A Fake Issue

A Fine Example of a Fake Issue 

The current uproar over the stopping of trading in the stock of the company Gamestop is a beautiful example of a fake issue in American politics. A fake issue is an issue that gives politicians an opportunity to express intense moral outrage without having to do anything to improve the lives of Americans. This is a good example of a fake issue. Speeches will be made; outrage is being expressed on Facebook; hearings will be held; maybe, a new regulation will be enacted; but the lives of most Americans will be unaffected, and the regulation, being badly thought out, will turn out to be a source of trouble.

Members of both parties are now bloviating that the stopping of trading the stock of Gamestop is yet another a case of the big guys on Wall Street stepping on the little guys. That much may well be true, but this relatively minor action is being compared to the decision in 2009 to rescue the big banks but not the homeowners who lost their homes. The day traders who conspired to drive up the price of Gamestop are said to have been motivated not merely by greed but by populist anger at a system that is rigged against them. Their anger at being denied a chance to make more money is now alleged to be like the Tea Party and the Occupy Wall Street movement. Members of both parties in Congress – including Ted Cruz and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – have jumped on the issue and are calling for hearings. The attorney general of Texas is calling for an investigation into Robinhood, the on-line app that halted the trading.

Take a Deep Breath

Take a deep breath. There cannot have been more than a few hundred day-traders trying to buy shares of Gamestop when the trading was halted. This is not a mass movement. In any case, brokers frequently halt trading in a stock if it seems to be running away with the market. The issue will not affect most of us in any way.  Only 55% of Americans own any stocks, and among those who do, the majority own them in mutual funds in retirement accounts. Very few people are day-traders, and trading or investing in stocks is not an altruistic activity. This is a fake issue.

We have plenty of real issues to occupy our attention: national health care, free post-secondary education, affordable child care, global warming and of course, the pandemic. We could worry about saving Social Security or about fixing our immigration system. Most politicians try to avoid discussing these issues because they come with risks for political risks. Taking a position on any of these issues can end up committing a politician to action that alienates some voters.  Fake issues are much safer, and politicians love them.

So, enjoy the political spectacle, but don’t allow moral outrage to rob you of sleep.

A Farcical End to a Farcical Presidency

 A Farcical Presidency

Last week’s insurrection was a farce. It was a deadly farce but a farce nevertheless, and as such, it was a fitting end to a farcical presidency. Farce and fakery have been the hallmarks of this presidency. It has been entirely consumed by the president’s image.  His farce has served as a curtain behind which the Republican Party has carried on business as usual, which has included tax cuts for the very rich and elimination of environmental regulations.

When Mr. Trump was elected, he claimed to represent the voiceless “forgotten people” in our society. He claimed that he would return the people’s government to them, but he never pursued or even defined policies to benefit the “forgotten people.” The signature policy achievements of his administration have been passing a big tax cut for the very rich, building a small piece of a wall on the Mexican border and moving the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. None of these provide any benefit for our “forgotten people.” They serve only to bring votes and money to the Republican Party.

Trump’s Farcical Use of the Media

We can see Mr. Trump’s fakery and his successful use of farce in his treatment of the media. He repeatedly claimed that the mainstream media published only “fake news,” and he claimed that people who wanted to know the truth should listen to him.  His effort to discredit the media was quite successful, and millions of people believe what he says to this day.

He might have used the power that the success of his campaign to discredit the media gave him to shape public opinion on serious issues. If he had not been a complete fake, he would have used his power to propose a program of legislation to benefit the people who put their trust in him. In fact, he did no such thing. He never proposed anything to benefit the “forgotten people."

He used his enormous media presence only to flatter his ego and attack his enemies. His populism was entirely fake and he conducted a political farce to the applause of his supporters and of the mainstream media who found themselves utterly captivated by his performance. He acted like a small boy who makes a lot of noise not because he expects to achieve anything useful by it but only to get people to pay attention to him.

Discrediting the Election

During 2020, Mr. Trump continually and loudly worked to discredit the election. He claimed that it would be and was a fraud. He brought dozens of legal cases to overturn the results of the election, but he did so in a way that was almost guaranteed to fail because he had no evidence to present. He tried to pack the courts in the hope that they would support him, but he forgot that prominent, conservative judges often have a strong commitment to upholding the Constitution. Again, the whole thing was never really designed to succeed. It was Mr. Trump’s standard political farce, which kept the national attention focused on him.

Unfortunately, there were millions of people who took the farce seriously. They believed what he said, and as a result, they believe today that our next president was not legitimately elected. Thus, serious damage has been done to our democracy and to our country, and the Republican Party, which also treated Trump’s farce serious bears considerable responsibility for the damage that has been done.

A Fitting End

The events of January 6 were a fitting coda to Trump’s four-year farce. He gave a speech to stimulate an insurrection with the ostensible purpose of preventing the certification of the electoral results by Congress, but there was never any chance that the insurrection would succeed.  The military did not support it; representatives of our ruling class immediately distanced themselves from it; the judges who might have legitimized the insurrection had already shown that they were not inclined to do so. The poor saps who were the foot soldiers of the farcical insurrection are now being rounded up and arrested. They will end up paying the price for it, while Mr. Trump and his Republican enablers will go free.  The insurrection itself was a typical Trump event: it was noisy; it was dirty; it was crowded; thousands of people cheered wildly; but nothing of substance was achieved. The farcical presidency came to a farcical end.

