Political sectarianism in America

[broncofan]

No no. I was talking about one of the most divisive cultural issues of our time.

Filghy, to what extent do you think antigovernment views are less a function of our system of voting and instead an unfortunate reading of real provisions of our Constitution? Although we have a unitary executive, the bill of rights is intended to be a bulwark against government encroachment on personal liberties. While there is a difference between putting speech beyond the power of legislation to encumber and believing all regulations infringe on unspecified but preserved liberties, the distinctions aren't always clear except where specific rights are enumerated. We have a history in this country of being suspicious of government, including government's beneficence in ameliorating social problems, and the electoral system makes it difficult to overcome that large faction of extremists who consider kindness to be tyranny and actual tyranny to be strength.

[filghy2]

Filghy, to what extent do you think antigovernment views are less a function of our system of voting and instead an unfortunate reading of real provisions of our Constitution?

I think your historical origins and the mythologies than have grown from this have a lot to do with it. The USA was created as a reaction against perceived tyranny of the British government. Australia was created as a project of the same government (indeed, as a direct result of US independence) and continued to be dependent on it for a long time. We never developed a mythology that our way of life depended on freedom from government.

[broncofan]

I think your historical origins and the mythologies than have grown from this have a lot to do with it. The USA was created as a reaction against perceived tyranny of the British government.

I've mentioned this on here before but in the early 1900s there were Supreme Court cases that were successfully brought invalidating various economic regulations because they were believed to violate the "liberty to contract". This was known as the Lochner era, because the plaintiff in the first case was named Lochner and the subsequent cases adopted the same shoddy reasoning as the Lochner case. Anyhow, I'm sure there are more interesting reads on the subject than the wikipedia article I'm going to post but it was a 40 year period of time where child labor laws and all sorts of very useful and humane laws were actually held to be unconstitutional. So even if it's not what our founders had in mind it's a viewpoint that was endorsed by our high court for 40 years and resulted in 159 statutes being overturned because they interfered with the marketplace.

Of course I could talk all day about how Republicans have contradicted themselves about the freedom of the marketplace because while they object to laws requiring businesses to serve lgbt customers they don't seem to think storeowners retain the prerogative to require patrons to wear masks in a pandemic! Go figure.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lochne...mplement%20its

[Stavros]

Politics in Australia is much less polarised and dysfunctional than in the US, and I think much of that has to do with the electoral system, as well as the fact that extreme views (eg anti-government or religious fundamentalism) have never got much support here. The features of the system (compulsory voting, preferential voting, an independent electoral commission) mean that the major parties must try to appeal to the middle ground rather than focussing on their own enthusiasts. They certainly cannot hope to form government if more than half of the country dislikes them. In our system, Donald Trump would never have succeeded and the Republican Party would be in deep trouble.

I don't know much about Australian politics, but is it not the case that while your party system appears to be stable, the incumbents are not -in the past Fraser, Hawke, Keating and Howard straddles the years 1975-2007 and lasted more than one term in office, whereas since 2000 including the end of the Howard era, there have been seven Prime Ministers, at least one or two removals from the 'stab in the back' rather than elections, and was not Julia Gillard the most publicly abused Prime Minister since Gough Whitlam- maybe even more so?

[Stavros]

I can understand why individual liberty is embedded in the US Constitution, and that the Pilgrim Fathers enjoyed the kind of freedom they lacked in England, the Netherlands and the German speaking lands from which they came. And yet, the personal lliberty of the Pilgrims was in fact ring-fenced by the religion they freely practiced which imposed rules upon their communities.

In the case of the Revolution and its Constitution, fundamental to the operation of a Liberal Democracy is the fact that individuals agree to surrender a degree of indiividual liberty to the State in order to receive the protection of the State from external and internal harm. Thus, the rule of law is created that both permits and limits what citizens can do, so there has never been much substance to the argument that some Libertarians claim- Government is the problem, not the solution. There may be too much, or not enough Government, and is reasonable, but I feel Libertarians cherry pick their issues for ideological, not practical reasons.

For all their belief that markets work better than Governments, the argument that an armed militia is superior to an armed law enforcement service is weak, if it even exists. For all their braggadocio, I don't see the Boogaloo Bois, the Proud Boys, the Oathkeepers, or the 3 Percenters arguing they should police America, the sad fact being that many LE officers across the USA wear 3 Percenter badges so there is no need to 'defund' the police on Libertarian grounds, as they have all but merged with the armed militia.

There is also the argument that Republicans want to maximise market choices and individual liberty, but how would the market, rather than Government deal with the Covid-19 Pandemic, not just with regard to the funding of the medical campaign, but with regard to the furlough schemes for businesses that cannot operate due to the public health crisis? Surely if the market is always right, then if a business collapses owing to Covid-19 that's just tough. When the pandemic is over, they can start again, right? And why should taxpayers pay others not to work?

