Political sectarianism in America

In my humble opinion this is such a critical issue and the extraordinarily good paper from the 30 October 2020 issue of the journal "Science" did such a great job of defining the causes and solutions that I decided it deserved a seperate thread.
Why is the traditional Party system of American politics ,that has served so well for so long ,now seem to be 'broken'?
What happened to the system of compromise for the benefit of all ,that the founders intended ?
What do we need to do to get it working again?

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/370/6516/533

Your opinion need not be 'humble' when the focus is on so critical an issue.

To summarize the article, the team of researchers explain their concept of Political Sectarianism by referring to three formative processes: 'Othering', 'Aversion'. and 'Moralization'. Thus,

1) Americans may identify with one party rather than another, but regard the 'others' not as equally valid in their affiliation, but people who have abandoned 'the tribe' and appear to be not just 'others' but 'the enemy' with partisan identity being shaped by Religion, Race, Education and Geography.

2) Thus 'Aversion' is a trend made possible by the end of the Fairness Doctrine in broadcasting and the media, so that the hostiiity shown to 'the others' is underlined and promoted by a one-sided media that not only reports in favour of one side and against another, but in doing so reinforces whatever prejudices have created the separation of people into 'tribes'.

3) Lastly, 'Moralization' gives you the language which demonizes the other -there is no hope of one party praising another for a real achievement; loyalty to the 'one true party' requires that the 'enemy' be permanently disabled, insulted, abused, ridiculed, and thus make any reconciliation or compromise seem not just absurd, but a betrayal.

Superficially or not, this explains the otherwise daft claim that during this Pandemic, to wear a mask is to identify as a Democrat; not to wear one, a Republican. More worryingly, Republicans believe in armed militias and the Bible more than they seem to believe in Democracy and the Constitution; Democrats appear to be 'More American than You' by seeking to reduce gun ownership and relying constantly on the Constitution to justify its policies.

The article is written in the context of 'Science' which for these authors means the political science of number crunching, and techniques derived from Psychology. While it makes some pertinent arguments, it fails to explain sectarian politics in the context of American and Global history, and fails to do so by contextuazing what has happened in politics over time to produce so lamentable an outcome.

The authors are in my opinion wrong to claim that the sectarian divide is worse in the US than in European or other counties at a similar stage of development as the US. They fail by using their model instead of another, for what has happened in Europe in the last ten years is the fact that parties that in some cases had existed for the best part of 100 years -the Socialist and Social Democratic parties of France, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, and Greece, are either in disarray, or in the case of the German SPD, appear now to be a Regional rather than a National party, not least because Angela Merkel has adopted or co-opted so many SPD policies as her own.

Moreover, if one looks at the Centre and Right, one finds instability -the French centre centre/right has failed since the end of the Third Republic to create one enduring party -numerous versions came and went from 1918 to 1958, and once de Gaulle parted from the scene his Rassemblement du Peuple Français morphed into variations desiged to be closer or further away from 'the last Great Frenchman'. Italy has moved to the right, but has a coalition of two rather than one party, both of which hate each other. The centre/right Chrisian Democrats who dominated Italy from its origns under de Gasperi in the 1940s to the corrupion scandals of the 1990s, has collapsed and disappeared, and with it a 'rational' Conservative party. The attempt by Silvio Berlusconi to create a solid centre ground party has similarly flopped, with his decade or more in power seen as a giant flop that was more about him than Italy, an early example of a Personality Cult replacing rational politics. Merkel's domination of German politics has raised the most obvious question- who or what can follow her, how, if it does, will Germany change, or remain the same?

Ok, so sectarian politics of the venal loathing we see and hear in the US is not replicated in Europe, not even in the UK (Farage is busted flush) where Brexit has broken the country into pieces but where I suspect there is a desperate hope, undermined by the architect of Brexit, Boris Johnson, that 'it will be alright when it happens' -watch that space. But, and I think this is critical, party politics in Europe has been convulsed in the last 10 years and does not resemble what it was for the previous 90.

This is where history and politics enters the frame, because what the Science authors fail to do, other than identify Newton Gingrich as a pivotal figure in the (de-)Moralization of American party politics, is explain when this trend began and why. Nor does it suggest that there is an even simpler reason for sectarian divides: failure. In this context, it is the profound changes that have taken place to Capitalism that have changed the way we work, where we work, and the rewards we get from work. It is as if the Science team first read their Marx, then decided that it was culture rather than economics that was driving political change -it is clearly both.

