I wrote these thoughts on Facebook in response to a post endorsing Yascha Mounk's Atlantic article advocating voting for Joe Biden as a means of reigning in the "Illiberal Left".
I think the original poster's analysis was correct. People can be defined by, motivated by, and empowered by what or who they hate, and a Trump reelection would further motivate the illiberal left. However, remember the abhorrent 1998 add that said a vote for the GOP meant another church would burn? People like Mounk appear to be saying, in part, a vote for Trump means another federal building will burn. This is like "giving in" to hostage taking and threats of terrorism.
Furthermore, the only way a vote for Biden avoids increasing the power of the illiberal left is if part of the plan is to vote to create a divided government. In other words, if the goal is to avoiding an emboldened Illiberal Left by voting for an arguably centrist Democrat president, the best way to ensure the Democrat president does not stray from the reservation is to preserve Republican control of the Senate, perhaps also the House, and state and municipal offices. Therefore, those who propose Biden as a firewall or bulwark against the illiberal left should not only endorse Biden, but also endorse voting exclusively GOP down-ticket. If those promoting Biden as a bulwark did that, they would add far more credibility to their argument.
With respect to Biden, the idea he is a centrist firewall against illiberalism does not hold up if you read his campaign web page, consider his planned policies (reinstate the Title IX "Dear Colleague" letter, rescind Trump's anti-CRT EO, pass the Equality Act), or consider many of his comments, such as ones around youth transgenderism. 2020 Biden is not the Biden from the 1980s and 1990s. In some ways he was to the left of Obama during that administration.
Many are voting for Biden because they believe Biden will usher in a "Return to Normalcy". By that, most are thinking the Obama-Biden era of 2015 (the year before Trump declared his candidacy). Others think it will be a return to February 2020 (before the pandemic hit the U.S.). This is naive thinking.
Regardless of who wins, the Successor Ideology (Wesley Yang's term) marches on. Either more peacefully with Biden, or more violently with Trump.
Human nature suggests a critical mass of people will need to feel impacted by something before they push back. The Successor Ideology eventually will impact enough people that there will be a backlash. That will be the inflection point—not the 2020 election. Somebody is going to lose a job. Somebody is going to be conflicted enough to quit a job. Somebody is not going to get a job. Some divorced mom is going to see her aspiring teenage athlete daughter lose an athletic scholarship, and see her hopes and dreams for her daughter crushed. Someone is going to be called a racist one too many times. Someone is going to have to declare themselves a racist one too many times. Eventually a pushback begins. Eventually people organize to pushback.
Rod Dreher writes about the possibility of China's "social credit" system coming to the U.S. Some have written that the Internet Archive has been pressured to remove items from its Wayback Machine web site. What happens when not even your social media posts can get you fired or prevent you from being hired, but even long deleted social media posts are available, because of archiving sites? What happens when others (those who belong to the right group) are able to scrub their pasts including any archives? What happens when the general public has access to some people's social media, but others social media is restricted from public view? We have seen prospective and current college students held to task for social media posts made when they were 14 or 15 years old. We has seen other people held to task for who they choose to follow on social media, with motive assigned to the reason for following. It is reasonable to assume social media follows have been used against someone in an employment situation. We are not far from the ability to gather someone's Twitter follows and assign an ideological and personality profile to the person based on it.
I think we are in what we might call a "Long War". One measured in decades. I believe the start of this global populist/anti-globalist left+right movement goes back to the 1999 WTO protests (perhaps further back to Ross Perot's anti-NAFTA independent/Reform Party run in 1992). I think we have another decade to run. Wokeness and a claimed "democratic socialism" is the endgame of this "New Left". The "Great Reset" is the endgame of the new neoliberal centrists. A "New Right" has not yet fully defined itself. It may be socially reactionary against wokeness. It might be a further evolution of the anti-globalist somewhat socially conservative populism of Ross Perot and Donald Trump.
Another way to look at this is through the lens of the Strauss–Howe generational theory, or "Fourth Turning". In this model, the entire cycle is about 80-years, divided into four roughly 20-year "Turnings". The Third Turning is an "Unraveling." The Fourth Turning is a "Crisis." Per Strauss and Howe, the Third Turning started in the early to mid 1980s, which puts is in a Fourth Turning now. The problem is, I am not so sure. In some ways things still feel like an unraveling., and it is hard to believe we are approaching the end of a Crisis turning. However, that depends on when the Crisis started. Did it start in 1999 (WTO protests), 2000 (contested election), 2001 (9/11 attacks), or did it start in 2008 (financial crisis)? 2008 makes more sense, and fits with my theory the current Fourth Turning will not see resolution until the second half of the decade of the 2020s at the soonest, but probably more towards the end of this decade.
The idea we have another decade of angst to live through is too much for many to accept. They want a return to normalcy as soon as possible. A different president. A vaccine for COVID-19. A reliable, compounding increase in the S&P 500 index funds in their 401ks driven by continued cost optimization from the globalization of supply chains and labor markets. Their comforting property tax deduction returned, even if the tax cuts meant their total taxes went down. Readily available cheap, but questionably documented day laborers to handle repainting and landscaping. The costs of all of this put in a can and kicked down the road for future generations or Modern Monetary Theory to deal with. They want ideological and financial comfort food—tonight. This desire leads to a false hope that the resolution is near. It leads to a form of Magical Thinking: This just can't go on any longer. It is like the person who posted on Facebook in mid-March at the start of the lockdown: "We are only going have to do this for two or three weeks until we get a vaccine." Yeah, tell me how the SARS vaccine is going, now, eighteen years after that pandemic started.
I believe the 2020s are going to be another 1960s. People think the current chaos is wrapping up, or that this can be wrapped up, with a Biden win, as if changing the president changes our reality—a sort of quantum superposition. The truth is, it is just starting, regardless of who wins. There is no way out, there is only a way through, and with apologies to Robert Frost, both roads are rough, and neither will make any real difference.
Wake me up in 2030.
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