What Democrats did wrong... Three categories of rationalizing - while ignoring why they hate us.

At the end I'll cite some book and SF news, including some fun! Like part two of my comedy, The Ancient Ones.

Only now we'll return to the topic on everyone’s mind… WTF just happened?  And what should we do now?

We'll start with Nathan Gardels – editor & publisher of the excellent Noēma Magazine - who always offers interesting observations. Though, he often triggers my infamously ornery “Yes… but…” reflex and a too-long response. (Several posts here originated in rémise to Nathan.)

In a recent missive - "How to Soul-Search as a Losing Party" - appraising What Democrats did wrong, Gardels points out many valid things… while reaching a conclusion that I deem spectacularly mistaken. Taking note of how so many Black and Hispanic males abandoned the old, Rooseveltean Coalition, he joins with so many others out there, urging a campaign of gentle conciliation.

Nathan cites a raft of earnest intellectuals, as well as deliberative ‘citizens panels’ that have – in Europe – shown some success at getting participants to bridge the dogmatic gaps that divided them. Indeed, such experiments have been terrific! It is the mature approach. And it works… 

...with those who are already drawn far enough into the process to leave behind their familiarly comfortable, polemical echo chambers. Forsaking today’s media Nuremberg rallies, in order to participate. 

“(O)nce informed and empathetically exposed to the concerns of others, participants move from previously held dispositions toward a consensus.“

Indeed, that participation can be widespread! As in the Truth and Reconciliation process led by Nelson Mandela, in South Africa, and similar endeavors in Argentina and Chile, wherein vast swathes of the public – on all sides – realized they must do this… or risk losing everything.

As for it happening in today’s USA? Well, I can think of one actual, real world example. 

         

All across the nation, grand juries are selected from randomly-chosen voters and vetted for general reasonableness. In a majority of American counties, the resulting panels consist largely of fairly typical white retirees. And yet, it has been exactly those red county white retirees who – after exposure to arguments and copious evidence – have indicted so many Republican politicians and associates of a vast range of crimes.

    I’d argue that is a kind of fact-based consensus-building, even if it leads to some well-deserved pain by the fomenters of one side.

That is the first of many reasons why the masters of that side will have no interest in allowing wider versions of consensus building.

I do not see any hope of such a thing happening in today’s America, at any kind of scale.

…with one barely plausible exception.

== Get the kompromat-compromised to trade 'Truth' for 'Reconciliation' ==

I am on record proposing an American version of a Truth & Reconciliation process. It’s kind of aggressive, like those grand juries, but it could begin a tsunami of revelation and light, leading to millions seeking common ground.

It might begin with one brave act. One so shocking and disruptive that it could rattle the echo chambers and draw millions of ostrich heads out of media holes. It might happen even right now, at the tail end of 2024, if Joe Biden were to offer the incentive of pardons/clemency, in order to draw forward any politicians in DC to admit that they are snared by blackmail. 

As I say elsewhere, the pervasiveness of widespread blackmail in Washington is widely known in counter-intelligence circles. Honeypot entrapment of western elites has long been a specialty of Russian intel services – Okhrana, Checka, NKVD, KGB and FSB – all the way back to czarist times. Moreover, three Republican Congress members have recently attested to it likely being widespread among their GOP colleagues. 

And hence, perhaps the incentive of presidential clemency just might be enough to draw some heroic – or simply fed-up – blackmail victims into cleansing light. And once a few have done so, others might follow, from all parties. 

And yes, I do believe it’s one path that could lead to a Truth & Reconciliation process in America.

On the other hand, could T&R be achieved by preaching for a nationwide flow of commensal consensus, based upon building touchy-feely ‘mutual respect’ and listening? 

Now?  

That is fantasy. 

Especially at this moment. 

Because we have nothing to offer to those who are getting exactly what they want, right now. 

You know perfectly well what that is, if you ask around, or follow social media at all. There is one voluptuous satisfaction that tens of millions of core MAGA folks seek – and are getting – that fills them with giddy joy, above all. To drink our tears.

If you do not know this, then you really, really need to get out more.

