Optimism in the Face of Crisis: How the Left Will Win (original) (raw)
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Trump-universally dismissed as a vanity candidate when he entered a field crowded with Republican talent, the former Democrat and former Independent mowed down 16 challengers while breaking every rule in the book. Then he pivoted to take on one of the most seasoned and famous politicians in the world, a former Secretary of State, U.S. Senator and First Lady, lost three straight debates to her (according to opinion surveys) and earned the disapproval of roughly 60% of all Americans. A dozen women accused him of sexual assault. He bragged about earning tens of millions of dollars each year while never paying income tax. His margin of victory in the Electoral College was on track to be the largest any Republican has achieved since 1988. In every corner of the world, governments are failing to recognise the full implications of their policies, and experts are too confused, or inappropriately influenced, to provide clear and credible guidance. The result is a mixture of hubris and cluelessness that is consuming countries' entire political establishments. America elected Trump, a political novice, self-promoter and gleeful provocateur, on Nov. 8 in one of the most extraordinary and unforeseen developments in American history. There is more than an air of panic in the media and political circles about it. Today's leading avatar of truthiness is, of course, Trump who has been rejected as deficient in emotional intelligence. Donald Trump, the man who promised Brexit times ten is now set to control the world's biggest economy. His public discourse consists of attacking or ridiculing a wide range of others: Muslims, Hispanics, women, Chinese, Mexicans, Europeans, Arabs, immigrants, refugees whom he depicts either as threats or as objects of derision. By persuading his supporters to view themselves as part of a white nationalist movement, a claim about identity is supposed to solve the problem that many people's interests are neglected. The populist phenomenon , wherever it is found, ―rests on a toxic triad: denial of complexity, anti-pluralism, and a crooked version of representation‖, and each facet must be addressed. While the rise of protectionism and anti-immigrant sentiment are widely believed to reflect stagnant incomes, widening inequality, structural unemployment and even excessive monetary easing, there are several reasons to question the link between populist politics and recent economic distress. Like it or not, Angela Merkel is now the main guardian of the norms, values, and institutions that make up the Atlantic alliance. German Chancellor Angela Merkel's message of congratulations to a newly victorious President-elect Donald Trump was markedly unlike that of her European counterparts. Germany & America are bound by their values; democracy, freedom, the respect for the law and the dignity of human beings, independent of their origin, skin color, religion, gender, sexual orientation or political conviction; based on these values, I offer the future president close cooperation. It is economics, not culture that strikes at the heart of legitimacy; in other words, it is when the rewards of economic progress accrue mainly to the already wealthy that the disjunction between minority and majority cultural values becomes seriously destabilizing. Trump ruthlessly exploited that disjunction, and, in doing so, obviously made a successful claim to represent people. In the world's eyes, fear has trumped hope as the currency of American politics. In the world's eyes, ―America will never be the same again. Key words: Trumponomics, Trade Agreements, Populism, Values, Immigrants
Politics and class in the United States: The assault on the middle class and the poor
2017
It has been said that the liberal values of Western democracies are associated with individual conscience, truth based on knowledge, the order of law, and with an appeal to universality and equality, that is, to legal and moral principles applied consistently to all. Yet, it has also been claimed that these values are often not practiced as they are preached by Western societies. In fact, these societies often display a dramatic gap between theory and practice, for their appeal to law frequently justifies exploitation and suppression by force both at home and abroad.
