I'm going to plunge right in where fools fear to tread, and present where my brain is going via international politics, and the rise of authoritarian, racially combative politics. It's new strength seems to be mostly a Western cultural phenomena (including Turkey in the West). It has old strength in lots of other places, but the growth of angry politics where it hasn't been standard fare - at least not to this degree - for generations is what I'm thinking about.
It's well represented by The Orange One Who Shall Not be Named (OOWSNN), and I'm much more familiar with him than some of the other political expressions of this trend, so I'll mostly be referring to stuff in an American context...and this may achieve book length, so might be a few sittings...maybe I'll split it into chapters. (Late edition note: it's 5200 words, too short for a book)
And if it's OOWSNN who's Dumbledore or Harry? Come on, some dimply geeky kid who's been a victim of abuse and neglect, we need you! I was geeky, but home life was awesome and I'm too old...not old enough for Dumbledore mind you, I guess I'm in a bit role again...always a bridesmaid...
The Setting
My beliefs about people, some of them commonly held, and some of them maybe even correct, are everything in this context, so I'll lay some basis stuff out for context for what comes after. And it's a useful thing to record for future perusal, where I can see how wrong I am about all of this in following years.
Tribes
People are tribal creatures. We evolved in a world where direct contact with people around us and other nearby tribes (for fresh genetic input) were our whole word. Our intellect, cultural knowledge and the manner of our expression of tribe has changed, but it's what we are at the root.
Our behavior in groups, particularly groups of strangers, are shaped by this. There is the pseudo alpha male posturing, where men bang our chests and try to prove who's dick is biggest (I catch myself drawn into this posturing too often) and women either join in, (cus that's the way it's done) or wait out the inevitable primacy jockeying that men haven't evolved past. I'm not suggesting Woman don't have their own stuff, I'm just not as active a participant. Lots of activities are engaged in by all - openness to sharing, feelings on titles and positions, even road rage - are linked to our tribal roots.
Our brain's are programmed by evolution to respond in certain ways. Sometime that way is universal, other times the exact same trigger will cause responses in very different ways - according to experiences and what the individual learned from them. The responses are very often of a predictable Shape on a given input, and more predictable with larger groups - where details will differ with individuals.
That Shape is at the basis of the marketing profession, and is the trade of con-men, showmen, and shysters of countless generations (and all the above are practiced by women as well, of course, even if standard language usage tries to leave you out of it). Shape is the predictable part of human behavior. Individually we may do random stuff, but a larger group of people can be successfully modeled as an individual consciousness (see Donald D Hoffman's stuff).
In the modern world, we are all members of a multitude of tribes, and will feel real emotional upset when those tribes come into conflict. There is the sports thing, the colleagues group, the kids related groups, and hobbies and favorite car makers and favorite lunch place and favorite news source and...and...and...whatev...How strongly our internal self image thing (SIT) is linked to those tribes, are the lens we view conflict through.
When our most attached tribes are threatened, all members respond viscerally and emotionally. Some will hide that emotion, following the aristocratic ideal of not showing you're rattled, but everyone responds to it. A tribe where that aristocratic ideal is mostly overlooked is with sports teams.
Watching calm, dispassionate, rational icons of 'Professional' conduct throw a tantrum or dance with joy at the success, or failings, of their team, shows the unfiltered them. Those aristocratic filters evolved for a reason, and they are important to cultural adhesion and conflict resolution, but they hide how emotionally driven people are.
They seem to be favored by 'the way it's done' people and I figure it's because they allow people to avoid conflict. I figure if there's a conflict point it out and resolve it, but that seems to make many people uncomfortable...It's not like we duel to the death on perceived insult anymore, so sort it out.
The amount an individual has invested in self definition around a tribal allegiance, is directly related to how strongly the emotional response will be. There are life long Volkswagen fans that were broken hearted at VWs emissions cheating, and other people that kinda liked their cars, that weren't that fussed. VW outsold Toyota last year despite the reputation hit. The level of emotional response is related to rival tribes as well. The spouse of a Mercedes fan would be harder hit by VWs violation of trust than two VWs fans would be.
