Four Common Weaknesses of Political Thought

Four Common Weaknesses of Political Thought

And Their Implications for the 2020 Presidential Campaign

1.     Racial Reductionism

2.     Racial and Ethnic Nationalism

3.     False Equivalence

4.     Great Man Theory

Reductionism

The inspiration for this section comes from Adolph Reed, in an article entitled

The Trouble With Uplift, How black politics succumbed to the siren song of the racial voice.

Reed's long and academic essay boils down to a denunciation of identity politics, and of racial identity politics in particular: 

The politics thus advanced is profoundly race-reductionist…  if American racism is an intractable, transhistorical force—indeed, an ontological one, as Ta-Nehisi Coates has characterized it—then it lies beyond structural political intervention…  Coates and other proponents of reparations seem unconcerned with the strategic problem of piecing together the kind of interracial popular support necessary to actually prevail on the issue… Winning anything politically—policies or changes in power relations—is not the point. That is why the jeremiads offered by contemporary racial voices so commonly boil down to calls for “conversations about race” or equally vapid abstractions like “racial reckoning” or “coming to terms with” a history defined by racism.

Implications for 2020: Focus on economic issues for the majority.  Briahna Joy Gray:

Barack Obama’s two campaigns are a powerful model for what a presidential pitch centering economics, rather than race, sounds like. As Michael Gerson, a speechwriter for President George W. Bush and Bob Dole observed, Obama’s 2012 stump speech was “very much an FDR Democratic class-warfare speech … He’s very much running on economic populist themes in tough economic times.” Highlighting class, Obama was able to win decisive numbers of white voters in crucial midwestern states. Despite his own identity, he won. Twice. Democrats should not let Trump’s racism drive them away from that effective strategy. 

Reed and Gray oppose reducing complex matters to racial foundations.  Rather, they favor interracial politics addressing concrete societal issues.

Racial and Ethnic Nationalism

Inspired by Norman Finkelstein, in an article entitled

Why the UK Labour Party should not adopt the IHRA Definition or any other definition of anti-Semitism.

Racial nationalism is related to race-reductionism.  Reed opposes reductionism in which a nation is seen as the sum of its constituent races.  Finkelstein opposed racial nationalism in which race is equated with national identity.  Reed's essay was about race and politics in the United States focusing on black-white relations.  Finkelstein's essay is about race and politics in the United Kingdom, focusing on relations between Jews and gentiles and the state of Israel.

Prodded by the anti-Corbyn Jewish Labour Movement, the (Labour) Party’s leadership poured into the code a mass of verbal sludge that polluted the venerable principle of free speech. Now British-Jewish elites are terrorizing Corbyn to accept a purported definition of anti-Semitism that, one, is and couldn’t but be gibberish, two, exemplifies ethnic special pleading, three, is not just pointless but also stifles vital debate, and, four, has nearly nothing to do with anti-Semitism and nearly everything to do with shielding Israel from deserved condemnation...

“A man curses,” Malcolm X surmised, “because he doesn’t have the words to say what’s on his mind.” Something similar can be observed about he who reflexively reaches for epithets like anti-Semite and racist. It’s an impoverished, ignorant, slovenly substitute for rational dialectic. If he is so blessed as to possess the mental tools to engage in such a dialectic, it’s also inexcusable.

Implications for 2020:   The U.S. Democrats are comparable to the U.K. Labour Party.   Boris Johnson is comparable to Donald Trump.  Ridiculous accusations of anti-Semitism tore apart the Labour Party and helped Boris Johnson win.  Accusations of racism, including those of anti-Semitism, are often reductionist, reducing complex issues and motives to simplistic stereotypes. 

Simplistic stereotypes are prevalent in U.S. foreign policy these days, on both sides of the political aisle.  Trump, Netanyahu, Pompeo, and Bolton on matters of foreign policy beat the war drums with regularity, often supported by Democrats (with regard to Venezuela and Iran, for example).  Democrats treat Putin as the devil incarnate, and take a tough military line in the new Cold War and it's current hotspot of Ukraine.  Rational discussion takes a back seat to epithets such as Moscow Mitch or Assad-lover.

Israel's racial nationalism may be a reaction to the German racial nationalism which brought us the holocaust.  Religious nationalism and ethnic nationalism are variations of this disease.  Nationalism, aka tribalism, is positive and necessary at some level.  It is generally good to bring one's group together behind a common set of values and goals.  Democrats can be successful by keep the focus on our group -- the United States -- and not being distracted by foreign affairs of only tangential interest to our voters.

We are multi-racial and multi-ethnic empire, and our success requires that we transcend race and ethnicity, both in our domestic affairs and our foreign allegiances. 

False Equivalence

Inspired by:

David Katz, in an article entitled
The “Double Genocide” Theory, The New And Official Form of Holocaust Denial

and

Mike Davis

On the Crimes of Socialism and Capitalism

Let's talk about socialism.  Bernie Sanders is a socialist, and he is one of the leading candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination.  Democrats will need the votes of his supporters to win the presidency in 2020.  Yet many Democrats fear the socialist label, seeing it as providing the Republicans with a lethal weapon. 

The Democrats have already boxed themselves into a corner somewhat by governing on the basis of what the Republicans will say as opposed to what is best for the country.  Thus, for example, Obamacare was crafted not as an efficient healthcare financing system, but rather as something that the Republicans wouldn't be able to discredit as socialist.  Now the Democrats are in the position of defending an inefficient, Republican system (originally developed by Republicans for Mitt Romney in Massachusetts).  And that didn't stop the Republicans from tarring Obama as a socialist.  (Obamacare was better than what we had before, and Democrats wouldn't have had the votes to institute a Canadian style system.  But they could have tried to do the right thing, and then fallen back on what became "Obamacare" as a compromise.  It could then have been termed Blue Dog care.)

