Populism, Then and Now

A while back, I put up a blog post dealing with populism, and pointing out that the populist mantle has now been assumed by both the left and the right – although the term “populist” seems, most of the time, to be restricted to descriptions of the right, and not necessarily complimentary. You can find the blog post here: https://zarathustrasoldman.blogspot.com/2017/06/whose-populism-is-it-anyway.html

But what is populism? Rather than get into poly-sci theory, because most populists aren't theoreticians, let's just say that “populism” is what happens when a large portion of the citizenry starts feeling left out. Left out, neglected, ignored... mocked and derided... exploited... persecuted, even. This is clearly what energized Trump's “base” during the 2016 campaign, and what continues to energize his supporters. They basically felt that the people in charge – the ruling elite – had written them off, forgotten them, chosen to ignore them... and they were perfectly correct. But at the same time, there was an equally malcontent group on the left, including supporters of Bernie Sanders, who felt pretty much the same way. But how can this be? Part of the answer – as we see more clearly than ever with the results of the Democratic primaries – is that the mainstream, or “moderate”, Democrats had no more use for the true radicals – the “democratic socialists” – than did the conservatives. In politics, and especially with our one-party system that masquerades as a two-party system, the worst thing you can do is rock the boat. Things as they stand are the result of years – decades! – of fine-tuning... of a balancing act that puts the Wallendas to shame. Most of the opposition and controversy between the Republicans and Democrats is nothing more than a kabuki dance to gull the citizenry into thinking there is Something Really Important going on... something fraught with principles, morals, firmly-held beliefs. Whereas in practice, after putting on a farce on the floors of Congress our elected representatives retire to the nearest watering hole and slap each other on the back with cries of “Good show!” and “We fooled 'em again!” and so on.

But this is precisely what populists of either the left or the right are protesting. They are tired of business as usual... of every election resulting in the new boss being just like the old boss... and mainly of feeling chronically out of the loop, exploited, taken for granted, overtaxed and underrepresented. So when this feeling reaches critical mass – which it does roughly once in every generation – you wind up with a “populist” movement of some sort.

This phenomenon could be traced, in American history, all the way back to the Revolution, except that in that case it was more like the landowning elite enlisting the aid of the common people to make good their decision to split off from England. Anything that is birthed among the elite can hardly be termed populism in the strict sense. Many years later, we had the Progressive movement, which had some of the markers of populism, except that this time it was an invention of the intellectual, humanist elite – and its flaws were brought out in sharp relief when Woodrow Wilson – a progressive of the first order – got us into World War I and then became a dictator on the domestic front. (So much for intellectual college professors, especially those of the Ivy League persuasion.)

But the first blush of populism in our history, unless you include the Whiskey Rebellion, was the movement called Jacksonian Democracy. And then, just as now, “the people” rose up in protest that the country was being run by an elite (made up of wealthy landowners, bankers, merchants, transportation moguls, and the like) for their own benefit. And while the era of Jacksonian Democracy may not have lasted intact for very long, it set a tone, and the dynamics of populism were established to appear again and again (while being suppressed at other times) right up to the present day. One can talk about historical cycles, thesis-antithesis-synthesis, etc., and the history of populism fits the model.

The question about populism as a movement, or cultural meme, is not why it arises from one generation to the next – that's obvious -- but why it fades – why it seems to go away. One reason is that other events intervene – either accidentally or by intention – and war is a prime example. The Progressive Era came to a screeching halt when we got into World War I – ironic, since going "over there" and fighting in a war that should never have started in the first place was Wilson's idea, and he was a died-in-the-wool progressive, as I mentioned above. The New Deal, likewise, had to be put on hold when World War II broke out. (Some will say that the New Deal ended with World War II, but all you have to do is wander along the Mall in D.C. and gaze at all of the New Deal-era government buildings, which are still intact and which house the very same agencies that were established in the 1930s by FDR. And some of these agencies and programs were only established on an “emergency” basis in order to deal with the Depression. So why are they still gobbling up billions of dollars each year 80+ years later? Don't ask...) The Great Society – not a grass-roots movement by any means, but certainly designed to appeal to populist sentiments – hit an iceberg called Vietnam. And so on. This is one of the great ironies of America – the greatest, perhaps. Our ideational founding set the stage for ever more “progressive” domestic policies, but at the same time planted the seed of empire building. It's the old “guns vs. butter” question, and at any given time we have to choose, because we can't have both – not in abundance, even by increasing the national debt to stratospheric levels. War may be “the health of the state”, but it's the death of all economic sectors not directly involved in supporting the war effort. And on those rare occasions when a war ends and prosperity breaks out, we soon become restless and start looking for another one to either initiate or get involved in. We are – let's face it – a warlike people, and we have to accept the consequences (either that or engage in massive denial, which is the more common response). We marvel at the economic and social achievements of countries in Northern and Western Europe, and wonder – if they can do it, why can't we? Well... they don't stagger around with the heavy chains of perpetual war hanging from their shoulders, and they're no longer spending their wealth establishing, maintaining, or defending empires. They might even have learned a lesson from World War II; who knows? In any case they've managed to avoid pretty much any serious direct involvement in wars ever since (with the exception of France, if you want to talk about Algeria and Indochina), whereas we have been on a war footing the whole time, and have, since 9-11, explicitly adopted a perpetual war policy (one of the few things both the major parties can agree on). (Ironically, we spend money on military preparedness so the Europeans don't have to. Any questions on who actually won that war?)

To return to the populism thread – another major instance of genuine, up-from-the-grass-roots populism was the response to the Great Depression and the enthusiastic support for the New Deal by the “forgotten man”. Even then, there were plenty of “agents of change” stirring up the citizenry – said agents being, in many cases, real agents, i.e. of Stalin and the Soviets. But it was populism in that the people found a voice, and applied it in a political way, and the system responded – perhaps more readily then than at any time since. (It's important to remember that capitalism – however defined – was in severe disfavor at that time, and that it was widely felt that the future lay with some form of socialism. The leading contenders were Soviet-style socialism, AKA communism; German-style socialism, AKA Nazism; and American-style socialism, AKA the New Deal. Make no mistake – World War II was not about capitalism vs. anything else, it was about which form of socialism would emerge triumphant. And since both we and the Soviets were on the winning side, it had to take 45 more years before a victor emerged from the Cold war, namely us – but by that time socialism had become controversial, and not something to simply be accepted without question.)

Fast forward to the 1960s. The hippie/anti-war/anti-draft movement had a populist flavor, but it had a limited agenda and was also the province of a fairly narrow age group (albeit under the considerable influence of left-wing academicians both here and abroad, and undoubtedly aided by some “dark money” from the Soviet Union). Plus, the establishment at that time was pretty much united behind the war, from the conservatives (American empire, and war is good for business) to the liberals (since it was started by JFK, a liberal icon, and escalated by LBJ, hardly an icon but nonetheless a hero when it came to domestic policy). (If you want further proof, look at what happened to the anti-war Democratic candidates in 1968.) If the only people out on the streets protesting are “dirty, drug-crazed hippies” and a few wild-haired professors, it's not going to impress anyone. I think in the long run the cultural impact of the 60s was much greater than the political impact, especially when it comes to foreign policy. The culture war was won by the anti-establishment types, but the foreign policy chickens haven't yet come home to roost. (Some will contend that 9-11 was a major piece of push-back, but that's assuming the establishment narrative is true, and really, what are the chances?)

But at the same time – actually a bit earlier – we had the Goldwater campaign, which can be seen as the very first blush of conservative populism, i.e. conservatism not limited to polysyllabic eggheads like William F. Buckley Jr. Goldwater was, as we all know, crushed and ground into fine powder by the LBJ machine, the media, and all of the other usual suspects that are still on the front lines today. But he paved the way in a sense – at least making it semi-respectable to be a home-grown conservative without an array of think-tank appointments and framed advanced degrees hanging on the wall.

But – you might ask – why was this significant? Why then? Wasn't the country as a whole still fairly conservative in its thinking at that time? And it was, compared to now. But the culture war had already shifted into a higher gear... the lid of the cultural Pandora's Box had been lifted just a crack... and people were starting to be afraid that “their” country – the one they had grown up in and were used to – was under assault. And, lest we forget, the war in Vietnam was getting off the ground at that point, and the civil rights movement was in high gear, and so the cultural fault lines were starting to stand out in sharp relief. All of a sudden it was the young vs. the old, conservative vs. liberal, black vs. white, male vs. female, freedom (however defined) vs. liberty (however defined), and so on. So Goldwater represented a return to that which was old and reliable and secure – to a nostalgic, sepia-tinted time that may never have existed, but which had great power as an icon. It was the first reaction, in other words, of people who had always taken things for granted, but who now saw the revolution coming over the hill. So while the left at that time claimed to represent “the people”, the populist conservative movement also claimed to represent “the people”. And they were both right; the difference was in their constituencies. (And please note, in that case as in all cases each side claims to represent the real people as opposed to the other side, which is made up of – pick as many as you like – reactionaries, collaborators, socialists, communists, religious fanatics, drug and/or sex addicts, traitors, fools, the gullible, the easily-persuaded, anti-intellectuals, intellectuals, people who are pro-science, people who are anti-science, etc. etc.)

