The end of US democracy thread

[gkbill]

Hello,

Is this what we have really become? Working with fellow congressmen/women of the opposing party will cost you a leadership position? I'm no fan of Kevin McCarthy but the headline says it all. John Henry Clay is rolling over in his grave.

https://archive.ph/deIDr

In the end, it's all our fault for electing such immature narcissistic children - perhaps we can point at the political parties, but (in theory, at least) the parties consist of citizens.

[Flex]

Gaetz is a particularly despicable jackass. I'm honestly shocked McCarthy had the spine to stand up to him. Not that I have any affection for him, but it's frustrating that doing even the bare minimum of responsibile governance has such a disincentive.

I'm on vacation and get to go to some NPS sites this week that I was thinking I'd have to skip. I guess I'll send McCarthy a postcard from one of them.

[Sparky]

Hello,

Is this what we have really become? Working with fellow congressmen/women of the opposing party will cost you a leadership position? I'm no fan of Kevin McCarthy but the headline says it all. John Henry Clay is rolling over in his grave.

https://archive.ph/deIDr

In the end, it's all our fault for electing such immature narcissistic children - perhaps we can point at the political parties, but (in theory, at least) the parties consist of citizens.

And it just keeps getting better....

https://nypost.com/2023/10/01/house-gop ... -mccarthy/

[Dr. Medulla]

Hello,

Is this what we have really become? Working with fellow congressmen/women of the opposing party will cost you a leadership position? I'm no fan of Kevin McCarthy but the headline says it all. John Henry Clay is rolling over in his grave.

https://archive.ph/deIDr

In the end, it's all our fault for electing such immature narcissistic children - perhaps we can point at the political parties, but (in theory, at least) the parties consist of citizens.

And it just keeps getting better....

https://nypost.com/2023/10/01/house-gop ... -mccarthy/

An open civil war with the GOP would be a good thing, at least in the short term. Force the non-MAGA to pick a side instead of trying to have it both ways.

[revbob]

Hello,

Is this what we have really become? Working with fellow congressmen/women of the opposing party will cost you a leadership position? I'm no fan of Kevin McCarthy but the headline says it all. John Henry Clay is rolling over in his grave.

https://archive.ph/deIDr

In the end, it's all our fault for electing such immature narcissistic children - perhaps we can point at the political parties, but (in theory, at least) the parties consist of citizens.

And it just keeps getting better....

https://nypost.com/2023/10/01/house-gop ... -mccarthy/

An open civil war with the GOP would be a good thing, at least in the short term. Force the non-MAGA to pick a side instead of trying to have it both ways.

Yeah so many Republicans are terrified of crossing Trump. A few felt slightly emboldened after Jan 6th, but not really enough to convict him. And most of those that sort of spoke out have walked it back and or declared their full support for him.

[Dr. Medulla]

Hello,

Is this what we have really become? Working with fellow congressmen/women of the opposing party will cost you a leadership position? I'm no fan of Kevin McCarthy but the headline says it all. John Henry Clay is rolling over in his grave.

https://archive.ph/deIDr

In the end, it's all our fault for electing such immature narcissistic children - perhaps we can point at the political parties, but (in theory, at least) the parties consist of citizens.

And it just keeps getting better....

https://nypost.com/2023/10/01/house-gop ... -mccarthy/

An open civil war with the GOP would be a good thing, at least in the short term. Force the non-MAGA to pick a side instead of trying to have it both ways.

Yeah so many Republicans are terrified of crossing Trump. A few felt slightly emboldened after Jan 6th, but not really enough to convict him. And most of those that sort of spoke out have walked it back and or declared their full support for him.

I imagine well over half of Republicans in Congress want him convicted. Far easier to benefit from Trump the martyred symbol than deal with Trump the ongoing problem.

[Flex]

Could be a few spots for this, I suppose. An interesting article about the trouble the illiberal movements of the moment are running into, which is that they still have to promise modernity to be attractive. Some lengthy excerpts:

The Illiberal’s Dilemma

The picture of modern prosperity outlined above poses a problem for illiberals. The fundamental nature of illiberalism—regardless of which palette-swap reactionary movement we’re talking about—is a pervading and indeed pre-intellectual libidinal love for hierarchy—for status, power, order, and violence. As the famous Wilhoit Proposition puts it: “Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: there must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.” This of course gets dressed up in various ways, ethnic or religious and always, always patriarchal guises, but the fundamental idea is the same: there are some people who belong on top, and good things should accrue to them, and other people who belong on the bottom, and bad things should accrue to them, most especially domination and inferiority. Of course, being on top of the hierarchy in the modern world requires having all the stuff that modernity produces: the weapons, the medicines, the media, the food, the travel, the abundance, the everything. Everyone wants the stuff. No conservative who longs for an earlier age suggests cutting themselves off from the modern world in an intentional community, as the Amish have—because that would mean accepting an inferior place in the hierarchy of power.

