The Z-man uses a software metaphor to explain revolution. A business creates a software system to implement its business processes, but then needs to modify it. At some point the system becomes too expensive to modify, so the business throws the old system out and buys or develops a new one. So it is in politics:
What Bernie is doing is exposing the lie at the heart of the welfare-state project. It was not about what is good for America and Americans but what it takes to win elections with free stuff.
As you can see from the chart, US government spending as a percent of the economy has gone about as far as it can go.
So, really, when Bernie is proposing to double down on everything from Medicare to the Green New Deal, he is really telling us the the game is over. Because the net effect of politics since 1980 is steady as she goes.
Now I believe what is happening is that Americans are being offered two futures, by two competing upper classes. The old future, represented by the Democratic Party and the educated gentry is the old game of the Gentry combining with the lower-class Clients to loot the Commoners. Loot in return for votes. The new future, represented by Trump, is for the Commoners to rebel against the old system and demand that their Commoner concerns and aspirations be addressed. Something that the old Republican Party was failing to do.
But, the question is, can the Commoners possibly win this game, when you consider that the whole educated Gentry would get totally screwed if politics in the US were reoriented towards the needs of the Commoners? No doubt the Gentry would fight to the last Client in order to keep their privileges and authority and feed their ambitions to be the wise rulers teaching the deplorables their needed daily lesson.
But then you look at the chart above and see that government spending has gone about as furr as it can go. Are the American people -- those suburban moms -- really going to vote for a massive increase in government spending? Probably not, unless you can stampede them into believing that the planet is about to die.
See my analysis of politics so far is that the creative class, the educated Gentry, has been running for the last century on the idea that, oh, we are the guys that care about the helpless victims, the workers, the women, the blacks, the immigrants, the homeless.
That line was gold when the vast majority of Americans were indeed workers struggling up through the industrial revolution. And, in the post-WWII world, the program adapted to the workers as they became suburban home-owners.
But since the Civil Rights revolution the gentry game has been to give free stuff to minorities -- and now immigrants -- out of the hide of the white working class, which is now really the Commoner class.
Back in the day the Republican Party was a Gentry party of the educated and the fairly well-to-do that was arguing for moderation in the expansion of government. It accepted the premise of benefits for the workers, but not so fast that it wrecked the economy.
But Trump has reinvented the Republican Party into a Commoner party that is saying: why should we Commoners pay for you Gentry to bribe your Client voters with our lives and our money?
So US politics has been transformed into Commoners-stick-together against the century-old coalition of educated Gentry and Clients.
I'd say the situation is that the Democrats are beside themselves; they really do not have a clue what to do next. Because all of them are apparatchiks of the old order, where you offered a little bit more free stuff to the Clients, and that was enough to get you over the finish line, most of the time. And don't forget the Irving Kristol rule that you must deal in the middle class if you want to help the poor.
Notice something? The Dems have stopped dealing in the middle class. Because Medicare for All doesn't offer anything to the middle class; instead it takes away their health insurance for... Yes, for what exactly?
But why? Why would the Dems do this?
Well, I think it is because in any ruling class, or any corporate hierarchy, the guys that understood what they are doing are the founders -- of the state or of the corporation. The chaps that come along later and step into the slots created by the founders know how to check the boxes and how to recite the anthems, but they don't know why. And so when they turn the dials and press the buttons and nothing happens, they really don't know what to do next.
So Bernie is punching his buttons, and Joe is punching his buttons, and the others are punching various buttons they learned from the Elders. And nothing is working.
What they need is someone that knows what he is doing.
Everyone thinks that Trump is an idiot, and is fumbling and stumbling like an amateur and really does not know what he is doing. Or maybe he got lucky. Maybe.
But if I were a Dem I would tell everyone I know to cut the crap and assume that Trump does know what he is doing.
And I believe that the future of politics in the advanced countries is going to be Commoners-stick-together. Oh, and any of you Clients that want to join us Commoners, come on in; the water's fine.
Hey, it makes sense. Commoners are the majority. They oughta have a politics that responds to their needs.
Democracy, dontcha know.