So we Democrats should try to do the right thing, as opposed to being driven by what the Republicans will say.  What is the right thing with regard to socialism?  How can we Democrats be united in facing the inevitable charges the Republicans will make equating Democratic policies with Stalinism and Venezuelan government?  The truth is that democratic socialism works remarkably well in western Europe.  We have many socialist type programs in the U.S. such as universal, free public education through grade 12, Social Security, Medicare, the highway system, etc.

Implications for 2020:   Many socialist programs are very popular and successful in the United States and elsewhere.  The Democrats should speak up about these, while rejecting the name calling behavior.  The label is not so important as is the record of various social programs.  Republicans will be clearly engaging in false equivalence when they compare Democratic policies to those of Stalin or Hugo Chavez.  There is a vast difference between Norway and Stalinist Russia, for example. 

At a deeper level, the articles referenced above (The Double Genocide and On the Crimes of Socialism and Capitalism) explore catastrophes such as the Holocaust, and famines in capitalist and socialist countries.  In particular, Nazism is making something of a resurgence following the collapse of the Soviet Union.  Centrists, including Democrats, have been getting uncomfortably close with Nazis in places such as Ukraine.  Democrats should not only steer clear of Nazis, but should speak out forcefully against Nazi activity.  Trump voters are not in general equivalent to Nazis, but there are real Nazis about including some we've supported in Ukraine and the Baltic countries.

There are some political issues where outrage is genuinely appropriate.  In addition to Nazism, fake news by the mainstream media is another, in my opinion.   Quoting myself from Ranking Outrageous Behavior on a Societal Scale:

Outrage is warranted. The establishment, led by the intelligence community, now lies brazenly about matters of war and peace. There is no investigation or reporting of these lies. This is worse than Vietnam and Iraq 2003, in my opinion. As hard as this may be to take, Trump's talk of fake media is true, in my opinion, and therefore the outrage supporting Trump's abominable presidency is somewhat justified. So don't hate your neighbor. Rather pull together behind the need to reclaim an honest press and an honest discussion of foreign policy, including the role of intelligence agencies in domestic politics.

Great Man Theory

The Adolph Reed article mentioned above (under Reductionism) got me thinking about how we often deify individuals and downplay political movements.  Slavery in the U.S., for example, wasn't ended by the heroic exploits of any one person, black or white.  Rather it was a combination of people of both races in a political alliance.

My friends worry about Bernie Sanders' age, and this is certainly reasonable.  Bernie's campaign slogan, Not Me. Us., addresses this, I think.  Suppose Bernie is elected president, yet dies in office or becomes debilitated.  Would everything he stood for be for naught?  I don't think so.  I think he would have a capable vice president. I think he would have expanded the nation's consciousness as to what is possible in terms of dealing with the serious problems facing our nation and world.  I think he would have made some good appointments, and that future leaders would step up to fill the void created by his incapacitation.

It's not about Bernie or any of the candidates.  It's about political movement -- getting people together to address real problems. 

David Brooks on Moderates and Democrats

Brooks has a column today entitled Dems, Please Don’t Drive Me Away The dynamic pulling the party leftward.  Here I respond to the points he makes:

According to a Hill-HarrisX survey, only 13 percent of Americans say they would prefer a health insurance system with no private plans. Warren and Sanders pin themselves, and perhaps the Democratic Party, to a 13 percent policy idea. Trump is smiling.

My opinion is that Americans have no great love for their private health insurance.  Insurance is mostly a pain in the ass. Americans just want to get medical services with a minimum amount of expense and hassle.  Our system is more complicated than it needs to be as can be seen by comparison with the systems in other countries such as Canada.

Second, there is the economy. All of the Democrats seem to have decided to run a Trump-style American carnage campaign. The economy is completely broken. It only benefits a tiny sliver. Yet in a CNN poll, 71 percent of Americans say that the economy is very or somewhat good. We’re in the longest recovery in American history and the benefits are finally beginning to flow to those who need them most. Overall wages are rising by 3.5 percent, and wages for those in the lowest pay quartile are rising by well over 4 percent, the highest of all groups.

Democrats have caught the catastrophizing virus that inflicts the Trumpian right. They take a good point — that capitalism needs to be reformed to reduce inequality — and they radicalize it so one gets the impression they want to undermine capitalism altogether.

There is some validity to this point, but it ignores both the unfairness and the unsustainability of the current system.  I disagree with Brooks about the extent of reform needed.

Third, Democrats are wandering into dangerous territory on immigration. They properly trumpet the glories immigrants bring to this country. But the candidates can’t let anybody get to the left of them on this issue. So now you’ve got a lot of candidates who sound operationally open borders. Progressive parties all over the world are getting decimated because they have fallen into this pattern.

I agree with Brooks on this point.

Fourth, Democrats are trying to start a populist v. populist campaign against Trump, which is a fight they cannot win. Democratic populists talk as if the only elite in America is big business, big pharma — the top 1 percent. This allows them to sound populist without actually going after their donor bases — the highly educated affluent people along the coasts.

But the big divide in America is not between the top 1 percent and the bottom 99. It’s between the top 20 percent and the rest. These are the highly educated Americans who are pulling away from everybody else and who have built zoning restrictions and meritocratic barriers to make sure outsiders can’t catch up.

If Democrats run a populist campaign against the business elite, Trump will run a broader populist campaign against the entire educated elite. His populism is more compelling to people who respond to such things. After all, he is actually despised by the American elite, unlike the Democrats.

