The point about politics, I think, is that the meaning of "revolution" is not what the left thinks, the brave activists getting in the face of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) at a Washington DC restaurant. It has more to do with this:
The answer is pretty simple. Most people don't pay much attention to politics. They acquire a party loyalty at some point in their life because of a major event -- such as the Great Depression, or The Sixties -- and they don't really change unless confronted by catastrophe.
Thus, in the small New England towns, people kept voting Democrat because that is what people like them did. After all, the Democrats were the party of the working man, right?
In fact, of course, people are tribal, and their loyalty is to their tribe. In the old days, tribes were tribes of the kindred, people related by blood, but ever since the dawn of agriculture, and more so since the industrial revolutions, people have been joined together by "fake" tribalism, an imaginary tribe unified by some notion other than close blood relationship.
In our day there are many fake tribalisms on offer, from the tribe of nation to the tribe of language to the left's preferred cocktail of race, gender, and class tribalism.
The reason that Donald Trump got to be president is that he broke through the stasis in the Rust Belt in which people voted their class status as members of the worker tribe, and called people over to a national US tribe, as in Make America Great Again.
Now I see a lot of people on the Right proposing a "white" nationalism, or a cultural nationalism, or some other way of creating a new fake tribe. But I don't see any notion better than Trump's American nationalism, which is nothing more than appealing to the great ordinary middle class that really doesn't identify with anything other than America.
The power of the Trump idea is that it fits today's political alignment. The Democrats represent the educated class that believes itself way above the tawdry idea of "nation." And it represents the newcomers to the city that identify with their ethnic or racial group rather than with the nation itself.
But obviously there is a borderland between the educated globalist elite and the ordinary middle class on the one hand, and the ordinary middle class and the ethnic enclaves on the other hand. The job of a politician like Trump is to advance the border between the educated and the ordinary on the one hand, and the ordinary and the ethnic on the other.
Now, I would say -- OK, I hope -- that the antics of the feminist #MeToos and the folks that ambushed Sen. Cruz would be expanding the border of the ordinary into the educated class. I would say that the ordinary middle class person, even including folks in the professions, really does not cotton to the activist culture of the left.
And I would say that you can expand the border of the ordinary into the ethnic enclaves by expanding economic opportunity and getting them solidly into the middle-class economy.
So I argue that people will vote for the same party forever, unless something comes along and jolts them.
Has anyone got a better idea?
I grew up in a small town in rural New England, which has long been a stronghold for Democrats. My grandfather was a carpenter, and for many years as a boy, my father was, too. Several of my family members are or used to be members of labor unions, and many of them have for years consistently and exclusively voted for Democratic candidates.Democrats showed that they were not longer the party of the working man in 1971 when Archie Bunker debuted on TV. Archie was no longer the salt of the earth, as we had been taught, but a racist, sexist bigot.
For much of my young life, their commitment to the Democratic Party had puzzled me... And the older I get, the greater the divide grows between what Democratic voters in small towns and cities across the country think they’re getting from the politicians they vote for and the actual policies being proposed and implemented by Democrats.Yes, why do people keep voting for people that have stopped representing their values?
The answer is pretty simple. Most people don't pay much attention to politics. They acquire a party loyalty at some point in their life because of a major event -- such as the Great Depression, or The Sixties -- and they don't really change unless confronted by catastrophe.
Thus, in the small New England towns, people kept voting Democrat because that is what people like them did. After all, the Democrats were the party of the working man, right?
In fact, of course, people are tribal, and their loyalty is to their tribe. In the old days, tribes were tribes of the kindred, people related by blood, but ever since the dawn of agriculture, and more so since the industrial revolutions, people have been joined together by "fake" tribalism, an imaginary tribe unified by some notion other than close blood relationship.
In our day there are many fake tribalisms on offer, from the tribe of nation to the tribe of language to the left's preferred cocktail of race, gender, and class tribalism.
The reason that Donald Trump got to be president is that he broke through the stasis in the Rust Belt in which people voted their class status as members of the worker tribe, and called people over to a national US tribe, as in Make America Great Again.
Now I see a lot of people on the Right proposing a "white" nationalism, or a cultural nationalism, or some other way of creating a new fake tribe. But I don't see any notion better than Trump's American nationalism, which is nothing more than appealing to the great ordinary middle class that really doesn't identify with anything other than America.
The power of the Trump idea is that it fits today's political alignment. The Democrats represent the educated class that believes itself way above the tawdry idea of "nation." And it represents the newcomers to the city that identify with their ethnic or racial group rather than with the nation itself.
But obviously there is a borderland between the educated globalist elite and the ordinary middle class on the one hand, and the ordinary middle class and the ethnic enclaves on the other hand. The job of a politician like Trump is to advance the border between the educated and the ordinary on the one hand, and the ordinary and the ethnic on the other.
Now, I would say -- OK, I hope -- that the antics of the feminist #MeToos and the folks that ambushed Sen. Cruz would be expanding the border of the ordinary into the educated class. I would say that the ordinary middle class person, even including folks in the professions, really does not cotton to the activist culture of the left.
And I would say that you can expand the border of the ordinary into the ethnic enclaves by expanding economic opportunity and getting them solidly into the middle-class economy.
So I argue that people will vote for the same party forever, unless something comes along and jolts them.
Has anyone got a better idea?
No comments:
Post a Comment