Pop Your Cross in the Bin

Economic crisis has engulfed the world and the country in ways that are invisible to the protected elite that determines the American electoral process. The accumulation of climatic and ecological catastrophe is also producing changes that are visible but avoidable to elites that are preoccupied with the scramble to maintain an economic system. Both of these processes are undermining faith in the decisions that are made within the closed chambers of power.

The political memory of the politically marginal more and more tends to persist beyond the expiration date of the narrative that is meant to enthrall it. I don’t know if the strength of memory is growing, but it is certain that the pace of crisis is accelerating. So the success of the outsiders in this election cycle should not surprise. Trump and Sanders are both benefitting from the discredit that has descended on those whose bona fides from the existing political universe are steadily losing value. 

Why have the old stories fallen out of favor? It’s not because they don’t profess to be new under the sun. They always do. And that has often been enough. But the ground has shifted and it is not so much that new stories must be invented as that the old mechanisms for generating new stories are no longer adequate.

Neither Sanders nor Trump are outside the region of acceptance for their parties. Their roles have been seen before, even been victorious. It is the material dislocation of so much of the real world underneath the vision of American political discourse that has created an opening for the outliers this cycle and so surprised its commentators. To be, yes, allowed but, nevertheless, pooh-poohed has turned out to be the best credentials for this election.

Which is your insurgent camp of choice will depend on whether your class politics are right-side up or upside down. The Democratic Party is supposed to be the defender of the working class. Its primary voters have been split between those who continue to have faith and those who sense betrayal. Median income is not the difference. The older you are the more likely you are to be invested in the idea of the party as the protector of your class interests. You may not be enthusiastic about Clinton but you are assured by her credentials that she will be a reliable steward.

If you are younger you have grown up in a world where the old bargaining processes have collapsed. The old stories about the shared interests of you and the bosses are hard to swallow. Very old legends of a political program which actually belongs to the working classes begin to circulate without the critical rubrics that have been automatic in new deal America. Bernie Sanders, by openly enunciating the name of that program and by making certain modest demands which have long been a part of the class compact in America, has become a signifier of socialism. 

And that is enough to generate enthusiasm for a revolution that is faithful to its host system, that wants only to clear away the crust of corruption that has recently adhered to it. The Democratic Party structure has demonstrated more resilience than the Republicans. The confrontation between it and the socialist barbarians within it will not be resolved during this campaign. But it will not disappear either.

In the other camp those who believe that the political program of their own class is the greatest threat to their interests also have a champion. The second Bush administration should have been the end of the Republican Party so it is hard to understand the bitter tears that are being shed by those who consider themselves its arbiters. The Republican masses who have flocked to Trump are consistent with their own inverted ideology. At the top of the party, on the other hand, there is nothing more to say. Those who have everything can certainly claim they are entitled to more but, outside of their private clubs, who will listen to that now? 

I'm as filthy as a poodle and I'm raking in the boodle and, ooh, I'm really getting big.