Category Archives: Essays/My Intriguing Thoughts

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November 13, 2024

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After the Election – Part 2

This is the less-fun part of what I had planned. Here, I’m going to try and run through what is, I think, the ultimate best-case scenario of the second Trump administration. I’ll try to discuss it with the mindset of what I think the Democrats could do to improve their position with the voting demographics that they lost ground with and what that means for their national scale. For the sake of my own sanity and well-being (which, as of November 12, is hanging on by a thread), I’m not going to dwell too deeply on what I think of as the most-likely outcome of this (which is Trump and his cronies remake the electoral process in such a way that the GOP is now the only realistic federal power broker), but that might be something I have to write out just for my own therapy, even if I don’t post it. So, here we go.

As I see it, the Trump electorate (and others, as we’ll see) can be split into four segments:

  1. The dyed-in-the-wool MAGA crowd;
  2. Evangelicals and Protestants following the recommendation of their community, regardless of whether or not they, individually, believe what Trump is selling; and
  3. The people who only care about the price of goods they see in front of them. (In consultant terms, I believe this would be “low-engagement voters.”)
  4. The apathetic vote

You’ll have some individual segments outside of that (California ideology types; New Hampshire libertarians; etc), but those, to me, are the base of who turned out to vote for Trump.

If I were a strategist for the Democratic party, I’d essentially write off the first two segments. In my previous post, I wrote about how the Harris campaign’s strategy (a continuation of federal-level Democrat strategies since time immemorial) focused on appealing to moderates and conservatives and how that is, at its core, a flawed if not pointless attempt at courting a group of people who do not care about what you’re selling. It’s like trying to sell a car to someone who cannot legally buy a car. Those two segments – MAGA and Evangelicals especially – are essentially dyed-in-the-wool Republicans. There are, of course, a substantial amount of non-evangelical Protestants set who are more open to your message, but they’re likely already going to vote for you and don’t need to tune in to your convention.

Rather, the Democrats need to focus in on group three: The people who are going to be most brutally shut-down by the very economic policies they’re voting for. In order to do that, the Democrats need to take a look at what those people want, where they’re getting their information, and think long and hard about how they can engage them at a local level. For despite all the Democrats’ messaging about grass-roots organizing and small donors, they don’t seem to be getting their pitch for President across. You can knock doors, you can buy TV ads, you can do everything in your power to get across to them using traditional means, but at the end of the day, the people who get sticker shock when they go out to buy candy as a small reprieve from the horrors of the world won’t want to vote for a person who doesn’t speak their language.

But before we get into that, we have to explain why this is even worth doing, rather than what the Democrats are seemingly stuck on doing: Eating the progressive wing of the party. Right now, at this very moment on November 12, people are responding to AOC’s Instagram post asking for their reasons for splitting a ticket. And that is exactly what happened across the country: A lot of voters split their tickets. They voted for progressive policies like enshrining abortion rights and then turned around and voted for the very people who are trying to take away those rights. What those people are saying seems to be similar: They don’t trust what the Democrats are selling because it’s too polished. AOC’s constituents who split the ticket between her and Trump said that they like her and Bernie because the two of them talk to them at their level and their concerns. Harris, for all intents and purposes, did not. If you were really paying attention, she did, but most people don’t pay attention to that degree. Most people, they get off of work and they’re exhausted. They have responsibilities to attend to or they’re too dog-tired to do anything but veg out or listen to something brainless (i.e., Joe Rogan). They don’t have time to sit there and watch rallies, or listen to debates. That’s just not the way life in the 21st century operates.

But you know who gets that and shows up, and talks in common-sense language about the problems people are facing? The progressive wing. AOC, Bernie, Rashida Tlaib? These are people who keep getting re-elected to their districts even as the American electorate apparently shifts to the hard right at the Federal level. And, even though he is remarkably full of shit, Trump speaks at a level people can understand. (Kind of. Sometimes. Most of the time it’s a rambling, incoherent mess, but surprise, surprise, CNN didn’t spend nearly enough time talking about that as they did covering Biden’s stutter, so here we are.) Their voting base feels a connection with them and knows that, at the very least, they’re not mainstream politicians, which they respect.

