Orange Gasbag's neo-feudal minarchism: voting for the wrong lizard with a $#!+ load of dimes
“That must be Lord Farquaad’s castle… Do you think he’s maybe compensating for something?”
Profane male TV gasbag seems so much more appealing to that ethno-nationalist base than lifelong feminist policy wonk.
Trumpian politics will be conducted like the Apprentice: Autocrat edition. Crypto-fascist Ethno-nationalist Steve Bannon’s “restoration” is more of a Meiji Restoration although modernization has little to do with 2016’s power shift to an imperious POTUS and it’s a capitalism often fantasized but never realized.
“This is not the French Revolution,” says Steve Bannon. “They destroyed the basic institutions of their society and changed their form of government. What Trump represents is a restoration—a restoration of true American capitalism and a revolution against state-sponsored socialism. Elites have taken all the upside for themselves and pushed the downside to the working- and middle-class Americans.”
Liberals can use social media, too. Demagogues fall from favour when their policies fail to bring prosperity. And demographic trends favour pluralism.
Elite liberals stress two sources of identity: being a good global citizen (who cares about climate change and sweatshops in Bangladesh) and belonging to an identity group that has nothing to do with the nation (Hispanic, gay, Buddhist, etc). Membership of certain identity groups can carry material as well as psychological benefits. Affirmative action of the sort practised in America gives even the richer members of the racial groups it favours advantages that are unavailable to the poorer members of unfavoured groups.
Nationalists dislike the balkanisation of their countries into identity groups, particularly when those groups are defined as virtuous only to the extent that they disagree with the nation’s previously dominant history. White Americans are starting to act as if they were themselves a minority pressure group.
FDR provides a working historical precedent for this approach. While his administration did admonish directly against fear itself, it also pulled no punches in channeling the anger of dispossessed Americans toward the plutocrats who opposed him in ways that are strikingly sharp in tone to a modern ear, but find echoes in the language of combative moral authority we typically only see from conservatives today.
Consider FDR’s 1936 Madison Square Garden speech, and how little in common it has with the neoliberal rhetoric of modern Democrats:
We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace—business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering. they had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob. Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred. I should like to have it said of my first Administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match. I should like to have it said of my second Administration that in it these forces met their master.”
That was a speech designed not for the more rational parts of the brain, but straight for the amygdala, the so-called “lizard brain.” FDR used rhetoric like this in combination with aspirational speeches to build a large and broad coalition that appealed to Americans across the aisle.
Despite forays into airlines, casinos and steaks, Donald Trump’s fortune remains largely tied up in the industry that made his family rich: real estate. A new Forbes investigation into Trump’s wealth pegs his net worth at $ 3.7 billion, down $ 800 million from a year ago. Much of that drop — some $ 475 million — comes from a decline in the estimated value of his properties.
The presidential hopeful lost the most in New York City, home to roughly 53% of his fortune. Cooling markets for retail and office space in Manhattan helped lop about $ 300 million off the net value of some of his most notable buildings, including Niketown and Trump Tower (which also experienced an estimated 20% decline in net operating income). Plus a slowdown in the city’s luxury residential market hurt the value of high-end properties, such as the two dozen apartments Trump still owns in Trump Park Avenue, a former hotel he converted into condos in 2002, and his personal residence, a three-story penthouse atop Trump Tower.