 A few thoughts on this:

1. Sanders also seems to be despised by the American elite.  If Brooks thinks that is necessary to win a populist campaign against Trump, then Brooks should consider Sanders.
2. Brooks claims that "Trump will run a broader populist campaign against the entire educated elite. His populism is more compelling to people who respond to such things".  I don't agree with this and Brooks doesn't provide any supporting arguments or evidence.  While some portion of people unsatisfied with the status quo (populists) are no doubt against the educated elite, others are no doubt against specific policies which have proven ineffective or worse.  

Finally, Democrats aren’t making the most compelling moral case against Donald Trump. They are good at pointing to Trump’s cruelties, especially toward immigrants. They are good at describing the ways he is homophobic and racist. But the rest of the moral case against Trump means hitting him from the right as well as the left.

A decent society rests on a bed of manners, habits, traditions and institutions. Trump is a disrupter. He rips to shreds the codes of politeness, decency, honesty and fidelity, and so renders society a savage world of dog eat dog. Democrats spend very little time making this case because defending tradition, manners and civility sometimes cuts against the modern progressive temper.

I disagree that Democrats spend little time criticizing Trump's lack of civility (and I disagree that that's a criticism from the right).  I do agree that many progressives are angry and ill-mannered.

The debates illustrate the dilemma for moderate Democrats. If they take on progressives they get squashed by the passionate intensity of the left. If they don’t, the party moves so far left that it can’t win in the fall.

Right now we’ve got two parties trying to make moderates homeless.

I suggest looking along the populist-elite dimension in addition to the left-right spectrum that Brooks uses.

Brooks famously opined that the success of the 2003 war in Iraq would lead to a generation of political moderation in the United States -- just the opposite of what actually happened as he acknowledges today.

I want moderates such as Brooks to have a home in the Democratic party.  I encourage Brooks to more seriously consider some of the populist Democratic ideas.  Populism is a natural reaction when the elites make mistakes.

Impeachment ... GROAN... But There's Hope!

Impeachment ... GROAN... But There's Hope!

1. This is the CIA fighting back against the Trump Administration (Barr) which is investigating likely intelligence community misdeeds with regard to Russiagate.
2. Trump decided to play hardball and investigate the Ukrainian involvement in Russiagate, and may have tried to use money (military aid) to accomplish this.
3. The CIA played hardball right back by concocting a dubious "whistleblower" exposure of Trump's Ukrainian investigation.  I say dubious and put "whistleblower" in quotes because the accusations are obviously partisan infighting as opposed to a lone whistleblower taking on the powers that be.  The CIA, the media, and the Democrats have been on the whistleblower's side from the start, even before the facts behind the accusations emerged.
4. The Democrats and the CIA are trying to obscure the intelligence community misdeeds with regard to Russiagate.  The open involvement of the CIA, the association with national security (as in Russiagate), and the heightened polarization (you are either for or against Trump regardless of the facts), are all designed to invalidate the investigation by the Trump Administration into the CIA's and FBI's handling of Russiagate.
5. The fact remains that the outstanding crimes were committed by the intelligence community, with the encouragement and at times funding from the Democrats.  Whereas both sides have reasonable cases with regard to the Ukrainian investigation, the same cannot be said for the original Russiagate.  Questionable anti-Russian / Cold War intelligence activity encouraged the coup in Ukraine and the subsequent fallout.  
6. The Russians have a much better foreign policy record in the 21st century as opposed to the Americans.
1. The Russians were right about WMDs and the advisability of toppling Saddam Hussein in Iraq in 2003.  The U.S. was disastrously wrong.
2. In Libya and Syria, the U.S. misjudged badly, leaving these two regions in chaos and severely damaging U.S. credibility.  Russia judged correctly that they could help restore the peace in Syria through military assistance.
3. With regard to Iran and Yemen, the U.S. has sided with Saudi Arabia and taken an extreme position against Iran.  Russia has been more centrist with regard to the Sunni-Shia conflict, and has avoided the entanglements that have further damaged U.S. credibility in the region and around the world.
4. In Georgia, the U.S. (led by John McCain) did a lot of saber rattling after Russia moved in to protect Russian sympathizers in South Ossetia and Abkhazia.  But ultimately the U.S. did nothing and Russia achieved its aims.
5. In Ukraine, the U.S. assisted in the replacement of a Russia friendly government by a U.S. friendly government.  However, Russia annexed Crimea and Russian sympathizers control eastern Ukraine.  Ukraine itself is unstable since the 2014 coup, and U.S. politics have been rendered unstable in part as a result of the fallout from this region as demonstrated in the current impeachment imbroglio.  
6. With regard to China, the U.S. is engaged in another Cold War, while the Russians have improved relations.
7. In large part because of U.S./U.K. blunders in the Middle East, Europe has been swamped with refugees and a populist backlash against governments throughout the region.  Brexit is the most obvious disastrous result of the failed policies of the U.S. and U.K. military-intelligence establishment.

(Update 11/3/2019:   Scott Ritter has a good summary of the Russian foreign policy success: 
Russia Isn't Getting the Recognition It Deserves on Syria)

In summary, the U.S. military-intelligence complex has a disastrous record over the last 20 years.  American influence has fallen dramatically, while the Russia has a record of success, strength, and prudence (e.g. Iran) in comparison.  Rather than acknowledge their mistakes, the political-intelligence establishment in the U.S. has doubled down on Russia being the root of our problems, including the election of Trump in 2016.  

The hope is that a restoration of centrist leadership (a la Clinton, Bush, and Obama) will lead to a restoration of American power to dealing with Russia, Ukraine, the Middle East, China, Venezuela, etc.  We refuse to acknowledge that Russian success vis-a-vis the United States is a result of their doing better with the facts (Iraq 2003) and being more realistic on the battlefield (Syria, Georgia, Crimea, eastern Ukraine) and in the diplomatic arena (Iran, China).  The CIA's job is to advance American interests around the world and they have failed miserably, yet they are now moving more forcefully into domestic politics.

