The State Of The Disunion

 

 

The reader may not be aware of this, but the American left and right are in the same box.

The Progressives are being shunned by the Democrats, and the Populists are being shunned by the right.  The reason is simple, but the mess commonly referred to as US politics is a hot mess.

The Democrats have been under seige by the Progressive left since the 1972 campaign of George McGovern.  The left has had an ongoing crush on Socialism for a long time, but the mass student movement in favor of McGovern was the first time that segment of  the Body Politic had discovered just how many people supported the ideology and the power they had to affect the nation.

It could be argued that FDR was the first Progressive/Socialist president, and it's a strong argument, but the ideological sentiments of the general public weren't quite there.  The Comunist/Socialist movement began in the 1920s in the US, but FDR cherry-picked the elements that would draw the widest public support for his campaign - Social Security, government spending on public works, price controls, etc.

By the 1972 election, the Progrssive/Socialist ideology had found a significant voice in the population at large.  They put up a strong challenge, but the entrenched American right won out and put Nixon in office, but the Progressives made in-roads in local and state offices and continued to build on it.

In 1976, widespread disgust with Nixon led to a backlash and a squeeker victory for Jimmy Carter.  Carter ws the classic "bleeding heart" liberal - emotional, sentimental and naive.  When he gave away the Panama Canal, the right was shaken out of their complacency, realizing that the left had no clue how to run a nation, and placing the nation's strategic interests in the hands of people who felt sorry for other nations was a direct line to ruin.

Sure enough, China bought the port concessions at both ends of the canal, but that's a different blog.

The backlash was palpable.  In 1980, Carter was trounced by Ronald Reagan, a kind of Pro-Freeper, who subscribed to free markets, minimal regulation and low taxes.  It worked.  The economy took off, millions made fortunes, but unchecked greed has its drawbacks.

The entrenched interests who had taken over the country in 1963, with the death of JFK, weren't happy.  And the Socialist left was getting ansy.

GHW Bush was granted a term in office to give lip service to the Reaganites, while the Bush crime family (intricately linked to the JFK assassination) had time to find a suitable guardian for their interests.  In stepped the Clintons.

Billary - for they cannot be separated, like the Katzenjammer Kids - were the perfect pair.  Bill was the mellow dude about town, while Hillary was the hardcore McGovernist.  Together they played both sides of the fence.  Bill attracted the lassaiz-faire right, while Hillary appealed to the radical left.  They were the transition couple, lulling the right into complacency, while sliding the Agenda under the RADAR.  Bill did what he was told as long as the trim and bud kept coming, and Hil injected her vitriol into the Body Politic.

It takes a lot of effort to stop a pendulum.  With Carter, it has swng to the left, and the momentum carried it all the way to Reagan, so Bush the Elder slowed it, the Clintons caught the left swing, and Shrub caught the right swing.  Altogether, they slowed the swing of the pendulum towards the nadir, where absolute destruction lay waiting.

In stepped Obama.  This piece of work was essentially the echo of Billary.  He was the mellow dude about town with a radical bent that would have made McGovern blush.  He almost stayed the pendulum, but there was a growing backlash in the form of Ross Perot/Ron Paul adherents who believed the Reagan Revolution had not gone far enough.  There was unfinished work, and this Obama dude was going the wrong way (compare election results for 2008 and 2012).

America was sliding back towards the right when the left put Hillary up for auction.  This panicked the right.  Rugged Individualism dies hard on the rocks of Socialism.

In steps Donald Trump.  Trump was a hold-over from the Reagan Revolution.  He was a self-made billioniare who was the symbol of 1980s Enlighened Greed.  He was the .Gordon Gekko prototype.  He was a marketing genius who had made his own name synonymous with luxury and had created a media empire from scratch.

But if Carter was the naive left, then Trump is ihe naive right.

The backlash against Trump was immediate, profound and relentless.  He was hounded from the moment he announced his campaign until he left office.  Hillary had been chosen to stop the pendulum, but Trump won, because no one but Trump had foreseen the vast, silent Populist masses that they thought they had silenced with Ron Paul, just as the right thought they had silenced the Progressives with McGovern.  Both were wildly wrong.

What has become glaringly clear in Election 2020, is that there are two competing ideologies that are diametrically opposed and will not be silenced - and are no longer willing to be marginalized.  The Estalishment, installed under Wilson, encouraged by FDR, glamorized by JFK, disheartened by Nixon/McGovern, energized by Reagan, placated by Clinton/Shrub/Obama have been finally pressed together like opposing magnetic poles, and they will fly apart against all efforts to confine them.

We are seeing a Revolutionary Civil War, unlike anything that has arisen before.  One might point to the Soviet Union, but the left in that case was exhausted and capitulated.  In the current case, there is an entrenched oligarchy that has played two camps against each other for decades, but have now lost control of both, and everyone loses.

Trump has likely lost, but a Harris administration - I mean Biden - is a disaster.  Think of the brilliant scene in John Carpenter's Dark Star, where a character gets into an existential argument with a bomb.  The bomb's entire raison d'etre is to explode, but because it can't be released from the bomb bay, the character desperately needs to talk it out of "becoming".

What's really going on in the US, is that the Establishment have put forth their preferred puppet, Kamala Harris.  They have disguised her as Joe Biden, who will be removed from office almost as fast as the echoes die down drom his Oath of Office.  Trump is waging a war against a foe he was ill prepared to handle.  In his inflated self-image, he thought he could negotiate his way out of anything, but he never met a foe such as the one he faces now.  It is a global interlinked cabal of mutally blackmailed Elitists who are scared to death they are going to be lamp-posted and their century-long effort to take over the world will be lost forever.

Talk about motivation.

How can we sum all this up neatly?  Well, America's genetic roots are a bunch of people who wanted to be left the hell alone.  They are pursued by people who have had and want to continue having control  over everything.  There are vast numbers of people on the ;leave me alone' side, and the US Constitution is in their favor.  There is vast wealth and ancient history in the other corner.  They are entrenched and intractible and have been at war for centuries.

There is a solution for the US, and it has succeeded elsewhere.   What remains is to determine the resolve of the independents and whther they are married to an abstraction or reality.

Stay tuned...