Struggling To Keep Up

[poliphilo]

I've been saying for a while now that our politics were busted and I expected a revolution- and now it's upon us- and I'm not sure I understand what's going on but I intend to try.

I was expecting a revolution of the left- because that's where revolutions usually come from- but this is a revolution of the right- if that's the proper word for it- which I doubt. Perhaps we should go with what the revolutionaries call themselves and say "alt-right". Anyway, I've just been watching a young guy from Breitbart being interviewed on Channel 4 News- and he was nervy and clever and Jewish and gay- with white streaks in his black hair- and not like any rightist I've seen before. Also he had so much energy...

Comments

[artkouros.livejournal.com]

Yeah - I've seen that guy. How anyone can work at a cesspool like Breitbart is beyond me. Over here we were expecting the right to implode. Guess what? The left imploded. Oh well, pick up the pieces and build again.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It's as though all the energy has drained from the left. I think these things are cyclical. Now one's up now the other.
Another thing that's weird is that the revolution is being led- in the States- by a 70 year old man- which isn't at all what one expects.

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

I think to call Trump a revolutionary would be a misnomer. A revolution has to be bigger than oneself, and the man is a malignant narcissist only interested in stuffing cabinet positions with his children and cronies and hounding the media when it challenges him.

I don't think the right are stronger than the left. I think they were just willing to dispense with the normal standards of shame and restraint that help a society cohere.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Isn't it always the case that a revolution is bigger than its leaders? The French revolution ate its leaders. So did the Russian revolution.

I think Trump's personal character is largely irrelevant. Change was coming with or without him.

[tagryn]

I read it as a populist uprising, with focus on anti-globalization measures such as reversing NAFTA and TPP. I've been expecting something like this to happen - eventually the wheel was going to turn back towards protectionism - but didn't see anyone in either party who particularly wanted to take up that banner, since the elites on both sides of the aisle were benefiting from the status quo. Perhaps not surprisingly, the uprising came in the form of people outside the parties (Sanders and Trump).

What came as a total surprise to me was they they were able to co-opt the major parties, successfully in Trump's case and unsuccessfully in Sanders', rather than having to work outside them. I suspect the historical postmortems on 2016 will say that the GOP was left too weak from a half-decade of infighting between the Tea Party and establishment sides for either to fend off Trump when he emerged out of nowhere; the Democrats didn't have such a strong division after eight relatively successful years under Obama, and so had enough institutional strength to short circuit Sanders' insurrection attempt.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I like your analysis. I think its right.

So what next for the parties? Will they keep their names but morph into very different entities? That's what happened in the past so I imagine it's what'll happen now.