As people here know I’m not a fan of the neoliberal/freemarket ideology and I always knew that one day there would be a backlash – well as they say be careful of what you wish for – in this case I got Trump. I thought, I hoped, that it would be a more left wing movement and to give him his due Sanders seems to be part of the same backlash but there was something I should have realised and that is that the right has always found it easier to accept and channel anger, hate, prejudice and bigotry and even racism (if it was couched in terms that allowed for plausible deniability). I thought that the backlash would come after the financial crash which was so clearly a product of the neoliberal ideology that had dominated western economic thinking for the past 30 years or so. In that time neoliberal ideas shaped policies that increased economic globalisation, free trade deals, out-sourcing of jobs, and the dismantling of wealth distributive systems, amongst other things all of which brought about a huge leap in inequality, wealth grew fat while those at the bottom and the middle saw their incomes fall or stagnate. And the political establishment in both the Republican and Democrat parties not only stood by and let it happen they were complicit in all. Were the politicians to blame? Well yes they brought in those policies but they did so because they were following the dominant economic orthodoxy which told them to do it and many Americans seemed to give that ‘free market model’ their support (as I know from personal experience, from the first time I’ve been on this site I’ve been battling American supporters of neoliberal ideas). Republicans and then Democrats came to think that was what Americans wanted. But they were being mislead, the politicians by wealth supported economists and people like Alan Greenspan and many regular Americans by a trick I’ve explained many times here – wealth financed think tanks pumping out biased and subjective reports that concluded the ‘freemarket economic model’ was superior to any other and those then being accepted by many parts of the media as ‘fact’ and reported as such. But while criticism of free market thinking has virtual all come from the left the interesting thing was it was mostly effecting right wing voting white working class and lower middle class Americans. The question was asked many times by people on the left - why did so many Americans seem to vote against their own financial interests? I’m beginning to think that that they were like that frog that slowly boils to death, they didn’t understand what was going on and didn’t notice it at first. That was because certain right wing politicians told them they should had other concerns (the neo-con Karl Rove said they were ‘God, Guns and Gays’, the tea party directed their attention to un-American and socialist Obama) Anyway the media they watch, listened to and read all told them the neoliberal ideas were the ideal of ‘American capitalism’ (although few even knew what neoliberalism even was) and only the pinko’s and socialists were warning about the consequences so of course they could be ignored as biased. Also to a large extent the truth was also hidden from them by easily available debt, want to buy something you couldn’t afford because you were not making the amount of money you used to, fine just take out a loan. That is until the party ended in 2008. The crash should have sorted it, the political and financial establishment even remembered Keynes and which saved the world from depression and then was instantly forgotten as failed neoliberalism once again reasserted itself. The wealth sponsored economics professors were still in place, no one burn down the wealth sponsored neoliberal think tanks, the free market politicians did not have a epiphany and they convinced themselves that it was all the fault of ‘government’ and Obama, not a flawed economic model. Two movements did emerge, from the left Occupy seemed to just fizzle out and on the right the Tea Party seemed (at least at the start) to be even more supportive of neoliberal than the Republicans they wished to replace although later it seemed to get its momentum from hate, hate of anything Obama. Meanwhile the frog was coming to a boil and was getting rather pissed off about it and looking around for someone to blame. The white working class and lower middle class families were feeling the pinch and felt conned but they don’t seem to understand who conned them so they lash out at everything the immigrants are taking their jobs, the establishment and the politicians are liars, the system is corrupt, someone stole their slice of the pie and trashed the American dream. But I don’t think they understand that its free market capitalism that they should be angry about it’s a backlash against what it has done while having no real alternative, certainly not the ideas of the left. Trump has become the perfect conduit for their anger, fears and hopes – throw out the immigrants, crash the establishment, kick out the lying politicians, fuck China, fuck Mexico, bring back the jobs, take back the pie, make America great again. But that’s the problem they’re angry but they don’t have a plan and neither does Trump he is just going to use that anger and win or lose that anger is not going away and it’s in no-one’s interests to let it carry on boiling. But the establishment don’t seem to have a clue how to turn down the free market heat.
