Where I Stand on American Politics
I'm proud to nail my colors to the mast. Wikipedia: please take note.
The United States presidential election is right around the corner, and the fear factor is palpable. But in reality there's little to fear, at least in the near term. The Biden-Harris administration had four years to end freedom of speech and take away your guns, but instead Harris went on national television to brag about her Glock. And when Trump had his four years in office, he declined to "lock her up" and somehow forgot to sign that executive order reinstating Jim Crow. Our futures are not at risk. Democracy is not on the ballot. Forget the inflammatory rhetoric -- on both sides. Trump is not Hitler, Harris is not Stalin, and there are no fascists or communists in America. Even those few Americans who have historically fooled themselves into believing that they were either fascists or communists have recoiled when confronted with actual, real-world fascism and communism. All Americans value life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We simply differ over the best ways to achieve them.
But since the end of the Second World War there has arisen in America a political tendency that does have something in common with both fascism and communism, and that's militarism. American liberals as disparate as Dwight D. Eisenhauer ("the military-industrial complex") and C. Wright Mills ("the power elite") warned us about it, and anyone can see the difference between the ("inward-focused" or "isolationist," take your pick) America that existed before 1940 and the ("liberal internationalist" or "imperialist," take your pick) America that emerged after 1945. There are good arguments for and against the United States maintaining a large military, and there are good arguments for and against the United States using that military abroad. Leave these aside. The facts are that the United States does have a large military, and it does use it, for good and/or for bad.
And with a large military comes the rise of militarism.
Before September 11, 2001, militarism was a powerful but never a dominant force in American politics. Of course there was a defense lobby, of course there were jingoistic journalists, and of course the intelligence agencies looked to take care of themselves. But what once only one interest group among many became, over the course of the "War on Terror," became the dominant interest group. Anyone who reflects on the otherwise bizarre fact that Dick Cheney has endorsed Kamala Harris can see that. The Bushes, the Clintons (or at least the Rodhams), the Cheneys, the Obamas, and the rest of the first families of the American political establishment are all essentially militarists. They are many other things as well, good and bad (depending on your policy preferences). But for all of them, control over (or perhaps being controlled by) the security state is the dominant fact of their political careers.
That's not because they are bad people. It's because there is so very much money to be made from militarism -- and you don't have to be particularly smart to make it. Consider Ukraine. Unambiguously: Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 and 2022 and bears full moral responsibility for waging a brutal war of aggression against a peaceful neighbor. It is reasonable (maybe right, maybe wrong; you be the judge) for the United States to support Ukraine in its efforts to retain its independence. But why were so many Americans doing business in Ukraine before 2022? Why was the serving vice president's son, Hunter Biden, a "consultant" there in the early 2010s? And why was the future Trump campaign manager, Paul Manafort, a "consultant" there in the early 2010s? Why were so many well-connected Americans making so much money in a relatively poor eastern European country with minimal trade ties to the United States? They certainly weren't there for the oil.
Ukraine is a marcher land of the American sphere (or the "American Tianxia," as I called it in my 2017 book). The marches are military frontiers where civil oversight is weak and shady fortunes can more easily be made. Easy money is the bane of orderly government; people will bully, bribe, and even kill for it. Apple and Google have made many people fabulously wealthy, but there are no (credible) stories of American political institutions having been undermined to murder, imprison, or otherwise silence opponents in the tech wars. Such stories are rife in relation to Ukraine. And not only in relation to Ukraine; in relation to Central America, the Middle East, and anywhere else where there is easy money to be made -- and protected. Military marches are the graveyards of republics and the rule of law. They are absolutely hostile to the liberal principles on which the United States was founded, and that underlie its continued prosperity.
The American militarists are not particularly concentrated in either political party; they seek to control both. From 2001 through 2016, they succeeded. And then, to paraphrase Polanyi, society acted to protect itself. In 2016, two outsider candidates challenged the militarist establishment that controlled the Democratic and Republican parties. In reality, it was not so much that the outsiders mounted challenges; outsiders had mounted challenges in every previous election, to little effect. The miracle wasn't the challenges; the miracle was that people of conscience in both parties flocked to the challengers. The 15 Republicans who ran against Donald Trump all ran against Donald Trump, not each other, but actual Republican voters chose Trump. And of course Hiliary Clinton ran against Bernie Sanders, who won the support of much of the party's rank-and-file. It took all the strength of the Democratic Party machinery to keep them down -- and him out.
My fellow progressives: it should give you pause for thought that Matt Taibbi, Glen Greenwald, Elon Musk, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have all lined up behind Donald Trump, whether explicitly or implicitly.
