#but they act like gen z only hates joe biden and it’s like.. no actually all politicians including the president need to be held accountabl

[medievalwife]

the millenial democrats on here are like “ZOOMERS ARE SO NAIVE AND ONLY CARE ABOUT PALESTINE BC ITS AN EXCUSE TO HATE JOE BIDEN” ok well you guys are using palestine as an excuse to suck joe biden’s dick what if you just killed yourself !!!!!

[sinrau]

Photo by John Moore

I’m sorry. I’ve tried, but I can’t help it. I have a bad feeling about the upcoming election. A very bad feeling. I’ve tried to stifle it. Tried and tried. But it’s rising, like a failed harvest, by the day. Do you have that kind of feeling too? Or maybe you don’t at all. I can’t say.

Let me distill what this strange and terrible feeling — it feels like watching a sky turn black, or a horizon grow red — keeps whispering to me.

(I’m going to put the first two reasons in parentheses because you should skip them. They’re boring and we all know them. The first one is the most obvious: Trump’s trying to steal the election. And so far, he’s doing a pretty good job. The Postal Service has been captured, voting machines mysteriously, quietly shut down, and meanwhile, the Democrats have threatened to…hold hearings. He’s threatened to send armed troops into the streets on Election Day. Then there’s the fact that his side has an array of legal challenges lined up, which will cast doubt on whatever the results are, throwing politics into chaos. And the fact that he doesn’t plan to leave office peacefully at all. Need I go on? Suffice it to say that an aspiring authoritarian has a well-crafted plan to thwart a fair election — but the opposition, what little there is, doesn’t have a unified, careful, decisive plan to stop him.

Then there’s all the help that Trump is going to have stealing the election. You know what’s coming, and so do I. Everyone from the Kremlin to your local unfriendly billionaires are going to barrage Facebook with propaganda — and because there’s money to be made, Zuck is going to grin like a dork, and look the other way.)

But those are only the least urgent, most superficial things my bad feeling whispers at me, to tell you the truth. The economist in me and the survivor of authoritarianism in me — they’re whispering truer truths to me right about now, ones I can’t ignore, I can’t deny, things I don’t want to say or admit or even think much about — but have to anyways.

Here’s the first one.

America’s up against not just Trump and his cronies — but against the tides of history itself. And history is a mighty, mighty force, like a great river. The few who’ve swum across its tides and lived to tell the tale? Well, they barely exist. Let me explain what I mean by that.

There’s one single force that foretells the rise of authoritarian-fascism in a nation: fresh, growing poverty, which breeds discontentment, anger, and eventually, hate. That hate is channeled by demagogues, targeted at long-hated minorities, who are blamed for all a society’s ills — which, in truth, they have nothing to do with.

It’s an old, old story, as old as time. Weimar Germany became Nazi Germany by way of Hitler, who blamed the Jews. A once vibrant and liberal Muslim world became a fanatical hotbed of extremism, by way of mullahs, who blame everyone from women to gays to “heretics.” Even Athens, the birthplace of democracy itself, fell prey to this vicious cycle, and fell to the Thirty Tyrants, as poverty and insecurity grew.

The latest example of poverty and despair igniting fascist-authoritarian collapse? America. Let me outline how grave the situation is. Just a quarter of working age Americans now have what would be considered decent jobs in any other nation. Another 25% work go-nowhere McJobs, what economists politely call “ low-income service jobs,” jobs with no benefits, protections, upward mobility, raises, security, on which you can’t support a family. And the remaining 50% are either unemployed, underemployed, or “discouraged,” meaning they’ve given up entirely.

Let me say it again. Just 25% of working age Americans have decent jobs. Everyone else is trying to eke out a living. And mostly, they’re failing. That’s why suicide and depression are skyrocketing. It’s why millennials can’t afford to start families, and are so traumatized they barely have sex. It’s why the birthrate is plummeting. How the middle class became a minority, and the dream died with it. Why 80% of American households live paycheck to paycheck, 75% struggle to pay basic bills, and 70% can’t raise a few hundred dollars for an emergency.

