The Essentials of Disruption/Destruction

I've said I'm not much interested in the presidential campaign this year largely because the two main candidates are.... simply appalling. That's not to say that one or the other doesn't have some positive qualities, that's not the point. The point is that both of them represent ideals of the State and society that are loathsome. They are both ideologically neoLibCon. They are both exploiters and oppressors. Neither has a shred of faith in or genuine interest in the well-being of the masses.

Hillary is the avatar of the perpetuation of the status quo, and under other circumstances, that might be enough to get her back into the White House all by itself. After all, we've been propagandized for years that "everything's fine," the world is a better place, the economy is steaming along nicely, everyone who wants a job can find one, and now we are learning that incomes for the Lesser People are rising for the first time since 2007!!!! Yay!!!!!

Whut? Think about it. Household incomes are rising for the first time since 2007... what does that imply? Obvious, isn't it? Household incomes have been declining or flat since 2007. Ah, now that makes sense, because that's clearly the case. Actually, statistically, the median household income has been in decline since 1997. There may -- or may not -- have been a slight uptick in 2015 over 2014, but the overall trend is downward, and that hasn't changed.

Think. When was Obama elected on a promise to halt/reverse the Great (for the Rabble, the Endless) Recession? Ah. 2008. And guess what? He hasn't done it. At least not for the Rabble, not even close. The High and the Mighty, however, have made out like the bandits they are.

For many of them, there never was any Recession at all.

And Obama made sure that situation was institutionalized.

Hillary represents the continuation of, indeed the intensification of, the policies that make it so.

Thus, of course, the majority of the Highest of the Mighty support her candidacy over that of one of their own class, Donald Trump.

At least they have until recently.

Now after Hillary's Unfortunate Incident at the 9/11 Memorial, they seem to be hedging their bets. Trump may not be The One -- yet -- but if Herself craps out, who they gonna turn to? And after all, Trump has long been One of the Tribe and he seems to be picking up steam among the Ignorant Rabble, soooooo.... why not?

After all, he is a Disruptor/Destructor. And that's important to the success and well-being of his class.  Part of their culture is the disruption and destruction of rivals below them. Trump is a master at that. He showed it on his TV show for years and years, and he is certainly adept at it in life. Not only does he disrupt and destroy, he often gets his victims to like it. Now that is a highly desirable skill among the rich and powerful. In fact, it is a necessary one given the ideological foundations of the modern political economy.

Obama has that skill too, though he's far more subtle about it than The Donald. He's been soothing the savage beast of the Rabble throughout his entire reign at the top, and he's better at it than any politician I know of.

Hillary simply does not have that skill, though her husband does, though that can't overcome some of his other qualities that we need not get into here.

Hillary inspires resistance, not so much because she's The Devil Incarnate (as she's been characterized by a large segment of the Internets) but because she tends to scold rather than uplift, tends to negatively characterize her opponents, tends to be less than inspirational in large gatherings, tends to be so wedded to preserving and extending the status quo, she's all but unable to recognize that the status quo hasn't worked for the majority for a generation or more.

She can see discreet elements of failure, but not the whole, basically because she's wedded to the whole picture, a picture which from below is horrendous.

She doesn't seem to see that, nor can she grasp it.

On the other hand, Trump sees it clearly -- because he's profiting from it -- and seeks to exploit the Rabble to the maximum degree he can, first by being elected, and then who knows what will follow?

No one.  No one can be sure, and that is a big part of his appeal. This was also part of Reagan's appeal. There were lots of dog whistles for those who were attuned, and there was his (suddenly forgotten and ignored by the media) governorship of California that clued some people into what his governance as President would become, but it was an era of hailing the hero, in contrast to the "failed" status quo represented by Carter, and in the public eye, a celebrity is almost always Heroic, no?

But nobody could be sure what Reagan would do, anymore than they could be sure what  Trump will do in the White House.

Hillary, like Carter, they already knew all about -- too much about. And they could anticipate policies that would do little or nothing on their behalf, or would actually make things worse for the many while ensuring that things would get better and better for the few.

Trump on the other hand can play the Rubes like a room full of marks much like the hucksters who sell real estate courses do. They dazzle the Rabble with the promise of getting rich! rich! rich!. But when it comes to it, the only one who really gets rich! is the course promoter. Gee, who'd a thunk?

Trump is pure show business, pure con-man. But that's what it takes anymore. Obama is more cerebral, but he's just as much a con-man, as too many people found out after he was elected. The con was that he held out such promise to the Rabble, but he delivered mostly  to the High and the Mighty whom he served.

Trump is a different kind of con-man; he serves no one but himself. No one. The concept of "public service" is anathema to him -- something he makes clear if you cut through his gobbledygook. He's in this for himself alone, period. End of discussion.