So populism suffered a stunning blow in 1964, but it didn't go away. It returned in full force in 1980 with Reagan's election, and yes, he won at least in part due to Carter's towering incompetence, but it was also because the grass roots from the Goldwater debacle arose, bloodied but unbowed, to give it another try. And they felt duly rewarded for their efforts – so much so that they were willing to support George H. W. Bush in 1988, even though he was a charter member of the ruling elite with nary a populist bone in his body. Then we had Clinton's “vacation from history” when populism took a vacation as well because the 8-year soap opera that was the Clinton administration was much more interesting... and then we had the Bush II administration which was based entirely on a single event, namely 9-11... but then populism returned on the other side with Obama. And it was the blatant triumphalism of Obama and his supporters that paved the way for Trump – action, reaction. But at the same time, there were people for whom Obama's brand of liberalism wasn't good enough, and they became Bernie supporters. Even when Bernie caved to Hillary in 2016, they remained loyal, and when he caved again to Biden, well... we'll see how that plays out at the Democratic convention. (My question is, will Antifa be there, and if so, whose side will they be on?) Right now the Bernie-ites are licking their wounds, but they may yet turn the 2020 convention into the 1968 convention redux, which would at least be mildly amusing before we slouch into the brain-dead Biden era.

When it comes to populist movements – of which there have been plenty, as we see – it's always tempting to assign scores, or ratings, as to which ones were more radical, i.e. anti-mainstream and anti-establishment, which ones lasted the longest, and which ones had greater impact. It strikes me that we're still “enjoying” (if that is the word) the fruits of Progressivism 100 years later – including, I might add, the fruits of empire, and make no mistake, these are intimately linked. The New Deal expanded government far beyond the wildest dreams of the Progressives, and established, once and for all, the Deep State, which is still very much with us and getting bigger every day. In fact, it has been argued that the Deep State has, for all intents and purposes, supplanted the presidency, and I believe this is true in many respects. But it also depends on their relationship at the time. Obama, in addition to being The Anointed One and being crowned king, was also the head of the Deep State, and is even now considered its head emeritus. Trump, on the other hand, has been at war with the Deep State ever since he announced his candidacy. But in a sense this supports the argument. If, in Obama's case, the presidency and the Deep State were one and the same, then you clearly don't need both. And if, in Trump's case, the presidency and the Deep State don't overlap to the slightest degree, then it makes more sense to get rid of one and keep the other. A house divided against itself cannot stand, etc.

After that brief – ahem! – introduction, we come up to the present day, when an interesting phenomenon is taking place. We have the pandemic, and the government's reaction to it, which is to basically shut down the entire economy until further notice. And then we have the reaction to that. Now, the latter reaction is a spontaneous, grass-roots movement if anything ever was. There is no charismatic leader, no money behind it (How could there be? Everyone's out of work.), and coverage by the mainstream media is entirely negative, and the social media are censoring all attempts to organize protests and start petitions. You might say it has all the earmarks of an underground movement except that it's just the opposite – it's above ground and out in the streets. What they're objecting to is that those in charge want them to stay underground (or behind closed doors). But at the same time there's a very strong, and vocal, social movement in favor of the restrictions, and I don't think they're all working for the government; they're grass-roots as well, and – I'm sure – convinced that what they're doing (admonishing, enforcing, tattling) is what's good for the community. It is, if you will, a civil war which is being fought on Facebook and Twitter. (Better that than with guns and cannons, I guess.)

There are, of course – as with everything else these days – political correlates. The obedient ones tend to be liberal and authoritarian, and cheering for Fauci and Birx, and whatever they consider to be “science”. The rebels tend to be conservative and on the side of Trump. So the fact that Trump and his brain trust appear on the same stage for hours every evening has to be causing a bit of cognitive dissonance whiplash.

The one thing that the two sides in the current controversy have in common is fear – and fear stoked by, no surprise, the government and the media. One side is scared to death of dying, and the other is scared to death of the spectre of unemployment and poverty. Some in government (at all levels) are trying to pull off a balancing act (the Wallendas again) and come up with a formula that will satisfy both sides, but I think this is an exercise in futility. If they go all in for health and safety, they're going to be blamed when the Second Great Depression hits, and if they go all in for the economy, they're going to be blamed every time someone sees a hearse rolling down the street. So they can't win, and I wouldn't want to be in their shoes for all the tea in China. But hey, they campaigned for this job, they wanted it in the worst way, and sure enough they got it in the worst way.

If you want to talk about Trump himself, history will remember him primarily as the guy who was in office when everything changed. There will be plenty of blame and credit to go around, but at least the entire impeachment drive will fade into oblivion by comparison, and rather than finish out his time as a lame duck Trump will be able to think of himself as a brand-new kind of war president, and that may convince him that it was all worthwhile. I mean, who knows, he may even get his face on a stamp some day; now that would be something!

2020 Vision

It's not too soon to be talking about the 2020 election – I mean, the campaign started on Inauguration Day the same way it always does. Let's accept that (with weary resignation) as a given. But the 2016 election provided an exceptional number of “lessons learned” for both parties – or let's say it provided an exceptional number of lessons that might be learned, or lessons that will be ignored, or non-lessons that are mistaken for lessons.

I'll say it again – the 2016 campaign provided a rare juxtaposition of two varieties of populism, the traditional Bernie Sanders version (which was successfully quashed by the Democratic establishment, none of whom appreciated the irony of it all) and the Donald Trump version (piggybacking on the Tea Party), and the latter actually won against all odds, which shows that populism is not always doomed to defeat despite its track record of usually being snuffed out by the ruling elite. (Note that the last bona fide populist to run on a major party ticket was William Jennings Bryan, who managed to get nominated by the Democrats three times, and lost each time.)

So it could be claimed that the Democrats have, basically, given up on populism, except for buzzwords and “optics”. The blandishments of power – of being part of the establishment and of the ruling elite – have proven way too seductive. The Republicans, on the other hand, have more recently discovered populism, starting with Nixon's “Southern strategy” and extending through Reagan to Trump (skipping over Ford, Bush I, and Bush II, all of whom were too obviously products of the ruling class).

The problem is whereas populism used to come naturally to the Democrats, it still makes the Republican establishment uneasy; they don't trust the unwashed masses – “the people”, with all of their strife, demands, and impulsiveness. Much better to settle back into the comfortable country-club mode and hope that they can attract enough of the middle class to gain victory – said middle class being motivated primarily by fear of the lower class. (When Obama threatened those corporate moguls with visions of peasants with pitchforks, he was engaging in a bit of temporary nostalgia – referring to those golden times when “the people” put FDR in office in order to put the ruling class in its place, which, of course, he spectacularly failed to do, even though he was a master of what we now call “optics”.)

Trump, of course, is not a theorist, or an ideologue – and he never will be a politician, which is the ultimate offense. He simply refuses to play that game, and for people for whom that is the only game in town – nay, the only game in life – he represents an alien life form. And sure enough, the people in both parties who play that game, and their facilitators in the wider culture, are as eager to eliminate this thing in their midst as white blood cells are to eliminate bacteria.

So the battle that is raging right now is likely to go on until Inauguration Day 2021, or until Trump is driven from office – whichever comes first. And any arguments that Trump's election benefited the Republican Party fall on deaf ears; recall that, during the campaign, many members of the Republican establishment came right out and said that they would rather lose the election than see Donald Trump in the White House. Try reminding them that they won because he won, and they will erupt with indignation: “win” on his terms? That can hardly be called winning. And this is one reason, other than sheer habit, why they are as limp as wet noodles when dealing with the hard-core believers in the Democratic Party. “Turn the reins of government over to the likes of Schumer, Pelosi, Feinstein, and Franken, we don't care. We're in despair! We're taking our dolls and going home!” And yet this is the party that is dreaming of some kind of comeback in 2020? If the Trump administration crashes and burns like the Hindenburg (oh, the humanity, etc.) they will feel fully vindicated. But if Trump manages to pull it off, they won't be any happier. They will be campaigning for hope and change every bit as fervently as the Democrats. (The term “loyal opposition” only applies where there is a monarch on the throne, like in England. Over here it's an unknown concept.)