Thus, the history, and this is my take on it, shows that the US has never fully healed from the Schism that was created by the Confederate terrorists who attacked the US at Fort Sumter in 1861 and provoked so devastating a war, though one must also put that into the broader context of what Langston Hughes called 'the American heartbreak' -Race-. In the aftermath of that war, the South may have lost its slaves, but it gained the very kind of segregation -physical, ideological, social- that is embedded in the sectarian divide described by the Science team.

Moreover, the 1960s was the Pivotal decade, because not only did Segregation become illegal, as one of its architects LBJ noted ruefully, it meant the Democrats losing the South. Partisan politics did not die immediately, think of Kamala Harris criticising Joe Biden over his warm relations with Southern Bigots, but what happened was a slow 'mission creep' iwith the enduring resentment by the South that 'the North' -ie Democrats- were still trying to dictate to the South how they should live, and above all treat Black Americans as Equals.

From this vantage point, and throw in all 'the others- Feminists, Gays, Transgendered, Environmental Activists- and 'Liberal' no longer describes the American of 1776, but its enemy. It is a country that has surrendered, or capitulated to a mosaic of foreigners and weirdoes who do not stand on the pillars of 'their America' = God, Family, Country.

The climax of this assault on America/Defence of America, was the election of Barack Obama, a point of No Return when a Black Man walked into the White House as President.

From these roots, I see the changes noted by the Science team; my own historical perspective is biased, but at least it is there as a framing device whereas the Science article does not engage in the reality. Crucially, what lies in the space between this sectarian divide is that none of the major parties in America or Europe, with the possble exception of the Germans -and because of their traumatic sectarian and global warfare- has managed the successful transition from a predominatly Industrial to a Service economy since the 1980s. What we have seen are phases of growth and then recession, of mass unemployment and reductions in it, of the phenomemal growth of the global economy, but a division of spoils that rewards '1%' with billions of dollars, while '99%' slump into a stagant pond ever burdened by debt.

Add to this a sorry coda creating its own mendacity: BLAME -what went wrong in the UK? Blame the EU, then leave it. What went wrong in America? Globalization, attack China.

Political parties are at a critical juncture in history, do we even need them? Are we about to see Trump maintain his relentless attack on the US by forming a social movement, an alternative to BLM? But can either of them achieve their aims outside Congress? Maybe this is just a phase the US is going through, and four years from now, Trump will have been exposed as a tax cheat, a fraud whose property empire was built using tax-payer loans, whose value is inflated, its tenants powerless and afraid. And people, even his current supporters tired of his permanent references to himself as a Great Man, with no viable policies on which to build an alternatiive America.

Or maybe he just wants to go down in flames, like Atlanta, defeated, exhausted, and irrelevant.

I shoud add with regard to the comparison between US and European parties, that the disarray in Europe has not happened in the US where there has been a stable, some would argue, stagnant two party system for most of the last 100 years. Morevoer, not only has this duopoly not been successfully challenged, the phenonemon of Trump has shown that the only way for a Maverick outsider to succeed has been through the existing system -the Republican Party may not be the the Party of Lincoln, or Hoover, Eisenhower, Nixon or either GHW or GW Bush, but the US still has a two party system. As for the radical changes that were promised in 2016, the incoming President merely smothered Washington DC in a swamp of corruption and lies to take advantage of the financial opportunities for himself and his familly, so one wonders why anyone can be fooled into thinking he changed anything for the better.

I think it means that, for example, the Black Panther Party in is original and its contempory forms, could, and can never be more than a fringe party with minimal impact on the party system. It remains to be seen if Third Party candidates and parties, from Ralph Nader and the Greens in elections of the past, or the Liberarian Party in the 2020 election, were effective alternatives, but in closely fought elections with two parties competing for the most votes, alternatives merely make the victory of the Democrats or Republicans more or less likely, they do not change the balance of power, which remains in a Congress where only two parties rule -and is it surprising that when there is an Independent candidate winning an election, as with Bernie Sanders, he does not seek the Presidency as an Independent, but as a Democrat?

It poses the question: why do Americans have only two dominant political parties? Is it the simplicity of choosing either/or? Where are the regional parties, for example, in Alaska or Hawaii, or even Califoriina? For example, the UK has the Scottish National Party, and neither the Conservatives nor the Labour Party seek election in Northern Ireland, so while Labour and the Conservtives dominate, certanly in Governmet, the UK has greater diversity of political representation.