This is, further, borne out in some of the surprises across the country. Surprises like the one city council race in deep-red Kentucky where an openly transgender candidate was elected. This is, admittedly, a sample size of one, but it does show that such things are possible. You can get progressive, marginalized people elected at the grass roots level if you are willing to stick your neck out on the line and support them.

As another indicator of this, in my town of Portland, voters brought in a surprisingly progressive city council. (This might partly be a result of people not voting down-ballot, but, in my opinion, I think that view assumes that people have a conservative slant and were too flummoxed to vote with the new rank-choice voting system, which I disagree with. But that’s another essay.) The new councilors showed up in multiple venues, threw parties, talked to people in neighborhoods, and schmoozed in a way that you don’t typically see from candidates. The new mayor, too, showed up at the recent Book Festival early on and just quietly hung around, letting people come up to talk to him for a quick chat and made connections that way. It was a surprising blind spot for a lot of other candidates: One of the points of Portland’s pride is Powell’s Books – the city loves books! Why didn’t you show up to the damn book festival, bud? Schmucks, I tell you.

All of this, then, leads me to wondering what, exactly, the Democrats could possibly do to win over the “apathetic vote.” (This, of course, assumes that we will have a free and fair election in four years’ time, which is very much in doubt.) Well, those thoughts will be in part 3. And apologies in advance, but that one’s going to be much, much longer.

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November 11, 2024

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After the election – Part 1

It’s been six days since the results started trickling in and we, as Americans, have to face exactly what we’ve allowed to happen. As many people have reminded me over the last week, we don’t know what will happen. It can’t be done. By his very nature and temperament, Trump invites chaos. “Capricious” is not enough of a descriptor of what goes on in that man’s head, and I don’t see any reason why prognostication about his plans in office should be taken at face value. (Especially given his new inner circle is wildly egotistical and will [hopefully] turn on each other very quickly.)

But with that said, the stakes are high enough that it is worth taking him and his friends at their word. They campaigned on promises of mass deportations, on stripping away the rights of women, on threatening the lives of anyone who does not fall into the cishet bucket that forms their voting base, and thinly-veiled threats to the lives and liberties of anyone who is not an evangelical Christian. If you apply a disaster preparedness mindset to all of this, then it’s obvious what we have to do: Figure out what to do if the worst comes to worst and we’re faced with a thoroughly-entrenched, effective authoritarian regime. For my money, I’m not confident that the national Democrats will learn any lesson from this – indeed, they’ve seemed to repeat past mistakes and begin assigning blame to the trans community, the nebulous “left,” and anyone who didn’t attempt to court the Republican vote.

I don’t think I’m in a space to talk about what preparedness in the face of a Trump regime will look like, but I can attempt to work out my thoughts about the Democratic strategy. I’ve had a fair few sleepless nights since November 5, and a lot of that liminal space has been dedicated to thinking about stuff like this. (It should not be surprising to anyone who knows me that this is what I’ve thought about while I’ve lain away at night.) So, here we go. This post will be about my thoughts on the Democrats’ attempt to court Republicans and Independents and, later on, I’ll post something about how, I think, they should approach voters going forward. (Spoiler: Actually embrace progressive causes and talk to people on their level.)

So much of the Democrats’ strategy since Obama’s second term has been to attempt to appeal to the reason of “moderate Republicans.” For my money, this grew out of the otherwise rational reaction that the Tea Party could not possibly represent the average Republican voter. The Democrat strategist strawman in my head saw the Tea Party and thought, “Well, these people are lunatics,” and reacted against them. This, after all, seemed to work to get Obama elected in the first place. And yet, according to stats from Cornell, what you saw was a 93/6 split in favor of Romney among Republican voters. Which, fair enough. Romney was a boring and, in relation to today’s standards, moderate candidate. Not too surprising that he captured such a huge proportion of the GOP vote.