Trump, on the other hand, has no coherent strategy for dealing with foreign affairs.  He's hired and fired neo-con monster John Bolton, and still works closely with neo-con leaders such as Pompeo and Barr.  He's needed their inside help to fight Russiagate and now Ukrainegate.  He's in a desperate fight to do what?  Protect himself from a CIA led coup.

My guess is that impeachment proceedings will end in stalemate.  Despite the apparent strength of the CIA/media/Democratic position, the Trump Republicans and their allies will not be easily defeated in such a short time.  Here are some related thoughts:

• Impeachment will be unpopular with U.S. voters.  It's a distraction from the issues we care about.  Public squabbling amongst intelligence agencies and senior politicians will result in the airing of a lot of dirty laundry, ultimately helping Trump's populist stance and harming the centrist Democrats.
• Democrats have the mainstream media on their side in unprecedented fashion.  Thus, there may be high confidence (overconfidence?) by the Democrats and their CIA allies that they will prevail in the court of public opinion.
• The presidential battle will be closely contested, with the populist unpopularity of impeachment somewhat offsetting the mainstream media support for the Democrats.
• The state of the economy will be important, as always, to the incumbent's prospects for reelection.  An additional factor this election, however, is that Trump has a reputation as an economic populist -- who poses a challenge to the economic status quo.  
• If the Democrats nominate a populist such as Elizabeth Warren, they will be in position to benefit from economic weakness.  Economic strength would favor Trump in this case.
• If the Democrats nominate a status quo figure such as Biden, Republicans will be in a better position to benefit from economic weakness.  Economic strength would favor Biden in this case.
• I think the Dems will nominate Warren, who is the only plausible candidate to bridge the Clinton-Sanders divide that plagues the party.  So Dems will be hoping for economic weakness (recession) in 2020.  They can blame this on Trump without having to defend their own questionable ties to the economic status quo.
• The military-intelligence community will be wary of a potential Warren presidency, as well as being divided internally.  Once impeachment fails in the Senate, they will recede from the public view, somewhat chastened.  They have no viable political path forward unless Biden (or another from the Clinton camp) wins the nomination.
• The mainstream media will endorse Warren as an alternative to Trump.
• Many of the wealthy will be against a potential Warren presidency.  But they will be split between pro and anti Trump factions, with more being anti-Trump.
• Trump will try to boost the stock market and the economy by getting a trade agreement with China.  Ironically, this could be discouraged by the intelligence community, engaged as it is at the moment in intense infighting.  Also, Dems and the mainstream media will be reluctant to support such as a measure during the impeachment battle and its aftermath.  And China will be reluctant to make a deal with Trump, given his hostility and unreliability. Thus, Trump's efforts to jumpstart the economy will fail and the country will slip into recession.
• Warren will win the presidency, and the country will get a fresh start in economic and foreign policy affairs.  

Logos, Ethos, Pathos

Nathan Robinson, of Current Affairs, wrote the following: 

I don’t like to invoke the authority of the ancient Greeks, but Aristotle really did point out something quite useful in his treatise on rhetoric. He wrote that:

“There are… three means of effecting persuasion. The man who is to be in command of them must, it is clear, be able (1) to reason logically, (2) to understand human character and goodness in their various forms, and (3) to understand the emotions-that is, to name them and describe them, to know their causes and the way in which they are excited.”

Rhetoric consists of logos, ethos, and pathos—logic, emotion, and character.

Let's apply these concepts to my perspective on the current state of politics in the United States. 

1.     The Republicans long ago lost credibility in my eyes.  The Iraq War of 2003 eliminated any doubt in my mind.

2.     The establishment Democrats have lost credibility in my eyes due to two more recent stances:

a.     The anti-Bernie hysteria that began in 2016, and is reminiscent of previous Republican anti-Clinton hysteria.  Please see this recent article by Branko Marcetic which compares the two.

b.     The Russiagate investigation which, in my eyes, has shown most Democrats unable or unwilling to recognize the truth.  Rather, there has been a mass movement to blame the election of Donald Trump on the Russians.  Fox News now has more credibility in my eyes, on this issue.  Instead of accepting that Mueller's report was based on faulty intelligence, the Dems have doubled down on the faulty/fraudulent intelligence.  Insinuendo: Why the Mueller Report Doth Repeat So Much provides a clear look at what has been going on in this regard.  Conveniently for my analogy, Mueller was also FBI Director in 2003 pushing the bogus "intelligence" that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. ("Baghdad has the capability and, we presume, the will to use biological, chemical, or radiological weapons against US domestic targets in the event of a US invasion.")  Saddam Hussein has morphed into Vladimir Putin.

Thus, the Democrats have adopted the tactics of their nemeses, the Republicans. Opposition figures to the left are thoughtlessly demonized.  Russia is blamed for our problems.

In my circles of friends and relatives, nobody agrees with me on this.  The best response I get is when people listen a bit and agree with certain things, while not passing judgment on others.  Other times, people talk past me, not responding to points.  Usually the conversation abruptly ends as the other person doesn't respond anymore.  I at least try to end conversations on a good note, with some explanation for my non-response.

The fact is that people often cannot handle the truth.  This is neither good nor bad, but a fact of human nature.  The condition is known as epistemic learned helplessness.  This means that we tend not to go along with weird theories, even if the person propounding a theory seems to have logical arguments.  Most often, we do not have enough knowledge ourselves, in the specific domain under discussion, to argue with the proponent of the weird theory.  But we know that the theory is not backed by the experts we trust, that we do not have enough time to become experts ourselves, and weird theories are often used to fool or cheat us into doing something we shouldn't.