In the US, the clustering of tribal affiliations are becoming dangerous. NASCAR, 'working' class, Christian, (especially born again evangelical Christian), rural, moneyed, captain of industry, talk radio listening, Fox News watching etc. Republican tribals don't interact with many urban, 'professional' class, latte sipping, hippy, agnostic/atheist, do-gooder, liberal etc. Democrats. There are absolutely several categories of those political groupings that don't interact themselves (ie. captain of industry/working class within the Republican tribe), but they are still overlap all over the place in a web of tribal identification.
Within political unions, the relative strength of non-political allegiances are not a matter that generally drives political unrest. You may get a riot of supporters of the winning team at the Stanley Cup, but not much sustained domestic unrest. There are points of intersection - in Europe, teams can be a rallying and connection point for politically like minded activists, but it's usually not of political interest.
All these 'secondary' allegiances tend to be subsumed into a national tribe when the nation is under threat, but they define connections and an 'in' crowd they will act in concert with. It's reached the point where the divide over favorite TV show mirrors political divides.
Preferences across a wide range of thing align with political alignment that by knowing a political affiliation, you can, with high confidence, predict everything from religious affiliations and cable viewing habits and favorite comedian and that lack of cross over or shared experience creates an uncomfortable degree of us and them. A common experience further diminished by things like school choice and high cost universities and walled neighbourhoods and whatev...
The OOWSNN's genius was in deliberately studying the language used by Limbaugh radio and Fox News and Beitbart and using that language in his initial introduction phase and throughout his campaign. He identified himself as a tribal leader in that tribe by co-opting that language and those tribal identifiers, and particularly for busy people not paying a lot of attention to detail, that he's a leader of their tribe is enough.
Tribal responses
As stated, if a tribe is threatened, it's membership responds emotionally. One of the few places men and woman's cognitive responses differ (according to fMRI work (functional magnetic resonance imagery) , is in their response to threat. Men tend to get defensive and prone to lashing out. Women tend to get protective and hunker down, different parts of our brains are activated.
Behaviorally people become less open and fearful under threat, so the Shape of their responses are more predictable. Following the financial crackup of the 2007, many overlapping tribal allegiances for clusters of tribes were under threat.
Bifurcated earning, with more going to the top earners, and the same or less to most people that had been increasing since the Reagan/Thatcher years became increasingly apparent. Most people realized they earned less than their parents - and had no chance of reaching the single earner, 2 1/2 kid, house in the suburbs, Greatest Generation lifestyle enshrined in the American Dream and defined in the popular imagination by Leave it to Beaver and it's like.
Gay marriage, woman's rights, abortion, a coloured guy in the white house, people harping on about global warming and telling people their energy consumption habits are destroying the earth, - heck, even a pope that wasn't that fussed about homosexuality and was bad mouthing rich people - were now compounded by financial hardship and unemployment and losing that house in the suburbs (even with two earners), - and real hardship.
All this change and a political establishment that was all about infighting and has lost track of making people's lives 'better' (with a multitude of definitions of what 'better' meant), and that had let the rich bankers, even the ones where the bank plead guilty to illegal activities, off the hook.
Those threats and outcomes fell heavily on a population that had already mostly separated into two camps and that who's political tribal allegiances had split the same way. Coinciding with this and enabling this has been a curation issue in information sources.
Alternative Facts
The shift of the American populous to the information age has led to a gap in curation. There is no trusted source of information that can be used by everyone to shape problem definition and work out solutions. The loss of the Network Anchor, Cronkite-like role to a wave of voices (like mine!) on the internet and talk radio and CNN and FOX news and news services that were primarily businesses so had to hit the bottom line.
Different arguments as to the solutions to apparent problems weren't even agreeing on a version of the truth, let alone agreeing to the contours of a problem enough to develop a solution to anything. Two camps of almost informationally (it should be a word) independent inhabitants had formed. Without a common recognition of a truth to work from, a large chunk of the population was going to be estranged from any solutions.