With the final question -can the US change its party politics? What would change look like?

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Originally Posted by Stavros

It poses the question: why do Americans have only two dominant political parties? Is it the simplicity of choosing either/or? Where are the regional parties, for example, in Alaska or Hawaii, or even Califoriina? For example, the UK has the Scottish National Party, and neither the Conservatives nor the Labour Party seek election in Northern Ireland, so while Labour and the Conservtives dominate, certanly in Governmet, the UK has greater diversity of political representation.

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I think the electoral system has a lot to do with it. A 'winner take all' system will naturally tend towards duopoly because minor parties find it almost impossible the get into a position where they have any influence, which means a vote for them is essentially wasted. The only exception is where their support base is sufficiently concentrated, as with the SNP.

In Australia the two major parties only receive about 75% of the vote nowadays, and much of that seems attributable to the electoral system:
- the upper house is based on proportional representation, so minor parties often hold the balance of power
- the lower house is based on preferential voting, which means that a vote for minor parties is not wasted and they can have influence through their recommendations on preferences

If you look at the US electoral map, there are in a sense two regional parties called the Republican and Democratic parties. Republicans are the party of middle America and the South, and Democrats are the party of the East and West coasts and the Great Lakes. In Australia support for the two major parties is fairly evenly spread, so that every state changes hands periodically. There are large parts of the USA where that never happens.

Thanks,Stavros, for that excellent summary of the "Science" magazine article and your erudite critique . And flighty2 for your Australian perspective on the issue. I understand that voting in Federal elections in Australia is compulsory! Your Australian and UK proportional representational systems are certainly better ,in my view , than our "stagnant"2 party system.

I only hope that, as the authors of the article stated, our poisonous sectarianism "is neither inevitable nor irreversible" . I hope election finance reform,reform of social media algorithms, and a spirit of respect for opposing points of view can and will follow.
Reminds me of the Dali Lama injunction,"Be kind whenever possible,it is always possible."

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Originally Posted by sukumvit boy

Your Australian and UK proportional representational systems are certainly better ,in my view , than our "stagnant"2 party system.

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It is a mixed bag in the UK -Parliamentary Elections are Single Member Simple Plurality -ie, first past the post, winner takes all. There are various PR systems in regional elections, particularly in Scotland and Norther Ireland -this article addressed those systems.
https://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/...sed-in-the-uk/

PR has been rejected as the method for electing the UK Goverrnment in Parliament, most recently in the 2011 Referendum. I oppose PR because it is an entry into politics of small parties, and usually not effective ones -we had a Coalition in 2010 because Cameron failed to convince enough people to vote Conservative, but sharing power with the Liberal-Democrats, allegedly to the left of the Conservatves did not prevent the economic austerity measures that Government embarked upon which have caused so much damage to the NHS and our public services.

The real concern is that PR would give an entry into politics of New Wave Fascists like Nigel Farage, which is something to be avoided- he has never been able to get elected to Parliament after 7 attempts, and his party rarely wins a substantial vote. If you want a comparison, look at the extremist parties in Israel who become part of the Government even when they get barely 5% of the vote -indeed, though Netanyahu didn't need such extremists to expand illegal settlement activity in the Occupied Territories, most of the fringe parties support it anyway. The UK has been broken by Brexit, to introduce PR for Parliamentary elections would, in my view, aggravate the misery of Brexit by creating one unstable Government after another, no one party capable of forming it -and we may be headed for political instabity anyway, so why make it worse?

What is more pertinent is what has been said before -is Trump going to create a new movement or party, or insist on leading the Republican Party -and will they get rid of him between now and the mid-terms in 2022, or after that if he fails to take the House and Senate?

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Originally Posted by sukumvit boy

And flighty2 for your Australian perspective on the issue. I understand that voting in Federal elections in Australia is compulsory! Your Australian and UK proportional representational systems are certainly better ,in my view , than our "stagnant"2 party system.

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Australia was only created as a federation in 1901, so we had the advantage of being able to learn from other countries' experiences. Our 'founding fathers' studied other systems (especially the US, UK and Canada) and tried to combine what they saw as the best features. I think they were very wise to reject a presidential system because too much power in the hands of one person seems to be one of your big problems.