What I’m getting at, for 2012, is that Obama’s progressive platform was wildly tamped down and moderated in order to appeal to moderates and conservatives. Yet what that got him was barely over half of moderate voters (56/41 split), a roughly even Independent share (45/50 in favor of Romney), and barely anything from the GOP. Yet, Obama was elected, so one can imagine Democrat strategists doing a victory lap and entrenching the methodology in The Books.

Let’s now fast-forward to 2016. The election that broke tons of hearts. The Democrats wound up with Clinton via the primaries. She ran a pretty bog-standard Democrat platform: center-left, very moderate on most issues, and insisting that policies would be enough to appeal to the average American voter. And you know: That should have been enough. She was running against a maniac. A guy who bragged about assaulting women (and, indeed, in a matter of years would be proven to be a rapist in court). The Democrats were, indeed, sure that they could court the moderate and Republican voters who were, as they said in their own words, disgusted by Trump. And yet, Clinton lost with a similar share of moderates and a slightly-improved share of Republicans. But only slightly.

Okay, sure. That’s fine. Let’s assume, for the moment, that Trump’s charisma was enough to appeal to those disgusted Republican voters. (The guy was on TV after all, and we Americans love our TV personalities.) Clinton lost the campaign and the Democrats immediately turned on the progressive wing. People in my immediate social circles blamed Bernie Sanders (specifically “Bernie bros”) for the loss, as if the left in America is substantial and the electoral left is anything more than a drop in the bucket. The Democratic party at a national level did not spend time thinking that their insistence on policy was enough to get people’s attention. They didn’t seem to consider the reality that, to most people, anything more nuanced than an acknowledgment that the rent is too damn high and eggs cost $6.50 at 7-11 (!!!) is too much to handle.

And so we had four years of Trump in office, leading the country to massive deregulation, near-critical events on the international scale, and a global pandemic that killed thousands in short order. And yet, despite his many failures, the 2020 race was a close one! The Democrats wound up with Joe Biden who, to his credit, won. The party managed to keep voter turnout high and get people to bite their tongues and vote. And to Biden’s credit, he did a decent job of delivering on some of his progressive platforms. He shored up the NLRB, had a consumer-friendly FTC, and mitigated the absolute worst impulses of the government. (But only the absolute worse.) The thing we’re concerned about here is: Did he manage to pull Republican voters more than Clinton did? The two had the same opponent and Biden, arguably, had an easier time since so many people died under the watch of Trump.

Let’s look at the numbers. He did worse than Clinton! So much worse! Trump’s Republican base snapped back from an 88/8 split to 94/5! Credit where it’s due, Biden did pick up an extra +12 on the moderate side, but that sill kept him under 2/3 of the moderate vote – a number you’d hope would have been much higher. Biden saw a similar gain among Independents over Clinton, but, again, not substantial and in this case, well under 2/3 of the Independent vote.

As I write this, votes are still being tallied and it’s not clear how the Republican/Independent/Moderate vote share will shake out, but it’s clear that the Harris strategy of courting Republicans and moderates did not hand her the victory the campaign thought it would. Early numbers I’ve seen point to Trump retaining that 94/5 split, maybe even a little higher, with a substantial drop from Biden among independents. The moderate vote was roughly similar to Biden, maybe a little more, but still: Nowhere near what the Democrats needed and were trying to get with all of their positioning of Harris as someone who would lead, essentially, a coalition administration.

What does all of this mean? Well, to me, it tells me that the strategy of courting potential converts from the other political party does not work. A couple of months ago, one of the execs at my company had a brief spiel about how difficult it is to get people to shift from Android to iOS and visa versa. People are attached to their brands. The brands are part of their identity, and separating themselves from that aspect of their lives is like asking them to slough off part of who they are. American voters’ identities are roughly the same – especially for Democrat and Republican voters. That’s been proven election after election. The fact that the moderate vote is, consistently, either near an even-split or just over that, should imply that the moderate vote is really people who would be Democrat or Republican, but don’t want to register as such. In other words: They should be treated as a 50/50 split.