That the general populous was struggling, became clear in the anti-establishment rhetoric of 'surprisingly' successful populist challengers to the leadership of both parties. It was only surprising, if you weren't paying attention to the information streams popular among each group.
The network news and Sunday talk shows the establishment continues to fret over, were only paid attention to by the Village (those professionally tied into government and media activities in Washington - coined by the NYT's Krugman I think). Those were the important news sources as people came into power, and we all tend to stop noticing the world is moving on once we get power. Your powerful now, you don't have to pay attention and keep re-learning stuff - that's a Hassle - so everything you know needs to stop changing and I'm not listening now "la la la la"/with fingers in ears. It's why significant change can only happen in a crisis or generationally (should be a word too, I think wordpress need to build up their dictionary some).
So both sides are getting information from wherever, and no-one has much respect for facts as they change with each information source and sorting it all out is total Hassle, so I'll just trust a tribe to do what's right for me, and those anti-establishment candidates are talking my tribes' language, while the establishment is clueless, so anti-establishment it is.
Racism/Sexism
We are not in a post racial/sexism utopia. When tribes are under threat, they act defensively/protectively. Part of the internal definition of the Republican tribe includes a certain model of patriotism and nationalism and remembers that Leave it to Beaver definition of how life should be. The voices on the internet and talk radio pushed those memes hard.
Beitbart was already known to be open to the alt-right, race purity story line prior to the death of Beitbart himself. When Bannon was hired to help run OOWSMN's campaign, racism came for the ride in a totally explicit way. The original sin of American formation, with the initial toleration of slavery, has still, 150+ years after a civil war about it, not been sorted out. This is huge and the few words I'm giving it don't do it justice, - read a racist undertone into everything else here.
It was almost inevitable that the fates would arrange for the first woman to push to the head of a major establishment political party's leadership, would do it at the same time that very establishment was losing it's grip on popular support. And the personification of that loss of grip was a misogynist sociopath (what? he is, get over it...and I know some very nice sociopaths, they get a bad rap, we all have our "things" - but I guess facts don't matter any more do they...it's going to take some getting used to). I think it was Digby who made the Indiana Jones, "it had to be snakes" connection. A starker contrast is difficult to imagine. Read a sexist undertone into it all too.
Establishment failings
It is important to note that the Establishment in question, had very much earned the disgust of the population. Their discussion of problems and solutions had become a ritual that was tied up in it's own protocol. The way problems were talked about was disconnected from how a growing percentage of the population talked about them. They were sometimes the same problems, but the language that was used to talk about them had become a jargon accessible only to those that had spent the time (total Hassle) to learn it.
A great many people had been effected by the Great Recession (definitely coined by Krugman). People that had suffered a foundations rocking outcomes were known to most of the population within a couple of degrees of Kevin Bacon. This one really hit home. The optics of the decision not to criminally charge banks was terrible. The country of 'laws and not men'.'equal protection under the law' and 'we the people' clearly treated the rich and poor differently.
Banks had faked documents and issued foreclosures against people who had no agency to fight back in court - in some cases, the banks simply stole houses. There were stories of successful foreclosures on houses that had no mortgage - with any bank. The banks in some cases have plead guilty in court and were fined a small percentage of their operating costs for the plea. No individual bank officer was pursued. Partly because the law makes a conviction difficult, and without a likelihood of conviction, prosecution shouldn't be pursued - but the optics were terrible. Whether convictions would occur was disputed by enough high profile legal experts that it looks to be a marginal call, and the margin was weighted against the little guy.
Where we're at
So you take all that stuff above and roll it up and you end up with a leader who deliberately used fear of 'other' and national pride and thinly veiled racism and clearly stated sexism to successfully rise to the highest office in the land.
There are other countries with leaders using the same techniques with a local flare to rise to power as well. A vocal, activist, not necessarily majority, in several countries has been empowered to act...badly. Political power, through fear of other, fear of difference, coercive actions, normalizes a host of behaviors of the most animal/'bottom of the hierarchy of needs' type.