So this brings us full circle -- back to the sphere of trust. Humans operate from a mental model of how the world works.  Integral to this model is the set of people we trust, and this is not easy to change regardless of the facts we learn.  We are continually trying to fit new facts into our mental models, either questioning the facts or expanding our model to incorporate them.  The models have been devloped over the course of a lifetime and are responsible for our mental stability as well as our place in society.  The sphere of trust is not casually modified.

So those of us who are Democrats tend to stay Democrats, and the same with Republicans.  But when a party splits, as both Democrats and Republicans threaten to do at the current time, then societal change is possible.  For example, I will probably be tempted to vote for a third party candidate should the Democrats continue their love affair with Mueller and the anti-Russian war machine.  Third parties haven't broken through in the United States, but they have been significant factors in many presidential elections including the last one.  (Full disclosure: I live in Michigan and voted for Jill Stein.)  And many Republicans dislike Trump and his wing of the party and will not vote for him.

I am tempted to send an email to my 100 closest friends and relatives announcing my disgust with Mueller and Russiagate.  But I think that would be risky for me personally in that it would threaten to harm many relationships.  People would tune me out as a weirdo.  Others might agree, but would be reluctant to do so publicly as it might risk some of their relationships.  The web of trusts is strong..

So Democrats will continue to erode their credibiity by refusing to update their mental models to accommodate the lack of accountability and credibility of our "intelligence" community, as demonstrated in the Russiagate affair.  There is much more about this affair than meets the eye, yet we are not allowed to learn about "intelligence", which is secretive by nature.  Intelligence cannot be shared willy nilly, but rather is shared with the public to support various agendas.  The network of power relations and the consensus sphere of trust is dominated by large media corporations that cooperate with the intelligence agencies.  Those, such as myself, who question the credibility of the whole edifice can best work at the margins and divisions amongst the power players.

Over time, trust in the status quo becomes more superficial, as more people become like me.  The pump is primed for change.  The conditions are ripe.  The table is set.  The process may already be in motion.  So far Elizabeth Warren seems to be navigating the shoals pretty well.  Perhaps she represents the right combination of dramatic change and non-threatening demeanor that people are longing for.  Other options, including more Trump, Biden, Harris, and Sanders, seem likely to explode into conflict.

Elizabeth Warren has the character (credibility - ethos), passion and ability to connect with people (pathos), and reasonable policies (logos - intellect) to carry the day and hopefully pull us back from the brink.

Steelmanning Democrats & Republicans

Introduction

I frequently am amazed and dismayed by the attitudes and opinions of others.  How can people be so stupid?, I think.  At times like this, it's good to remember the trick of steelmanning:

Steelmanning is the act of taking a view, or opinion, or argument and constructing the strongest possible version of it. It is the opposite of strawmanning.

We all have mental models of how the world works, and as Sun Tzu said in "The Art of War":

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

It pays to understand one's "enemy".  With that in mind, and in my current status as neither a Democrat nor a Republican, I attempt here to steelman a Biden voter and a Trump voter.

Democrats: The Party of Progress

Democrats appreciate the human traits that have brought us this far -- to a world of unparalleled prosperity and human rights -- but also understand that we will have to change if we are to avoid extinction.

A Biden voter is aware of the tremendous injustice that has been part of human history, and wants to be sure that we maintain and expand the gains we have made in this regard.  Powerful forces including autocrats such as Putin may wish to hold the line on the expansion of human rights, and perhaps even turn back the clock.  Trump's "Make America Great Again" theme threatens to roll back the progress we've made.

In addition, human technology has reached the point that we threaten to destroy our earthly habitat.  Progress in controlling technology is not optional if we are to survive as a species. 

Our opponents have thwarted efforts to deal seriously with these issues.  We need to up our game and show that we can and will overcome the often inhuman or corrupt resistance to progress and sustainability.

Republicans: The Reality Based Party

Republicans appreciate the American traits that have brought us this far -- to a world of unparalleled prosperity and human rights -- but also understand that we must be vigilant in asserting and defending our values. 

A Trump voter is proud to live in a democracy where the majority rules and minority rights are respected.  We value our shared culture as Americans and recognize the need to actively support it.  We are a nation of immigrants, but we have come together to form a new identity, and it is that shared identity which must take precedence if we are to live together in peace and prosperity.  A Trump voter accepts that progress that has been made in human rights in the face of opposition by conservatives, as historic racism is universally acknowledged and segregation no longer promoted.  This acceptance is the objective truth as shown by the public positions of all top Republicans, but is denied by many prominent Democrats.

And the denial of objective truth is now more of a problem with the Democrats than with the Republicans.  I'm amazed to hear myself say this, but this happened when Trump was elected in 2016.  Democrats blamed Trump's victory on an unfounded Russian collusion conspiracy theory, and used loose accusations of racism to divide the country along ethnic and partisan lines. 

This was again clear with the COVID-19 pandemic, where opposition to Trump trumped scientific evidence with regard to the origin of the virus, the efficacy of various treatments, and preventative measures.  Amid a tremendous amount of scientific uncertainty, the Democrats and their allies in the mainstream media were overly certain in disagreeing with whatever the Republicans said.

We've reached the point where the national discourse, led by the Democratic leaning mainstream media, can best be described as social hysteria.  See, for instance, Due Process Is Good, He Said Controversially. 

After (Greenwald's) article about the Matt Gaetz case, trolls and blue checks rolled out an innuendo parade. He was a hypocrite for saying the New York Post’s Hunter Biden expose shouldn’t have been blocked, a “MAGA troll” who defends “40 year-olds who sleep with kids” (the contribution by “antiracism educator” Tim Wise), and a defender of white supremacists who hates women and is himself an ephebophile who groomed his own husband, among many other things.