Proportional representation is used only in the Senate, so it doesn't determine who forms the government. The House of Reps where the government if formed is based on preferential voting in single-member electorates. How this works is explained in the link, but the general principle is to ensure that the winning candidate is acceptable to more than 50% of voters.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electo...m_of_Australia

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.

Are you guys willing to tackle a niche issue like New York v. Chicago pizza? I think Mr. Fanti was right in that you need some experience on the ground to offer an opinion on this one.

In my view Chicago pizza lovers are becoming like a third party. In popularity it's New York pizza, then two week old leftover lasagna, then Chicago deep dish.

In all seriousness, I'm enjoying reading this discussion, please continue!

WHAT ? Oh,LOL.
At first I thought you were talking about the 'pizzagate' conspiracy ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizzag...spiracy_theory

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.

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Originally Posted by broncofan

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?

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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.

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Originally Posted by filghy2

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.

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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

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Originally Posted by filghy2

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.

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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?

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?

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Originally Posted by Stavros

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?

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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.

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.

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

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Originally Posted by 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

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Originally Posted by 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

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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.

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/

The House voted to remove Marjorie Taylor Greene from her committee roles. The ideas she has promoted are about the most deranged and racist and dangerously delusional ideas a person can promote. I read today she reposted a video that was basically great replacement theory warning about "miscegenation".

I read the vote to remove her was a bipartisan vote. Is that what they say if there's one Republican in the House with an ounce of decency? 11 Republicans in total voted to remove her from her committee roles. I never thought I'd see so many politicians behave as if they have no moral core at all.

https://twitter.com/ehananoki/status...92219094491136

It goes on and on. Violent racist thinks Muslims can't serve in the House of Representatives, but is supported by most Republican Congressmen.

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Originally Posted by broncofan

The House voted to remove Marjorie Taylor Greene from her committee roles. The ideas she has promoted are about the most deranged and racist and dangerously delusional ideas a person can promote. I read today she reposted a video that was basically great replacement theory warning about "miscegenation".

I read the vote to remove her was a bipartisan vote. Is that what they say if there's one Republican in the House with an ounce of decency? 11 Republicans in total voted to remove her from her committee roles. I never thought I'd see so many politicians behave as if they have no moral core at all.

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According to press reports, she received a 'standing ovation' when she spoke, would be interesting to know what she said. As I have argued before, unless you create the kind of party system we have in Europe, with formal membership requirements, extremists like Taylor-Greene (and Trump too) would never be selected let alone elected to represent the party. The best people like her could hope for is to be a local politician somewhere if independents or minority parties ever get their people into office. She attracts too much attention because of her views, others, like Paul Gosar have been on the fringes for years, he even invited 'Tommy Robinson' to visit the US. In the end you have the system of political representation that you are reluctant to reform.

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Originally Posted by Stavros

According to press reports, she received a 'standing ovation' when she spoke, would be interesting to know what she said. As I have argued before, unless you create the kind of party system we have in Europe, with formal membership requirements, extremists like Taylor-Greene (and Trump too) would never be selected let alone elected to represent the party. The best people like her could hope for is to be a local politician somewhere if independents or minority parties ever get their people into office. She attracts too much attention because of her views, others, like Paul Gosar have been on the fringes for years, he even invited 'Tommy Robinson' to visit the US. In the end you have the system of political representation that you are reluctant to reform.

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Yes ,we are reluctant to change our system . Such as the Electoral College system,after the tragedy of Trump's 2016 win I studied the system and I came to the conclusion that we should keep it.

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Originally Posted by sukumvit boy

Yes ,we are reluctant to change our system . Such as the Electoral College system,after the tragedy of Trump's 2016 win I studied the system and I came to the conclusion that we should keep it.

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I can see the logic of the Electoral College, and the original intention of fairness, and I don't suppose the people who designed it ever expected that it would produce the opposite outcome it was intended to. That said, what, if anything, would you change?

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Originally Posted by Stavros

I can see the logic of the Electoral College, and the original intention of fairness, and I don't suppose the people who designed it ever expected that it would produce the opposite outcome it was intended to. That said, what, if anything, would you change?

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I don't think the 'zero sum game' nature of the two party system is serving us well . I think we need to provide a way for a more diverse mix of political philosophies to get in the act of daily government and legislation. For example I love many of Bernie Sander's 'Socialist' ideas such as healthcare for all and the need to vigorously address the kind of rampant 'one percenter' income inequality we are struggling with ,and was sad to see him have to drop out.

