This is not going to be a regular piece, just a quick thing mostly talking to the camera because there’s some things I want to say.
Clinton, Biden, and Harris all campaigned on defending the status quo, on being “normal” while their opponents were “weird”. All of them were from the same Professional Managerial Class of overeducated technocrats that their enemies could paint as out-of-touch “elites”, even though those enemies were literal billionaires like Trump and Musk. The problem is that the status quo is shit. Nobody wants it. They want someone who’s going to break the status quo.
And the thing is, the technocratic leaders of the Democratic Party will no doubt respond to this by moving hard right, because they can only see things in terms of policy. But it’s not that the electorate moved right. Joe Rogan, who went on to support Donald Trump, first supported Bernie Sanders. It’s been noted before that people seem to actually like Biden’s policies when you explain them, but they don’t like Biden because they blame him for their material conditions, for the fact that no one can afford rent while economists croon on like maniacs about how great the economy’s supposedly doing. The majority of Americans support Medicare for All and abortion rights and still voted for the guy who’s on the opposite end from those things. Yes, Trump tapped into a rich vein of nativism, racism, and immigrant scapegoating, but the popularity of those things doesn’t appear out of nowhere, it’s a response to needingsomeone to blame when one economic crisis after another is destroying our lives thanks to neoliberal capitalism.
Bernie himself has this right: “Will the big money interests and well-paid consultants who control the Democratic Party learn any real lessons from this disastrous campaign? Will they understand the pain and political alienation that tens of millions of Americans are experiencing? Do they have any ideas as to how we can take on the increasingly powerful Oligarchy which has so much economic and political power? Probably not.”
And of course the power granted to the billionaire class allows them to directly control the ruling ideology by doing things like single-handedly taking over one of the largest communications networks in the world and using it to promote fascism and white supremacy. But this is just a new form of how, in Italy, Silvio Berlesconi (who once openly proclaimed his admiration for Mussolini, founder of the Fascist Party) engineered his own premiership by means of simply owning the TV networks with 90% of the viewership in Italy and having them promote him and his ideas. In America we used to have safeguards against media consolidation, but Neoliberalism and the rise of the Internet effectively destroyed that. In any case, the owners of so many of our news organizations are openly or covertly for Trump because he will give them the massive tax cuts and regulation destruction they crave. And our system is vulnerable to oceans of money from hostile foreign powers like Russia, and this on top of the way that campaign finance corrupts our politics to their core. Everyone I know could’ve devoted all their life savings to Harris and it would never be as much as Elon Musk can do without sacrificing much of anything at all.
I wish I could tell you things are going to get better. Trump and his ilk are going to do incredible damage to the lives of millions, probably more than last time, and last time was a nonstop parade of horror. Kids in cages might just be the beginning. Prepare to lose the Supreme Court for a generation. Prepare to lose gay marriage and maybe abortion rights nation wide. Prepare for much worse. Ukraine and Palestine are both likely screwed. On top of this, I don’t know if the Republic will hold, if this will last beyond four years. People who dismiss the idea of our democracy ending because of Trump need to understand that things can change very radically, very quickly.
One positive thing I can tell you is that in a lot of cases these fascisms based around cults of personality didn’t last long after the personality died. We saw this, for example, with Franco in Spain, Salazar in Portugal, Pinochet is Chile, and Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. That doesn’t mean it can’t return—the Philippians elected Marcos jr. not so long ago—but that doesn’t mean it will.
At the same time, Trump is going to dramatically exacerbate the same material conditions that put him in office and rush us faster to the technofeudalism of his billionaire-backers dreams. And beyond the US we have a larger international movement towards authoritarianism and fascism. Prepare for things to get much darker.
Particularly vulnerable people like trans people and immigrants—even legal ones—if they’re able, might want to have a plan to flee the country if things get especially dire. As a Jewish person, I know how important that is, but it’s why I also know for millions leaving the country is simply beyond their means.
National politics are difficult for any one person to grapple with, particularly in a country of 330 million people. Remember the first time Trump won and someone asked Pelosi what we should do and she just said “Vote!” As if me voting harder would’ve kept Trump out of office.
But over a century ago we faced a plutocratic gilded age and the way we pulled ourselves out was through organization. The reason socialism isn’t actually just “government control” is that the government can be controlled by people who not only don’t represent the workers, but hate and despise workers, who will shortchange them at every opportunity and do everything they can to strip them of their rights. Socialism isn’t about the government. Socialism is about the workers, the people.
Here’s what you can do: join the Democratic Socialists of America. Organize your workplaces. Even if your not ready or able to organize your workplace, you can join an org like the Industrial Workers of the World that helps other people organize their workplaces. Form worker cooperatives. Get your news from worker cooperatives like 404 Media and Hellgate instead of corporate media. Delete your Xitter account. Join mutual aid groups and directly help your neighbors.
Organizations are the only things that can form a power base to force the ruling class to change the system. This happened in 1933 when Franklin Roosevelt was forced to adopt leftest policies to get elected and it resulted in the greatest era of prosperity this country has ever seen. It can happen again. And in our modern economy, while corporations destroy themselves chasing profits or getting murdered by private equity, cooperatives can form sustainable alternatives that last.
Meanwhile, instead of dwelling on national politics, focus on local politics. Learn about issues effecting your community and work to make things better. Elect socialists and progressives to town and city councils and state legislatures. Show people how our policies, how our work can meaningfully improve their lives. New York City, famous for its corruption, has still managed to pass meaningful legislation to help secure housing for the homeless and childcare for undocumented immigrants, for example, thanks to the work of individual progressive legislators.
National politics will break your heart and destroy people’s lives. It’s easy to become distraught when things don’t seem to be getting better. But we have no choice but to continue to work together as communities and as groups to improve things and survive. Hang tight and help how you can.
On a less important note, very annoyingly for me I finished Gravity’s Rainbow Over Palestine right as this election was happening. I hope anyone wants to see it given the current mood, but I spent months on it and I’m proud of it and much of it is more relevant than ever, considering how Israel has its own fascist leader bent on mass destruction. It’s already up on Patreon, I’ll put it up for the public on Monday.
If you want something else to watch, some commenters have noted how all this was in some ways anticipated by one of my earliest videos, A Mind Forever Voyaging into Neoliberalism.
Hold on, help each other, be kind to yourself.
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