Why There is Trump
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Dorothea Lange Family of rural rehabilitation client, Tulare County, CA 1938 It’s over! The entire model our societies have been based on for a
[See the full post at: Why There is Trump]I am not disagreeing but there is an odd thing and that is I live in a place in Michigan that has been in recession since 1973 and the employment situation is better now than it has been since then, even better than 99 and the end of the tech/low energy price bubble. Also I think we can take at half of face value the report that the official poverty rate in the US had the biggest year over year drop ever, 1.2%.
It doesn’t take much thought to figure out how this is misleading but still, it’s certainly above any hell on earth story. The local story is the auto industry going crazy after the longest expansion in its history and this too will pass.
I’m not in any way disagreeing or dismissing IM’s analysis but even more than England’s Brexit vote I don’t attribute the turn against the elites as the lack of growth story being overwhelmingly the main cause. The no Brexit people and the Hillary people are more than half right that the yes Brexit voters and the Trump voters are responding to reactionary and nationalist and racial appeals. I’ve always expected the political dislocation to come from the right and so here it is. And yes their appeal will be to bring back growth. In lieu of that impossible promise Trump will herald in a far more openly authoritarian kind of governance. As expected by me but as I am a nice white person of middle class trappings I won’t feel the humiliation and pain.
PS
The link to the NYTimes story above didn’t work. If that fails do a web search
Millions in U.S. Climb Out of Poverty, at Long Last
I hate to do this, another post, but it needs mention that Trump voters despise the Greeks as much as they despise the Syrian refugees stuck there. As opposed to Hillary voters who are sympathetic, to the refugees at least. less so the Greeks,,at those very odd times when the story of Greece enters their minds. Which is rarely.
The bleeding hearts of ‘liberals’ are maddening and oh so cheap. Such is the fate of liberals, think nice thoughts, and then do nothing.
Great post Ilargi.
I’m astonished and angry at the disappearance of the real left. Boiled alive like frogs, one small moral compromise at a time.. compulsively rationalizing as to why Mr Hope ‘n Change was really a pretty good president, and how Hillary’s actions and policies not at all indistinguishable from Dubya’s. Hell, even Dubya’s neocons are firmly and actively behind Hillary, which should be all the warning anyone needs.
12 years ago, those same ex-leftists were of one (correctly) disgusted mind at the disgrace that was the Iraq invasion. 8 years ago, they were beside themselves with joy at the election of Obama. Now they huddle together braying for consolation about the global menace that is Trump.
Given that Hillary is definitively:
– a fraud: fruit of an insider-rigged selection process against the genuinely-popular Democratic candidate
– a traitor: co-operator of a fraudulent foundation, taking ‘donations’ from foreign states in return for financial favours
– a warmonger: committed to global destabilisation, provocation of Russia + China and further expansion of Israel
– a shill: for the out-of-control financial + military sectors
then I would respect any ex-lefters that on principle damned both candidates, and advocated not voting. I’m just completely gobsmacked by those who are in full boosterism mode for Hil.Excellent. I can’t say I “agree” or “disagree” with anything written because it seems to me to be a mathematical equation beyond opinions, so there doesn’t need to be agreement from me. But, I do agree that this all seems somewhat self evident and shocking that people don’t discuss it. ? Not that I am brighter or more insightful than others, but I am glad for AE. It helps me feel more ….sane. I also agree with the comment above from Huskynut about the disappearance of any real left. I was raised working class democrat and am amazed at how people my parents age, in their 60s, disinfranchised working class poor, will defend the “left” til the bitter end. I think Chris Hedges writes about this phenomenon well.
