or even his executive orders.

[Dear Leader] is just the shorthand for this very real and ongoing problem. The reason it feels like we can't quit [him] is that we can't quit the people who elected him. [W]e shouldn't pander to those people or seek to placate them, but we also can't just ignore them. Not while they still control so many levers of power.

Update (November 27):  Anthony DiMaggio clarifies that "being white and earning a lower income is not significantly associated with an increased statistical likelihood of voting for" Dear Leader.

[S]upport for [him] is not significantly associated with "deaths of despair" among economically insecure whites ... . While [his] white supporters are more likely to say they struggle with depression and alcohol abuse (although not illicit drug abuse), these struggles are not linked to financial insecurity (lower incomes), and such drug problems are common across the income spectrum, among lower, middle, and upper income earners. ... [T]here is very little evidence that support for [him] is seriously linked to financial insecurity, among Americans in general or among whites.

[O]ccupationally stressed, xenophobic white Americans – those who report working overtime or a second job, and who agree that "immigrants exert a harmful impact on society because they take American jobs, housing, and health care" – are significantly more likely to support [Agent Orange]. ... [S]aying that white [supporters] are angry because they are struggling to get ahead in their jobs is very different than saying these individuals are the same people who are being left disproportionately behind in an era of rising inequality and worker insecurity. ... What separates [his] supporters from other Americans, who are also facing occupational stresses is the former’s willingness to blame immigrants for their struggles.

Update (November 28):  Tony McKenna warns against complacency.

It is difficult to imagine that [the Biden administration] will offer the electorate either something qualitatively new or something that's likely to genuinely uplift the economic interests of the vast majority. The cloud of euphoria — which was more about the exorcism of [Dear Leader] than about the ascension of Biden — is likely to dissipate rather quickly under the grind of the neoliberal machine.

[E]fforts to call into question the validity of the democratic process, both before and after the election — on the surface the last-ditch cry of foul by a gaudy vulgarian, will in fact act as a potent rallying point for a political base all too ready to congeal around the notion that a liberal elite has robbed the "anti-establishment" candidate of his rightful win. And the more the Democratic Party pursues its pro-Wall Street policies, the more it will reveal itself as the party of an elite minority.

The slick brand of managerial capitalism which encompasses high finance and a new era of global imperialism, which Biden's administration is almost certainly set to offer, could well create the perfect conditions in which a new type of far-right demagoguery can metastasize; something which will unite the anguished fury of the lower-middle classes with the most rabid fringes of the far right, fusing them into a toxic and potentially lethal brew.

And Paul Edwards sees multiple issues on which there are, perhaps, irresolvable differences--economic, religious, race relations, ecological, foreign policy, labor, immigration, healthcare, and even beliefs about the very function of government.

[T]hese percolating disasters are unintended consequences of an economic system the sole purpose of which is to grind the living world to powder for money; a system without one single provision for the care and preservation of life in any form other than as a source of monetary gain.

There will be no "coming together"; no "healing of wounds". No "long, national nightmare" will be over. The lesions that unrestrained Capitalism has inflicted and left raw and festering on the body politic are not healable, and are fatal.

Update (December 9):  Heather Digby Parton notes that the enormous partisan divide make compromise unlikely.

[Dear Leader] may have lost the legal battle and will lose institutional power within a few weeks. But the danger won't pass anytim soon, because the GOP establishment sees benefit in leveraging this incoherent rage to sabotage what they're essentially claiming will be an illegitimate Democratic presidency. Biden can initiate all the outreach he wants but I don't think GOP officials could put that genie back in the bottle if they wanted to. And they have made it very clear that they don't want to.

Update (December 17):  In a conversation with Bill Moyers, Steven Harper and Heather Cox Richardson consider what the country is heading toward.

Harper:

Hannah Arendt would say when you're bombarded with lies, repeatedly, the purpose of the lie is not really to get you to believe the lie. It's to persuade you to doubt everything. And with such a people, you can do as you please. ... I think that pundits have ... really underestimated [Dear Leader] for a long time by referring to the things he does as "breaking norms." As if a norm is not a big deal. But one of the norms that this country has stood for, and what makes the country what it is, is respect for the rule of law. And if you shatter the rule of law, which is what's been happening again and again and again under [him], what's left? If you eliminate truth, if you eliminate facts, if you let people believe whatever they want to believe, if they confine themselves to the comfortable bubbles of people telling them what they want to hear, I don't think democracy survives that.