2023
Since the rise of the Market-based economy to now, the positive, strong and significant association within Economi upgrading and Social Downgrading has made it easier for the Market-based Economy to be exclusive and put Nations and Cities mainly the Peripheral Populations and Spaces at a greater risk of Urban-related Diseases. Unfortunately doing so did undermine the economic growth and lead to an ' Economic Suboptimality'. Furthermore, beside the economic and health costs, the mismatch withing Economic and Social Upgrading can also create the conditons of significant Incivility and Insecurity that in turn act as as centrifugal forces that tend to disperse economic activities and reduce the agglomeration economies. Moreover, the amplification of Systemic Risks have also led to the same outcomes. By doing so, there's a growing demand of Redistributive Policies to alleviate poverty. However and unfortunately, all the Redistributive Policies did not bear the fruits expected or have been misused or ignored. Furthermore, in a context of High-income Trap mainly due to the the mismatch withing Economic and Social Upgrading, Globalization and Technological change, Low-wage Workers became a game changer of Politics in the West. In fact, their preference for Predistribution policies compared to the Redistributive policies on the one hand and strong Anti-elites ressentiment on the second hand did make it easier for them to strengthen and empower the Fair-right Populism in US and Europe. Empirically, the victory of Trump in 2016 and the brexit are mainly explained by this shift. However, the attraction and retainment of the Low-education/Low income Workforce in the GOP could become a potential threat to its sustained existence. For example, this transformation of the GOP could affect its foreign policy and increase the risk of isolation of US. In fact, compared to the High education/ High income Workforce that lists foreign policy as Top priorities, less education people tend to prioritize domestic and economic issues. As a result, and more and more, the Republican Party has started to prioritize ' Inward Foreign Polity ' compared to the Democrats that favor more ' Outward Foreign Policy '. Furthermore, concentrating Low education/low income people in the GOP and even by extension in US will never help US fix its High-income trap on the one hand and lead in sustainable way the Complexity Economy Era and Service-oriented, Knowledge-intensive and Advanced Manufacturing Economy Era. Key Words: Exclusive Nature of the Market-based Economy; Economic Upgrading; Social Downgrading; Urban-related Diseases; High-income Trap; Low-education/Low-income Workforce; Redistributive Policies; Predistribution Policies; Fair-right Populism; Trumpism; Democrats Party; Republican Party; Complexity Economy Era; Service-oriented, Knowledge-intensive and Advanced Manufacturing Economy Era.
Populism and Inequality: American Politics in the Era of Neoliberalism
In Populism and National Identities . Ed. Sadok Damak and Fathi Bourmeche. Sfax, Tunisia: Contact Editions, 2023. 116-138. [ISBN: 978-9973-953-36-0], 2023
Meticulous observation of the American social, political, and economic scene denotes the existence of a conspicuous rise of various phenomena. While the rising rates of inequality in the U.S. over the last two decades have become a hallmark of the American socio-economic scene, populist tendencies and certain reactionary movements gained political prominence against a background of a crisis-ridden economy. From the populist ‘movementism’ of the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street, to the electoral populism of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, the federal government’s failure to successfully address the problem of skyrocketing inequality has led to the political and electoral manifestation of populism in contemporary U.S. Indeed, the growing economic and social gap between the have and have-nots establishes a binary division of the American society upon which populism found its anti-establishmentarian incentive and narrative. It has been a tradition to study and explore these phenomena separately and disjointedly by economists and political scientists alike. While many economists’ apolitical response to the issue of inequality in the U.S. remains unidimensional and symptomatic, political scientists' examination of populism and inequality lacks a comprehensive in-depth analysis. The present research paper thus adopts a macro-level scope of analysis by employing the Political Opportunity Theory. Accordingly, it attempts to establish a cause-effect relationship between the different symptomatic phenomena in the U.S. and the politico-economic framework engendering them. This paper brings forth a fresh perspective on how to view populism as a complementary puzzle piece of the contemporary political landscape in the U.S.
AUTHORITARIAN POLITICS AND CAPITALISM IN TRUMP'S AMERICA
Right wing political groups throughout the world are celebrating Trump's victory but rather prematurely. They traditional conservatives and liberals are sufficiently delusional to believe that they are somehow far removed from Trump-style authoritarian politics when in fact they laid the groundwork for Trump to succeed. Meanwhile, some traditional conservative political leaders around the world are wondering if right wing populism flirting with Fascism is the way to political victory, never questioning if their policies drove people to the far right. Others are questioning if BREXIT and the Trump victory really mean popular discontent with globalization under the neoliberal development model. Many analysts are already decrying the rightwing course of the American electorate, as though Clinton was a New Deal Democrat rather than a Rockefeller Republican with a more pro-Wall Street and more hawkish foreign policy than Trump. Political correctness aside, the US was already a quasi-police state before Trump under both Bush and Obama. Therefore, the socio-cultural-political landscape was fertile for the new populist Republican leader, especially considering the corruption scandals that plagued Clinton. It is not at all the case as many have argued that US democracy suddenly became bankrupt because of Trump's victory, because this was the case throughout history, with some exceptions when reformism became necessary