My fellow conservatives: it should likewise give you pause for thought that the Cheneys, Goldman Sachs, the intelligence agencies, and the retired generals have all lined up behind Kamala Harris.
The last eight years have witnessed a battle for the soul of the Republican Party, a battle that the militarists have definitively lost. The Republican Party is now a Trumpian Party. Whether or not you want Trumpian policies in government, it is good for American that the Trumpians are now in charge of the Republican Party. Would you rather have the Bushes? There will always be a Republican Party, and someone will always run it. Democracy requires choices, and Trump is offering a classic Republican choice: deregulation, lower taxes, punitive tariffs, and social conservatism. Those may not be your choices, but America would hardly be a democracy if the people who want those things were not allowed to vote for them. The complete rejuvenation of the Republican Party over the last eight years has turned it into the party that most Republican voters wanted to have in the first place. Now they have it.
No such rejuvenation has occurred for the Democrats. The Democratic Party remains the party of organized labor, welfare advocates, vulnerable groups, and salaried professionals. But it is a party controlled by the militarists. Joe Biden ran on a "buy American" platform under which he promised to use government procurement to steer jobs to unionized manufacturers; did you hear a word about that after November 2020? Where are the universal healthcare, the reparations for slavery, and the moral foreign policy? You may or may not want these things, but Democratic Party voters want these things. Bernie Sanders would have advanced these causes, and more. But Democratic voters were not given a straight-up fair choice in 2016, nor in 2020, nor in 2024. Three presidential elections in a row have seen the Democratic Party nominee chosen by insiders and imposed on the party. And why? Because where there is easy money to be made, democracy can wait.
The enduring strength of American democracy is its capacity for renewal. The Republican Party has been completely rejuvenated since 2016. The Bushes, Cheneys, and Boltons are out, and they're never coming back. And whether or not you personally like that, most Republicans like that. And in America, alone among the world's major democracies, it's the voters who decide who our candidate will be.
The Democratic Party remains under militarist control. Not only that; the Republican militarists have migrated to the Democratic Party, having nowhere else to go. Until the Democratic Party experiences a similar rejuvenation, American democracy will remain only partially reformed.
That's why I believe the reelection of Donald Trump is necessary for the renewal of American democracy. Only a thumping Trump victory can jolt the Democratic Party into reform. Trump has been so thoroughly demonized among ordinary Democrats that if Harris wins, it'll be "good enough" that she's kept Trump out. That's not good enough. Even for progressive Democrats, it's better to have four years in the wilderness during which the party completely reforms itself than four years in power that reinforces the militarist grip on the party. Consider this: Harris has welcomed the anti-Trump Republicans into the Democratic fold. How will that change the party, if she has four years in office to solidify the new condominium?
And consider this: when RFK Jr. joined Trump on stage to condemn big pharma, big agra, and the CIA, the MAGA audience cheered. In line with Kennedy, I am one of the five or ten percent of Americans who are crossover Sanders-Trump supporters. We may be in the minority, but we're the minority who will determine the outcome of this election. We're not Republicans, or even Trumpians. We're populist reformers. And we're all anti-militarists.
Ever since its founding, the United States has been compared to the Roman Republic. And to repurpose an aphorism, Rome didn't fall in a day. The vast, corrupt fortunes that undermined the Roman Republic were made in "the east" -- that is to say, in the military marches on the edge of the growing Republic's expanding sphere of control. There was easy money to be made staging coups and inviting interventions in the marcher lands of Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, and Palestine, far from the oversight of a nosy senate and activist tribunes, and ambitious Romans made it. In the last century of the Republic, a new class of Romans exploited the military machinery of the legions and the administrative machinery of the state to serve their own personal interests. At first, they couldn't do it in Italy -- the city of Rome itself was sacrosanct -- but once they had made enough money in the marches, they ultimately undermined the Republic at home.
The Roman Republic wasn't overthrown by rogue generals or barbarian invaders. It was undermined by its own political class. If the American Republic ever falls, it will fall in the same way: from within. That fall is, thankfully, not imminent. Nor is it ever likely to occur, though "ever" is a long time. It will, however, be forestalled if Americans of all political persuasions stand up against the militarists in their ranks. What we need is a Republican Party that reflects the broad preferences of the majority of Republicans and a Democratic Party that reflects the broad preferences of the majority of Democrats. That's how the primary system works: it lets people on both sides vie for the votes of people in the middle. Primaries are the unique strength of American democracy, and our safeguard against authoritarian rule. Republicans have now had three free and open primaries in a row. It's time the Democrats had one -- in 2028.
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