So let's entertain a few possible scenarios, shall we? Number one, Trump continues to be thwarted, blocked, frustrated, and filibustered at every turn, but remains in office, his administration fated to be judged a dismal failure, even when compared to that of Jimmy Carter, the very definition and exemplar thereof. This will obviously be a signal to the Republicans to go back to the tried and true, and nominate another bland nobody – a face in a suit – in 2020. Oh, you say that a party hardly ever fails to nominate a sitting president for a second term? I don't think that quaint custom is going to impress anybody next time around. But wait – what if Trump has as many supporters then as he had in 2016, or even more? That's the point at which the proverbial smoke-filled room will be resurrected from the dead. They will figure out some way to keep Trump from running for re-election, or from being nominated if he does run, popular support or no. For all I know, they'll take a page from the DNC play book and pull the same tricks on Trump that the Democrats played on poor old Bernie.

Number two, Trump leaves office for whatever reason, and Pence winds up as placeholder the way Ford did after Nixon was run out of town. He could wind up being nominated, just as Ford was, and wind up losing just as Ford did. But at least that way things would return to normal. (And by the way, I would be willing to bet that a good many of these pajama-clad “snowflakes” who wander around college campuses bleeding from every orifice because they feel “attacked” by Donald Trump think that if he were successfully impeached, Hillary would automatically become president. Um.... that's not how it works, kiddies. But hey, don't they all agree with Henry Ford who supposedly said “history is bunk”?)

Number three, Trump actually succeeds – not just by his own lights, but by general consensus of his supporters and some grudging acceptance by his opponents, who are legion, and are at the present time united in their hostility and resistance. About the only way this ever happens, historically, is if a major conflict starts and the U.S. is perceived as winning, or at least not losing. It has happened before. The problem is that once someone becomes a “war president” their fate is, from that point on, linked to that war; just ask LBJ. It's all about timing, basically. Men may make history when it comes to starting wars, but history turns around and unmakes men when it comes to ending them.

So, to sum up – and again, I ask your indulgence and that you ignore my previous hilarious mistakes when it comes to political prognostication. The Democrats will toy, once again, with populism but nominate, once again, a solidly establishment type, thus frustrating the populist remnant within the party – you know, those naïve folks who still believe the Democrats are the party of “the people”. The Republicans will nominate a face in a suit – who knows, maybe one of the countless 2016 contenders, and they will have about as much appeal to what remains of the Trump base, or of the Tea Party, as Hillary had to those who “felt the Bern”. And the republic will be, no matter who wins, back in the hands of the establishment – the ruling class – the globalist elite – and things will slouch on as before, as if the Trump era was nothing but a bad dream... an interregnum. The sane (allegedly) adults will be in charge again, and somewhere Dick Cheney will be laughing.

Whose Populism Is It Anyway?

I read a column in The Washington Times the other day that had me scratching my head. The topic was the already eagerly anticipated 2020 election, but what caught my attention was some of the terminology. Here are some quotes:

“... a Democratic Party that is tilting further leftward in a push toward economic-centered politics...”

“... President Trump's economic populism.”

“If Democrats are fighting for America's working families...” (quote from Elizabeth Warren)

“Her [Warren's] message of leveling the playing field for working families...” (quote from Nick Rathold)

“... the populist economic message that Ms. Warren and Mr. Sanders are touting.”

“... the populist message of Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders...” (quote from Adam Green)

The key words here are “economic”, “working families”, and “populist”/”populism”. So let's drill down a bit, since it appears that both sides are talking about the same issues and trying to appeal to the same people on those issues – not that this would be unusual in politics, but it doesn't get to the heart of the matter. If they're in so much agreement, why is there so much opposition and hostility?

The notion that the Democratic Party is suddenly enamored of economic-centered politics is a bit startling, since that is the only issue they have ever been concerned with. Way back in the Progressive Era, it was already about fairness... leveling the playing field... redistribution of income... and so on. It was, as it remains, more about outcomes than opportunities. Pretty much every domestic policy initiative by the Democrats over the past century or more has been aimed at equality of outcomes in some way, with a socialist nirvana as the ultimate goal. “Opportunities” are only a means to an end – and if they don't result in equal outcomes, then more opportunities have to be made available, ad infinitum. I'm not sure what the Democrats would be all about if it weren't for economics – foreign policy maybe? But they seem to consider that an annoyance, and something that has to be either minimized or ignored. Even foreign policy in our time is aimed, from the Democratic perspective, at equal outcomes on a global level – if the minimum wage anywhere in the world is lower than that in, say, Australia, there's a problem, and it has to be fixed (presumably by us).

How about “working families”? Oh, right – those folks who turned out in droves to vote for Trump. The Democrats have quite openly, and explicitly, chosen to eject and ignore working families in favor of a plethora of minorities. “Working men” (and women), AKA “labor”, finally caught on, and despite the pleadings and threats from their union leadership, chose to vote not only their pocketbooks but their basic values, which the Democrats have done everything to belittle and defeat. “Labor” cannot be counted on any more, and Trump's attracting the labor vote was similar to Nixon's “Southern strategy” -- just show people what is really going on and hope the scales fall from their eyes.

And when it comes to “leveling the playing field”, well, again Trump had it figured out. Get the government (as inspired by Democrats/liberals/progressives) out of the business of harassing, punishing, and persecuting honest working people and of attacking their culture and values. The government doesn't do this to the ruling class, and it doesn't do it to the comfortable upper middle class.. and it doesn't do it to the dependent class either. But it certainly has been sticking it to the working class, and again, their eyes have been opened (for the time being at least – and hopefully for keeps).

Then we have “populism” -- oy, where to begin? I've already commented (as have any number of other talking and/or writing heads) that the 2016 campaign was, for one brief, shining moment, a struggle between two varieties of populism – one represented by Bernie Sanders and the other by Donald Trump. So... what is populism, anyway? What, if anything, did these two campaigns in common?

The paradox of populism in America is that this country was, allegedly, founded to foster and preserve individual rights – i.e., the rights of the people. And this is still a key component of our self image, our iconography, and our various secular liturgies, litanies, and memes. And yet, mysteriously, the notion of government “of, by, and for the people” keeps having to be re-asserted, as if it's a delicate and fragile thing, and easily suppressed or ignored. But why is it, seemingly, always on the defensive? After all, we have the same Constitution now that we had back in 1789. There have been no revolutions, and we have never been conquered by a foreign power. So what's the problem?

The opposing forces to the interests of the people have been seen differently at different times, but there are certain common themes. One is uncontrolled immigration – not a new topic by any means. Another is industrialization. Then we have capitalism, banks, and big business (or businesses of any size which involve management vs. labor, wages, and profits). (The current buzzwords “Wall Street” and “crony capitalism” are subsets.) And then we have – depending on one's perspective – either too many laws and regulations, or not enough, thus the perennial pendulum swing in labor law between preference for capital and preference for labor. And we also have that new bugaboo, “concentration of wealth”, which is not all that new but keeps getting renamed and redefined. (It was “concentration of wealth” that stimulated the establishment of the income tax, lest we forget, and that happened more than 100 years ago.)

Interestingly, two things which are never mentioned in polite company as being opposed to the interests of the people are personal debt and war. And yet, in terms of draining the life out of an economy and out of its citizenry, it would be hard to find two more obvious candidates. Perhaps it's because these are the two leading weapons of the Regime to enslave people and nations, and they have structured the discussion in such a way that these things never come up (or if they do, the people who bring them up are immediately labeled as nut cases).

Perhaps our discussion of populism could profit from defining precisely who “the people” are, and what the forces opposing them are alleged to be depending on one's prior political position. If we insist on using the term “populism”, we find that political movements and organizations of violently opposing sorts have each used the term, or at least not objected to being described that way. The same is true if we merely talk about “the people as opposed to _____” (select from the list of offenders above, or add your own). But if we dig down a bit, and ask precisely who these “people”, so-called, are, we can get some clarifying answers. The old populists were, of course, for the “working man”, whether on farms or in factories, not unlike the target group for the Bolsheviks. The middle class was already being viewed with suspicion (in a shout-out to the French Revolution and Marx), and the ruling class was, of course, beneath contempt and the perpetual enemy. When the New Deal rolled around things were pretty much the same, but it should be noted that, although white ethnics were part of the picture, it had yet to reach out and embrace blacks... and Hispanics were still way down the road (or across the Rio Grande). And let's not forget that the first great populist-style program of the Kennedy administration was the War on Poverty, which initially focused on, guess where, all-white Appalachia. Whites elsewhere, and blacks, had to fight to get on the A-list.

So far, so good. It seemed that everyone calling themselves a populist, or preaching in favor of “the people”, was in basic agreement as to who “the people” were. One group that was more or less ignored in all of the discussions was white Southerners – and that was the basis for the “aha!” moment for Nixon. (He really ought to get credit for one of the greatest political coups of the 20^th Century – right up there with Trump's victory.) He found a group that had been left out of the political process on the national level; it was a large group, and worth courting. And thus was created the great divide/bifurcation/schism of “the people” for political purposes. (It's worth noting that there had never been anything like solidarity between the white and black working classes, or between the white and Hispanic agricultural workers, but those differences didn't have any discernible impact on mainstream politics of the populist variety – unless you include 1960s folk singers, of course.)