It breaks into the idea of Nation. The Nation is often the highest level of tribal affinity. It isn't always, and to real degree, the amount of political unrest in a polity is related to the degree it's true. Religion is another classic highest level of affinity, and is the reason state affiliated religions are an important factor in national development. Henry the Eighth wanted a divorce, whatever the Pope said, so bam!! there is suddenly a national religion in England.
We are where we're at, with a right wing, populist uprising upending the political status quo in the worlds dominant industrial/financial/military polity. That polity contains two, high level clusters of tribal affinities opposing each other for political control that are somewhat geographically distinct. I was predicting a civil war in the US within the next 50-ish years before OOWSNN was elected...30 now...
Part of the choice driving a 50 year horizon, was it looked to be setting up, but not a sure thing yet, and any prediction you make with a date limit, had better be a sure thing - or after your dead. Pulling it into a shorter time frame is still not a sure thing, but it's setting up more strongly. I figure 30 years is still long enough for everybody to forget the prediction, and I'll be really really happy to be wrong in any case. Unfortunately, there are two fairly distinct Nations in the same geographic space within a single polity. Historically that has happened lots, and it's never a comfortable fit.
It has often been about military conquest, with a large amount of physical confrontation pending incorporation into the conquering nation's Nation. The Romans were pretty good at it, Alexander the Great, less so.
Nearly as often it's been religion. Shiite and Sunni don't tend to get along much regardless of Polity. Protestant and Catholic have only started to live together peacefully to any real degree in the last couple Centuries. People thought JFK didn't have a chance because the American people wouldn't vote for a Catholic. He had to publicly disavow the Church as the highest authority in his world and that he wouldn't be taking orders from the Pope.
Continued unrest will be a continuous feature of American life until one of:
- the two Nations recombine into one, reconciliation;
- there is a civil war where political/military might is used to coerce 'good behavior'; or,
- an outside threat creates a common purpose that allows for a tightening the polities bonds.
Those three choices have different probabilities and outcomes, and I'll do some crystal ball gazing below. I should note that Predictions are hard, especially about the future (old Danish proverb popularized by Niel Bohr).
Reconciliation
The two sides are politically collapsing into a Republican tribe and a Democratic one along party lines. Several areas, of high emotional attachment break across these lines. Abortion, military adventurism, Religiosity, Gov't breadth of action, race relations, alternative lifestyles (defined broadly), lots and lots of other stuff...
An American individual's feelings on a very large number of closely held beliefs can be predicted by knowing their political affiliation. The regional parsing of the parties support make it likely that causation is often political affinity to belief, instead of the other way around.
The degree to which that causation is true is probably deterministic as to the outcome. My view is that causation from political affinity to acceptable beliefs is too strong to warrant reconsideration from most of the population. It's now baked in the cake.
The, primarily Republican, efforts to de-legitimize democratic institutions as a political ploy - combined with the explicit support to Nixon's Southern Strategy - has born fruit. Counterweights to this bifurcation of beliefs lack the strength adequate to bring them back together, excepting the military who is still widely admired.
Democratic institutions are classically believed to prevent authoritarian takeover in established democracies. That's only true if those institutions are considered legitimate by the population at large.
The efforts by the already powerful to weaken opposition have achieved a giant financial separation between the rich and poor, and weakened institutions. "The scariest words in the English language are - we're from the gov't and we're here to help", trickle down economics, Obama's birth certificate, the tax pledge, audit the Fed cries, whatev...they. all combined. have lead to a disbelief amongst a significant portion of the population, in gov't institutions.
Only two institutions have resonance amongst much of the populations, and are the rare esteemed institutions that cross party lines, Business and the Military. For the Business titans, it's a new age, and new type of aristocracy, and the new princes haven't an adequate fear of the masses. The French revolution is not on business course curriculum. Increasingly Medieval-style, princely conflict may be the result. The Military may be the last line of meaningful common allegiance soon...and nations that only esteem the military...well, not ideal, lets say.
Reconciliation ain't gonna happen, minus outside threat, or use of coercion - too late, institutions are too weak. Jared Rubin runs through some of the ideas here, and total bummer.