to strengthen capitalism under the pluralistic society as during the Progressive Era and New Deal. Behind the new authoritarian figure that will become America's president, and behind the Republican victory of both houses of congress, the real power is corporate America as it always has been. Wall Street, not Washington, will determine policy under Trump who promised economic nationalism vs. globalization, isolationism vs. interventionism, job-growth oriented economy vs. jobs export oriented economy. Mainstream politicians, the media, and the entire institutional establishment have always projected the image that elections are equated with democracy. The establishment wants people to believe that the electoral process affords legitimacy to the social contract. No matter how manipulated by the political class, financial elites and the media, elections put a stamp of legitimacy on what people believe constitutes popular sovereignty. As shocking as it was for many across the US and around the world, a Trump victory represents the illusion of democracy at work in a country where voter apathy is very high in comparison with most developed countries-the US ranks 27 th in the world below Mexico and Slovakia in voter participation. Besides the illusion of popular sovereignty, elections inject a sense of hope for a new start in society – the eternal spring of politics intended to maintain the status quo. An even clearer picture emerges regarding the distasteful " steak or fish " choices, as President Obama alluded during the correspondents' dinner a few weeks before the election to indicate with pride that there is no third political choice. The larger problem is the lack of differences between 'steak and fish' (Democrats and Republicans) in every policy domain, except social, cultural/ lifestyle issues. Of course, the very high percentage of 'negatives' for both presidential candidates and the absence of alternatives other than those that the political and financial establishment chose for people to give their final approval reveals that people were voting for what each side deemed the 'lesser of two evils' – the 'steak or fish' choice that the establishment places on the menu
Economic Anthropology, 2018
In this analysis, I use populism as a term to describe recent conservative social movements and representations. Right-wing populism, as I see it, deploys the rhetoric of reverse discrimination and scapegoating to galvanize political energy in the name of the "common man," within a context of intensifying socioeconomic inequality. Crucially, nostalgic and declensionist political campaigns, from Trumpism to the Tea Party, have framed the "common man" as white, properly masculine, and heterosexual-the rightful heir of the family wage in a moment when this wage has been diminished. And herein lies the conundrum. On one hand, downward mobility, precarity, and suffering characterize disinvested and deindustrializing regions across the United States. Those who were included in the era of postwar prosperity, underpinned by living-wage manufacturing, have witnessed the dismantling of social contracts and are experiencing downward mobility and a crisis of expectation and entitlement. Those who were largely excluded from the benefits of the family wage and other socioeconomic safety nets, namely, working-class people of color, experience an exacerbated inequality, never having fully participated in the postwar stability, and yet facing increased disinvestment with heightened rates of state-sanctioned violence, incarceration, and so-called access to opportunity, such as "subprime" loans. On the other hand, over the past thirty years, the policies, practices, measurements, and values of the US social economy that were ushered in by Reagan, continued by Clinton, and underwritten by Wall Street have enabled financialization and mostly benefited the financial elite. While the scapegoating of undeserving others has long characterized elite conservative agendas, it is important to recognize that one of the central ways in which elites have attempted to market and temper the ravages of these policies has been to frame them in terms of cosmopolitanism, meritocracy, and multiculturalism. Using the concept of "progressive neoliberalism," philosopher Nancy Fraser (2017; see also Bessire and Bond 2017; Brenner 2017) indicts the strategic coupling of multiculturalism with an "anti-provincial," free-market approach to globalization that ends up solidifying a new institutional elite. She argues that the celebration of diversity has lent "charisma" to the "forces of cognitive capitalism, especially financialization," and that ideals like "diversity and empowerment, which could in principle serve different ends, now gloss policies that have devastated manufacturing and what were once middle-class lives" (Fraser 2017). The reactionary populism, then, that has led to Trumpism arose out of real grievances against neoliberal financialization and globalization yet has conflated the policies and practices that benefit the financial elite with
Institutes, Foundations and Think Tanks: Neoconservative Influences on U.S. Public Schools
Online Submission, 2005
In the middle of the "liberal" Clinton years, Jean Stefancic and Richard Delgado produced a little known text entitled No Mercy: How Conservative Think Tanks and Foundations Changed America's Social Agenda. 1 We include a rather lengthy passage here, as their words have proven to be troublingly prescient. They saw a future dominated by ultra conservative ideology, established and maintained by well-funded think tanks. Black misery will increase. The gap between the rich and the poor (already the highest in the Western world) will widen. Women's gains will be rolled back, foreigners will be excluded…Conservative judges, appointed by conservative presidents with the encouragement of a conservative Congress, will repeal prisoners' and children's rights, and narrow women's procreative liberties. Unregulated industries will require employees to work in increasingly unsafe workplaces, pollute the air and water, and set aside less and less money for workers' health benefits and retirement. Tort reform will ensure that consumers and medical patients injured by defective products, medical devices, and careless physicians will be unable to obtain compensation. Children will be required to pray