The Uncertain Future and the American Election

I want to say something simple about Clinton and Trump as President, and about the future this election cycle presages.

With Clinton, you know pretty much what you’re going to get. She has a track record: She’s a neoliberal, neo-conservative. She’ll throw the left some bones, especially on identity politics issues, but basically she’s the status quo candidate. Slightly to the left of Obama on domestic issues, but well within the neoliberal consensus, significantly to his right on foreign policy issues.

Trump has issues he keeps hitting again and again. Trade and immigration are the big ones. Generally, Trump looks at most issues as profit-loss statements. “Is America winning from this trade deal? Is America spending more on NATO than it is worth?” But Trump’s said a lot of things, and his track record from private business says less about how he’ll run things than one might like, especially as his long term strategy is to “hire the best people,” and who knows who those will be?

Nassim Taleb, author of the Black Swan, has pointed out that people at the bottom or people who are heading there under the status quo and have little cushion, need volatility. If you’re at the bottom or near, and you can’t stand the status quo (aka, things getting slowly worse for you), then taking a flier on someone like Trump is a rational decision.

On the other hand, if you still have something to lose, or you feel that Trump threatens you directly (because you’re brown and think he’ll be worse than Obama on such issues (remember Obama has deported more people than any President)), well the status quo is preferable to change; to volatility, whose direction you can predict.

It’s not that Trump’s trade policy is insane, or that NATO is wonderful as it stands (it’s made us more likely to get into a nuclear exchange with Russia), it’s that Trump himself seems unpredictable. You don’t know who the “best people” are, and so on

But none of that matters if your life is already unbearable. You need a chance, any chance, and you know you won’t get it from Clinton. You might from Trump. He is more likely to cause substantial changes than Clinton, and thus change the matrix of winners and losers. You might be a loser who wins under Trump.

This is the calculus behind Trump. It will be the calculus behind the next nativist populist if Trump fails or fails to deliver. The more people there are whose lives are trash, or who see themselves in inevitable decline, the more people there are who are willing to take a flier on something–anything–which will upset the current way of doing things.

This is much of why Sanders, a Socialist, did so well. It is why Brexit. It is why Jeremy Corbyn in England. It’s why so many Scots want to leave the UK, or Catalonians, Spain.

People whose lives suck, or whose lives are facing near-to-certain decline, will take a flier on anyone who seems genuinely committed to changing the status quo.

Trump is far from the buffoon people make him out to be, but he is also a very flawed candidate. If he fails, he will be replaced and the people who compete to replace him (and there will be many), will include amongst their numbers some who are very disciplined and who understand that all the gifts the status quo bankers and hedge-funders and so on can give them are nothing compared to pure power, the adulation of the masses, and the sight of those “lords of the universe” on their bellies crawling to lick the boots of their new master. (The contempt with which Putin treats oligarchs who do not do as he wishes is instructive.)

I believe it is now too late to “self-correct.” We are going to have one of three outcomes in most countries:

An oligarchical, dystopian police state reminiscent of cyberpunk novels, if the status quo wins A right-wing populist government of some form or another A left wing populist government of some form or another

This is only the beginning. I am amused by just how worked up people are over Trump, because the sequence of events made inevitable by 40+ years of neoliberal policy is only beginning to unfold.

You can have your cyberpunk dystopia, you can have your right-wing populist, or you can have someone like Corbyn or Sanders.

There aren’t any other options, yet, on the table.

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