American Political Dénouement

Since the unexpected election of Donald J. Trump as President of the United States, I have been struggling to frame my thoughts on the matter. Plenty of others have already described the electoral strategies and polling errors that explain why the political prognosticators got their predictions so wrong, so there’s little for me to add there … though I was equally wrong. Instead, I keep returning to the concept of an historical inflection point—a point at which things begin to change more rapidly than usual, whether for better or for worse. Recognizing the beginning of this inflection point drove one of the most dramatic decisions of my life, so the remarks that follow will be both personal and historical.

While many commentators have explained the electoral results accurately enough, only a few have touched directly on some of the deeper social and cultural issues. These are historically and politically interesting, so I will add my comments to the record here before indulging in more personal and philosophical commentary. However, my interpretation is no doubt incomplete … and keep in mind that where I impute political motive, I do not imply malevolence. Political organisms are fundamentally amoral, but I assume that individual political actors are pursuing good intentions—even if their would-be leaders are in fact sociopaths.

First, the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee orchestrated the most impressive propaganda assault in American history, if not in all of human history. As frightening as it was, I do have to confess my awe. In collusion with the predominantly “liberal” mainstream news media, the Democrats engineered Hillary Rodham Clinton’s nomination over the more populist Bernie Sanders and positioned the obviously unelectable Trump as her opponent from the Republican Party.

Once he had secured the Republican nomination, the media launched an all-out attack upon Trump’s character. Donald Trump is boorish and impolitic, but that doesn’t make him a racist or a sexist. The allegations and “news” stories that I examined collapsed under minimal scrutiny, though I remain ready to be convinced by solid evidence. Again, very little malevolence is implied … at least below management levels. Would-be journalists pursued salacious stories until their political biases were confirmed and no further. In short, their work was lazy and incompetent, but I have no doubt that they thought they were serving the common good.

Of course, that is the historical irony. The mainstream media exercised their greatest moment of influence just when they lost control of the public narrative. Even though they couldn’t sway the overall architecture of the electoral cycle, alternative media sources on both the political right and the political left could and did point out mainstream propaganda on countless occasions. Though this honesty didn’t change my own curmudgeonly vote, I’m quite sure it did influence many, many others.

Here, I must also note that no grand conspiracy was required. Both parties were simply acting in their own interests. The Clinton campaign worked hard to make sure that Hillary Clinton wouldn’t be displaced by another upstart, and the left-leaning media wanted to actualize its vision for the arc of history. As the WikiLeaks releases showed, there was direct collusion to some extent, but general goals were shared regardless.

Second, political kinisthesis had its effect, if barely. Voters have been sorting themselves throughout the United States. “Liberals” have been migrating to the coastal and urban bastions of restrictive regulatory schemes, high tax burdens, and generous public welfare benefits. “Conservatives” have remained in or moved to the rural reaches of “flyover” country, where governments are a little less intrusive. These latter voters tipped enough of the right states in Trump’s favor to win him the Electoral College, even though Hillary won the more populous states.

I retreated from California partially in acknowledgement of this effect just over three years ago. While my adopted state of Washington also went to Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party has been losing ground in this arena, dropping 3.4 percentage points since AD2008. Other electoral results suggest political change, as well. For example, my county commission tipped from Democratic officers to “independents” this time around. Contrast this trend with California, where an even more dominant Democratic Party held onto its position or made moderate gains … and where the Republican Party lost 5.5 percentage points since the AD2012 Presidential contest.

This process is ongoing and may in fact accelerate in the coming years, as “conservative” cohorts of the baby-boom generation retire and migrate out of expensive “liberal” states. (I may have been ahead of the curve on this particular social surge.) The importation of left-leaning future voters has been exposed as the Democratic Party’s main countermeasure to this trend, but it will probably be stalled for at least the next four years. Even then, efforts to normalize illegal immigration have mostly affected states that the Democrats already control—but I will return to demographic transitions a little bit later.

My study of history has broadly focused on identifying causal relationships or their agents and their long-term social effects. This holistic examination of historical causation has given me the faintest glimmer of understanding for the historical forces and possibilities that act upon human civilizations. As usual, these are easier to recognize in hindsight, and no one has advanced a satisfactory theory of historical prediction to my knowledge, so what I attempt might best be described as metahistorical analysis.