This was the reaction to an article claiming that more evidence is needed before we pass judgment on sexual misconduct allegations against a Trump supporter.  Similar hysteria is rampant with regard to issues such as trans rights, me too claims, Russian sympathies, etc.  Numerous media figures and educators have lost their jobs for speaking rationally and trying to confront the hysteria.

Many Trump voters recognize the threats of war and global warming, yet feel that damping unwarranted social hysteria should be the priority.  Social hysteria gets in the way of the kind of progress we need.  

Conclusion

As I write this, I recall writing something similar a year ago:  The Democratic Reconquista.  The Democrats have been getting owned by the Republicans for decades (my entire adult life).  They finally decided that if you can't beat 'em, join 'em, and have a gone all out with the tactics of Republicans prior to Trump:

●      Hysterical overreaction and name calling.

●      Accusations of being pawns of the Russians.

●      Using the intelligence agencies to smear the opposition.

●      etc, etc, etc

The 2020 presidential and senatorial election results may seem to validate the merits of this win at all costs approach.  Now that Biden is in, there are signs that better policies may follow.  The odds of ultimate success will be greatly enhanced if we step back from the xenophobia, identity politics, and social hysteria and consolidate our gains, while recognizing that the "enemy" makes some good points.

Accountability - Republican or Bipartisan?

 A new favorite of my Democratic friends is Heather Cox Richardson.  On the 20th anniversary of 9/11, one of friends sent me her column about 9/11 and the ensuing 20 years.  HCR is a fervent Democrat in my experience and places the blame for our country's problems in recent years on the Republicans:

But even in 2001, that America was under siege by those who distrusted the same democracy today’s events commemorated. Those people, concentrated in the Republican Party, worried that permitting all Americans to have a say in their government would lead to “socialism”: minorities and women would demand government programs paid for with tax dollars collected from hardworking people—usually, white men. They wanted to slash taxes and government regulations, giving individuals the “freedom” to do as they wished.

In 1986, they had begun to talk about purifying the vote; when the Democrats in 1993 passed the so-called Motor Voter law permitting people to register to vote at certain government offices, they claimed that Democrats were buying votes. The next year, Republicans began to claim that Democrats won elections through fraud, and in 1998, the Florida legislature passed a voter ID law that led to a purge of as many as 100,000 voters from the system before the election of 2000, resulting in what the United States Commission on Civil Rights called “an extraordinarily high and inexcusable level of disenfranchisement,” particularly of African American voters.

This view of the world matches mine from most of my life.  I have been a fervent Democrat and have attributed most of our country's problems to the Republicans.  However, since Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016, my view is that the Democrats have adopted Republican deficiencies and become equally culpable.  In particular, the Democrats and their supporters pushed false charges from the intelligence community blaming Russia for Trump's election and initiating a new Cold War with Russia on that basis.  Democrats also used race to divide the county, fighting back in kind against Republicans.

So I have a different take from HCR on the 20 years since 9/11/2001.  She now sides with former president Bush in "calling out the similarities between today's domestic terrorists who attacked our Capitol to overthrow our government on January 6 and the terrorists of 9/11".  As Bush put it:

But in their disdain for pluralism, in their disregard for human life, in their determination to defile national symbols, they are children of the same foul spirit. 

I agree with Matt Taibbi who characterized the equivalence as follows:

the insane comparison of the 9/11 hijackers — people who committed intentional mass murder of thousands — with yahoos who waved Trump 2020 flags and took selfies on the Senate floor before ultimately pleading to crimes like “obstruction of an official proceeding,” the heaviest felony prosecutors could muster. 

So I've diverged from Democrats such as HCR in my view of the world.  She continues to see Republicans as our main problem whereas I see both Republicans and Democrats such as her as the problem.  There has been little accountability for our failures since 9/11/2001, and we need accountability for our increasingly bipartisan failures.  In that light, I commend the following:  

A modest proposal: Fire all of the post 9/11 generals, by Andrew Bacevich

Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal For preventing the Children of Poor People From being a Burthen to Their Parents or Country, and For making them Beneficial to the Publick,” published in 1729, suggested that the impoverished Irish might improve their condition by selling their children to be “stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled” and served on the tables of well-to-do English gentry. My own modest proposal envisions nothing quite so drastic. 

But whereas Swift’s “Modest Proposal” was intended as a satire, mine is not. Absent serious efforts to reform the senior officer corps, we can expect more Afghanistans to come. Listen to General Mark Milley, Joint Chiefs of Staff chair, who expected Afghan forces to hang on “from weeks to months and even years following our departure” and tell me I’m wrong.

HCR wrote a post on 9/8/2021 describing decades of Republican malfeasance and noting approvingly that finally Republicans are being held accountable:

While Ford recoiled from the prospect of putting a former president on trial, prosecutors today have seen no reason not to charge the people who stormed the Capitol. More than 570 have been charged so far. 

Yesterday, a 67-year-old Idaho man, Duke Edward Wilson, pleaded guilty to obstruction of an official proceeding and assaulting, resisting or impeding certain officers. He faces up to 8 years and a $250,000 fine for assaulting the law enforcement officers. And he faces up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for obstruction of an official proceeding.

This law was originally put in place in 1871 to stop members of the Ku Klux Klan from crushing state and local governments during Reconstruction. 

HCR started blogging 2 years ago in reaction to and support of Adam Schiff,  chairman of the U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.  Schiff has been notoriously wrong about Trump's involvement with Russia, claiming repeatedly, for example, that the Steele dossier was legitimate.  

Back in 2017, (Schiff) was the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee and therefore the man Democrats counted on to lead the charge that Trump had colluded with the Kremlin in order to steal the election. He did so with gusto. Quoting from a dossier prepared by ex-British MI6 agent Christopher Steele, he regaled a March 2017 committee hearing with tales of how Russia bribed Trump adviser Carter Page by offering him a hefty slice of a Russian natural-gas company known as Rosneft and of how Russian agents boosted Trump’s political fortunes by hacking Hillary Clinton’s emails and passing them on to WikiLeaks...   