Even more remarkable, all of a sudden there was a subset of “the people” who were actually loyal (albeit newly so, and probably not without some misgivings) to the Republican Party. But that's not the same as saying they were “conservative” in the William F. Buckley sense... and they were certainly not libertarian in the Ron Paul sense... and the Tea Party had yet to manifest itself as a semi-organized force. Despite all of this, the phenomenon of card-carrying “people” being Republicans, or at least voting that way, was revolutionary. Suddenly the party of country clubs, business, Wall Street, and the bourgeoisie had to make room for the (relatively) unwashed – and yet it was the key to success, not only for Nixon but also for Reagan and Bush II (Bush I having basically ridden in on Reagan's coattails and stayed for a while), and now for Trump.

The consequence of all of this was that the meaning of “the people”, and of populism, became totally contingent on who was using the terms, and to what purpose. Having written off the white working class, the Democrats' definition of “the people” was limited to minorities – albeit enough of them to constitute a majority. The Republicans, on the other hand, gradually morphed into champions of “the people” of different sorts – white, mostly working class but lower middle class as well (assuming there's even a difference any longer), and basically anyone with a grievance against the liberals/Democrats/progressives and their “people”. So “the people” were divided (so much for “e pluribus unum"!) into camps, grievance groups, voting blocs, and gangs.

And yet the perennial struggle persisted – that of “the people” vs. anything that oppresses them, either intentionally or accidentally, with new issues added on a regular basis. For the Democrats, it was post-Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts “residual racism”, as well as anyone held responsible for the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment, and later on came to include pro-lifers, “homophobes”, anyone opposed to open borders, and a host of other real or imagined enemies. For the Republicans, the new villains included government programs which eroded, or directly attacked, gun ownership, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of religion, as well as excessive taxation and the regulatory burden. Add ObamaCare and you have a perfect formula for a political (mostly) civil war, which the 2016 election certainly was, and which its outcome continues to be. And yet this civil war, just like the original one, is “people vs. people” as much as the government or ruling elite vs. the people. People on both sides consider themselves to be more real... more genuine... more representative of American values... more entitled to be heard... etc. You could stand up at a Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren rally and ask every “real American” to raise their hand, and I daresay more of those in the room would. Try it at a Trump rally and you'll get the same result.

So yes, the great divide – or the most recent great divide – in American politics is between “the people” on one side and “the people” on the other. “Economic populism” sounds like something the Democrats would be all in favor of, and yet it's attributed to Trump. Is this because he's an insincere, hypocritical demagogue who only pretends to favor the people's interests? But the same can be said for pretty much any leading Democrat at least since World War II. “Economic-centered politics” could be a characteristic of the Trump administration, but no – the Democrats seem to have a monopoly on that particular semantic nuance. And as far as leveling the playing field, well... has anyone asked, recently, when affirmative action is going to cease as a government policy? The answer, of course, is never, since even if we did somehow manage to equalize outcomes there would still be the question of reparations, and when reparations cease is a totally political question, since there is no possible objective criterion for when enough is enough. (Another way of putting this is, at what point can blacks be considered to have been “paid back” for slavery? From the karmic point of view, the answer really is “never”. Politically, it's debatable, but the debate has yet to occur.)

I guess what I'm trying to do here is not only clarify the meaning of words, but point out the forces behind their non-clarification. After all, if everyone's a populist, no one's a populist, right? The term loses all meaning. If everyone is equally for “the people” then that term cancels out and we'd better start looking for some new descriptors. And as for “leveling the playing field”, no one really wants to do that, do they, any more than anyone wants truly “equal rights”. That would be bad politics. What people want is preferences... advantages... whether enshrined in law or as a side benefit of other laws, regulations, or the economy in general.

Again, we are up against human nature – not only that of individuals, but of groups, parties, factions, what have you. Everyone wants an “edge”. It's not enough to just go out and seek one's fortune in the world and its many and varied marketplaces. You have to have that ID card that lets you in the door ahead of the rabble and the undeserving (not to mention the "deplorables"). Combine this with the ebb and flow of politics and the cynical manipulation of words and of people, and you have what we have now – a state of perpetual war that in its sheer intractability is not unlike that which our foreign policy has fostered. One could point out the massive waste of human and other resources that all of this entails, but that would seem wonkish compared to the unstoppable energy and self-centeredness that is a part of fallen human nature.

It's Our Party and We'll Die If We Want To

They could have stopped him, but they didn't. I'm referring to the Republicans and Donald Trump. There were plans afoot, right up to the convention and a day or two into the convention, to pull a fast one – enact some sort of change in the rules – whatever – anything to keep Trump from being the nominee. But it all collapsed; it became a non-story, a non-event, literally overnight.

And now, since that didn't happen, they are left with pathetic whining and empty threats to – at this point! -- choose someone else (to run on what ticket, pray tell?), or even to form a temporary third party. But this is all, in my opinion, an anemic attempt to save face – to basically say “Trump does not represent the Republican Party, even though he won its nomination (in accordance with rules which we could have changed, but didn't).” Well, fine – he may, in fact, not represent the mainstream or establishment Republicans, but he certainly represents all those who voted for him in the primaries, and they seem to constitute the majority of voting members of the party at this point in history.

But that is precisely the point. Trump won the primary race thanks to a populist insurgency -- a movement which he, basically, inspired. Where were these people before Trump came along? They were out there, clearly, but they had no voice – they were the forgotten, the disenfranchised, the ignored, the mocked and ridiculed (by the media and the liberals), and the generally shat-upon. So Trump became, literally, a rabble-rouser, and it was that rabble that temporarily took over the Republican Party by sheer force of numbers and energy. There's nothing like the politics of victimization to turn the powerless into the (temporarily) powerful – and since the Republicans are traditionally the party of non-victims, this was something the establishment did not foresee and had no way of dealing with once it occurred.

Now, I hasten to add that this particular populist demographic was not, and should not be confused with, the “Tea Party”, although there might have been some overlap in personnel. The latter was, basically, a conservative movement within the party; it made the country-club types uneasy, but they were willing to tolerate and work with it. The Trump crowd, on the other hand, makes the country-club types hold perfumed hankies up to their patrician noses; they really are beyond the pale, and “not our kind”. If the Tea Partiers were the county clubbers' churchgoing cousins (you know, the kind with wrinkled suits and big hair), the Trump crowd are all the black sheep of every Republican family rolled into one. They're the equivalent of Cousin Mike, who shows up at the family reunion on a Harley with a case of Pabst Blue Ribbon strapped to the back seat.

And the reasons are not hard to understand. The Republicans have been, as long as anyone can remember, the party of the contented... the complacent... the smug... the satisfied... the party of those who've made their pile and thus want nothing more than to hold onto it and keep it out of the hands of the unwashed masses. You can call it “conservatism” if by that you mean keeping things just the way they are – with, perhaps, an occasional bone thrown to the underclasses in order to keep them at bay (or at least confine them to the Democrat-operated inner cities where they belong). (And who says that it's only the Democrats who “need” the inner cities with their captive constituents? The Republicans need them too, the same way they need jails – to keep the proletariat contained.) But this is conservatism with neither compassion nor principle; it's a holding pattern, and it's phobic whenever confronted with actual ideas (which is why the Tea Partiers were regarded as being a bit out of control – because they actually had what amount to ideas in these times of conceptual vapidity).

And then along came Trump and his rabble army – and when you think about it, they didn't necessarily even have to be Republicans. After all, Trump and Bernie Sanders probably have more in common than Trump and the mainstream Republicans. But aside from that, Trump is not, after all, a man of ideas or of principles – to say nothing of “theory”. He is, when you get right down to it, fairly pragmatic in his goals, if vague as to the means of achieving them. He's not much for slogans, and is certainly not interested in demagoguery of the typical liberal/Democrat type, or bland speechifying of the typical Republican type. Heck, he doesn't even talk in rhymes like Jesse Jackson, or put on different accents depending on his audience, like Hillary. If you get beyond the offhand remarks and quips (AKA “gaffes”, according to the MSM – and why is it that when Biden says crazy stuff, he's just good ol' Uncle Joe, whereas with Trump it's taken as evidence of madness?), you find a lot of common sense – and that is, in fact, what his supporters are looking for. They've had the lifeblood sucked out of them by people with “ideas” for decades now, and are just looking for someone who “gets it”, as Trump seems to do. (And I don't mean “getting it” in the “I feel your pain” sense, a la Bill Clinton, because it was obvious that he didn't feel anyone's pain, and even if he had would not have cared.) Plus, Trump has the added quality of being politically incorrect, to the maximum extent possible without being literally driven out of town (although he has come close at times). And this is something that naturally appeals to anyone who considers themselves a victim of political correctness. The old-time radical goal of “épater le bourgeois” -- shock the middle classes – has taken on new life, and from an unexpected quarter at that. Now it's not so much the middle classes per se that need shocking (although that's also true) but the complacent subset represented by the Republican Party mainstream. (And their complacency is particularly puzzling considering that they have long since lost the culture wars and most of the big bucks are going to the Democrats. Which causes one to wonder, what's left? What do they stand for, anyway? (I think the answer should be clear by now.))