This is one great tide of history. One almost inescapable mechanism of cause and effect. The impoverishment of a society leads almost always to authoritarian collapse.

Now, most people — especially Americans — think that’s the other way around. They think authoritarianism breeds poverty. That’s exactly backwards. Authoritarianism doesn’t make people poor so much as people being poor breeds authoritarianism first. You only have to look at history to understand that. Why did peasants and serfs submit to being under the thumbs of kings and nobles, who were mostly violent, idiotic men with swords and guns? Because they were too poor to ever muster the resources to do anything about it. They were exhausted, drained, uneducated, illiterate, broken in the mind, spirit, heart. That’s why it took human civilization millennia to ever really develop beyond the age of empire.

The impoverishment of a society almost always leads to authoritarian collapse. Weimar Germany, Stalinist Russia, Maoist China, Islam in the late 20th century — I could go on forever. The examples of societies who have resisted this tide of history are so few and far between that they’re almost nonexistent.

What tends to happen is the precise opposite: societies have to become achingly, grindingly poor, reach a point of total catastrophe and ruin — before they wake up, come to their senses, and finally change. That’s Europe’s story. Only after World War II — the absolute devastation of it — did it become the place that’s synonymous with modernity and civilization today. Mere upheaval, as in World War I — even that wasn’t enough. Almost nobody escapes this tide of history. Nobody, in fact, that I can think of at all.

That means that America would have to be something truly, well, exceptional, to brook the tide of impoverishment breeding authoritarianism. Is that really the case? I imagine we’ll find out. But like I said, I have a bad feeling. History tells me that this challenge is much, much greater than most Americans think it is.

That brings me to the second reason I have a bad feeling, which is, well…Americans.

For Trump to really lose this election — not even by a landslide, just to lose it by a slender margin — three groups need to vote against him like they mean it. Young people, minorities, and those now notorious suburban housewives, by which we mean “downwardly mobile white women.”

I hate to have to say it, but I see absolutely no evidence yet that such a thing is happening. We need some kind of tidal wave of feelings rising from these groups, and I don’t feel it at the magnitude that we need it.

Young people, it seems to me, are just as tuned out and apathetic as they’ve been for a decade or more now. I don’t blame them. Joe Biden isn’t exactly a millennial or gen Z heartthrob, and neither is Kamala Harris. What I mean by that is that young Americans lean left — because they understand viscerally that they lived in a failed capitalist society, that capitalism has failed them the way communism failed Soviets. To Americans pundits, their young are “far” left — but they’re not, they’re mostly just minor-league social democrats in global terms.

But that perspective isn’t represented at all in the Democratic Presidential and VP choices. You couldn’t have more sober and boring neoliberals than Biden and Harris at all, really. And even though Biden’s a good dude, like Kamala, he’s not exactly a revolutionary, or even a reformist. He’s just…the establishment, all over again. “Better than Trump!” you cry. Definitely. Without a doubt. But young people aren’t exactly whooping with excitement — and that’s the point.

The same is true for minorities. Sure, if all you read is the New York Times, you’d think Kamala Harris was the second coming of MLK. But if you actually talk to minorities, you’ll hear a more rounded, skeptical point of view. It goes something like this. Kamala had to act like a white dude to ascend to power — and what’s the point of that? It obviates being a minority in the first place. If you have to act like them to gain power…then you’ve become them…and nothing changes. Different actor, same game.

Now, if all you listen to is pundits, you’ll never quite hear that perspective. But I think it’s a little insulting to think minorities are, well, so dumb that they’ll vote for someone just because they’re one of their own, according to skin color. I’m brown — should I vote for Kamala just because she’s half brown? Come on now, that’s mildly offensive, not to mention hilariously illogical. The point of view about minorities being presented by American punditry — most of which is white, remember — is way, way too simplistic to accord with lived reality. But what else is new? The point is this: just as young people are apathetic, minorities are skeptical and wary, too.