When the humans can no longer change the system or work around it efficiently, the users of the system start to question the system.Thus 2016 and Trump and 2020 and Bernie:
The first round of efforts to modify the existing system started in 2016 with the election of Trump. We’re seeing a second round now with the apparent nomination of Bernie Sanders as his challenger. Trump was always a reformer who believed in the fundamental integrity of the system. Sanders is a revolutionary who promises to first remove the legacy system.Sorry. Don't agree. I think that Bernie is a last ditch effort to pedal-to-the-metal the welfare state, to preserve the legacy system. If Medicare is good, Medicare for All is better. If subsidized college is good, then free college is better. Bernie is saying: let's just pour more money into the legacy system. It's worked all these years; why change now?
What Bernie is doing is exposing the lie at the heart of the welfare-state project. It was not about what is good for America and Americans but what it takes to win elections with free stuff.
As you can see from the chart, US government spending as a percent of the economy has gone about as far as it can go.
Now I believe what is happening is that Americans are being offered two futures, by two competing upper classes. The old future, represented by the Democratic Party and the educated gentry is the old game of the Gentry combining with the lower-class Clients to loot the Commoners. Loot in return for votes. The new future, represented by Trump, is for the Commoners to rebel against the old system and demand that their Commoner concerns and aspirations be addressed. Something that the old Republican Party was failing to do.
But, the question is, can the Commoners possibly win this game, when you consider that the whole educated Gentry would get totally screwed if politics in the US were reoriented towards the needs of the Commoners? No doubt the Gentry would fight to the last Client in order to keep their privileges and authority and feed their ambitions to be the wise rulers teaching the deplorables their needed daily lesson.
But then you look at the chart above and see that government spending has gone about as furr as it can go. Are the American people -- those suburban moms -- really going to vote for a massive increase in government spending? Probably not, unless you can stampede them into believing that the planet is about to die.
See my analysis of politics so far is that the creative class, the educated Gentry, has been running for the last century on the idea that, oh, we are the guys that care about the helpless victims, the workers, the women, the blacks, the immigrants, the homeless.
That line was gold when the vast majority of Americans were indeed workers struggling up through the industrial revolution. And, in the post-WWII world, the program adapted to the workers as they became suburban home-owners.
But since the Civil Rights revolution the gentry game has been to give free stuff to minorities -- and now immigrants -- out of the hide of the white working class, which is now really the Commoner class.
Back in the day the Republican Party was a Gentry party of the educated and the fairly well-to-do that was arguing for moderation in the expansion of government. It accepted the premise of benefits for the workers, but not so fast that it wrecked the economy.
But Trump has reinvented the Republican Party into a Commoner party that is saying: why should we Commoners pay for you Gentry to bribe your Client voters with our lives and our money?
So US politics has been transformed into Commoners-stick-together against the century-old coalition of educated Gentry and Clients.
I'd say the situation is that the Democrats are beside themselves; they really do not have a clue what to do next. Because all of them are apparatchiks of the old order, where you offered a little bit more free stuff to the Clients, and that was enough to get you over the finish line, most of the time. And don't forget the Irving Kristol rule that you must deal in the middle class if you want to help the poor.
Notice something? The Dems have stopped dealing in the middle class. Because Medicare for All doesn't offer anything to the middle class; instead it takes away their health insurance for... Yes, for what exactly?
But why? Why would the Dems do this?
Well, I think it is because in any ruling class, or any corporate hierarchy, the guys that understood what they are doing are the founders -- of the state or of the corporation. The chaps that come along later and step into the slots created by the founders know how to check the boxes and how to recite the anthems, but they don't know why. And so when they turn the dials and press the buttons and nothing happens, they really don't know what to do next.
So Bernie is punching his buttons, and Joe is punching his buttons, and the others are punching various buttons they learned from the Elders. And nothing is working.
What they need is someone that knows what he is doing.
Everyone thinks that Trump is an idiot, and is fumbling and stumbling like an amateur and really does not know what he is doing. Or maybe he got lucky. Maybe.
But if I were a Dem I would tell everyone I know to cut the crap and assume that Trump does know what he is doing.
And I believe that the future of politics in the advanced countries is going to be Commoners-stick-together. Oh, and any of you Clients that want to join us Commoners, come on in; the water's fine.
Hey, it makes sense. Commoners are the majority. They oughta have a politics that responds to their needs.
Democracy, dontcha know.
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