The establishment knows exactly what they and their corporate string-pullers have been doing since a good part of this shit started in 1973. That was the year the final nail was driven into the coffin of employer loyalty. That year spawned rule changes that wiped out pension plans for all but a few unionized and government staffed entities. No, it wasn't an overnight transition. But the result has been very obvious. Basically, anyone who can't defend themselves in court are taken advantage of at every turn by corporations. From shaving hours and other paycheck scams to filling our store shelves with products of the barest minimum standards, corporations and their government stooges have shown exactly how little they care as they turn the largest segment of the US population into disposable worker drones. And to keep them focused on anything BUT their plight the media pushes everything from Kardashian butts to Black Lives Matter, even creating hostility out of thin air to keep a storyline going. I don't think there's just 1 Orwellian mastermind behind this. I think a whole system based on beating profit from the hides of Americans evolved into a corporate culture. Since a corporation is a legal "person" it can benefit from all kinds of things without any conscience at all. Why would a corporation care if they polluted a river? Until the EPA came along they didn't. Not that the EPA solved everything either. Clearly they can be bought. For example, why build power plants in cities? For corporate convenience of course. They should be built in the middle of nowhere since electricity can be conveyed by power lines. On the political side, I was actually glad to see Trump and Sanders upset so many people. I don't particularly care for either of them. Trump's a loudmouth who says he has all the answers and reveals none. Sanders is a dreamer who thinks he can use government to bully the nation into utopia. Whether they want it or not. But both of them are presenting messages we never hear from establishment politics. I still think Trump will get us into a war or very warlike conflicts (so far every president has). But he speaks like someone who actually wants to win, a concept the Americans lost in the early 70s as we became the world's punching bag. The minimum wage has been catching hell lately and with good reason. One of the talking points on the right that I'm worn out from hearing is the notion that "the minimum wage was never meant to be a living wage" or that it's a "beginner's wage and not meant to support a family" etc. Well, I remember when people not only could survive and raise a family on minimum wage, but actually did. But in the 70s, after a few bumps in line with inflation, the minimum wage went stagnant. It has failed to keep pace which has created an imbalance in the economy. The corporations somehow con the government into catching the slack. Wal-Mart is a classic example. When they shifted from only selling American-made goods, they made a lot of extra money by selling Asian-made knock-offs, some licensed by their original American creators. But that profit was just not enough. So they turned to the employees to squeeze a few more nickels by working some as few as 15 hours a week. Benefits? Don't make me laugh. Today a massive part of Wal-Mart's workforce doesn't make enough money from their jobs so they end up qualifying for food assistance, rent assistance and other programs that were not originally designed for long-term use. Of course it's not just Wal-Mart, it's basically ALL of them. Anyone you can work for above a Mom & Pop operation (which have their own hazards) has already perfected ways to pay you only the least amount possible no matter how good you are at your job. Corporations have created the idea that all of us are just disposable cogs to be used and discarded. Corporations, while not people, have become pure automated greed machines. And Trump has been in the thick of that for most of his adult life. MAYBE he's seen the light and realizes that if the middle class evaporates, so too does his ability to make a buck. The fall of the middle class had hit casinos very hard and rump's a casino guy. Maybe he's running to restore as much middle class as he can because he can't personally figure out how to make money on the decline of them the way so many others have. But I'm more inclined to think that Trump has a plan that doesn't extend very far into the future. I think he will create some kind of gimmick, that works for a while before falling flat. Like Cash for Clunkers. One of the things that Sanders seems to overlook is that all of the socialist "success" stories are from nations that are much smaller and have a close-knit national community, many are downright patriotic. Turning the US into such a model, particularly with all the recently fashionable ways for Americans to justify hating other Americans (like for historical events they can't possibly rectify), would take a financial investment we simply don't have. It will take a lot of money to shift Americans from the present methodology. It will also take a lot of time, far longer than a presidential term or two. While it seems like Obama accomplished some things, few of them have staying power or the GOP wouldn't be shouting about reversing them. If the parties are going to do this back and forth crap with each president, the nation will not make many changes and will continue to stagnate. What's worse is that each administration will turn the country into their personal pet project, which enrages the other side. The rest of us seem to always lose money when this happens. Even if they restore something that was changed, it's never the same and usually costs more. Americans would do themselves a favor by establishing trade networks that operate outside of the US government umbrella. I still want Sanders more than Trump, but I no longer thing Bernie has a chance. What's funny in a scary way is Romney, who clearly took a dive to allow Obama 2 terms, is maneuvering through obscure GOP rules to attempt the nomination for president. If that happens, Bill will be the nation's original "First Gigolo" as Hillary slides easily into the oval office. It's such a weird time politically that I haven't made a single bet this year.
