Can Capitalism Save America?

It helps to remember that DJ T-Rump is not in charge.  He is a showman, not a true leader.  Things he says are contradicted with impunity by his direct reports in their public comments and their discussions with leaders outside the U.S. The people making the real decisions are those he has brought in as cabinet members and advisers.

His chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, is a particularly intriguing example since his worldview is strongly influenced by the same theory I have referenced several times in this blog - the secular cycle of history as explained in The Fourth Turning by William Strauss and Neil Howe. In a Washington Post article that points out Bannon's affinity to this construct, Howe includes a very succinct explanation of the book's main idea.

The Fourth Turning is geared to the cycle of changing generations as each couple of decades pass. The four cyclic turnings are all driven by the recurring generational archetypes that repeat in what Strauss and Howe claimed to be a discernable pattern. "The Nomads" (Generation X) are now in charge of the machinery of operating the nation while "the Prophets" (Baby Boomers) take their last hurrah with Trumpism and a whole range of dissenting movements. Long-ignored Gen-Xers are not terribly concerned with pleasing their elders. They will only subject themselves to the direction set by Baby Boomer elders when it makes sense for them.

By Marc Escanuelas

For the Gen-Xers standing at the controls, rules are made to be broken. If they see that breaking away from the U.S.A. is a better option than maintaining allegiance, they will veer their states toward secession, (though it certainly helps to have opposition Boomer elders like Jerry Brown in charge of your state when you choose that course). In his WaPo article, Howe writes that in our fourth turning crisis, "rising regionalism ... could lead to the fragmentation of major political entities..." A fourth turning can end in glory or debasement. Sad to say, I foresee the more apocalyptic outcome of this fourth turning.

My view is that rather than capitalism rectifying the mistakes of our elder generations, the forces at play in this round appear to exceed capitalism's capacity for lifting our nation to its former heights. Financial catastrophe, militarism, terrorism, peak oil, and Gaia are all breathing down our necks. It is beyond me how we can expect to be in a 20-year "high" a decade from now, united or not. In a more global view, I see c.2030 as the tipping point to the Age of Limits.

A documentary film by Bannon, "Generation Zero," takes the viewer through the U.S.'s most recent secular cycle. It is clear from this film that he and I look at the world through a similar lens. What's more, Bannon and I were both junior officers on ships in the Indian Ocean in preparation for Operation Eagle Claw - the failed 1980 Iran hostage rescue mission. For both he and I, that failure has been a source of long-lasting sorrow (though our ships had departed the area a month before the mission flew). That experience has led us to take offenses by the Iranian government more personally than the average American. In my case, being retired, there is little I can do now, but for National Security Councilman Bannon, sweet revenge is within reach.

Watching "Generation Zero" was better than listening to a lecture, since the endless string of narrators were accompanied by catchy video stills and clips, but Bannon's metronymic presentation feels like watching an hour-and-a-half long professional ping-pong game. The film gets into the aspects most relevant to our current struggles at about 1 hr. 22 min. The upshot of the film is that our fourth turning crisis will require a cleansing of the excess baggage that prevents the capitalist state from fulfilling the American dream. Howe calls it "the creative destruction of public institutions, something every society periodically requires to clear out what is obsolete." Bannon calls it "the deconstruction of the administrative state."

"Generation Zero" ends with a 1796 quote from Edmund Burke that resonates with the idea of a fractured nation coming out of our fourth turning:

Though plunged in an abyss of disaster, some states have suddenly emerged. They have begun a new course, and in the depths of their calamity, and on the very ruins of their country, have laid the foundation of a towering and durable greatness.

I don't know if, after our current fourth turning, there is any prospect of towering and durable greatness or if we will even still be a country.

Escape from Trumpism

Aside from the devastating effect on liberal Californians of seeing Trump win the presidency, another big influence on the rise of their secession movement was the 'leave' vote in Great Britain that triggered Brexit. Some of the same elements of populism that drove the UK's decision are also at play in the YesCalifornia campaign. Perversely, it was Trump's populist appeal to the working class that vaulted him to power after they had been sorely neglected under recent neo-liberal administrations. In an article published last August, Marxist Martin Jacques described how neo-liberalism is in its death throes, with Trump as an example of how class inequality is now the main issue:

[Trump's] arguments mark a radical break with the neoliberal, hyper-globalisation ideology that has reigned since the early 1980s and with the foreign policy orthodoxy of most of the postwar period... But Trump is no man of the left. He is a populist of the right. He has launched a racist and xenophobic attack on Muslims and on Mexicans. Trump’s appeal is to a white working class that feels it has been cheated by the big corporations, undermined by Hispanic immigration, and often resentful towards African-Americans...