Richardson: 

I think there is also the recognition on the part of a number of Republicans that this is it. They have to retain power. Because if they don't, the Democrats will in fact make it easier to vote, and the current day Republican Party is not going to be viable any longer.

But one of the things that [this] administration has done, is it has woken up an awful lot of Americans to the idea that democracy is not a spectator sport. And they're getting involved in ways that they have never been involved before. And they are really starting to understand that what happens in their government matters to their lives. And they're running for office, and they're meeting, and they're writing letters, and they're voting, and they're talking about what it means to be an American. And that, to me, looks like our greatest moments. ... And I really think, when you look at where we are, sure, this could be the end of American democracy and we might see the rise of oligarchy that looks a lot like a modernized version of fascism. But it could also look like a new future. And the work I see people doing on the ground makes me hopeful that that's the direction we're actually going.

Update (December 20):  Paul Rosenberg examines how the perception of victimization (as opposed to actual victimization) drives political support for tyranny. A tyrant will stir up support by feeding into narcissistic beliefs about being better than others and thus deserving special treatment.  Rosenberg quotes Elizabeth Mika:

You can expect the members of historically privileged classes and groups to have a sense of specialness ingrained in them by the virtue of being part of that class. When their sense of privilege is threatened and/or eroded, by, for example, expanding the privilege to others, members of previously disenfranchised and thus 'inferior' groups, they react with anger and rage that seek suitable scapegoats, more often than not from among those who are seen as 'stealing' their privilege or otherwise responsible for its loss. For narcissists, the loss of privilege feels like oppression.

Rosenberg continues:

This description is a near-perfect fit for [Dear Leader's] white, Christian nationalist base. That base easily delivered landslide re-election victories for Richard Nixon in the 70s and Ronald Reagan in the 80s, but has only managed one popular-vote victory since 1988. Its privileged position has been eroding for at least 30 years now, and has only survived this long because of multiple anti-democratic features of our politics: the Electoral College, gerrymandering, voter suppression, the Senate filibuster and ideologically-stacked courts. The longer that power has been sustained on such a fragile, illegitimate foundation, the more crushing its loss would seem. Hello, snowflakes!

Both kinds of victimhood seem central to conducting politics.

If one is not a victim but claims to be, that's very likely an example of envious reversal [a form of projection]. But if one is a snowflake and has spent years attacking others as snowflakes, that's also an example of envious reversal. So, too, if you believe that others are unfairly claiming victim status, when in fact that's been your go-to move ever since Brown v. Board of Education. So there's a potential for this kind of victimhood to lead into a hall-of-mirrors fantasy situation. But remember: This is still subjective victimhood. Questions about how subjective and objective realities align are incredibly important, but to fully address them we need to understand the subjective side as well as can.

Update (January 3, 2021):  Paul Rosenberg argues the United States is not so much a representative democracy as a form of "competitive authoritarianism". He notes antidemocratic features of the U.S. system such as "voter suppression, gerrymandering and the apportionment of U.S. Senate seats" and quotes Mark Copelovitch:

[O]ur electoral institutions have institutionalized minority rule and locked in policies at odds with what large majorities of Americans seem to want on almost every issue.

Bob Hennelly goes further to describe the U.S. as a failed state. 

[T]o finger [Dear Leader] alone for our miserable situation fails to not fully grasp the awful truth that's been decades in the making.

Update (January 10, 2021):  Doug Neiss warns that the "left" and "right" are not on equal footing as threats to democracy. Only one side looks to take on the "not impossible task, except politically" to "improve the quality of life for the lower half or more of the population" and resist "the power of money to subvert or displace any other values people hold".

The U.S. is said to have a two-party system, but many have observed that the parties are suspiciously similar, and refer to the system as a duopoly. They are closer to the truth, which is that we have a single right-wing party that rules, that sets the agenda and the limits of debate, whether officially in power or not, and a second, phantom party that goes through the motions of wielding power or of being in opposition.

If we simply revert to our pre-[Agent Orange] course, however, as the phantom party seems bent on doing, we should be very concerned about what rough beast awaits us on the other side of Joe "soul of America" Biden.