Moreover, if Government has an obligation to protect citizens, which in the case of a pandemic/epidemic is surely right, then how can the politicians opposed to barrier methods -masks, hand sanitation in public areas, lockdowns and restrictions on movement to short-circuit the spread of the virus -refuse to implement them on the grounds it violates individual liberty, or should be a matter of 'personal choice'?

To vilify social responsibility as some sort of an attack on liberty is weak, yet it comes from a party and other like-minded individuals or groups who are just as keen to tell Americans what they should, or should not be doing in their bedrooms, and who proclaim they are, in relation to Abortion, 'Pro-Life' while at the same time saying nothing about the pregnant women who have equal rights as citizens. Can the rights and liberties of a foetus really be more important indeed, replace the rights of a tax-paying citizen?

Sometimes partisan politics looks like a dead end, ad one is surprised there are not more dead citizens as a result, or maybe this is the true cost of sectarian politics -but will Americans learn from this?

[filghy2]

I don't know much about Australian politics, but is it not the case that while your party system appears to be stable, the incumbents are not -in the past Fraser, Hawke, Keating and Howard straddles the years 1975-2007 and lasted more than one term in office, whereas since 2000 including the end of the Howard era, there have been seven Prime Ministers, at least one or two removals from the 'stab in the back' rather than elections, and was not Julia Gillard the most publicly abused Prime Minister since Gough Whitlam- maybe even more so?

There was a period of constant leadership turnover, but it seems to have receded as the parties realised it was counter-productive and rules were changed were made to make it harder to trigger a leadership challenge.

Our system is far from perfect. There is a lot of short-termism that makes it hard to deal with longer-term challenges; climate change, in particular, has become a political football. However, the response to COVID-19 shows that the system still retains a capacity to deal competently in a bipartisan way with crises. Compared to the two countries we have looked to as exemplars in the past, we are in a much better place.

[filghy2]

To return to the original issue about polarisation, it's often argued that tribalism and fear/hostility toward 'the other' have evolutionary roots in the strategies that helped primitive man to survive. The same can be said of the attraction toward autocratic 'strongman' leaders.

Human progress over recent centuries has arguably been based on overcoming the limitations of these primal instincts, in particular through evidence-based knowledge and development of political and legal institutions that allowed conflict and disagreement to be managed in more civilised ways.

The big problem we now face is the concerted efforts, mostly by right-wing populists, to undermine the legitimacy of both knowledge and institutions. The very notion that these have an existence or role independent of partisan interest is under severe challenge. If this is not addressed we face the risk of going backwards.

What can be done about this is less clear. The key thing that has enabled this trend seems to be the fragmentation and siloisation of information media, which will be difficult to reverse. I have put a lot of hope in the prospect that the incompetence of populists in office would discredit them, but the US election suggestions that this works in only a muted way.

[blackchubby38]

I'm going to post this article here. Its long, it not explains why the last 4 years happened, but may give some insight as to how the United States can move forward:

www.yahoo.com/news/trump-showed-us-america-005554050.html

[Stavros]

I'm going to post this article here. Its long, it not explains why the last 4 years happened, but may give some insight as to how the United States can move forward:
www.yahoo.com/news/trump-showed-us-america-005554050.html

I'm going to post this article here. Its long, it not explains why the last 4 years happened, but may give some insight as to how the United States can move forward:
www.yahoo.com/news/trump-showed-us-america-005554050.html

Thank you for this link, which contains some genuinely thoughtful contributions, but many of which, to me are based on a denial of what others say, for what I think is most obvious about them is the extent to which Americans are divided by their own perceptions of who they are and what their country is.

There is not a lot that is original about this, Charles Beard famously upset a lot of people when he argued that the Constitution was a document written by wealthy men for the benefit of other wealthy men. It is ironic is it not, that the people who now seem to endorse this view as the one they prefer are not on the left as Beard was, but the 'Orginalists' in the judiciary who see 'their Constitution' as the means to prevent the USA from being ruled as a Rainbow Nation, by Rainbow People who to them see politics as the journey to the end of the Rainbow. Race, as ever, is fundamental to the divisions of America, but so too is Capitalism, the rock the contributors cannot identify properly even as it sticks in their throat.

