American pundits ask, after every debate, a singularly stupid question that makes my head want to explode (and maybe yours, too): “who won?!” They slaver and drool and howl like they were watching in Caligula’s box at the Coliseum, cheering a gladiatorial combat to the death. But Presidential debates aren’t just about the people on the stage. They have many actors, most of which are observers and witnesses. Who watches? History. Decency. Humanity. Dust. Sometimes, moments in history aren’t really about the people on the stage at all, and this is one of those times. The question isn’t “who won?!!” What, then, is it?

The simple truth, which I think you already feel, even if you won’t allow yourself to think it, is that many of the would-be leaders on that stage would make perfectly fine Presidents. Some would be better than others, sure. But most of them would lead a catastrophically broken nation forward. President Pete? President Cory? President Julian? President Angry Fuckin’ Beto? Fantastic. Maybe President Liz or President Bernie would fix more things faster and better — but that’s almost splitting hairs at this point.

So who “won?” That’s the wrong way to think about what’s happening in America entirely. The question now is about America’s people, it’s citizenry, whether Americans can act as true citizens of a modern democracy or whether they’ll go on meekly settling for jaw-dropping lives of self-destruction — the question now isn’t about America’s leaders. Let me explain.

For the first time in living memory, something remarkable is happening in American politics. Americans have…actual, meaningful, genuine, and slightly awesome political choices. What choices? There’s the same old macho old-school neoliberalism: Biden. There’s a fresher, slightly more woke version, attuned to gay rights and minority rights and so forth: Pete. There’s aggressive leftish European style liberalism: Julian and Cory. And then there are the biggies: social democracy, the lightweight version thanks to Liz, and the full-scale social democracy Bernie champions.

Bang! America’s political terrain has suddenly exploded, widened, expanded — like a supernova. Do you see how many choices that is? How globally relevant they suddenly are, too? And yet we need to understand — every one of us that considers ourselves intelligent people — just how momentous this vast expansion of America’s political terrain is. Why?

Because for as long as you and I have been alive on this earth, American politics have been as narrow as George W Bush’s Texas squint. They’ve boiled down to the following “choice” — predatory capitalism, with a heaping dose of supremacy and patriarchy, or slightly less predatory capitalism, with a tiny bit less supremacy and patriarchy. Wait — that’s not really a choice at all, is it?

Americans have never had truly modern political choices before — ever. What they’ve had is a dilemma: the same old failed ideas, attitudes, paradigms, theories, stances, or…even more of them. This moment in history is therefore a profound one. Think about the “menu” Americans have to suddenly choose from now. Neoliberalism. Left Euroliberalism. Lightweight social democracy. Hardcore social democracy. Those are genuine and real choices that other rich societies have had for a century or more now…for the first time ever in America. (That’s also why so many Americans have felt so trapped by “left” versus “right” for so long — they’ve been forced to “choose” among different flavors of exactly the same failed paradigms for all of living memory.)

(Go ahead and think about it. There was Reagan vs Mondale. There was Bush vs Gore. There was Obama vs Bush. And so on. None of these figures had any real agenda for what Liz Warren calls “structural change.” They didn’t have any ideas or visions for institutional change — except when it came to laying the groundwork of American authoritarian-fascism. What I mean by that is nobody proposed an American Healthcare System or an American Retirement System or a Free College System and so on.

What was the result? Well, the only new institutions — “structures” in Liz’s terms — that America ever built were…ones of violence and greed. Bush built a “Homeland Security” apparatus. Obama built a weird capitalist Obamacare system that helped life expectancy…fall. Obama and Biden built a perfect killing machine, made of remote controlled drones. Reagan and Bush made things like raiding pensions funds and hedge funds raking in billions from obvious manipulation and megabanks perfectly legal. Do you see what I mean by “America never built the structures and institutions of a modern society?”)

Now, finally, Americans have that choice. They can choose figures whose sole agenda — like Liz or Bernie — is making America a genuinely rich nation, which means a nation rich in modern institutions and structures, like healthcare, education, retirement systems, working laws, low inequality, rising life expectancy, and so forth. Americans suddenly have that choice — and many more — at long last.