So with all of this in mind, why is Trump so anathema to the Republican establishment? Why are they openly plotting against him – openly hoping he loses? Well, it's because he, basically, stole the nomination – snatched it right out of their pale, limp, lifeless hands. But they let him do it, and why was that? It was, basically, to teach those populists – that rabble, that doesn't belong in the party anyway – a damn good lesson: This is what happens when you try to turn the party of complacency into some kind of “people's” party... some kind of rag-tag outfit that talks about change, and reform, and all that radical stuff. Another way of putting it is that Trump is trying to turn the Republican Party into a Democratic Party for the white working class – and that can't be allowed to happen. (And yes, I know, the Democratic Party represented the white working class for many years, but they decided at some point that their fortunes lay more with the “rainbow coalition” -- a multiplication of aggrieved minorities under the supervision of “intellectuals”, academics, and media and Hollywood trend setters. So the traditional Democrat constituency became orphans. Some of them were corralled by Nixon with his “Southern strategy”... others by Reagan... and now it's Trump's turn.)

The problem with all of this is that the Trump camp is a minority within a minority. Not only do they not belong in the Republican Party, but they are a minority in terms of power, influence, and resources – even if they managed to exert themselves sufficiently to get Trump nominated. And the Republicans, in turn, are a minority party on the national level, simply because we have gotten to the point where the takers outnumber the makers – the tax receivers outnumber the tax payers. (And I don't hesitate to place myself in the former category, since I'm on a civil service pension – although I also pay taxes.) We have become, in short, a nation of minorities, most of which are aggrieved, rebellious, and militant – and thus easy pickings for the Democrats, who promise everything but deliver next to nothing (but that doesn't seem to matter since it's the “ideas” that count, and the Democrats are nothing if not the party of ideas – invariably wrong, but ideas nonetheless). (You can see this in the fact that while Obama has done so much for race relations – ahem! -- all that really counts is his being “the first black president”. And all that will really count for Hillary is being “the first woman president”. Results? Let's not get all hung up on that issue.) Ideas are fine things except when they trump (no pun intended) reality.

So the demographics are against any Republican candidate for president, even if they are not against all Republicans in all Congressional districts, state houses, etc. The Republicans could have nominated pretty much anyone to run against Hillary, and they would, by now, be dead men (or women) walking, as is Trump. And that's only pure demographics, and doesn't include the big-city machines that have myriad ways of delivering votes to Democrats – their age-old tactics now in overdrive with the advent of computer-based voting machines. (If it has always been true that it doesn't matter who votes, but who counts the votes, it is more true now than ever.) (At least in the old days it took some considerable physical effort to steal votes; now all you have to do is be in charge of the software.)

The Republicans can “fight back” by concentrating on Congressional races, governorships, state houses, etc. -- and they are, after a fashion. Of course their default platform when it comes to domestic policy is “we're almost as compassionate as the Democrats” -- a sure-fire winner. And when it comes to foreign policy, everyone is pretty much on the same sheet of music across the spectrum – although Trump has come out against “nation building”, which is sure to win him very few fans among the neocons who control the Republican party and have great influence with the Democrats as well. (This may, in fact, be his greatest sin as far as the Regime is concerned – that he seems skeptical about the desirability of expanding and maintaining the American Empire.)

The most recent candidate who represented a true choice among the entire Republican-Democratic array was Ron Paul, and his ideas are either 100 years behind the times or 100 years ahead; time will tell. Rand Paul was a pale imitation at best; he got some things right and other things as wrong as anyone else. Basically, he's a good man but not an idea man, and if anything is going to smash the two-party monopoly (which means a single ruling party with two subdivisions) it's ideas – and not just the usual pap, but real ideas with real consequences.

I should mention also that a prominent argument against the idea that the Republicans allowed Trump to be nominated so that he'll lose and discredit “right-wing populism” once and for all is the Supreme Court issue. Put Hillary in for 8 years (she'll get re-elected in 2020 even if she has to campaign from a hospital bed) and we'll wind up with an iron-clad liberal Supreme Court for the rest of the century, or something. (And BTW, if the rumors about her health are even partly true, is she really going to last eight years? Will I be putting up a blog post entitled “Citizen Kaine” at some point? Time will tell.)

But when it comes to the Supreme Court argument, well... for one thing, look at the success rate of Republican presidents when it comes to Supreme Court appointments; most of them take about five minutes after they don those heavy black robes to wander off the reservation. But the main point is that the Republicans knew – just knew, with absolute certainty – that they couldn't win the presidency this year. So why not try and salvage at least some advantage from what is shaping up to be a debacle? Why not teach those populists a lesson and get rid of them (blaming them for losing the election, of course), and drive them back into those trailer parks and mountain shacks where they belong? Then the “nice”, well-behaved people can take over the party again, and... what? Continue to suck up to the Democrats, even when they are in the majority in Congress? Probably. It's what they do best.

The Real Silent Majority

It's pretty much a truism that, in any society, the loudest voices are of those who want change – the dissatisfied... the disenfranchised... the victims (whether actual or self-styled). A subset of this group would be the theorists – the “idea people” who set the terms of the debate and use language in the service of their agenda (whether for good or ill). They are the agents of influence, and of change – but they would be helpless without their loyal followers – the “true believers” (or “useful idiots” in some cases). In the current election season (would that it were only a “season” rather than perpetual) we have – as I've commented on previously – a rare, if not unique, situation of raised voices on both the left and the right – populist movements of people who feel cheated, ignored, and left out. On one side we have the Tea Party (still alive and well, as far as I know – not that it was ever a formal organization), and on the other the “Occupy” crowd (ditto). The Tea Party is represented to a greater or lesser degree by the more “conservative” Republicans; Trump's relationship with them is ill-defined, if it exists at all. And the Occupy contingent is represented fairly well by Bernie Sanders.

This is, as I said, a rare thing in American politics – to have dueling populist movements. Most of the time, there is one party – one world view – in charge, and the “loyal opposition” on the other side. Populist movements, when they spring up, often create a third party, which rarely lasts for more than one election cycle. Someone has commented that Trump's campaign represents a third-party movement within the Republican Party; it seems that the same could be said of the Sanders campaign within the Democrats. And then you have the real third parties, like the Libertarians and Greens, which only complicates the picture even more. But in any case, it seems that no one is satisfied these days, and they are all protesting and fighting against the depredations of some ill-defined establishment -- “big government” for the right, and “not big enough”, or “big enough, but with the wrong priorities” for the left. But both sides are trapped in their own contradictions, since the right wants smaller government except for “defense”, which you can apparently never have too much of... and the left wants government to somehow mend its ways and start serving “the people” -- even though big government is, by and large, a creation of the left, and it was created precisely in order to, guess what, serve “the people”. Obviously, something funny happened on the way to Utopia. The “democratic socialist” (referencing Bernie Sanders' position) movement, which started during the Progressive Era and went into overdrive with the New Deal, has now morphed into oligarchy, domination by the Money Power and the military-industrial complex, and perpetual war – and this with nary a shot being fired, to say nothing of any sort of revolution. If Sanders and the leftists want to rewind the tape and start over, they'll have to go back at least as far as pre-World War I, in other words 100 years. Socialism without a love affair with war and empire might be possible – look at Scandinavia – but for the “major powers” it seems to be an impossibility. Even the former colonial powers, who should have learned their lesson, jump at any chance they get to return to the fray and make a cameo appearance on the world stage, as witness England and France's pathetic tag-along enthusiasm for our follies in the Islamic world.

And yet, having said all this, there is nonetheless a large, faceless, non-noisy portion of the citizenry, and they are, in fact, the biggest single piece – a plurality at least, and most likely a majority. And they are satisfied – complacent... smug, even. They don't object to paying taxes (the ones who do, I mean)... they don't have any problem with big government, even in its current manifestation... they are perfectly happy with every law and regulation that the rest of us find intrusive and onerous... they think that anyone who doesn't like the way things are is some kind of radical, nut, or “hater”... and one never hears from them, because they are profoundly satisfied. They are the true establishment of our time, at the grass-roots level. They are the true conservatives, as opposed to the “conservatives” who want radical change, or who talk like they do.