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Originally Posted by sukumvit boy

Yes ,we are reluctant to change our system . Such as the Electoral College system,after the tragedy of Trump's 2016 win I studied the system and I came to the conclusion that we should keep it.

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Originally Posted by sukumvit boy

I don't think the 'zero sum game' nature of the two party system is serving us well . I think we need to provide a way for a more diverse mix of political philosophies to get in the act of daily government and legislation.

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When you say you favour keeping the electoral college do you mean the method for determining how many votes states get, the 'winner take all' system that operates in virtually every state or the indirect method of election? The three elements are separable.

If you want to weaken the duopoly I think you should favour shifting away from the 'winner take all' system to one where every vote counts equally and no voters can be disregarded. That would force candidates to appeal to as wide a cross-section of voters as possible, rather than appealing primarily to their own partisans. There are a number of options that could acihieve this more effectively, including election of the president by popular vote, ranked preferential voting and/or proportional representation.

I am not sure how the US can reform given the power that States have to design their electoral system, and resist any attempts by the Federal Govt to change that. On the one hand, one cannot see either main party giving up their hold on office, on the other hand, if the Republicans split, one or both factions might see some form of PR a means of remaining in office, if the split vote keeps them out of power. But the more urgent task is to tacke gerrymandering and voter suppression.

The problem with PR is that it may appear to be a fair reflection of the way people vote, and thus return a Parliament/Congress that more closely represents the people, but it doesn't mean it results in fair government. If no party wins enough to rule on its own, a Coalition is required, and more often than not, is the consequence of PR. This in turn tends to make either for inefficient government or through policy failures can ruin the fate of a party in the Coalition -the Liberal Democrats formed a Coalition with the Conservatives in 2010 but were punished in 2015 and relegated to being a party of minimal importance. Although the Democratic Unionist Party were not in Coalition with Theresa May's Government after the 2017 election, they held the balance of power in the Commons, but used it to ruin May's attempt to pass the EU Withdrawal Bill. Not only were they then punished in 2019 by becoming an irrelevance in a Conservative Majority Commons, their chershed links with the UK are now under threat to the extent that they face the prospect of losing a popular referendum in Northern Ireland on unity with the South, as the local economy is hammered by the Brexit reaities that Boris Johnson doesn't care a fig for Northern Ireland and may try to change or amend the Northern Ireland Protocol but cannot change the fact that the UK is not in the EU, but NI is half-in, half-out.

Again, if you look at Israel, or West Germany when the Free Democrats held the balance of power, PR offers parties with minimal public support key roles in Government and with policies that the majority may not want. Israel is a good example of how parties with barely 3 or 4% of the vote can determine the fate of the country -so that in these cases, PR as a voting mechanism may fairly represent the voters at large, but cannot guarantee that Government represents the country more fairly, or is even efficient. One can look at the endless negotiations that follow elections to form a government in Belgium and Italy to realise PR more often than not results in an incoherent mess.

If PR was to be tried in the US system the logical place would be in the Senate, as is the case in Australia. I think the system generally works quite well in Australia. The governing party cannot just ram its legislation through the Senate, but has to negotiate with the minor parties, which results in improvements more often than not. You might call that inefficiency, but efficiency isn't everything - dictatorships are very efficient.

If the starting point is a system characterised by gridlock (because the same party rarely controls all three arms of govt) it's not a very convincing objection to say that PR would cause gridlock.

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Originally Posted by filghy2

When you say you favour keeping the electoral college do you mean the method for determining how many votes states get, the 'winner take all' system that operates in virtually every state or the indirect method of election? The three elements are separable.

If you want to weaken the duopoly I think you should favour shifting away from the 'winner take all' system to one where every vote counts equally and no voters can be disregarded. That would force candidates to appeal to as wide a cross-section of voters as possible, rather than appealing primarily to their own partisans. There are a number of options that could acihieve this more effectively, including election of the president by popular vote, ranked preferential voting and/or proportional representation.

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Yes, but without the Electoral Collage the combined vote of the east and west coasts alone would win. Good video on Amazon Prime and I'm sure many other sources...

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Originally Posted by sukumvit boy

Yes, but without the Electoral Collage the combined vote of the east and west coasts alone would win. Good video on Amazon Prime and I'm sure many other sources...