Civil War
Odds on favorite in my view...big bummer. It's a movie we've seen too often throughout history. American culture is all about the individual, they've lost touch with the collective. Their much vaunted patriotism doesn't include other American people very often. Many among very rich (Koch's, Thiel, the Walton family, the Nominee for Secretary of Commerce, the Nominee for Secretary of State, the Nominee for Education Secretary) look at the masses with disdain.
From Romney's 42% to the OOWSNN groping women cus he's famous, they no longer see themselves as part of the same tribe as the masses. Many within the masses look at the hyper rich's gilded palaces as something to aspire to, and haven't noticed the loss of reciprocal belonging. And ok, OOWSNN has some specific pathologies exaggerating everything about him, so his stuff is more complicated, but the point still holds.
The underlying racial component of, well, everything in American politics is another huge driver of separation. Wit's have observed that the South lost the Battle encompassing the American Civil War, but, through Jim Crow laws, the South won the War. The sixties led to a reopening the fight, and it certainly hasn't been decided.
The descendants of slavery voted Republican as a block as the party of Lincoln, and the descendants of slave owners Democratic, for the same reason, until Nixon's southern strategy when it all reversed. A series of court challenges undid Jim Crow laws, and the embracing of 'dog whistle' politics led to a politically opposite south and an end of Southern Democrats who supported socially conservative policies. The days of Tip'n'Ronnie having drinks and discussing politics through a twisted bipartisan lens ended.
The last couple of generations of legal equality for women is are well short of universal acceptance. One of the real questions among voters in the last election was whether tribe Republican women would chose their sex's tribe over their cultural environments preference. Enough went with their cultural environment. They voted for a person who spoke about sexual assault as something he regularly, actively participated in, which indicates the supremacy of the cultural tribal affiliation with them.
Albeit, if the vote was justifiably removed from men; due to their demonstrated inability to get past their most base, dominance laden impulses and 10000 years of recorded history of mostly screwing it up; the world would certainly run better. I'd vote for a women who regularly assaulted men acting on their Trumpian impulses, so I certainly don't feel strongly attached to that 'men tribe' either.
The combination of an increase in partisan segregation along both social and economic basis, and the hardening of racial lines, combined with fear of the 'other' fueled by 9/11 anger, has led to strongly emotionally laden beliefs - the kind that don't dissipate easily. The coming Supreme Court actions to overturn Roe v Wade and who knows what else but, at least, action around civil rights and voting access in general - will harden this break and bifurcation more and more.
If the general setting of the population didn't soon become 'threatened' those primal impulses engendered by Trump may have had time to disperse. The Cheney/Bush administration is not one I admire much, but they worked hard to not relate 9/11 to Islam in general. The real hardships of the financial collapse strengthened the 'threaten' mode of behavior and future politicians would not tread so lightly, actively fostering a fear of 'other'. People actually made a 'thing' about phrasing terrorism as "radical Islamic" to political ends. This has created a climate of fear and the closing off to 'other' which is going to take a generation to undo at best.
The most plausible path through this coming period that avoids this outcome, involves the more open, post racial to a greater extent, millennial generation coming into real power across the societal rainbow. They may start weakening this 'presently strengthening' separation. That'll happen in another 20 or so years...is that fast enough? Doesn't look that way from here.
Outside Threat
The historically most traveled path to unification of a dividing nation is having a war or two. Preferable a smaller, not existential set of skirmishes that marks a clear outside threat to draw the drifting loyalties of the population toward each other, back to a common cause.
Ironically, the serving together, getting to know each other reality of WWII created the opening for the 60's dismantlement of the 'leave it to beaver' lifestyle and the end of Jim Crow that the more militant side of the ledger now often disparage. But that comes after a war throws everybody together.
Unfortunately the Republican party seems to have taken Orwell's 1984 as an instruction book. If you haven't reread this since high school, and the rat thing doesn't still give you nightmares, read it through a lens of possible American futures. It turns out scarier then any rat that way, but it illustrates the strands of the threads being pulled really well. Somebody just needs to convince the Republican party that the society as lived in the alternative future was supposed to be viewed as a bad thing, not a role model.