The illiberal’s dilemma is therefore simple: modern economic growth and especially the continual churn of new productive technologies is inimical to the maintenance of stable status hierarchies. Consider one historically central example. The pre-modern world saw wealth and power based very consistently on a single thing: ownership of land, and the rents accruing therefrom. The industrial revolution increased the productivity of land—and, paradoxically, decreased the power of landowners, as they became an increasingly small fraction of the overall economy. Land became worth less and less as compared to industrial development—and, suddenly, our political and social worlds stopped orbiting around the big farmer up on the hill. A stable status hierarchy is a closed loop of political, economic, and social domination. The continual emergence of new and more efficient modes of production inherently threatens such loops.

This dynamic recurs over and over. Coal baron from West Virginia? Sad news, new solar plants are cheaper than existing coal plants, and all those billions in assets you had buried beneath the ground are rapidly ticking down to zero. Don’t like Jim Crow? Move north and get a factory job. Your father wants you to be a boy? Move to the city and work as a coder.

Modern illiberalism is driven by an attempt to square this circle: to maintain old hierarchies while participating in modern abundance. This allows us to analyze our varied cast of authoritarians in simple terms.

Petro-dictators respond to the illiberal’s dilemma by displacing modernity in space. “Modernity abroad, repression at home,” with the gap bridged by the extraordinary wealth that oil brings. The fruits of modernity are purchased and imported, sustaining the wealth and power of the elite in their home countries. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is the model here. The Kingdom is blessed with immense resource wealth in the form of gigantic deposits of light, sweet crude oil; this oil is one of the fundamental resources of the modern world; for decades it has been in extraordinarily high demand by the industrial economies of the world. This has allowed the House of Saud to sell oil, buy modernity, and keep their pleasing hierarchies intact.

This dynamic is sustained by the fact that oil requires an unusually small industrial footprint relative to its productivity. Pumpjacks and pipelines don’t run themselves, but the labor required is a fraction that of a coal mine and a railroad. Refining can take place abroad; advanced drilling machines can simply be purchased on the world market with oil revenues. The educated, skilled workforce that might otherwise demand social reforms can be kept at arm’s length from the petro-dictator.

Is this sustainable? Well, it worked pretty well for a long time. But the churn never stops. And these days the petro-dictators themselves are signaling pretty hard that they can read the writing on the wall: the green transition is coming, and “peak oil” no longer refers to the moment we run out, but the moment its price starts dropping and never stops, because new technology has enabled us to produce better products without oil. Hence Mohammed bin Salman’s increasingly outlandish pitches for ultramodern hubs of tech and finance built from whole cloth in the Saudi desert. Of course, if the foregoing arguments are correct, none of these are going to work without reform of the Kingdom’s political and social systems, because who wants to bank with a man who will have you cut apart with bone saws if you don’t like the interest rate.

Herrenvolk democracies respond to the illiberal’s dilemma by displacing modernity socially instead of physically. “Modernity for me, hierarchy for thee.” The model here is Orbán’s Hungary. Such states propose to offer the benefits of modern liberal democracies (democracy, rights, economic growth) to certain citizens, while simultaneously stripping it from others members of that very society—women, ethnic minorities, queers, and immigrants are generally at the top of the list here. This nominally provides the benefits of both modernity and hierarchy to those fortunate enough to be members of the true Volk.

As it happens, this does not work particularly well in practice. While Hungary might be beloved of America’s own eurofascist Claremont Institute, the Claremont bros typically neglect to mention that Hungary has the GDP of a mid-sized American city, and only achieves that much because it receives approximately ten percent of its own GDP in EU subsidies.

Indeed, herrenvolkism has a quite predictable tendency to produce economic stagnation. They trend towards cronyism—towards a political economy not of growth and innovation, but favors and kickbacks. Letting the authoritarians into politics lets them pick winners and the losers—and mostly they like to pick their friends, it turns out. This feedback loop between government cronyism and support for herrenvolkism is central to its political economy—call it “rule by car dealership owner.” To the extent that herrenvolkism appears economically sustainable, it’s usually because it’s leeching off modernity in some obscure fashion.

Authoritarian capitalists respond to the illiberal’s dilemma by trying to establish a separation between the political and the economic spheres. “Modernity for the economy, hierarchy for politics.” The model here is, famously, China. From 1958 to 1976, Mao Zedong led China from the catastrophe of the Great Leap Forward to the catastrophe of the Cultural Revolution, killing tens of millions of Chinese citizens to no appreciable benefit, economic or otherwise. But beginning in 1978, Deng Xiaoping began a series of economic reforms intended to introduce a measured degree of capitalism into Chinese society while maintaining a stable but closed political system of rule by the Communist Party. The results, as we all know, were extraordinary, transforming China from starving backwater to industrial powerhouse.