Hours later, he assured MSNBC that the evidence of collusion was “more than circumstantial.” Nine months after that, he informed CNN’s Jake Tapper that the case was no longer in doubt: “The Russians offered help, the campaign accepted help, the Russians gave help, and the president made full use of that help.” In February 2018, he told reporters: “There is certainly an abundance of non-public information that we’ve gathered in the investigation. And I think some of that non-public evidence is evidence on the issue of collusion and some … on the issue of obstruction.”

The press lapped it up. But now, thanks to the May 7 release of 57 transcripts of secret testimony – transcripts, by the way, that Schiff bottled up for months – we have a better idea of what such “non-public information” amounts to. The answer: nothing. A parade of high-level witnesses told the intelligence committee that either they didn’t know about collusion or lacked evidence even to venture an opinion. Not one offered the contrary view that collusion was true.

 But rather than admit that the investigation had turned up nothing, Schiff lied that it had – not once but repeatedly.

Let that sink in for a moment. Collusion dominated the headlines from the moment Buzzfeed published the Steele dossier on Jan. 10, 2017, to the release of the Muller report on Apr. 18, 2019. That’s more than two years, a period in which newspapers and TV were filled with Russia, Russia, Russia and little else. Thanks to the uproar, acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein secretly discussed using the Twenty-fifth Amendment to force Trump out of office, while an endless parade of newscasters and commentators assured viewers that the president’s days were numbered because “the walls are closing in.”

Schiff’s only response was to egg it on to greater and greater heights. Even when Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller issued his no-collusion verdict – “the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities,” his report said – Schiff insisted that there was still “ample evidence of collusion in plain sight.”

Schiff's biggest campaign contributors are defense contractors including Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Orbital ATK, Harris Corporation, and Raytheon.

But surpassing all these is Parsons Corp, a multinational engineering services firm...  Parsons has maxed out for Schiff ... an honor it hasn’t bestowed on any other congressperson... 

Parsons’s various subsidiaries receive huge amounts of government largesse. Its “Government Services” subsidiary landed more than $740 million in government contracts in 2017, most of which came from the defense department, while its “Global Services” subsidiary has raked in tens of millions of dollars worth over the last few years, almost all from the Pentagon.

Parsons benefited directly from Schiff’s vote for the Iraq War, becoming the second largest reconstruction contractor in the country... And as if war-profiteering wasn’t enough, Parsons’s work in Iraq tended to be rife with problems... While other lawmakers criticized the company for its failures, Schiff was muted...

So HCR wants accountability for the unarmed protestors who went to the Capitol on January 6, but is a big supporter of Adam Schiff and in fact founded her blog in support of his intelligence findings.  It is obvious to me that her demand for accountability is misplaced.  Republicans should be held accountable for our many fiascos over the past 20 years, but so also should Democrats such as Adam Schiff and others in the bipartisan foreign policy establishment.

An Election as Part of a Movement

Populist movements are on the march across the neoliberal democratic world, along with various fringe or borderline areas.

In the United States, the Sanders candidacy represents a populist movement.  As such, it is similar to the Trump presidency.  In Britain, the Brexit movement toppled the neoliberal establishment.  In France, the Yellow Vests have been on the streets for over a year.  Populism has been rising in Germany.  The populist Sinn Fein party just scored an upset victory in Ireland.  Populists have dominated Italian politics in recent years.   Protests in Hong Kong are ongoing.  The Middle East has been rife with populist turmoil of one sort or another for decades.  Modi in India and Duterte in the Philippines are right wing populists, as are the leaders of Hungary (Orban) and Brazil (Bolsonaro).  Mexico and Venezuela have leftist populist leaders, while the leftist populist leader of Bolivia was recently deposed in a coup.  Civil protests are taking place throughout Chile.

Leftist populism is age related in the United States.  An Economist/YouGov poll released this week (written Feb 15) found that 60 percent of Democrats younger than 30 support either Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren; among those 65 and older, the progressive candidates’ combined total was 27 percent.  Exit polls from New Hampshire affirmed this generational split, with Sanders winning 47 percent of voters 18 to 29, but just 15 percent of those over 65.

This is the context for the 2020 presidential election which finds Bernie Sanders as the leading Democrat trying to unseat Republican Donald Trump.   The old guard is under attack from both the left and the right, and from the next generation.  Reactionary forces have moved into high gear, employing vast quantities of advertising and scare tactics in an attempt to derail the populist movements.  We are told that Trump is such a threat to our democracy that we must rally behind the Democratic establishment to preserve liberal values.  In this view, establishment Democrats provide the only credible alternative to a second Trump term and the end of democracy as we know it.  This is indeed a frightening prospect.

I disagree with this reactionary political movement for two fundamental reasons:

1. In my opinion, the U.S. military intelligence complex is a greater threat to our liberal values than are Trump Republicans.
2. The Democratic establishment has proven ineffective in representing liberal values and presenting an alternative to Trumpian populism.

I will discuss the military intelligence complex below, but first I will address the argument as to whether Sandersonian populism can be more effective than the Democratic establishment  The best argument against Sandersonian democratic socialism, in my opinion, is that it's unrealistic.  I disagree with this argument, but it is a serious one.  Protest movements are by their very nature not sustainable in the long term, in large part due to the amount of energy and commitment it takes to maintain them*.  If Sanders is elected president, he will face formidable obstacles to implementing his agenda.  Congress will block him, corporations with vested interests will continue to oppose him, and the military intelligence establishment will undermine him.  A reasonable argument can be made that he will be unable to govern effectively, and that therefore his liberal ideals will be discredited.