OK. So why does that appeal to anyone else? Well, why are gangsters often held in high esteem? Because, at least for those on their side, they hold out a promise of well-being, even prosperity, so long as you don't cross them. In other words, if you're on their side, you'll be OK -- until you aren't.

Gangster rule works, at least it can, but it is also disruptive and destructive of the Established Order.

Gangster rule is a rival and a threat to the Establishment. And the Establishment has to make deals with the Gangsters or be uprooted and destroyed by them. "Deals" are what Trump promises. "Deals".

Hillary offers essentially nothing new at all. She started her campaign with the implied slogan: "No you can't," and she really hasn't budged an inch since then. It's still a "No you can't" campaign, and it's hard to see any resonance among the People. She offers the Rabble nothing but a long-hard slog to gain marginal improvements -- eventually. "Stronger together," indeed, but to what object, when ultimately her message is that "nothing can be done," and "there is no alternative." (h/t Baroness Thatcher, may she burn in Hell.)

Further, Hillary posits that she knows best, and the rest of y'all need to go along with it. It's for your own good after all.

Sigh.

Trump promises to upend and overturn all that, sweep t all away, and in the end rule as a dictator, strongman, gangster. This is the ideal of his class after all. Whether this is the time for that, I can't say, but I was shocked to the bone in 1980 when Reagan won against arguably one of the nation's best presidents -- one who was, however, incapable of controlling the pile on of negative forces that undermined his authority and ability. Reagan just swept all that aside. This is what Trump promises to do as well.

If the status quo doesn't work for the majority -- and arguably it doesn't -- then a quasi or literal revolution is required.

But as I've long maintained, if the Revolution is to come, it will come from the Right.

I didn't think it would be quite as openly gangsterish, but that's what it looks like is in the offing.

Oh boy.

How Fares Teh Revolution?

Stalled?

Well, I don't want to go quite that far, but maybe so. Since I tend to slow down while I'm here in New Mexico, I'm not really up on all the News of the Uprisings Around the World, but I did hear that the Wisconsin legislature is plowing forward with their anti-union measures and doing it in defiance of the Democrats (still in exile in Illinois) and the People. I heard that the Egyptian military "cleared" Tahrir Square in Cairo with a great deal of violence and that the masses in Iraq are still up in arms -- and apparently still being shot down -- over the absolute corruption of their imposed and managed "democracy."

And then of course there's the continuing slaughter in Libya and the constant dithering over it in the capitals of Europe and the United States. The slaughter in the Yemen. The other Uprisings and slaughters here and there.

The upshot, from my partially disengaged perspective, is that The Revolution is sputtering and best and being turned back on many fronts -- despite some extraordinary rhetorical and documentary efforts on the part of the Revolutionaries and those who support them.

In other words, the rhetorical war is being won rather handlily, but the ground war is not going that well at all, even though there have been a number of apparently victorious removals of tyrants.

A rhetorical device that's making the rounds is this chart demonstrating the direct effects of the Class War that's been underway -- with or without Revolutionary push-back -- for more than a generation.



The Class War hasn't stopped; in fact, the battle has been redoubled by the Billionaires who are determined -- more than ever -- to have their way. In addition, there is a constant litany of "social war" issues being pressed with more fervor than at any time in the past.

As I've said for many years most if not all of the Revolutionary fervor in this country is on the Right, not on the Left, and even though we're seeing some union push-back on the economic front now, for a very long time it has been a matter of holding on to the status quo at best, with very little or no forward thinking, especially not on economic matters.

We're seeing some resistance to the overwhelming corporate influence on Government and the dreadful results that has had on the well-being of the People. The existence of resistance is encouraging, but until the issue is expanded beyond the narrow economic interests of a sub-section of the working population ("Hey! At least they still HAVE jobs!") the Revolution is bound to stall.

In Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere, Revolutionary fervor is being attacked militarily in some places, attacked with minutiae in others. While it's obvious to me that the Revolutionaries have broadened their issues from the purely pecuniary to more fundamental principles of Dignity, Justice, and Community, their opposition is strong and there is no easy path forward. That doesn't mean the Revolutions have failed, but neither have they succeeded.

In another post, I asked whether we were seeing a version of 1848, 1968 or 1989. Indeed, as the Revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt seemed to successfully overthrow tyrants and tyrannical governments, allusions to 1989 were seen and heard with some regularity. But then Libya happened, as well as the stalled Revolutions in Yemen, Bahrain, Iran and so forth, and allusions to 1848 cropped up more and more. A couple of the Revolutions of 1848 were more or less successful in changing the nature of governments to some degree, but most were brutally crushed. The Revolutionary philosophies that came out of the Revolutions of 1848 (especially Marxism) were more important ultimately than the uprisings themselves. And that may be the case now.