Who are these people? Why, Hillary Clinton supporters, of course! They are the ones who have completely sold out to the system – or were born into it, so didn't have to. They are like a huge baby that is perpetually locked onto the teat of government, and spends its life in a dream-like stupor. The only thing that can ever get their attention is any sort of threat to their “rights” -- which means their entitlements, which means their right to the fruits of someone else's labor. They are the current-day manifestation of the communist concept “to each according to his need” -- except that their “needs” are titanically greater than anything Marx or Lenin ever dreamt of, or would have tolerated.

And I don't want to give the impression that I'm talking only, or even mainly, about “the deserving poor”. There aren't nearly enough of those to fill this box, and to scapegoat them would show a lack of compassion. No, these would be people of all social classes, right up to and including billionaire “crony capitalists”, who could not imagine getting along without government help of some sort. There might have been a time in our history when welfare was for the poor, but those days are long gone. The poor get a trickle, but the so-called “capitalists” get a windfall. And again, is this a natural and inevitable evolution of our society, or did something go terribly wrong at some point, and might it be possible to go back and take the “road less traveled” again? (This is certainly the fond wish on the part of Bernie Sanders and his supporters.)

So here we have an election arena – a marketplace of ideas, if you will – that is using up all the air time (and all the air) and which seems to involve everyone to some degree or other. It's as if everyone in Rome is at the Colosseum and no one is out there doing ordinary, everyday tasks. But that's not the case! There is a silent majority, and they're silent because they're satisfied... and they are firmly in Hillary Clinton's camp because she represents what they all want – the “nanny state”. She is Big Nurse – just do what she says and we'll get along fine. Otherwise... you don't want to know.

The problem for the noisemakers – populists left and right, and their candidates – is that they don't fully realize that this demographic exists – or if they do they're in serious denial. They assume that revolutionary fervor will carry the day, that it is a force multiplier of sorts and can turn a numerical minority into a majority in terms of energy and impact – and they can point to plenty of historic examples, like pretty much any bonafide revolution. But I don't think we're living in times like those. For revolution to work, you need a lot of desperate people – a majority, even; we might have come close to that state during the Depression, but it's been far from the case ever since. (And no, “quiet desperation” won't do, because that's too akin to despair and is therefore enervating.) 

Religion was supposed to be the opiate of the people, but that was just a myth perpetuated by those who wanted government to be the opiate of the people – which it has, in fact, become. And even those who occasionally stagger out of the government opium den into the fresh air can only think clearly up to a point. They still accept the premise that “something has to be done” and the only entity that can do it is government. If they thought more clearly they would realize that government is the problem, and it can't be expected to fix itself. But then they would also realize that they are in the minority, and... what's to be done? Pass the opium pipe, I guess.

Opiates of the People

In our disjointed political life, perhaps no symptom is as chronic as the claim that everything any politician does, or wants to do, is “for the people” (or “for the children”, assuming that “children” is a subset of “people”), when in fact nearly everything they do is precisely the opposite.  They are serving corporations, banks, foreign powers, special interests, rent-seekers, and -- last but far from least -- themselves, and any benefits that accrue to the average citizen are mere side effects.  What counts in politics is not results, but stated intentions, as witness the continued woes of “inner cities” after decades of rule by Democrats, who are full of promises but largely empty of results.  But that doesn’t matter, you see, because they “tried”, and they were “compassionate”, and were people “of the people”, whereas the Republicans, apparently, are an alien race from another galaxy determined to spread human suffering as far and wide as possible -- “compassionate conservatism“ being almost universally regarded as a contradiction in terms. 

So if politicians always have to represent “the people”, and be working day and night for the peoples’ interest, then so do political campaigns and political action committees.  No one can come out and say they’re for anything else -- at least not until they take office and are besieged by lobbyists, at which point they go from being populists to being experts in special pleading, and the political train moves on, leaving “the people” on the platform as always.  (The inner cities are far from the only example, but they are the most stark.)

We also have to consider that politicians of various stripes have a wide variety of opinions about “the people” -- about their wisdom, their way of life, their general worthiness.  Communists have, for nearly 100 years now, styled their dictatorships “people’s republics”, as if that everlasting cachet was sufficient to justify all enormities -- which, to easily-misled intellectuals, theorists, and academicians, it does.  No matter if a tyrant sucks the life blood out of the citizenry and confiscates everything of value in the country, he is still a hero to the left if he rules over a “people’s republic”.  (Who says language doesn’t count?  Language is everything.)

But really, haven’t all politicians, at least since the French Revolution, used “the people” as a magic key with which to acquire unlimited power?  Hitler and the Nazi Party were all about the “volk”.  The New Deal glorified the “common man”, picking up where the earlier Progressives had left off.  Who campaigns, or openly leads, on behalf of an elite -- of the rich -- of the well-born -- of the “1%”?  No one, basically.  And yet when it comes to despising, and even fearing, real people and their values and life style, it’s hard to match the liberal/socialist/collectivist elite of any society, including ours.  “The people” are great as an icon -- as subjects of a stirring mural or sculpture or folk song -- but for heaven’s sake stay away from the real thing (as Hillary Clinton invariably does)!  They might start making demands… asking questions… exposing some weakness in your arguments... calling you a hypocrite or an elitist.  Why, they might even be dangerous.  And one thing is certain, they will always be guilty of the cardinal sins of our time:  racism, sexism, homophobia, and now “transphobia”, not to mention general “hate”. 

So if “the people” is a universal theme in politics, how to explain populism, or what might be called “people-ism”?  I mean, if it’s always about the people how can populists be even more about the people than anyone else?  I think the answer is that the populists are, at least at the beginning, actually sincere and non-hypocritical.  They genuinely want what’s best for the ordinary citizen, but this is where things break down.  For who is an ordinary citizen?  And who are his enemies?  Take the two most prominent populist movements of our time, the Tea Party and “Occupy”.  They are each for the people, but on closer inspection they are only for a segment of the people, and those segments do not overlap.  “Occupy” seems obsessed with Wall Street and the rich, but their only answer is more government regulation (including confiscatory taxation), which automatically means bigger government.  (They ignore the fact that it's precisely big government in partnership with big business that has created the situation they are protesting.)  It is basically a revolt of the allegedly disenfranchised against privilege, with the middle class being pretty much ignored except when they are acting as tools of the elite.  The Tea Party, on the other hand, is about the middle class being liberated from Big Government (which, basically, means from redistribution of wealth), with both the rich and the poor being pretty much ignored.  So each of these movements represents a segment that the other has no interest in.  And the rich don’t need representation, obviously, since they already have it -- in the form of bought and paid-for politicians.  The problem the Tea Party has with the rich is that they would all like the chance to get rich themselves, so they’re not about to suggest making wealth illegal, the way the Occupiers and other radical socialists do.  And the Occupiers, like so many of their communist/collectivist forebears, know that getting rid of the rich is only the first step -- one must also get rid of the middle class in order to achieve a true worker’s paradise.  It’s not so much that the middle class are an economic burden as that they’re a metaphysical burden.  To the purist who dreams of a class-free society, they’re an eyesore -- a non-necessity that must be eliminated as soon as possible (if need be, even with the aid of the rich and their political servants).  To put it another way, the middle class has no friends except itself, whereas the rich enjoy the esteem of the middle class (and the envy of the lower class), and the lower class has at least a claim on the guilt of some of the middle class (but not of the rich, who never feel guilty about anything).     

Populism of any sort is bound to fail in the long run, or even the medium run, simply because “the people” (or whatever one’s preferred subset is) have no political power.  Really, you might ask?  But don’t we still have elections, and the right to vote?  Right -- we need to talk.  Let’s just cut to the chase and say that the people have their leaders handed to them, and don’t have a whole lot of say in the matter -- and that those leaders are already working for someone, and it isn’t you.  As one political commentator once said, anything they allow you to vote on can’t be that important.  (And that includes, obviously, who’s president, governor, Congressman, etc.)  Plus, our very governmental structure makes it inevitable that a fool and his vote are soon parted.  We don’t live in a radical democracy where every question or issue is brought up for a popular vote.  We live in a republic, and therein lies the disconnect.  Politicians are ostensibly elected by the people, but once elected they answer to higher powers, simply because that’s where the power, money, and other privileges reside.  Winning an election instantly propels you into a privileged class, where you enter a protective, well-defended bubble, never to return to ordinary existence (which makes it laughable every time some candidate starts bragging about his or her humble origins -- they're trying to shed and escape those humble origins as soon and as thoroughly as possible).  It really is like something right out of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” -- the regular Joe you voted for yesterday comes back strangely changed… in a sort of trance… robot-like.  We see this effect right up the line, including presidents.  They get “the talk”, they get that plate installed in their skull, and they become living, breathing servants of the Regime… political zombies who are subordinate to stronger wills.  And this process has to start fairly far down the line politically, because, after all, it is from those grass roots and farm teams that tomorrow’s leaders come (after many rounds of meticulous vetting, you may be sure).  (You think it’s an accident that some political candidates “come out of nowhere”?  No -- they come out of somewhere… out of some political hatchery… some provincial hotbed of corruption… so by the time they appear on the national scene they are ready for prime time, thoroughly trained and conditioned like athletes, and ready for the rough and tumble.) 