The game, ultimately, is getting more of your party and that 50/50 share to turn out for the polls. That’s always been the game. That’s why you used to have local parties bus people out to polling stations. You need to ensure that you have your base on lock and turning out, otherwise you’re screwed. As I told my Dad on the phone the other day: This is less of a problem for the GOP than it is the Democrats. The GOP has evangelical churches do that work for them. (i.e., Protestants voted for Trump at a 63/36 split and evangelicals in particular went for him at a whopping 82% of the vote.) The Democrats, locally and nationally, must come up with an answer to that. They ran on a platform of saving democracy and that was, apparently, not enough to get their people to turn out or to not switch their vote to Trump.

So, what does that strategy look like? Well, in the next post – soon™ – I’ll talk about what I think that looks like. (For all the good that’ll do.)

The key point here, though, is that continuing to appeal to the center and the “reasonable right” is a lost cause. You can’t get people to switch their phone OS, and getting people to vote against their party is harder still.

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January 24, 2024

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Decay, Rome, and Constantinople

I recently read Bill Peel’s wonderful Tonight It’s a World We Bury: Black Metal, Red Politics. It’s a short book about how left-wing political thought and action can be mapped on to the themes of black metal. Those themes specifically being: 1) Distortion; 2) Decay; 3) Coldness; 4) Secrecy; 5) Heresy. Black metal is a genre that I just kind of fell into over the years. I think even as recently as 2015, if you’d tried to have me listen to something by Trespasser, I would have balked and run screaming for the doors. Yet since then, I’ve grown to really love it. The genre’s distortion, dissonance, and thees have been a big standby in my playlists since I was first introduced to Rotting Christ, and I don’t think I’d have it any other way.

Still, it’s painfully obvious to anyone who listens to the genre that it’s got a big ol Nazi problem. As Peel points out, that’s due – at the very, very, very least – to the fact that many of the popularizers (ironic, that) of black metal were, themselves, Nazis. Since the 90s in Norway, though, there has been a rise in what’s known in Red-Anarchist Black Metal (RABM). RABM uses the themes of black metal – outlined above – to the ends of building a better world, smashing oppressive systems, and even a bit of religious commentary here and there. But RABM is not a popular subgenre even within a very unpopular genre of music. In vast swaths of the metal community, it is rather gauche to be seen as political. Apoliticalness is a badge of honor, partly because it allows the listener to pretend that they are above the masses of humanity who waste their time caring about things. More distressingly, though, apolitical music often gives cover to right wing movements who infiltrate subcultures. (See Anton Shekhovtsov’s “Apoliteic Music: Neo-folk, Martial Industrial And “metapolitical Fascism” for an excellent breakdown of how this works.) 

But we’re not here to break down right-wing metal and RABM in detail. I already did that in my podcast. No, we’re here because something popped into my mind as I read Talia Lavin’s latest blog post about the fall of Rome and how that relates to where we’re at in America. Now, I’ve calmed down over the years. I used to get very, very annoyed when people equated America to Rome and how we’ve been in the decline of America just as Rome declined etc etc. It’s something that liberals and conservatives love to trot out. Liberals love it because it gives American political institutions a sort of Victorian romanticism. They think of grand paintings depicting the fall of the Roman Republic and they think, “We, too, had decorum once.” Conservatives love it because they get to point at the borders, migrants, and “woke culture” and shout, “Do you see?! They’re coming for us! The barbarians are at the gates!”

Now, both of them are wrong. It’s a lazy equivocation to compare Rome and America. The Roman Republic was even less of a Republic than the American Republic. Women were essentially property, slavery was warmly embraced at all corners of the state, and politicians openly hired crowds of street toughs to beat up their opponents. Now, we have the good sense to do all of that under the table, thank you very much. 

It is, of course, undeniable to state that the Republic transitioned to an Empire, and one can point out parallels to America, but I reaffirm my stance that doing so comes not from a place of historical accuracy, but a desire to be a Victorian romantic. It is more droll – yet I think more accurate – to point to any number of more modern states that had a liberal democracy and went whole-hog into autocracy. My favorite is the Weimar Republic, because I’m a paranoiac and like to joke that, any day now, the chuds will load me onto the trains for the concentration camps in Idaho. 