Anyone who thinks they can placate that with ‘can we all just get along?’ has no memory of the middle school playground, where we learned one of the deepest expressions of human nature -- from bullies, whose greatest joy came from hearing nerdy victims cry out - “Can we talk this out?”

== Twin prescriptions that are guaranteed to fail ==

 

Today’s Chasm of Political Recriminations within Blue America appears to be similarly unbridgeable. 

First there’s a left wing that wants only to double down exactly upon a raft of combative identity stances that didn’t work… 

(Abortion! Racism! Pronouns! Shun Bill Maher! Forget the economy; it’s all about abortion! And did I mention abortion? And abortion!)… 

… vs. those murmuring “we need to reach out for consensus!” Consensus with those who have openly declared hatred of every single fact-using profession in America, along with universities, science, the civil service, the FBI and even the U.S. military officer corps. 

To be clear, I am not rejecting consensus building! There have been times when rational politics used to be about negotiation, and those days may come again. 

Please. If you read and grasp nothing else here, understand the following history lesson.

In olden times, Republican and Democratic legislators would socialize and get to know, rather than demonize, each other. Their kids went to the same schools! That is, until Dennis “friend to boys” Hastert established a rule (look it up) that GOP representatives must stash their families in the Home District and spend as little time as possible in Washington. And - above all - demonize those on the other side of the aisle.

During some previous eras, a president was able to negotiate – even horse-trade – for a few votes needed by this or that nominee. And each appointment was considered separately.

This was true even as late as the Speakership of Newt Gingrich who, for all of his fiery, right wingism, was there to negotiate and to pass legislation needed by the country. Hence we got Welfare Reform and the Budget Act and Clinton Surpluses.

Alas, at that point Karl Rove’s program to expand gerrymandering shifted the locus of power in hundreds of districts, away from the General Election over to district primaries. Primaries in which radical partisans gained outsized sway. It happened in both parties, but especially in the GOP. Threats of ‘being primaried’ became fierce tools to enforce uniformity.

(There are ways to defeat this! Decisively, in fact. Methods that don’t even require legislation. One simple, nationwide information campaign could destroy the effectiveness of Primary Radicalization… and no party politician will discuss it.)

== The roots of our present political impasse ==

This transformation reached fruition with the 1996 Congressional putsch, when Newt was jettisoned without so much as a thank you and replaced by a later-convicted child predator, whose “Hastert Rule” has ever since declared a political death sentence for any Republican who – ever again – actually negotiates with Democrats. 

This resulted in the most tightly disciplined party and politburo America ever saw. (And some of the laziest, worst Congresses in U.S. history. Only once in the last 28 years has there been a session that passed needed legislation that directly resulted in major benefits for the nation.)

How effective is Hastert-Discipline?  No hypocrisy is too great. As when GOP Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused even to meet with Obama nominees more than 13 months before the next election… but hurried to confirm Trump’s final appointments one month before Biden took office. Even “deeply concerned” Senators Collins and Murkowski get back in line at the slightest warning look from Trump or from Trump’s Potemkin puppeteer.

And all of that leaves out speculative supplements, like my well-based conjecture that blackmail is rife in D.C. 

And so… amid all those highly refined tools of fanaticism, radicalization and discipline-enforcement… are we somehow supposed to seek consensus, when every single incentive is designed to thwart it?

== Bitter partisanship is a recurring American norm ==

Again and again, I am appalled by an unwillingness by our brainy, punditry castes ever to look at history. 

• Like the 6000 years when 99% of human societies fell into drearily similar patterns of feudalism, dominated by male bullies who enforced power based on an inherited ruling class. 

• Or how the American Experiment - in escaping feudalism - has experienced rhythmic pulses of cultural strife, with pretty much similar casts of characters, across 240-years. 

• Or how Franklin Delano Roosevelt forged an alliance of rich, middle and poor that rendered Marxist notions of class war obsolete for a while… until Old Karl has lately been revived to fresh pertinence, by those who forget.

This latest phase of the recurring U.S. Civil War goes far beyond simply snaring the GOP political caste, as we saw in the previous section. It has been vital to re-create the 1860s alliance of poor whites with their rich overlords, in shared hatred of modernists. This required perfection of masturbatory media, offering in-group solidarity based on a Cultural Schism that has divided America since its inception. 