Is this system sustainable? Maybe. But recent events suggest that things are breaking down in predictable ways. Xi Jinping has begun killing off profitable industries (like tech) and lifting up unprofitable ones (like farming). Combined banking and real estate crises signal an economy that is struggling to rebalance itself in the face of economic and demographic transitions. Decades of export-led industrialization produced a specific kind of power base. But now the churn continues, and its closed political system is struggling to manage the resulting shifts in power and prestige without fracturing. And Xi’s increasingly incompetent meddling in the economy shows no signs of slowing. Given the power wielded by personalist dictators, it is less than clear that a neat separation between an open economy and a closed political system is sustainable in the long run.

The Liberal’s Dilemma

So much for the illiberals and their dilemmas. There is a lesson here for we liberals as well. We too are confronted with the relentless churn of modern capitalism, this magic beast that throws up prosperity. And the chaos of it all offends our sensibilities. Surely there is so much waste. Fast food, fast fashion, all that cheap plastic crap filling up our landfills—surely we could direct it all in a better way.

This aspiration is given its latest expression in the contemporary “degrowth” movement, which aspires to reorient the world economy around not “profit” but “real human need.” It is therefore worth considering other historical attempts to harness the magic beast of modernity to total state control. And here we come to one project I have conspicuously failed to mention, because it was neither illiberal in conception nor liberal in execution: the Soviet Union. The great attempt at world communism began with the best of intentions: to overthrow oppression and liberate the people of the world.

Its planned economy promised to out-grow and out-produce wasteful capitalism by focusing not on profit but social need and genuine productivity. It was run according to top-down directives about how much of what kinds of material goods to produce. While the Soviets did not aim at degrowth but world preeminence, their failures are instructive. Unable to deliver steady per capita productivity growth, they compensated with natural resource extraction and Western debt. This practice of selling oil and importing advanced machinery has a certain parallel with the methods of petro-dictators: modernity abroad, hierarchy at home.

But the facade could only be sustained so long, and in 1991 the Soviet Union would collapse entirely after Gorbachev’s failed attempts at economic and political liberalization. Like other non-liberal regimes before it, the Soviet Union failed to deliver the continual technological innovation and economic dynamism that sustains modern growth. That growth requires the freedom to experiment according to your own perception of the good—a freedom that is incompatible with the goals of degrowth, as my colleague Paul Crider has argued.

From this world-historical debacle, certain liberals have drawn the lesson that the free market must be free, and the great task is to keep “politics” out of markets to the greatest extent possible. In a grimly ironic turn of events, the Soviet Union would once again be the ideological experiment-ground for ideological imports from the West. In 1991, the “best and the brightest” would bring unbridled free market capitalism to Russia—with results that are now painfully evident. Robber barons carved up the government into their own little fiefdoms, the economy (outside of oil windfalls) continued to stagnate, and now the country is being led to ruin by crooks and warlords. Capitalism without liberalism is just feudalism with a different name.

Full article (although that was most of it): https://www.liberalcurrents.com/the-illiberals-dilemma/

The main critique of the article, I think, is that it tells a "just so" story about modernity and the benefits of growth. There's some hedging and acknowledgement of the need for regulation and safety nets and so forth, but I think there's an obvious weakness of the article there. That said, the insight that these illiberal movements (and I thought it was useful that the soviet union was included as a fellow traveler) have internal contradictions that make them unsustainable in the long run.

[Dr. Medulla]

I've dl'd the piece to read later when I can properly concentrate on it, but the premise of the dilemma strikes me as kissing cousin of the Marxist—the material production of industrial capitalism but without the exploitation and division (instead, the organic society of an idealized past).

[Dr. Medulla]

The main critique of the article, I think, is that it tells a "just so" story about modernity and the benefits of growth. There's some hedging and acknowledgement of the need for regulation and safety nets and so forth, but I think there's an obvious weakness of the article there. That said, the insight that these illiberal movements (and I thought it was useful that the soviet union was included as a fellow traveler) have internal contradictions that make them unsustainable in the long run.

I'm generally jaundiced towards the idea of economic growth as the norm as climate change worsens, so perhaps that's the way out of the dilemma that Hancox-Li presents: the luxuries generated by modernity will become less common, which will allow for a reassertion of non-liberal forms of society/government. If the liberal-capitalist bargain is common luxury but disorder/instability, then losing the common luxury means the appeal of order is harder to challenge.