But what of 1968, a period of largely student driven uprisings all around the world, that were ambiguously successful. What happened as a result of the 1968 Uprisings is actually very complicated. Governments did fall, troops were called out here and there, and many, many student Revolutionaries were slaughtered (Mexico City was one horrible example.) But in China, the Revolutionary fervor of the young was channeled by the Government into the Cultural Revolution which had the ironic effect of strengthening Mao and the regime while nearly exterminating all opposition.

Something like that took place in America when Reagan and his sponsors cleverly -- brilliantly, really -- co-opted the Revolutionary spirit, language and rhetoric (of "liberation" and "freedom") from the student uprisings and used them to further the corporate/aristocratic factions at the expense of everyone else.

It worked and it is working now. The question is whether it will continue to.

The Rightist argument is wearing very thin. People are at the point of not listening any more. The Left may still be in a quagmire of supporting the support for the Status Quo, holding on rather than moving forward, but even that doesn't hold back the resistance from other quarters.

There are still mountains to climb.

Confidence Game

Now, there will be all kinds of explanations for what has happened to the Financial Markets and Why the Bailout Isn't Working. But perhaps the best explanation I've heard so far has come from "This American Life" on NPR.

The System is a Confidence Game, a Protection Racket, a Ponzi Scheme, and the System failed because it's based on nothing but what can be squeezed from "below." And when "below" ain't got nothin', or it seems like it, Boom Goes the Dynamite, and it all falls to pieces.

That's what happened.

The massive infusion of money from the Treasury in the end will not affect the outcome measurably at all. The Game itself has stopped. Or at least the portion of it that the cash infusion is supposed to "help."

Parts of the Financial System are still working. Loans are still being made, credit is still available and the wheels of industry are still idly turning (not that we have much industry left). Some of the price inflation that has made people's lives so miserable has mitigated. What collapsed was not at the root of the System of Finance and Capital but was on the margins, in all those strange derivatives and credit default swaps and what have you, margins that were pumping lots and lots of essentially bogus and worthless "value" into the System, through a Protection Racket and a Con Game. Lots of workers in the Financial field got rich playing this game, and of course they didn't want it to stop.

But it had to. And when it did, POOF! All that "value" that was never really there in the first place, disappeared. And lots of people in the Financial Industry started screaming. The Bailout/Extortion was designed to prop up the marginal Phony Value sector until the most of the players had a chance to get out of it. It's not just too little too late, though. All these marginal products had become disbursed throughout the System, padding bottom lines here, there and everywhere. All this toxicity needs to be removed through some sort of purge of the System. The Extortion Scheme is supposed to buy up all the toxicity and remove it in an orderly manner. But because of the way things are mixed up in the System, that may be easier said than done. There may be a lot of failures of "fundamentally sound" institutions because the toxicity can't be separated any more.

This may be why the Graybeards and Wise Guys who run the System have been reluctant about or resistant to the notion of actually helping out at the bottom of this teetering pyramid of debt, by helping homeowners who are facing foreclosure. The foreclosure and subprime crisis has been going on for years. Millions upon millions of homes purchased in the last few years have been seized and families forced out of what they thought were their homes. It's tempting to blame them and ignore the elements above them in the System that caused the problem in the first place. But the reluctance of the System to help them in this crisis -- and there is certainly no urgency whatever to assist homeowners in a bind -- seems to have more to do with the fact that the System doesn't see the problem in foreclosures. In other words, it's never been about those subprime mortgages. In fact, the majority of those allegedly "toxic" mortgages are still performing fine.

The problem -- as far as the Wise Guys are concerned -- is well above the individual mortgage level and the value of individual properties. They really don't care what happens at that level. If it mattered to them, they would have called for intervention long ago.

No, the problem is all the "Protection" that's been sold and re-sold based on artificial and inflated values (not just mortgage and real estate values), "Protection" that is essentially worthless.

THAT'S what the problem is, that's what the Extortion is being demanded to cover.

There isn't enough money in any combination of treasuries to do it. Since it was all based on fantasy -- if not outright fraud -- anyway, the notion of covering these bets out of tax revenues (or more borrowing) gets into realms of faith and belief that beggar description.

So.

It seems that the Masters of the Universe are trying to use the Hooverite pre-Great Depression methods to prop up the System, by covering some of the bets at the top of the teetering pyramid, and they will find (like Hoover did) that it doesn't work. It makes things worse. This time, though, the Masters have convinced themselves that it will work.

It's way too late to prevent the Finance System's problems, but it may not be too late to shift the focus from the "top", however.