(And yet I worry that they don’t know it. You see, Liz has had to something very smart — but also very damaging — to get this far. She has to say “I’m a capitalist!” at every opportunity. Let’s get real. Maybe even she thinks she’s a capitalist, but I doubt it. What she is is a classic Social Democrat — quite a bit like Canada’s pioneering ones. But she can’t say it. Why not? Because then America’s punditry of aggressive morons, all little patriarchs, will jump on her like a prison gang jumps a new inmate. The following terms aren’t part of America’s discourse: social democracy, capitalism, fascism, authoritarianism, collapse. But they should be. Because then discussing what’s really happening in America today would be much, much simpler. That’s this.)

Let’s put all the idea of the “sudden expansion of the political terrain” much more simply and accurately. Americans finally have the choice between 1990s style neoliberalism, European liberalism, European social democracy…and, on the other side, 1930s style authoritarian-fascism. That’s it. But — and there’s a big but…

But an expansion of the political terrain is nothing without a citizenry capable of choosing it. Transformative leaders are nothing without a revolution surging behind them. Let me explain that, too. Remember when I said the question isn’t “who won?!” Now maybe you understand what I mean.

The question now isn’t about the people on the stage vying to be President at all. It’s about us, you and me. You and I know that America’s full of catastrophically failed institutions. From banks to corporations to HMOs to student debt to political parties. But do you want to know what one of the biggest ones is that we don’t discuss? America’s citizenry.

America’s citizenry may be it’s biggest failed institution of all. What kind of people vote against…their own…goddamned…healthcare, education, retirement, kids futures, planet, environment, well-being, sanity, incomes, savings…for decades? What the? How do you even make people do that? It makes everyone else in the world just shake their heads in disbelief. What kind of people don’t want their kids to have safe schools and their grandparents to afford insulin? What on earth?

Americans will complain — rightly, I think — that they’re too weary, broken, poor to be good citizens. They work many jobs. They’ll lose what they have. Just being a citizen in America today costs more than most people have…which is nothing. That’s true. And yet Americans are also hardly the poor and huddled masses of the French Revolution. Maybe you get my point. It’s possible for an institution to fail — and still to be empathetic to the causes of its failure. But that doesn’t change the fact of failure.

America’s citizenry has failed in ways that drop the jaws and shake the heads of people in every other country in the world. Americans are powerless, poor, broke. They live short, mean, nasty lives, at which they’re forever at each others’ throats. Their kids are shot at school and their elders can’t afford basic medicines. But that’s what Americans have not just tolerated — but in a weird and bizarre tale…what they were taught was “good” for them…namely greed, cruelty, violence, anger, and selfishness…so that’s what they lionized and championed and voted for. Remember when I said America’s two party system offered voters a dilemma, not a real choice? I think over time, that dilemma got internalized. Americans came to believe that choosing between more cruelty and greed or even more cruelty and greed was all politics could or should be.

Now all that is being undone — maybe, just maybe, possibly, not for certain.

Americans finally — finally — have real political choices. They can choose something other than capitalism, supremacy, and patriarchy, or even more of it. They can finally decide to have a society founded on values other than greed, violence, selfishness, and stupidity. The question, my friends, is if they will choose it.

The question isn’t “who won the debate?!” The question is: “is America’s citizenry capable of letting itself win…for once…at last?” Will America choose a new revolution — to take on the challenge of real sociopolitical transformation? Will it choose to become a social democracy or at least a Euroliberal society — instead of the failed smoking wreck that American capitalism, supremacy, and patriarchy made of it, from school shootings to medical bankruptcies? Will it dare to climb the ladder of social progress at last, and leave the stage of capitalism and its endless exploitation and systemic abuse and inherent racism behind? Can it? Are Americans intelligent and wise and courageous enough to choose a future that matters again? Can they revolt once more?

Those are the questions. They have to do with America’s greatest failed institution: it’s citizenry. Strangely, America’s polity has proven it can still produce candidates worthy of being good and decent leaders. There are would-be leaders offering Americans all the choices of genuinely modern politics now, from Liz to Bernie to Julian. What there isn’t, yet, is a citizenry that really gets that, understands it, feels that transformation — and so is hell-bent on choosing those leaders, and making genuine, enduring, revolutionary progress again.

Will America’s citizenry be its last and greatest failed institution? Is it capable of a new revolution? That part isn’t just anybody’s guess — though pundits will spend the next year endlessly talking about polls.

It’s up to you.

Umair

September 2019