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That can't be correct. The combined population of East and West coasts comes to about half the total US population, and obviously they don't all vote for one party. https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li...%20more%20rows

In any case isn't government by majority rule the essence of democracy, subject to everyone having basic legal rights protected? The interests of smaller states can still be protected by the Senate.

Yes, I stand corrected regarding my hasty statement .However even at "about half of the total US population" that leaves the "flyover states" rural ,agrarian,and conservative at a severe disadvantage in choosing their next president .That's the problem the Electoral Collage was designed to address.
When I set out to satisfy my curiosity and learn more about the EC system I went into it of the opinion that this is a terrible system . However I came away with a better appreciation of the problems the system was designed to prevent. Can it be improved? Yes, no doubt . But discarded altogether ?,I think not.

I wonder how Americans view the Founding Fathers with regard to the Electoral College. I can see the argumnt in favour of it based on the equitable distribution of votes that would otherwise mean large and populous states always dominating the outcome, but in a sense that happens if a State becomes so large its College Votes increase, and also if that State awards all of its College votes to the candidate in the election with the most votes.

Now consider that when the Constitution was signed in 1787 there were only 13 States, and neither women nor slaves had the right to vote. The language of the Constitution does not mention this, which has worked in the favour of 'the People', but conceptually, are we not dealing with -is it a paradox?- the fact that the 'Original' intention was that the Constitution would only apply to Men? It appears to some that the principles have held, that even with a significant expansion of both the number of States in the Union and the extension of the right to vote to, the system devised in the 18th century has survived. I don't think at the time, the men who wrote the Constitution envisaged that the College votes would either be close, or result in a popular vote in the General Election that was not ratified by the Electoral College -but I am not sure of this and maybe someone can clear that up.

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Originally Posted by sukumvit boy

Yes, I stand corrected regarding my hasty statement .However even at "about half of the total US population" that leaves the "flyover states" rural ,agrarian,and conservative at a severe disadvantage in choosing their next president .That's the problem the Electoral Collage was designed to address.

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That doesn't actually require the President to be chosen by an Electoral College though. That seems to be a constitutional crisis just waiting to happen. What if the Republican delegates in a few key states this year had been Trumpists who chose to ignore the vote count?

I'm also wondering how you expect to break down the two-party duopoly if you don't want to change the existing system.

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Originally Posted by Stavros

I can see the argumnt in favour of it based on the equitable distribution of votes that would otherwise mean large and populous states always dominating the outcome, but in a sense that happens if a State becomes so large its College Votes increase, and also if that State awards all of its College votes to the candidate in the election with the most votes.

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That's a good point. If there was no 'winner take all' system the dominance of larger states would be lessened because their EC votes would be distributed more evenly. it would also eliminate much of the wrangling over margins of a few hundred or thousand votes.

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Originally Posted by sukumvit boy

However even at "about half of the total US population" that leaves the "flyover states" rural ,agrarian,and conservative at a severe disadvantage in choosing their next president.

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The more I think about this, the more I think that position is dubious. The problem is that it views people according to the single dimension of which state they live in, rather than as individuals with multiple dimensions; eg race/ethnicity, sex, age, socio-economic status, family situation, occupation, etc. Are these other dimensions less important than where they live?

Consider that according to the last Census 62% of the US population are non-hispanic whites. Couldn't it be equally said that this puts non-white people at a disadvantage in choosing the President? Couldn't the same be said for any group that is in a minority on some important dimension?

(off topic)
The Imperial Chinese 'Examination System' served them well for over 2000 years ,and it was very democratic and educational merit based.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_examination
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histor...Imperial_China

A recent poll by the American Enterprise Institute (conservative think-tank) provides a good insight into Republican voters' attitudes.
- 79% of them agreed that the political system is "stacked against conservatives and people with traditional values"
- 56% agreed that "The traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it."
- 39% agreed that "if elected leaders will not protect America, the people must do it themselves, even if it requires violent actions."

https://www.americansurveycenter.org...xceptionalism/

In addition, 65% of Republicans agreed that last year's election was marred by widespread fraud, 50% thought that antifa was mostly responsible for the Capitol riots, and 29% agreed with the QAnon conspiracy (with another 43% undecided).