As has been pointed out, some of the System, the traditional loan and credit portions of the System that don't rely on all the toxic products for "value," are working more or less well. There is some difficulty in some sections, but be wary of the auto industry's plaints, for example. They are claiming they can't get loans to purchase inventory on the one hand, but on the other hand, they're saying their showroom traffic is down by half or more. And they are trying to make out that the customer can't get loans, which isn't exactly true. The dealers can't get loans for inventory purchases. But they can't sell the inventory right now anyway. So what are so fretful about? They don't need the inventory. They can't sell it. Nobody is in the market for a new car right now.

So it is with many of the businesses claiming inability to get credit. It doesn't mean that credit isn't tighter than it was; it's just that things are not necessarily as bad as some of the louder voices want to make out.

Which doesn't mean they won't get much worse.

The focus has to shift from the "top." The Masters of the Universe got their demands met, more or less, but it won't do them much good. If the masses are unable to buy and sell and live relatively decently because they can't get jobs or they don't have homes, or whatever the case may be, then all the fussing over and currying of the Masters isn't going to make much difference. Attention has to shift immediately to the conditions ordinary people are facing -- should have actually been focused there all along -- and efforts to increase employment, fund infrastructure, energy transition, health care and education, and any number of domestic priorities has to enter the equation. Incomes for the masses have to rise, and those of the rich have to fall.

Fundamental to what needs doing is the revival of the notion of Public Interest, and Public Good.

When we get to that point, then we'll know the Reagan Revolution is well and truly over.

Well, It's REALLY Reagan's Fault

A generation ago, it really wasn't all that hard to anticipate what would come of a successful Reagan Revolution: governments in turmoil, increased repression of dissent, growing ignorance among the masses, huge disparities in wealth and privilege, lower taxes on the rich, economic chaos, crumbling infrastructure, nasty "Little Wars," and on and on. It was all built in to the Reagan world view, and it had been fully on display while he was Governor of California before he took on the World.

Here's the Nation section contents for the November 17, 1980 issue of TIME Magazine (cover illustration above)

NATION
Reagan Coast-to-Coast

We Are Off on a Special Adventure (The Presidency/Hugh Sidey)

When Jimmy Knew

An Interview with Ronald Reagan

A Determined Second Fiddle

Draft Picks for the New Team

Is There Life After Disaster?

Squeezed Out off the Middle

Reagan Gets a G.O.P Senate

The House Is Not a Home

Moving into Stately Mansions

Referendums: Rising Impatience

Note the surprise with which his landslide election victory took the Wisecrackers at TIME (and the rest of the media) on Election night:

Landslide. Yes, landslide—stunning, startling, astounding, beyond the wildest dreams and nightmares of the contending camps, beyond the furthest ken of the armies of pollsters, pundits and political professionals. After all the thousands of miles, the millions of words and dollars, the campaign that in newspapers across the land on the very morning of Election Day was still headlined TOO CLOSE TO CALL turned out to be a landslide. The American voter had struck again. Half the election-watching parties in the nation were over before the guests arrived. The ponderous apparatus of the television networks' Election Night coverage had scarcely got on the air before it was over. NBC called the winner at 8:15 p.m. E.S.T., and the loser conceded while Americans were still standing in line at polling booths in much of the country. In a savage repudiation of a sitting President not seen since F.D.R. swept away Herbert Hoover in the midst of the Great Depression, Americans chose Ronald Wilson Reagan, at 69 the oldest man ever to be elected President, to replace Jimmy Carter in the White House.

Indeed.

And what would he do as President? TIME hints in its opening story that November, but doesn't quite get around to saying:

Regan never backed away from his basic principles or essential message abroad, the source of most trouble in the world is the Communist drive for global domination; at home, the fount of most American woes is the overblown, endlessly intrusive Federal Government. In foreign affairs, the U.S. must build up its military power and face down the Soviets. At home, Regan watchword will be less: less federal spending, less taxation, less regulation, less federal activism in directing the economy and curing social ills—in fact, less Government period.

And so it would be, so it is.

And look what it's got us.

Blame Clinton? Sure, for what he did and didn't do. But he didn't orignate the Reagan program he was still carrying out. He was just the best Republican president since Teddy Roosevelt. Blame either or both of the Bushes? Of course, for what they did and didn't do, and their bloodsoaked reigns of terror and kleptocracy are not likely to be forgotten. But they were not the originators of the Reagan quest for world domination, for unfettered (and largely untaxed) rich man's rule, for squeezing every dime out of the untermenschen.

No, what we have today -- and what will have to be dealt with for a generation to come -- is the direct result of the Reagan Revolution. Many people supported it unknowingly, just wanting something different, "change" as it were (as it was repeatedly stated during the election of 1980.) "CHANGE!"

In some ways, Obama is wise to use the same mantra for this year's election.

But will an Obama presidency be as transformational or even Revolutionary? That remains to be seen, but events have a way of shaping outcomes, just as much as Leaders do.

And events are spiraling much the way they did before Reagan ascended to the Purple.