(Look up how in 1850s plantation-lords arranged to burn every southern newspaper that did not hew to the slavocracy line.)

Want a keen insight about all this from a brilliant science fiction author? No, I mean the revered (if somewhat libertarian) Robert A. Heinlein, who describes a recurring American illness.  In projecting a future America dominated by religious fundamentalism, he adds:

"Throw in a Depression for good measure, promise a material heaven here on earth, add a dash of anti-Semitism, anti-Catholicism, anti-Negrosim, and a good large dose of anti-“furriners” in general and anti-intellectuals here at home, and the result might be something quite frightening – particularly when one recalls that our voting system is such that a minority distributed as pluralities in enough states can constitute a working majority in Washington." 

And he wrote that in the 1950s.

== So how to fix what went wrong in 2024? ==

I speak elsewhere about this recurring American psychic and political chasm. Biliously-addictive Culture War explains Red America’s rage, far better than self-flagellatory riffs like: “We blues are at fault for refusing to listen to legitimate rural concerns.”

Excuse me. From FDR to LBJ to Clinton and Obama, rural America has received generous largesse that transformed ‘hick’ Southern and Appalachia states into modern hubs, surrounded by comfortable towns that – under Biden – just received huge waves of infrastructure repair and high-speed Internet. Unemployment is super-low and inflation has fallen.  

Did the Harris campaign fail to make all that clear?  Of course they did. And that failure was godawful. 

But nothing we try, no statistical proofs… and certainly no ‘outreach and listen’ campaign… ever stood a chance against the drug-like power of sanctimony. The volcanic flows of ingrate-hate pouring from Trumpian America, toward…

… toward whom? 

Leftists claim that the hated groups are races/genders etc. And while there is some of that, their obsession is - in its own right - poorly based sanctimony-delusion. In its own right, it is delusionally insane.

Test it! Just watch Fox some evening and count the number of minutes spent spewing outright racism or repression of gender variety, or attacking the poor. 

All of that is as a droplet next to tsunamis of bile aimed at … nerds. At fact professions. At civil servants. At the FBI and intel agencies. At the U.S. military officer corps. At exactly those who are targeted by Project 2025.

Elsewhere I go into the WHY of this open and insatiable hatred of every single fact-wielding profession. It's exactly the same cultural phenomenon as when Southern white males supported King George against city merchants… and supported slavocrat plantation lords, their actual class enemies, against urban northern sophisticates. And supported Gilded Age plutocrats against the original Progressives…

…and who now support today’s lucre-oligarchy against ‘smug university-smartypants know-it-alls’. The professionals who stand in the way of feudalism’s return. 

(Just watch who Trump goes after… and how the red folk who you want us to ‘reach out to and understand’ will cry out gleefully, with every shout of nerdy pain.)

== Defend what they most avidly seek to destroy ==

Can such masturbatory joy at defeating all fact people be assuaged with ‘reaching out’ sessions seeking ‘consensus’?

Okay, sure. Give it a try. It seems worthwhile! I might be wrong!

But if I'm right about this being phase 9 of America’s recurring cultural Civil War, then shall we look at how the previous phases were resolved? 

It doesn’t always have to involve violence! In fact, only one of those earlier phases was truly violent. And a couple were resolved by genius politicians like FDR!

But in this recurring madness, what never worked was supplication. Or looking weak.

What's worked is the same thing that caused bullies on the playground to step up from the dust, stare at the blood they just wiped from their noses, and go “Huh! I guess you aren’t meat, after all. Wanna come over and play X-Box?”

But sure. Read Nathan G's editorial in Noema! As usual, it is articulate and knowledgable and persuasive. So let's by all means assign some folks to give 'consensus-building' a try!  Go with the carrots that have never worked. But maybe this time.

Meanwhile, I plan to continue offering sticks. 

Tools for fact-folks to use. 

Tools that establishment politicians have never-ever-ever actually tried. At least none since FDR and LBJ.

Sticks that worked.