Against this, we can see the fate of Democrats during the Obama presidency.  As a moderate, Obama swept into the presidency with Democrats in control of both houses of Congress, including 60 senators.  However, his Democratic administration was openly undermined by Republicans and, ultimately Democrats overall were discredited by the electorate as Republicans came to dominate all branches of government by 2016, including especially state governments.  Moderates failed in precisely the way that reactionary conventional wisdom predicts that Sanders will fail.

Looking at American and world history shows that real change in society is possible.  Slavery was abolished.  Women got the right to vote.  In the New Deal era, Social Security was passed and laws passed to help workers and the unemployed.  Throughout the western democratic world, health care is provided as a human right (except in the U.S., although we are much of the way there).  Minority rights are protected much more than they were in the past.  These advances did not result from singular electoral victories.  Rather they were the culmination of movements which eventually prevailed over vested interests and the status quo.

This is the light in which the Sanders candidacy is most constructively viewed.  Ian Welsh discusses this in more detail.

Bernie Sanders, like Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Occupy Wall Street, and Black Lives Matter before him, wants to use mass appeal audience effects to renegotiate the country’s political and economic contract...  These movements operate by forcing conflict out into the open, on favorable terms and on favorable ground. Make the malignancy of power show its face in daylight. Gandhi and the salt march. MLK and the Selma to Montgomery marches. FDR picking fights and catalyzing popular support throughout the New Deal era, starting with the first 100 days. Occupy Wall Street changed American language and political consciousness by cementing the frame of the 1% into the lexicon. Black Lives Matter reminded America who it has been and still is on the streets of Ferguson...  Sanders understands very clearly what kind of coalition and movement he needs to ignite to accomplish the vision he’s putting out in his campaign. It’s an aspirational vision...  Elites may beat Sanders himself but they will not beat the movement he’s invigorating but did not create.

Realistically, we the people have limited power in comparison to the .1% who own most of the wealth.  Whether we vote for Bernie or for Bloomberg or for Trump, they will continue to hold disproportionate power and continue to act in their own self-interest.  What we can do is make our preferences clear, and push for a better society for all by exposing problem areas to a wider audience.

Viewed from the global perspective, there are similar movements for change in many places, abetted by advances in communications technologies which expose problems to large audiences.  As the predominant global superpower, the U.S. leads the reactionary response to protest and unrest across much of the world.  The neoliberal establishment blames the ascendance of Trump in the U.S. on Russia.  China is blamed elsewhere.  Iran is seen as a major culprit in the Middle East.  Populism in the U.S., Britain, France, Germany, and Italy is blamed on racism.  Problems in Central America and South America are blamed on corrupt dictators, and so forth.  There is little self-awareness as to dysfunction of the U.S. led international system of neoliberal economics and politics.

The Democratic party establishment has demonstrated this lack of self-awareness to an extraordinary extent since the 2016 presidential election.  Trump's victory was blamed on Russia, Sanders, racism, and the FBI, although it was later revealed that the leadership of the FBI (including Director Comey) was anti-Trump and pro-Clinton.  Most troubling, the Democrats and the mainstream media have relied on faulty leaks from the FBI, CIA, and British intelligence sources to make their anti-Trump, pro-neoliberal establishment case.

I have written about this, providing detailed examples, many times.  For example, Robert Mueller played a lead role in trying to discredit Trump.  Mueller was given tremendous credibility by the Democrats and media despite his poor track record.  For example, as FBI Director in 2003, he asserted:

Baghdad has the capability and, we presume, the will to use biological, chemical, or radiological weapons against US domestic targets in the event of a US invasion.

When his investigation of Trump was concluded last year, finding no evidence of Trump conspiracy with Russia, it was widely dismissed by Democrats and the media.  Our democratic system has already been severely compromised by the intelligence community such that we ignore their being wrong and move on to their next batch of "leaks".   The impeachment process, initiated by a CIA "whisteblower" over investigation of possible corruption in Ukraine. was a massive distraction from the serious problems facing the country.  It demonstrated that Trump faces massive opposition in the public sphere, in contrast to the intelligence community which is largely unaccountable.

Thus, I disagree with the scare tactics promulgated by the Democratic establishment regarding Trump as a threat to our democratic system.  The greater threat to our democracy can be seen in the Democratic campaign for president in 2020.  Pete Buttigieg has become a favorite of the intelligence community and invested in the app which has prevented the Iowa caucus from being conducted fairly.  In a widely acknowledged fiasco, the Democratic establishment ended up giving Buttigieg more delegates than Sanders, despite Sanders winning more votes and documenting mathematical errors with regard to determining delegates.

Mike Bloomberg has entered the Democratic race and is throwing tons of money into a desperate attempt to stop Sanders.  No major media outlets endorse Sanders, nor do they cover his campaign fairly.  Vested interests are everywhere throwing money and misleading commentary in an attempt to preserve the status quo.  Hillary Clinton and Lloyd Blankfein are amongst these purveyors of fear.

Of course, political campaigns have always been rough and tumble events.  Thus, Republicans will say that Trump's lying and funding by vested interests are fair.  Democrats will say that stopping Trump is imperative and justify Bloomberg's Trump-like performance.   The U.S. as an empire cannot escape the desire of other countries (U.K., Israel, Ukraine) to affect the U.S. political scene.  That's reality.  But secretive and unaccountable intelligence agencies are best positioned to take advantage of this landscape, not a relative outsider such as Trump.

Again, a Sanders victory will not magically clear this up.  But it will provide an opportunity to expose real problems, including election misbehavior, to a wider audience.  The mainstream media will have to extend the Overton Window to encompass Sanders' bully pulpit.  This would be a great restorative measure for the U.S., and thus for the world as a whole as we struggle to evolve more effective democratic principles and reduce the need for populist protest.