So it has come to pass.
The white tribal authoritarianism (“WTA”) we warned the D.C. and U.S. national political class about leers at us all 24/7.
These two specific, concrete examples from 2009/2010: “Our Common Peril” (2009) and then again here in 2010 — just two of many alarms we raised in vain.
We quoted a GOP individual in the 2009 piece above who embraced a Franco-type racial fascism for the U.S. He’s a close Bannon and Roger Ailes confidant at FOX, known in national media and political circles for decades.
All that is Trumpism today in power? In open sight for years across D.C. for anyone who chose to see.
Here’s a quite recent, frustrating moment. A few weeks before the election at a public D.C. national security event I described – on camera – the entire authoritarian arc, specifically linking the Bannon, Miller, Sessions network with dates and its authoritarian embrace of Putin and Russian fascism. Tout le monde there instead focused on the Clinton e-mail “crisis”. In fact, a New York Times reporter (nice enough guy) at the event rejected my warning, adding “I don’t think white tribalism is a problem at all.”
Same as it ever was.
Long time readers helped trace here the anti-Enlightenment, authoritarian impulses in the modern GOP for Republicans, Democrats, Independents (and the hapless professional [sic] political journalists who discovered it all only in 2016). Unfortunately, water under the bridge. America of 2017 will not countenance contemporary accountability. To do so would mean speaking the truth: tens of millions of white Americans prefer anti-liberal democratic authoritarianism over American values, institutions and character. And then what?
History will be less kind. As are we. The easy political solution ahead is to repeat the recent past. America 2003-2015 preferred to paper over 2 failed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Katrina, the Financial Crisis/Great Recession and white tribalist efforts to de-legitimize a 1/2 African American presidency. If we emerge victorious against Trumpism, white tribalism will demand similar treatment in sullen fury. (One defining characteristic of American white tribalism? Only white tribalists are entitled to be angry).
Expediency will demand such an outcome. Yet kicking the can down the road only postpones the reckoning. Sometimes, though, a little is enough.
A couple of observations worth discussing among us now:
(i) the U.S. status quo mindset is still its own worst enemy – returning to ‘normal’ after blatant transgressions is only a palliative without more;
(ii) Americans outside the WTA/Republican revanchist base generally lack a political philosophy to answer WTA in power beyond process;
(iii) racial tribalism rejecting conventional post-1945 ideologies is far more than ‘populism’;
(iv) the WTA/GOP rejection of US post-1945 liberal democratic international order is potentially the greatest strategic disaster in world history — yet U.S. foreign policy stakeholders have atrophied to the point of political impotence;
(v) American society is unable to self-organize beyond sub groups in an era of demotic, non-rational digital communications, granting political advantage to activated minorities; and
(vi) global and domestic economic and demographic trends will trigger further white tribal psychological implosion without an open conversation about the white problem in the U.S.
We’ll offer thoughts on the evolving conversation to come on these specific points. Note the underlying substructure to the above is organization – both concrete and philosophical.
We don’t deny the satisfaction derived from eloquent Canadian former speech writers or the like. Neocons are usually good at AgitProp. But the time has come for practical work.
Dr Leo Strauss says
The Atlantic in May 2017 finally concedes what we attempted to tell senior people there repeatedly in early 2016: Trumpism is about white racial identity.
(Recall for critical months in 2016 they strenuously argued Trumpism was all about economics).
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/05/white-working-class-trump-cultural-anxiety/525771/