As for us, we played cards with our daughter during the debate, after having gone for a long walk and making a lovely homemade dinner including things from my brother-in-laws garden. Much more rewarding than watching & trying to have an opinion on a political person. Thanks for the chance to comment!There is an interesting outlier to the ‘end of growth’ and that is in the seemingly oblivious ‘tech sector’… Where technology is accelerating at an exponential pace. Solutions to: energy, health, environment, transportation, learning, etc., are springing up all over the planet… But because their rise is not being covered by ‘corporate media’, we’re not seeing the solutions “grow”. It was actually inevitable because as ‘radio’ and then ‘television’ grew, at about 10% per year, but were ‘one-way’ communication; traffic and content have doubled every year, on the Internet, and not just because it stores so much data. It’s multi-directional, and such an amazing tool to ‘solve local problems’ from a sea of ‘global solutions’. This transition from the ‘old guard’ institutions, in their insatiable greed, will be an easier evolution than we have ever experienced. Instead of a series of ‘revolutions’, I believe we are going to see a ‘rapid evolution’, based on ‘choices’.
Raul writes: “Both will be failures. All we really get to do is try to decide who may be the lesser failure.”
This really hits the nail on the head. What only readers of The Automatic Earth understand is that the system will fail regardless, but that there are better choices we can make as individuals, communities and nations as we weather that failure. I agree Trump offers a necessary departure from the status qho in order to weather that failure.
As Nicole Foss pointed out so accurately many times, the winner of such elections is simply the inheritor of the poisoned chalice. Our leaders, no matter who they are, will be pilloried, vilified and denigrated as the wheels come off the bus of the financial system. But the best of them will sacrifice in order to find a safer, saner path that preserves freedom, while the worst of them will capitulate to powerful interests that seek to control wealth for their own benefit while everyone else starves. Ironically it really does appear that the “capitalist” Trump in this instance has individuals’ interests at heart over the “socialist” Hillary’s interests in big banks and Globalism.
Thanks Raul for posting this article.
What a refreshing telling it like it is. Simple, clean, and right on the mark.
But would humbly like to add a bit more here. We have all had a hand in this demise of ours by our own inner levels of selfishness and greed. Born out from consciousness this selfishness has now manifested and taken root in our outer physical world. But despite this, we need not feel hopeless. Love, compassion, and real genuine brotherhood can once again reflect something new and wonderful for all of us. Yes, we will probably need to go down to restart, but it will be worth it to find peace on earth once again. Such is evolution. The power to face all of this comes from complete selflessness. To mentally die to all worldly life and personal ambitions, and as the great ones have always said, then you will find your life, without any fear.
Hello, new commenter.
Excellent analysis, something we’ve been waiting to hear for some long time! But let’s carry it further and ask WHY growth has stopped…why speculation and sheer BETTING has increasingly replaced bona fide “investment”, why yield has vanished and why living standards are falling. Why “a dollar buys a nickels’ worth” and why currency debasement has been a feature of “money” for decades.
And, although “deflation” is the contemporary meme, if looked at in longer-term and in context we actually live in an era of soaring price inflation. Look at house prices, art prices, stock prices, bond prices, healthcare, education, rent…everything except iPhones.
I was originally tempted to finger the constantly increasing supply of money & credit as the cause of the end of growth. It’s tempting too to blame central banking. But then I thought a bit more: perhaps the soaring money and credit supply is a SYMPTOM or a RESPONSE to an underlying cause.
The system’s response has for decades been one of replacing the absence of real growth with DEBT…borrowing from the future.
To my mind the real root problem is resource depletion and scarcity, specifically the depletion of cheaply-extractable resources, especially when the cost of extracting those resources is juxtaposed with the assumption that living standards (including of those paid to do the extracting) are expected to keep rising endlessly.
This constant-economic growth-dependent system is perniciously breaking down, from the margins towards the centre. Not everyone suffers lower standards of living equally or simultaneously but those at the margins are doing so FIRST.
An insightful and likely valid perspective; dreams are built upon insubstantial foundations and universal dreams are owned by no one in particular.
The cure may be found here – in individual growth, where everyone pulls his/her weight and reaps rewards commensurate with investment. No free rides / lunches anymore. It has to begin with our currently misplaced sense of ‘entitlement’ and this can only be addressed in the educational system. Once a perspective such as entitlement is embedded in the values system of any individual it’s there to stay.
The challenge though is that thinking and initiatives like this will never get you elected as a politician – so perhaps they have to go!
I, for one, won’t lose any sleep over their departure.
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