Should We Expect More Terrorism from the Radical Right?

 The Terrorism of the Weak

The short answer is, “Yes, we should expect more terrorism.” Terrorism is a tool adopted by people who feel that they have no other way to be heard or acknowledged by the political system under which they live. Terrorist acts are committed by people who feel that they face a political system of overwhelming strength that refuses to accept the legitimacy of their cause. The radical right feels that way as we can see from the popularity of the myth that last November’s election was fraudulently stolen from Mr. Trump.

Terrorism may take various forms. One them is the assassination of political leaders.  The most famous political assassination in modern times is the surely the killing Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which touched off the First World War. A famous American example is the killing of Abraham Lincoln in 1865. Terrorism may also include killing of journalists like the twelve who were killed at the office of Charlie Hebdo in Paris in 2015. Terrorism may also include the destruction of buildings or monuments or the killing of random people by bombings or shootings. The killing of more than 100 people at the Bataclan Theater in Paris in 2015 is a well-known example.

Elite Terrorism

An entirely different kind of terrorism may be used by members of an elite that is struggling to maintain its position. Such terrorism is different from the terrorism of the weak. Elite terrorism is better organized, more sustained and much more deadly. The terrorist campaign unleashed against black people in the South after the end of Reconstruction in 1877 is an example. The campaign went on for decades, and it included lynchings, burnings, rapes and whippings. It included actions by private individuals, by law enforcement agents and by mobs. It even involved the destruction of whole communities. Thousands of innocent black people were killed, and millions moved out of the South to northern cities.  I do not think that we will see this kind of terrorism in our country in the immediate future. Our elites are very secure. They will not feel the need to terrorize us.

The Terrorism of the Weak in America

The extreme right in America has frequently employed the terrorism of the weak in recent years. During the Civil Rights Movement, we had the murder of three civil rights workers in Mississippi, and in 1995, we had  the Oklahoma City bombing. More recently, we saw the murder of children at a church in South Carolina,  the murder of Jews at a synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018, and the murder of a black man in Kenosha only last year.

There Will be More Terrorism

Should we expect the use of this kind of terrorism to increase? I think that the answer is “Yes.” Today, the members of the radical right see themselves in a position of weakness in confrontation with a powerful system. The myth of the stolen election in 2020 tells them that our allegedly democratic elections are controlled by a shadowy elite, which is determined to use fraud to deny electoral victories to the political right.

Mass actions have also failed them. The recent invasion of the Capitol in Washington was dramatic but failed to produce any long-lasting result. The takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in 1916 was similarly ineffective. From the radical right’s point of view, it may have no alternative but terrorism.

So, we should prepare ourselves for a difficult time. The radical right is very well armed, and its members are desperate. The internet facilitates the organization of desperate acts. Our law enforcement agencies must prepare themselves for repeated acts of terrorism by the radical right. The lack of preparedness that we saw recently at the Capitol must not be repeated.

The Creation of a Political Myth

 The “Stolen Election” is a Perfect Issue for Republicans

Ted Cruz and 10 other GOP senators join Hawley in attempt to throw out election results: CNN's Tapper - Raw Story - Celebrating 16 Years of Independent Journalism. This is a perfect issue for the contemporary Republican Party. It is perfect because the effort to throw out the electoral results will fail, and therefore, the issue of “stolen elections” will continue to motivate voters in the future.

The Fragile Republican Alliance Needs Issues that Don’t Go Away

Today’s Republican Party is a fragile and unstable alliance between Trump’s populist followers and the traditional, business Republicans. The populist wing is useful to the party because it brings in millions of votes, but the business Republicans never really want to enact populist policies. They want tax cuts and reduced regulation of business, but those are not issues that excite most people.

To appeal to ordinary voters, the Republicans use cultural issues like abortion and gay marriage, and the party supports coded race-baiting. For the Republican Party, the great thing about these issues is that they don’t go away. They never get resolved. So, they can be used over and over again to appeal to voters. They are permanent grievances that can bring people to the polls.

The issue of the “stolen election” is ideal in that way. Millions of people will never believe that the election was fairly won by Mr. Biden. Instead, they will continue to believe that a shadowy “elite” stole the election, and that grievance will bring votes to the Republicans for years to come. Thus, the “stolen election” myth will function as the “lost cause” myth functioned in Southern politics for decades and as the “stabbed in the back” myth functioned in German politics in the nineteen-twenties.  

They Are Creating a Myth

Ted Cruz and his colleagues know that the effort to throw out the election results will fail just as dozens of lawsuits have failed, but that failure is the point of the effort because failure will perpetuate a grievance that can be exploited in future elections. Cruz and his colleagues are not really attempting to upend the election; they are creating a political myth that may serve them well for many years.