The End of Wishful Thinking

My candidate didn't get nominated and yet the actual nominee said she supported many of the same issues. The polls were good and I'd hoped we would be spared the worst. It does somehow seem selfish to think that with a "reasonable" President, we wouldn't have to face the stark reality of our predicament for a few more years. No need to think about it if you believe someone is taking care of things.

But even though we won, we end up losing. And the signs were there all along for those who would look. In Democracy Incorporated, Sheldon Wolin describes the precariousness of democracy and where we've been heading for a long time.

A government responsive to the deepening distress of the Many, to ever-widening class disparities, to impending environmental crises, would need sufficient autonomy to defy corporate wishes. The fact that government rarely challenges corporate power allows capital to define the political terrain to fit its own needs.

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By fostering an illusion among the powerless classes that the party can make their interests a priority, it pacifies and thereby defines the style of an opposition party in an inverted totalitarian system. In the process it demonstrates the superior cost-effectiveness of inverted totalitarianism over the crude classic versions.

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Antidemocracy, executive predominance, and elite rule are the basic elements of inverted totalitarianism. ... Citizens are encouraged to distrust their government and politicians; to concentrate upon their own interests; to begrudge their taxes; and to exchange active involvement for symbolic gratifications of patriotism, collective self-righteousness, and military prowess.

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A politics of dumbed-down public discourse and low voter turnout combines with a dynamic economy of stubborn inequalities to produce the paradox of a powerful state and a failing democracy. 

In the essay (also included in his new collection Low Dishonest Decades) What Is to Be Done?, George Scialabba examined several authors who contended that Republicans retain electoral advantages despite their (then recent) 2006 setback. We know now the results of 2010, 2014, and 2016, but Scialabba had hoped for something better.

[I]f we want a durably decent society, we have to improve the quality of political discussion.  ... Otherwise, public life will become wholly a marketing competition, and nothing more.

And unfortunately, who knows marketing better than an expert con man?

Update (February 26):  Anis Shivani argues that "moral disengagement" might be the best response to the current situation.

Why do I think that resistance makes fascism worse? Because it creates the illusion, for a while (as under the Obama administration), that things are getting better, but they only get worse. Resistance legitimizes, and fascism, especially, thrives on it.

[B]ecause America already possesses total capacity to destroy any entity, internally and externally, ... resistance only strengthens the fascist regime. Resistance gives that regime something to fight against. Fascism needs an enemy to build itself against, but what if the enemy were to retreat and disappear? What would it fight against then?