I’m a blast at parties.

But the main thing that I think people get wrong about this is drawing a line that, as Rome the city fell out of the hands of what we commonly refer to as the Roman state, the Empire fell. It ignores the fact that, long before then, the Roman Empire was governed by two emperors: One in the West in Rome (and later Ravenna, Milan, and even out of Italy for a time) and the other in Byzantium, later Constantinople. The latter was more secure, fortified, and stable than the Western counterpart for a number of reasons which I won’t go into, but the point is that, while the Western Rome “fell,” the Eastern Rome remained until the 15th century, though the full expanse of the Roman Empire was never re-achieved.

And indeed, there’s something even more specific that I want to briefly chat about. The reason I put “fell” in quotation marks in the paragraph above is that I don’t think it’s at all accurate to say that Western Rome “fell.” See, one of the ideas that Peel outlines in his book is the idea of decay. While decay is commonly thought of as a negative, Peel points out that decay is part of the growth cycle of every form of life on this planet. In a very illustrative case, Peel writes about mushrooms, specifically mushrooms that grow out of specific dead forests. While a common perspective is that the forests have died and, thus, provide nothing of value, the truth of the matter is that the value just changes forms. From fallen trees come mushrooms, often monetarily valuable (or tasty) ones. Life, in other words, does not have a hard stop; it just changes from one thing to another.)

So too with Rome. Even if one wanted to take the position that the Empire ceased when the gates of Rome were breached, it ignores a slew of questions of defining the continuity and transition of power (and indeed the veracity of that power) between emperors and who granted those emperors that power. It is less difficult to say that power centralized in Rome, which had by that time strong ties to the Papal seat in the Vatican, transitioned to the power recognized by the Pope and given the Christian authority to establish the peace of Rome. In less obtuse terms: While what is popularly construed as the Roman Empire disappeared from the world stage, it is not at all hard to draw a transitional line from the various Germanic tribes that sacked Rome to Charlemagne and, thus, the Holy Roman Empire. 

(The Holy Roman Empire, is not a strange thing to be wondered at, like it’s an alien. It’s a simple premise summed up in a simple label: The Holy Roman Emperor is the man with the authority given to him by God, via the Pope, to bring Europe under Christian dominion and leadership, and sits above kings in order to ensure that kings play as nice as they can. It is Holy because it is a religious authority. It is Roman because the Pope, in Rome, grants it that religious authority, and it is, obviously, an empire.)

What I’m getting at, here, is that we need to approach these things with a decay-centric worldview. When we do, life and the world get much, much more interesting. We see the way institutions transition authority between themselves. We see the way peoples change over long periods of time. We get a better understanding of how things work. It’s not romantic. Shelley would not write about these things. You won’t get think-pieces about great transitional periods and the potentialities therein. But it is the way of things. 

(And this, of course, does not begin to touch the interplay between the Eastern Roman Empire [ERE] and the Western, and later how Constantinople interacted with the West at large, and what that says about the ERE as an artifact of antiquity vying against newer forms of government and power in the West. Really, the ERE gets short shrift!)

I suppose what I’m saying here is that it’s not wrong to say that the Roman Empire in the West collapsed, but it is wrong to leave it at that. It is wrong to give in to melancholy, to fetishize the past of a past, and thus to fetishize death. It allows oneself to become a wasting waif, which is very romantic and seems to automatically impart one with the scent of burning candles, leather-bound books, and the sound of wind and rain on the moors outside one’s manor house in the Midlands, but it’s limiting. 

We can look around us and see, obviously, that things are changing. But when we think of that as approaching an end, we place ourselves in a spot where we’re more inclined to be inactive, to let events happen to us. When we see our world as in flux and moving from one thing to another, it’s easier to not only act to change things, but to imagine a better world and to plan for that world to come into being. That’s the promise of decay, as I see it, and, sadly, you don’t get that from gigantic paintings that hang in the Louvre or the National Portrait Gallery.