That brings me to the third critical constituency: soccer moms. Listen, I love soccer moms. No, not that way. I mean something more like I basically am a soccer mom, if a brown dude can be one. Hey, I get to choose my own pronouns now, right? I take my puppy to the park and hang out with all the other moms.

Recent history has shown us something funny, dismal, and surreal. Who decided the vote for Trump? All those nice white ladies. Who said they’d never vote for Trump? You guessed it. Who ignored Trump’s horrific history of misogyny, as in ‘grab ’em by the pssy’? Who had some kind of weird, deep hatred for Hillary, and chose Donald Trump over her? All those nice, polite soccer moms.*

White dudes — much maligned — ended up, in the last election, being a little more honest. They’ll tell you the batshit crazy stuff Americans believe to your face. “Nobody should have healthcare!!” “Wait, Bob, not even…your kids?” “No! They have to learn to stand on their two feet!!” “But what if they get — ” “Hey, only the strong survive, brochacho!! There’s no room for the weak around here!!” So white dudes we have a reasonably good read on: most of them, as in the majority, are fairly terrible people (sorry, white dudes), who, despite living in the 21st century, believe that nobody in society deserves any form of basic human rights, except maybe guns and beer and possibly obligatory sex from women. That’s a fact, by the way, even though I’ve put it in a funny way: Trump leads among white dudes by close to ten points.

So what if white women feel the same way — but just won’t admit it? That’s exactly what happened in 2016. The secret hate vote emerged, as in, the polls were wrong, because lots of people who said “Oh my God! I’d never vote for that hateful bigot”…turned around and…did. And most of those people — the secret hate voters — were women. The much maligned downwardly mobile American white lady. Soccer moms. If white ladies feel the same way white dudes do — and just won’t admit it, like last time — then…bang!!…Trump wins all over again. Even if just half of them do, he wins. He doesn’t even have to contest the results. He just…wins.

Now. How much do you trust the white suburban moms of America? Like I said, I’m a fan of soccer moms. But do I trust them? That’s a very different question. I only have history to guide me. And history, like I said, tells us that American soccer moms may very well repeat what they did in 2016. Everyone makes mistakes. People grow and learn. But it’s also true that people don’t change, that they stay the same in deep ways, that growth and maturity are hard-won are rare and precious.

I have a bad feeling about all that. I think the soccer moms of America might just turn out to do an about-face in the voting booth, like last time, and put Trump right back into office. Adding fuel to that fire in my mind is the question of whether they’ll really vote for Harris. Half black, half brown, the embodiment of everything that the downwardly white American lady, possibly secretly embittered and resentful…hated…just four short years ago. Is that much growth and maturity in so short a time really possible?

So now you know why. Why I have a bad feeling about this election. America, standing against the great tides of history, trying to swim upstream — a poor country now, trying to undo authoritarianism. How many have managed that? Very, very few. Young people, who seem as alienated as ever — with good reason. Minorities, whose views aren’t being examined or even thought about very carefully at all. And the vexing possibility of the betrayal by the white lady, or even just the American lady who wants to be more white. The one who secretly decided the election for a misogynist, a bigot, a crook, a man so brutish and violent he’s the very embodiment of patriarchy. Do people change that much in four short years?

History says no, my friends, to all these things. It say America can’t swim upstream now. Look how feeble it is, a wounded thing. It says young people won’t vote much for a candidate and his pick who don’t represent their preferences much at all. That minorities aren’t as simple as majorities make them out to be, and pandering to them rarely works well. And that people don’t change nearly so fast as circumstance needs them to, that wisdom comes slower than opportunity, which is the true source of all human grief.

Maybe the truest and darkest truth of them all about time, people, and dust, is the only one left worth believing in, I think to myself sometimes. It took Europe becoming ruins, mass grave, flames, bones — before it grew up, into gentleness, and rebuilt itself as the paragon of civilization and modernity. The growth of our capacity to love comes to us only through seeing what might have been turn to ashes. To mature, to expand in grace, beauty, truth, goodness, first we must fall down.

Umair

August 2020

I Have a Bad Feeling About This Election