We've always been at war with Eastasia...My 90/10 guess is this is absolutely pushed as the path forward, and Bin-Laden gets his wish. He wanted to weaken the institutions of the Western Nations and draw them into continual asymmetric conflict and bleed them dry. It is the outcome in his writings that he most wanted, and the clearest outcome of future possibilities.
How can I think both this and the civil war are likely? This part won't work. Too late and part of the other sides beliefs is not spending the national treasure on outside wars. It is a piece that does cross party lines a bit, and having a long running war that is making little headway and creating new opposition with every victory becomes draining on a nation. Even a nation as overwhelmingly powerful as the US.
America spends as much on defence as the next 7? 10? all of them? it bounces around depending on the budget that year, so we'll make it 10 in a semi-arbitrary way, and start that statement again. They spend as much on defence as the next 10 countries combined!!! and eight of the countries are their allies!!! And OOWSNN wants to build it up, so they don't look weak!! Bummer...
Not winning asymmetric conflict has, very recently, been shown to be a real drain on anyone. It's too bad Bush made such a mess of things that nobody listens to him anymore, cus we need OOWSNN to learn that quick. It is a difficult lesson to teach in 128 characters, and OOWSNN seems to have frozen his world knowledge at the early 70's so didn't even learn from McNamara and Vietnam.
The coming war against radical islam - leading to a loss of support to the Gov't - leading to civil rights violations justified by the crisis - leading to more underground resistance focused geographically along the same line as the political party support - leading to Californian succession that triggers the 2nd American Civil War...they won't use nukes in a civil war, right, RIGHT?? Bummer of all Bummers. The Shape of the future is somewhat predictable. Hari Seldon and his psychohistorians would call this one a highish probability. I've rarely wanted to be wronger than here.
The avoidance of this hinges on continued actions by OOWSNN and support. It isn't outside of probability that the rest of his party rises up to oust him at some point, and he's of elevated age and hasn't always lived right, and one of his secret service protection may take him out - for the good of the country. If he stays in power I give it 90/10 on the outside threat war stuff, and 70/30 for a civil war breakdown in the next 30 years - maybe next month at the present rate of production for executive orders. If he makes it long enough, the civil war trigger could be his dismissal of term limits applying to him, after 8 years. Or somebody later will ride the changed norms of behavior to the same conclusion.
Well, it sure as heck isn't going to be boring. If you see mushroom clouds, I recommending driving towards them. I've seen the post-apocalyptic world in lots of video games - there been a huge trend in the genre lately...a mirror of social anxiety perhaps? Anyway, even when you 'win' the game, the life depicted is icky.
It's even worse than the dystopian Blade Runner kind of future we're heading towards without an apocalypse. We can take action against that too, but it maybe less urgent, or not...How do people not have depressional episodes sometimes? I guess I need to pay attention less...That said, somehow even fresh after working through all this, I'm not having an episode presently...people is weird...
The details vary from the American situation in several other countries, but similar stresses and potential outcomes. The dominant American player will have several potential international allies for just about anything - to provide cover and international gloss.
This is a great spot for 'people' to pull off one of their "never saw that one coming" moments. Yeah, that's the best I can pull off for an uplifting ending on this one...go optimism bias and lead to people pulling off something awesome. Let's have a black swan event...I guess it needs to come out of Australia where they have black swans...GO AUS!!
Maybe the string of protests to OOWSNN actions bring enough people together in the US to remember we're social animals and do way cooler things when we pull together. If he keeps not clarifying his orders to the people executing His Will the way he has on the immigration/visa thing there is a real chance. And by the time you read this, there may be a better example than that! By the time I post this, there may be a better example than that!! Yes, the 'best' road forward for the species depends on OOWSNN not just failing, but failing YUGE...
Update..............................
- David Koch is warning about authoritarian risks with Trump... You... Just... Couldn't... Make... This...Up - Or I couldn't,...but I have an underdeveloped imagination...Koch's comments are behind a pay wall with Financial Times, so I'm going on a third party's description...
and I fixed a bunch of typo's and cleaned up a couple things - and probably still left a bunch of messy stuff in, but whatev.