After the Future

Crazy Always Wins...

...in a culture that has lost its mind.

This isn't a statement of hopelessness, because I believe that we will eventually recover our minds, even if it takes fifty or sixty years  to do it.

I haven't said anything about the mass shootings of the last few weeks because no solution seems possible until we have recovered our minds. The real problem is that most Dems, Never-Trump conservatives, and moderate Independents are sane, and sane doesn't have a chance against crazy when crazy is motivated, well organized, and well funded. In other words their institutions, norms, and rules don't have a chance when crazy becomes institutionalized, which it has done now in the GOP.

Most of those in Blue America, because they know nothing about guns and gun culture, have no idea what guns symbolize for Red America. Blue America just can't understand why common-sense gun control measures can't be passed. They don't understand that their common sense and decency is no match for the insanity that will stand in the way of any such measures. It doesn't matter that sane gun control measures poll well. If the Blues are for it, the Reds will be against it. Actual policy has no political salience, only Blue- and Red-team loyalties do. 

Guns have become fetish objects in the culture wars. They symbolize power and agency for a huge segment of Americans who feel they have neither. They've invested whatever is left of their identities and sense of dignity in their ownership, and to take their guns away is to take what's left of their dignity, and so they will use them to defend that dignity when they are made to feel disrespected, which is what any kind of sane gun control makes them feel. The NRA understands this, and hence its bumper sticker: "I'll give you my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hands" 

It's too late now. It was criminal negligence on the part of the Republican congresses in the 2000s that that it didn't support the renewal of the assault weapon ban. Now there are so many assault weapons out there, that anybody who is determined to get one by extra-legal means and to use it will not be significantly impeded by such legislation. The assault weapon black market will grow and thrive, and in red states, and in red counties in any state, the police will do nothing to crack down on it. Such a ban will only reinforce the de-legitimzaton of Democrats in Washington and increase the motivation of the kind of people I described in the previous post to take power by any means necessary and to prevent Dems from ever getting it back again.

The problem is not that there are many sane, decent people who own guns, but that there are so many unstable Americans who do--or can get them so easily when they feel the "need" for one.  And so the only real remedy is to address the underlying causes of the identity loss and its ontological dizziness that has made America so crazy. This is partly a metaphysical question, but it's also a social political one caused primarily by the destructive effects of Neoliberalism on the American social fabric. The second flows from the first, but the most egregious negative effects can be remedied by a politics of decency that strives to support American families. 

I think that most Democrats understand this, but they get in their own way by having allowed themselves to become branded as "woke", which everyone outside the media and the universities finds at best irritating for its priggishness. It's not that 'woke' is technically wrong, but nobody likes a prig except other prigs, and so it makes Dems so unpopular at at time when they really, really need to be popular if we're to save our democracy. If there is any political solution, it would have to come from a political realignment that would require a new party to emerge comprising thoughtful social conservatives and communitarian (anti-Neoliberal) Progressives who were willing to agree to disagree about culture-war issues and start confronting the all the ways that Neoliberalism has destroyed the basic social infrastructure of working-class America. Obviously this is not something that will happen any time soon, but something like it is what's called for. 

There is not that much in economic policy differences that separates social conservatives on the Red Team like Patrick Deneen, Oren Cass, Sohrab Ahmari, and Erika Bachiochi from social Liberals on the Blue Team like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren when it comes to policies designed to help American families. Both factions understand how destructive Neoliberalism has been in the lives of most ordinary Americans, but they can't get together mostly because of differences about sex and identity politics. But that's part of what makes us so crazy now. Progressives have become the party of "woke" and Conservatives the party of "anti-woke". As I said above, nothing else has political salience. 

 

The Danger of the Moment 2

In what follows I imagine a conversation with someone like Sohrab Ahmari, about whom I wrote in a post entitled Radical Elites on the Right 1. I say someone like Ahmari, because I don't want to put words in his mouth. I'm just looking for someone who is smart enough to understand that Trump is an idiot, but sees him as a useful one because of the kind of American future that he hopes for. It begins with my question and follows with his answers:

Are you willing to risk the loss of American democracy to prevent Liberals from remaining in power?

I think Liberals are exaggerating the threat. Democracy will continue but with stricter controls on who gets to vote. 

Are you saying that more than half the country should have no say in who gets elected?

I'm saying that it's better for the country that the party of traditional American values has the power to make decisions about what's good for America. Liberals are allowing the moral fabric of American society to unravel, and they need to be stopped for their own good and for the good of the country. 

But you understand that in a democracy a minority can't just impose its will on a majority that doesn't agree with it, right?

I think most Americans do agree, but they just don't know it yet. Liberals are like people in a cult who need an intervention. Once we're in power, we will throw out the filibuster and enact programs that will enable them to see the error of their ways--the law is a teacher. And especially when we enact Bernie-Sanders type programs to support families, we will get the support of most of them. 

But then how can you say that such actions will not destroy American democracy?

Well, because with or without Trump we'll be voted into power in '24 with broad popular support.

But you realize once you impose your 'law-is-a-teacher' program, it will be seen as very unpopular and will lead to your being voted out in the next cycle, right?

Well, I question that it will be as unpopular as you think, but while I hope it won't be necessary, we might have to temporarily suspend elections until our new Moral Majority regime gets broader support. What we're doing is truly revolutionary even though it's only restoring the old moral order. America has become deformed; we simply want to re-form it according to its original blueprint.

Do you think the people in Blue states in the Northeast and West coast will take this sitting down?

Once we're in power, what are they going to do? Take to the streets? Let them. They will be perceived as radicals with a far Left agenda who will broaden public support for our regime. Any violent counter-revolutionary actions will be violently suppressed. But not to worry--it's not as if we'll have to deal with armed militias, right? Not a Left kind of thing. Our militias are armed and ready, and they will take care of any serious problems of public resistance. 

The great danger in the upcoming midterms, but especially in '24, is that Main Street moderates will vote for Republicans because they blame Democrats for inflation and  baby formula shortages. In the next month, through the public hearings of the January 6 Committee, we will learn whether Main Street is capable of grasping the enormity of what happened in the last months of the Trump presidency and that it is likely to be repeated in '24 but with more success.  

Democracies have shown time and again that they are perfectly capable of voting themselves out of existence. The question remains whether Independents and moderate Republicans understand that they might be doing just that if they throw the Democrats out. We will learn soon enough whether Main Street has any real understanding about what's at stake. 

Go to Danger of the Moment 1.