So,
a) on Race we have the argument that BLM is the expression of Black alienation, and not just with Law Enforcement, juxtaposed with the alienation of White America that feels it is losing its control of the country they created, shut out of its benefits. In theory, a Marxist would identify false consciousness uniting these two groups which, exposed and fought against, can end their collective misery. Yet we are told that Marxists have shaped the BLM which appears to me neither willing nor able to make common cause with White America, and howcan they when the Law Enforcement Officers 'at war' with Black America wear III Percent logos on their uniform?
On this, the ultimate fact is that Marx was wrong, and that the US proves that class solidarity cannot co-exist with racial fragmentation -it begs the question, can the USA ever reconcile the divisions shaped by 'Race'?

b) the conribution by Bauerlein is one of the best, yet he describes something he does not explain, thus-
"It wasn’t Trump’s politics that disgusted the college presidents, celebrity actors, Google VPs, D.C. operatives and the rest. It was because he pinpointed them as the problem—the reason factories and small stores had closed, unemployment was bad, and PC culture had cast them as human debris. And millions cheered. This was unforgivable to the elites. They sputtered in reply, which only confirmed that our betters aren’t so smart or skilled or savvy, and not so virtuous either, though very good at self-help. The outburst was a long time coming. Trump gave it an outlet, and the scorn for men and women at the top of our country is now widespread and frank. It’s not going to pass any time soon."

-Bauerlein identifies what for me is the fundamental problem- factories and small stores had closed, unemployment was bad, and PC culture had cast them as human debris- but fails to point out that the USA has adopted Capitalism as its national economic ideology, but has become a victim of it too. The word 'Globalization' is commonly used, but why not Capitalism?

And, why is this malaise in the US blamed on 'elites' with a college education when it is pretty much all of the US that has collaborated with the Capitalist Pact? If you look at it from the perspective of Capitalism, the US is divided between those who prefer markets over the state, and those who use the state to manage markets.

This is where the true fault-line exists that accounts for the decline of heavy industry, the stagnation of wages, the anxiety that the future is going to be worse than the past.

But who is responsible for this? The same class of Corporate capitalists that produced Trump, the Koch brothers, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Elon Musk benefited from 'globalization' but cannot reproduce its benefits in the US because the cost of American labour is too high.
And the reality is that American had its heavy industry for just under a century before global developments undercut domestic industry -so the logic of Capitalism kicked in: when there was over-capacity in the Steel industry, the mills had to close. When oil and gas became cheaper and more efficient than coal, the Mines had to close. When factories producing a commodity at a dollar an hour could not compete with the Asian factory producing at one cent an hour, the factory had to close.

It has been the height of hypocrisy for the marshals of American capitalism to blame globalization for their own preferences. It is even more hypocritical for Libertarians to argue there is too much intervention by the State in the economy when so much of the US economy is now dependent on Federal and local state contracts the the US economy would collapse if it were dependent solely on market forces. If you want to know why wages have stagnated in the last 30 years, look at successive Democrat and Republican Governments that have rewarded the big businesses they give contracts to, to secure the 'social peace' that would break down if markets alone were the source of jobs and income, but how they conceded to Capitalism through 'regulation lite' the opportunity to constrain excesses in banking, and how they simply did not care when 1% awarded itself interstellar salaries while the shop floor got peanuts, if they were lucky.

To me so many people are in denial about the fundamentals of American capitalism. On the political front, it is clear to me that the fringes of American politics in the past remained on the fringe because in the absence of a universal internet, most Americans had never heard of them -even today, who remembers Lyndon Larouche? But here we are, and in the case of the GOP, the lunatics have taken over the asylum. People who would never have got near the party in the past have become its Congressional Representatives, its Senators, and now its President.

Sour grapes from elitists with degrees from celebated universities should not obscure something few of the contributors refer to. How the GOP, by becoming a Sectarian party to distinguish itself from the Democrats in terms of us-vs-them, either/or, has simultaneously marginalized itself from mainstream America while attracting the margins into its ranks
-compare the Conservative Governments of David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson, with its senior ministers who are Female, Jewish, Black, Asian and Gay, with successive Republican Administrations that have been for the most part White and Male only. When Lindsay Graham complained that postal ballots would result in a permanent Democrat government, he exposed the weakest element of his own own party: its inability to attract. For if the GOP wants to win Congress and the White House, it needs to appeal to more Americans, whether they vote in person or by mail.

By shutting itself off from so many Americans, the Republican Party seems doomed to be a minority party, more dependent on the margins than the centre. Just as the USA's embrace of capitalism has undermined its economy, so its politics appears to have failed by not addressing that most basic argument: that the people who make the wealth of America should have an equal share of it. This component of the discourse is absent, yet its absence points to the constant denial of reality as its cascades through health, education, housing, transport and the environment. The contributors often feel positive about the consequences of Trump, and how such negative copy can be transformed into something positive.

But it also needs to address the grievances, and do what Trump has so spectacuarly failed to do: produce practical solutions that the majority of Americans can see work for them. On the plus side, the US economy is large enough and diverse enough to survive, but on the minus side, I fear a generation of young Americans is facing a decade or more of unemployment in a slow-and-low growth economy, and the social consequences of that, with the race factor added, makes for a difficult, and painful journey into the future.

[Stavros]

The link below is to the latest issue of The Times Literary Supplement, and a review article that explains how the 'Christian' Fundamentaists have 'taken over' the Republican Party -another form of sectarian, and rather scary politics. Worth reading.

https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/h...ublican-party/