Another bit of evidence is that populist movements tend to be short-lived.  Heard about any “Occupiers” lately?  How about the Tea Party?  Is it about to make a comeback?  Highly doubtful.  What typically happens is that people drop out from sheer fatigue or discouragement (“burn-out”), or they become co-opted by more establishment entities, or they go the other way and become more radicalized, confining their efforts to university and college campuses, obscure political journals, fringe “think tanks”, and (in our time) the Internet.  But their day is over, and all of the initiative is passed into other hands. 

But what’s wrong with populist movements -- their fatal flaws -- isn’t necessarily wrong with the people per se.  What’s wrong with the people is that, as I indicated previously, no one is actually interested in what they think, but what they ought to think.  So to the Soviets, every peasant, factory worker, and soldier was a sophisticated political, economic, and social theorist -- or should have been -- or will be, the minute he attends a few evening sessions with the political officer of the factory, collective farm, or military unit.  The problems arise when people turn out to have the same old ideas, values, and goals their ancestors had, focused on outmoded things like race, ethnic group, tribe, religion, family, and gender.  So clearly these things have to be dealt with first -- the table has to be cleared -- and the foremost instruments for accomplishing this are the media and the public schools (along with ancillary organs like libraries and social “service” organizations).  And every nation on the road to totalitarianism has come up with a slightly different formula for accomplishing these things -- with different degrees of severity and different concepts of reward and punishment.  But they usually perish or seriously decay before they fully succeed in getting human nature out of human beings.  Oh sure, some people fall into line and conform perfectly -- or at least seem to.  They turn into little goose-stepping robots and love and adore Big Brother.  And they are heartbroken when it all comes crashing down, and turn into what are then called “reactionaries”, which is ironic because they spent all of their prime years fighting “reactionaries”.  But they are typically in the minority; everyone else heaves a big sigh of relief (volume to be adjusted depending on who might be listening). 

In a society that is totalitarian in many ways but remains laissez faire in many ways, such as ours, the populism issue takes on different dimensions.  Genuine populists have no clout with the establishment… “for the people” hypocrites are in nominal control… and the elite for whom the “common people” are as dispensable as flies are actually in charge.  It is out of this witch’s brew that we are able to have endless wars that further enrich the already rich, but which “the people” nonetheless support simply because it would be shameful to do anything else.  (This comes under the heading of a cultural habit which is supported by a national mythology, and which gives rise to any number of cultural memes and tics -- like ribbons, flags, and bumper stickers.)  The problem the genuine populists have -- what frustrates them to no end on any given day -- is that “the people”, whom they like to think they represent and whose interests they have at heart, by and large don’t care.  They’d rather just plod along through the day, get stoned, drunk, or distracted by “entertainment” on the weekend, and not have to worry about “issues”.  So, ironically, populism always becomes a plaything of the minority, if it didn‘t start out that way.  And doesn’t some resentment eventually develop, like, I’m working my butt off for these people and they don’t even care?  I’ll bet it does, and I’ll bet that has a lot to do with the attrition rate among populist theorists and “leaders” (assuming that’s not a contradiction in terms, the way “anarchist government” would be).  And some will make the point that the people would be more interested in the issues  -- especially the ones that directly impact their quality of life -- if they weren’t so distracted by “games and circuses”.  And they (the critics) will convey the suspicion that these distractions are part of the program -- that they are the way in which the Regime keeps people pacified, placated, and anaesthetized.  True enough, and, to give one example, I often marvel at how readily the Regime dispatched the Black Power movement in years gone by.  The weapon of choice was drugs -- cheap, powerful, and the supply was virtually limitless (as it still is, for that matter).  The few radical leaders who didn’t wind up dead or in jail based on entanglement with drugs retired from the scene (to academics or quiet writing, or even mainstream politics in a few cases), hoping that the next generation would succeed where they had failed.  And what did the next generation wind up with?  Sex (abortion), more drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll (rap, hip-hop, etc.).  Busted again.  Busted, co-opted, neutralized, and basically nutted.  So yes, the Regime has ways of dealing with troublemakers, and their spotlights are ever on the move, like in some old prison-break movie.

Here’s another concept to try out before we close.  It’s what I call the “moral watershed”.  In any society, no matter how advanced or well-founded, there will inevitably be some members who are moral actors, and not dependent on time, place or circumstance to remain so… others who are intrinsically immoral, or at least amoral -- morally neutral… and others who are easily swayed by clever arguments from either side, most of which boil down to money, creature comforts, and leisure time.  Let us say further that the proportions of these three groups varies with the particular society we’re talking about.  But let’s also say that this division cuts across all other divisions, like race, ethnicity, religion, social class, occupation, etc.  There can be moral, immoral, or indifferent people in any group, in other words -- not disallowing the high probability of some strong correlations. 

What’s important is not that this situation exists, because it is, I feel, universal -- you won’t find a society without it.  What counts is the side of the divide on which certain key people fall -- political and religious leaders certainly, police and the military, “capitalists” in advanced societies, and, in our time, “entertainment” and media moguls -- those who represent the propaganda arm of the Regime.  For any given level of society, who has the power, and are they moral or otherwise?  It’s a simple question, but one that has to be asked again and again -- as with the current controversy over policing in black neighborhoods.  And the problem is that things tend to default to the weakest link.  You can have a sound city government, but if the police force includes criminal types, all the good intentions of city hall don’t matter.  Or, you can start with a morally-sound military but then add morally-corrupt civilian overseers (yes, it can happen).  The result -- unjust and immoral military operations with the resulting frustrations, traumas, atrocities, etc.  Any number of other cases, both theoretical and actual, can be proposed.  The point is that we live in a moral “mix”, and while there is more than enough blame to go around, it tends to be unfocused because people don’t understand the roots of the problem.

Our society, it seems, has undergone a tipping of the balance at some point.   There may have been a time when we were a mostly (never entirely) moral people with leaders with high ethical standards and high standards of personal conduct.  (I say “may have” because who can ever be certain?)  But each national crisis has caused a falling from grace -- sometimes subtle, sometimes more dramatic.  The Civil War was a catastrophe from which we have yet to fully recover -- as witness the absurd controversy over the Confederate battle flag.  Then we have various imperialist exertions like the Philippines and Panama… empire-building (AKA “stepping out onto the world stage”) in World Wars I and II, the Cold War, Vietnam, and the current array of wars, mini-wars, proxy wars, “conflicts”, and “police actions”.  Each of these set us down a moral notch -- or more than one -- and have we done anything to make up for these moral setbacks?  Could we have?  Was it even possible?  Or is it just one of those things that, once lost, can never be regained?  And when it comes to the moral watershed, it seems like more and more of our leadership and our culture on all levels has migrated to the other side, with predictable results -- pretending to do things, both foreign and domestic, based on principle, whereas they are based purely on politics and moral relativism.  And this may be a perfectly natural progression -- or regression -- and it may be unavoidable.  The issue then is, at what point do we decide that the American Experiment has run its course and it’s time for a fresh start? 

Did "The People" Ever "Have" America?

Surely you will indulge me for a moment while I present a take-off on “Particle Man” by They Might Be Giants. (It's more fun if you listen to the original on YouTube and read these words at the same time!):

Tea party man, tea party man
Doing the things a tea party can
What's he like? It's not important
Tea party man

Is he a fool, or is he a schmuck?
Maybe he's nothing but a hockey puck.
When his house is underwater does he get wet?
Or does the bank get him instead?
Nobody knows, tea party man

Wall Street man, Wall Street man
Wall Street man hates tea party man
They have a fight, Wall Street wins
Wall Street man

Neocon man, Neocon man
Size of the New World Order man
Always blind to a smaller man
Neocon man

He's got a watch with a minute hand,
Millennium hand and a Zionist hand
When they meet it's the Promised Land
Powerful man, Neocon man

Person man, person man
Hit on the head with a frying pan
Lives his life in a garbage can
Person man

Is he depressed or is he a mess?
Does he feel totally worthless?
Who came up with person man?
Degraded man, person man

Wall Street man, Wall Street man
Wall Street man hates person man
They have a fight, Wall Street wins
Wall Street man

Well, that was fun. And as you can see, I didn't even have to change some of the verses. The point being, we're in a situation where a number of different gangs who barely speak to each other dominate the political scene. We have the “tea party”, “Wall Street” (which represents the money power – i.e. the international finance facet of the Regime), the Neocons (who represent the political/foreign policy facet of the Regime and who are inseparable from Israel), and then the average schmo who doesn't know what to make of it all, but mainly doesn't want to get involved. And why should he? He suspects, on some level, that he is totally powerless, and has decided to adopt that as this baseline and spend his time on more productive pursuits. The tea partiers, on the other hand, persist in believing that “the people” somehow have a voice in how things go – in how the country is run. So Wall Street and the Neocons, who make up a large part of the oligarchy, look down with barely concealed contempt on the ordinary, non-committal “person man” types, and laugh at the exertions of the tea partiers.