Jacques' predictions for what would happen to the our country with Trump as POTUS were strikingly dire:

A Trump America would mark a descent into authoritarianism characterised by abuse, scapegoating, discrimination, racism, arbitrariness and violence; America would become a deeply polarised and divided society.

We are already seeing plentiful instances of those predictions coming true. Note that Jacques describes several manifestations of the process of descending into authoritarianism. We may not have an authoritarian government yet, but we are headed there quickly.

Stephen K. Bannon's cryptic mandate for "deconstruction of the administrative state" is shorthand for the federal government washing its hands of social responsibilities, but enlarging its control of whatever the President considers threats to national security (both internal and external). Trump's gaffe at calling the deportation surge a military operation was just what you would expect of a militarist. Enter, the security state. Nigel Farage, former leader of the Brexit campaign and a Bannon fan, noted that these ideas are what Bannon would like to see adopted "across the West."

Meanwhile, the neo-liberal Democrats have decided to take their fight to Congress, rather than waste all their energy protesting Trump directly. In shouting matches at numerous Republican Congressional town halls they hope to hold their Representatives and Senators to the neo-lib standard, rather than follow Trump in his version of economic nationalism. Their playbook is the Indivisible Guide, which explains its purpose thusly, "We believe that the next four years depend on Americans across the country standing indivisible against the Trump agenda." Ironically, in these townhalls, the Indivisible movement manifests America becoming "a deeply polarised and divided society," as predicted by Jacques.

Photo by Markus Tacker

It is interesting that while the Trump victory is seen as America's Brexit, there is little anticipation of Calexit or the 49 other potential exits brewing in the country. That, too, would be a sure fulfillment of becoming a "deeply ... divided society." Calexit and others that follow will not be a populist response to the failure of neo-liberalism, but an escape from Trumpism. The Green Party would do well to concentrate on formulating agendas tailored to individual states and to participate in the revolutions occurring at that level.

Califoreignia Dreamin'

In order for America to emerge from the fourth turning as a federation of confederations, the transition will need to begin soon. Due to our crisis of presidential leadership, it is suddenly conceivable that the watershed event triggering a complete geopolitical realignment of these United States is now before us.

Photo by Roman Avdagić

That event would be the passage of a ballot measure aiming for California to secede from the union. Once California passes their measure, the secessionist urge will snowball to include several more states. Depending on the popularity and success of the YesCalifornia movement, there are several other states with long-standing secessionist movements likely to follow suit. These include Hawaii, Texas, Vermont, and New Hampshire, all being spurred on by the election of DJ T-Rump. Washington, D.C. will not be able to prevent these departures because there is no component of the U.S. military that will agree to take up arms against any of the states, especially California. Especially under this Commander and Cheat.

As the states peal off, natural alliances will form with compatible neighbors. Eventually, some will consolidate into confederations. There is already some interest by Oregon and Washington to make common cause with California in backtracking America's manifest destiny. There is no telling which states will comprise the U.S.A. once the dominoes have fallen, but states are the natural level of fragmentation since they already perform most of the same functions as their parent government. We may end up being the Divided States of America, but more likely we will become just a less perfect union, with a semi-authoritative coordinating body like the Organization of American States.

The YesCalifornia blue book provides answers to many questions regarding their initiative. The nine main points on their homepage bear some resemblance to positions taken by the Green Party, e.g. shrink the military budget, provide universal health care, protect the environment, and extend access to immigrants. Or, YesCalifornia may morph into something more in the image of Peter Thiel, though he doesn't have much time before they put the measure on the 2018 ballot followed by a plebiscite to finalize the divorce by March 2019.

Plans for the California's national Independence Day fireworks are rumored to include their own damn satellite rocket.