Perhaps not surprisingly, these views are correlated with religious and racial attitudes, with white evangelicals far more likely to agree with the statements.
https://www.npr.org/2021/02/11/96649...may-be-necessa
Three-quarters of Republicans also agreed that discrimination against Whites is now as great a problem in the US as discrimination against Blacks and other minorities, consistent with other evidence that racial resentment/anxiety is a strong indicator of support for Trump. This group was also more likely to agree that political violence may be necessary.
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/02/14/p...ent/index.html

In light of recent events, this raises the question of whether the Republican Party might turn into a de facto fascist party. Fascism is difficult to define, but three of the key elements seem to be a leadership cult, willingness to use violence for political purposes and some kind of ethno-nationalist agenda. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_fascism

As a companion piece, this is a good discussion of factors that promote mass radicalisation.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazi...rection-468746

"First, you have to have a vulnerable audience receptive to the extremist narrative—individuals who are scared, angry, isolated and looking for answers that satisfy their own personal biases, looking to cast blame for their problems on someone else. They find narratives that tell them their problems are not their fault; it’s the product of a conspiracy trying to undermine your way of life and well-being.

The second thing you need is an influential voice pushing the extremist narrative. And over the past 4½ years, we have had a very influential political leader [President Donald Trump] pushing a narrative that is not only polarizing—not only highlighting that the right and left are far apart on policy issues and disagree on discretionary spending—it’s a narrative of “othering.” It’s a narrative that casts the other side as evil, as “enemies,” as individuals you have to fight at all costs in order to preserve your way of life.

The final thing you need is a mechanism to spread that narrative to the masses. Historically, mass radicalization took time. If an influential leader wanted to spread a message, they’d do it through newspapers or political speeches in towns and cities throughout their country, and it could take a while for that message to spread. But that’s not our reality anymore.

Our reality now is one in which a radicalizing message can be broadcast to hundreds of millions of people in a matter of seconds. And if it catches on, you’re virtually guaranteed that millions of people will [believe] that narrative. We’ve seen this in the more traditional forms of media, with outlets like Fox News pushing some of these conspiratorial views, but we’ve also seen it with social media companies not cracking down on this rhetoric early, and instead letting it fester."

I would argue we are seeing a revival in the form of a 'New Wave Fascism' that attempts to rescue the original ideas of the Nation from the lamentable histories of Italy and the variants as experienced in Spain and, via Military Coups those 'Fascist' or 'Fascistic' versions in South Korea, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Greece and a host of African countries.

The key thinker to me is Roger Scruton, who in the years prior to his death moved away from his original work on Aesthetics to chamipion the view that European and American Capitalism and Democracy was rooted in, indeed, built upon Judeo-Chrstian Civilization. He used this in the Introduction to Bill O'Reilly's abysmal book The Closing of the Muslim Mind, because Scruton rejects any claim that Islam has had any influence on Europe -not in Maths, Geometry, Medicine, History, Geography and so on, indeed sees Islam as a theat to the integrity of the Nation, which is also how sees the concept of 'Ever Closer Union' that has driven the evolution of the European Union since the 1950s.

In some cases, the Christian legacy is vital for Scruton, in others, such as the second of the American appraisals linked below it is downplayed. Michael Gove was a supporter of Scruton, and I believe Steve Bannon too. In Bannon's case, the New Wave Fascism he extols believes there is nothing that the USA needs that cannot be made in the USA, hence 'America First' and a belief that all the production offshored to China and the rest of the world can, indeed should be repatriated to the USA. It is summed up in the core beliefs of Italian Fascism -'Everything Within the State. Nothing Outside the State. Nothing Against the State'

A key element of this New Wave Fascism is the concept of loyalty, which is, I think intended to replace any idea that Race is or should determine who the Citizen is to whom the State belongs. It means it is possible to be a Jew, maybe even Black and be a citizen, but the dilemma is how one defines this loyalty, particularly if for Scruton, a Religious element is desirable, even essential. His hostilty to Secularism and Islam is based on the tendency of advanced capitalist states to be either secular, in the case of the 'original' community, or religious in the case of immigrant communities, but an 'alien' religion that threatens the identity of 'Who We Are; threatening to relegate it to 'Who We Were'.

The dilemmas mount: New Wave Fascism is opposed to Globalization, but can any economy survive in isolation from the rest of the world?

What does one do with those citizens who fail the loyalty test?

Scruton's view here-
https://www.roger-scruton.com/articl...ed-for-nations

An American view here-
https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2...-nation-state/

Another US view here-
https://theimaginativeconservative.o...mccormick.html