But now a new element enters the scene (and there was no room for them in the song) – namely the “Occupy Wall Street” protesters, AKA (by some people looking for a buzzword) “leftist tea partiers”. And they're on to something to the extent that both the tea party and the OWS types are populist movements, dedicated to the proposition that “the people” still have a voice... or ought to. The problem is that they have wildly differing conceptions of what constitutes “the people”. To the tea partiers, “the people” refers to an increasingly-disenfranchised and stressed-out middle class, who see the economic flood waters rising enough to get their feet wet, and also see that their values are under constant attack. And – the more perceptive among them realize that there is a connection between the two. To the OWS gang, “the people” refers, I guess, to themselves – a rag-tag bunch of humanists, leftists, populists, graduate students, etc. who don't feel disenfranchised because they never felt enfranchised. They are trying to reclaim something that, in fact, they never had... whereas the tea partiers are under the illusion of having, somehow, “had” America at one time, but no longer.

Now – why can't these two groups join forces against the oligarchy? Well, it's because they don't share the same core values; all they share is the suspicion that something is terribly wrong. But the tea partiers are hesitant to blame Wall Street and big business, etc. because they grew up thinking that those entities exemplified the American Dream... and that any boy (or girl) born in a modest bungalow in Levittown could grow up to be CEO of a Fortune 500 company. The OWS types have, at least, never trusted Wall Street or big business, and even if their distrust might have been ill-founded at one time, it's perfectly reasonable in these times. But they also have little or no regard for private property, and probably little regard for religion or traditional values – so the gulf between them and the tea partiers would be a very tough one to bridge. And besides, despite the fact that Wall Street and the government are, for all intents and purposes, a single entity, they persist in believing that government is the cure for all human ills. I don't think you'd find many libertarians among the OWS crowd – could be wrong, but that's what I suspect. And by the same token, you won't find many libertarians among the tea partiers; they too think that government is the cure for... if not all human ills, then a great many. When they say they want “smaller government”, they don't mean so small that it can't go out and defend traditional values in the fashion of Saudi Arabia's Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.

What I'm trying to say is that the Wall Street protesters and the tea partiers share the same ambivalence toward government. They don't like what it's doing now, but believe that it can be set upon the path of virtue. And this, as any libertarian can tell you, is a fatal misconception. And what the Regime is highly skilled at is taking advantage of these ambivalences and co-opting the people who suffer from them – offering to fix whatever ails the nation but then turning around and using the power granted to them by the people against those same people. The OWS types are just the latest in a long line of progressive movements – and the progressives, after all these years, continue to moan and groan about what a monster the government has become – when it is they, and their views, who have as much to do with the growth of government as anyone. The tea partiers, on the other hand, think big government is just groovy when it comes to “force projection” and a “muscular” foreign policy, but resent it when the same resources are turned back on them on the home front. And just try telling either of these groups that they can't have it both ways! It's impossible. So they just march on, and rave on, and the people in charge chuckle and shake their heads.

But there is one question plaintively asked by these groups that bears some thought. They both ask, on a regular basis, how “the people” “lost America” -- as if “America” (whatever that means) was, at one time, something that “the people” had, or possessed. Now, certainly if one reads the founding documents and other historic pronouncements, it does give the impression that the people's voice was intended to count for something – although one can question whether this country was ever intended to be a “democracy” in the radical or literal (as in “rule by the people”) sense. I think the term, “consent of the governed” expresses it better; after all, radical self-rule would be hard to distinguish from anarchy. So what does “consent of the governed” imply? At the very least, it should imply that people elect representatives to governing bodies who share their values and priorities, and are willing to promote those values and priorities in the process of governing. In other words, we don't vote for Dr. Jekyll and wind up with Mr. Hyde in Congress – which is what happens more often than not under the current system. I've discussed before how big government corrupts those who are part of it, even if they did, at one time and in all sincerity, promise to work for the benefit of their constituents; the temptations and pressures that impinge upon crossing the Beltway are too overpowering for all but a very few secular saints to deal with.

The main point is the both the tea partiers and the OWS crowd act as if the transfer of power from the many to the few is a recent event – the implication being that anything that happened that recently should be relatively easy to undo. What I say is that, while public figures were mouthing words about democracy and representative government, the Regime was gaining strength and gradually taking over... and I don't think this is a recent trend at all. One has to trace it at least as far back as the Civil War, and probably to the Mexican War. And speaking of war, when was America's last “good war”? Some will say World War II... possibly Korea. Me, I nominate the War of 1812. Every war since then has been, to a greater or lesser degree, a racket, and has been started primarily to benefit those in high places – politically and financially. And I would say that the degree to which the people “rule” is negatively correlated with war – the more wars we fight, and the greater a portion of our resources and productivity that goes into them, the less the people have any voice in things. When, for example, is the last time the American people actually voted yea or nay about getting into a war? The answer is that they never had that opportunity. And if a choice of this magnitude is kept out of their hands on a recurring basis, how much power do the people have? Very little, I'd say. So what does that tell you about what has become an economy based on perpetual war, with the required political, propaganda, financial, and “intelligence” infrastructure? It's the biggest single piece of the economy and it has a larger impact on national life than any other factor – and yet the people have absolutely nothing to say about it one way or the other. To the average schmo -- “person man” -- war just happens, the way recessions just happen. To the middle-class tea partier, dropping real estate values just happened; he doesn't know why and no one can (or will) explain. So what they are all faced with is an increasing frequency of events that make them feel helpless – but unlike the Great Depression, which featured a kind of universal fatalism, people now have at least developed some modicum of skepticism. They're not sure that everything they are told by the government is true – and that is certainly the beginning of wisdom. But it is also, I suspect, way too late – which is why the tea party protests and the Occupy Wall Street protests are exercises in futility. Not only has the horse escaped from the barn, he's been rounded up and turned into dog food – and yet people persist in thinking that if the barn door is made secure, the horse will somehow be reconstituted and come back to life.

The “bottom line” to all this – if there even is one – is that, on some level, the concept that “the people rule” is not only an illusion now, but it always has been. Like the new car that starts losing value the minute it's driven off the lot, vested interests started to erode the people's power from day one – and the Civil War proved how far that process had progressed in a mere “fourscore and seven years”. And yet, the illusion persisted, and continues to persist right up to the present day – as witness the efforts of the Progressives, the left during the New Deal, the anti-war movement during Vietnam, and the people currently protesting Wall Street or big government. And this is not to say that the Progressives accomplished nothing, or that the left (including the labor movement) didn't have some impact on New Deal programs. If fact, rumor has it that the New Deal came about as a way to head off revolution – which, if true, shows you how much has changed just since then. Imagine entertaining the thought of a “revolution” of any sort these days? The last one of any significance, I would say, was our own cultural revolution of the 1960s, which was relatively bloodless... but the funny thing is, although it did change the face of America, the power structure remained completely intact. Things had gotten to the point of almost complete consolidation at that point – more than in the New Deal era, even, and certainly more than in any earlier era. The possibility for change – real change – had pretty much vanished by the post-war era, for the simple reason that – I'll say it again – the war enabled the power structure to consolidate and tie up all the loose ends, and the result was the Regime as it stands today.

So this notion that “the people” (of whatever stripe) once had, or owned, America but somehow lost it along the way is misguided, and a source of considerable frustration. What we have lost is not America but our illusions – and even that has been a gradual process that not everyone has shared in. Most people just keep their heads down and try to stay out of the way. The reason that the “tea party” is so dramatic is that it consists of people who were non-boat rockers from birth, but who have finally gotten fed up. And yet, the notion of a middle-class revolution is a contradiction in terms; they don't have the persistence or – dare I say it? -- the capability for violence that must always be part of a successful revolution. And that motley crew down on Wall Street... well, they're about as effective as the freakazoids who come out to protest at G-20 and IMF/World Bank conferences. And to suggest to either group that they might find common ground with the other... well, you'd get every expression of revulsion and disgust ever invented. It would be “those long-haired, pot-smoking, oversexed hippies” all over again, on one side... and “those bourgeois, uptight, square churchgoers” on the other. Ne'er the twain shall meet – and yet if they did, what a bonfire we could have!