At least, it is a means to understand why your initial prediction was wrong. What you thought would happen—or wanted to happen—just wasn’t historically possible. That’s where I was at the end of AD2013, when I made the decision to leave California. The historical model I was working to actualize collapsed. California was not going to become the state I needed it to be within my lifetime … or more importantly within my daughter’s lifetime.

The arc of American history had entered an inflection point. Therein, the possible outcomes became especially murky. Dramatic change comes out of inflection points. They can be times of glorious revolution or of horrific social disaster. We’re seeing the beginning of that now—and human civilization may lie in the balance.

Global historical trends may be better served in some future post, but as we emerge from the inflection point, they will all become relevant. The United States has merely been on the leading edge of Western history by some combination of luck and genius, becoming the bellwether of Enlightenment culture. If we Americans fail, the odds of Western civilization surviving the 21st century drop considerably, I suspect.

What did the election mean in this respect? Will President Trump and a Republican Congress tip us up the positive curve? Would a President Hillary Clinton have sent us down the negative curve? I don’t know. I expected terrible developments under a Clinton administration, but these also might have stoked the political will to make real positive change—or they might have literally destroyed the republic. The Trump years will avert any immediate disaster, I’m quite sure. We have at least a second chance to shore up the institutional safeguards that protect constitutional governance and individual opportunities and freedoms. However, if that fails to occur, I doubt the political will can ever again be rallied to fight for those values.

This wasn’t how it was supposed to be—and there has been no shortage of jokes wondering about what’s happening on the “real” timeline. Impressive as it was, the collusion to put Hillary Clinton into the White House backfired. An honest election would have seen Bernie Sanders, championing progressive socialism for the nation, facing off against someone like Rand Paul, advocating for individual freedom and opportunity. Important issues would have been discussed … and the future of civilization would have been decided in an informed manner.

Instead … we called each other deplorable names.

What is historically possible? We’ve accomplished many great things in the 300 some years since the Enlightenment, and we’ve made some terrible mistakes. Some of these mistakes are obvious in retrospect (unnecessary wars, ethnic pogroms, and other episodes of unjustified violence). Others were more subtle, and some were metahistorical in nature, beyond the scope of individual or corporate actors to manage. For example, the direct political empowerment of women occurred almost as soon as it was historically possible, but the institutions of democratic governance built up by men over the last few thousand years were not designed for women’s different decision-making priorities and processes. Without adequate safeguards, a certain amount of social damage has resulted from this political transformation, affecting crime patterns, family cohesion, and perhaps even cultural survival. Again, little or no ill intent was involved. The sociological basis for human male and female behavioral differences had not been studied at the time of the universal suffrage movements, and the ongoing and almost religious refusal in some quarters to acknowledge that these differences even exist remains a significant part of the problem.

No one expected D. J. Trump to be elected, but his election moved us out of the inflection point—as would have Hillary Clinton’s. I was wrong. The political prognosticators were wrong. We all forgot the underrepresented demographic in American electoral politics. Right or wrong, we’ll be living with the consequences for at least several years to come. The question that remains is whether American political factions can still settle their differences peacefully in the long run.

Democratic Rule in California

While the mainstream media were tripping over themselves to call President Barack Obama’s re-election, a perhaps even more important event went largely unnoticed. On Nov. 6th, the Democratic Party won commanding majorities in both the California Assembly and Senate, effectively completing a takeover of the state’s government. This electoral victory has been a few decades in the making but wasn’t quite unexpected.

Until the late 1980s, California often leaned to the Republican Party. However, the demographic changes that accompanied the state’s rapidly growing population began to deliver more and more state and federal offices to Democratic contenders. Instead of rallying and trying to build new relevance for themselves, the Republicans struck a nefarious political bargain with their rivals. Using self-serving legislative redistricting procedures, both parties carved out safe, unassailable electoral enclaves for themselves. In this manner, the Republicans preserved some political power in the California Legislature and the U.S. House of Representatives, even while they steadily lost representation in statewide offices.

After a series of fierce statewide initiative battles, the voters approved a new commission that would take control of the redistricting process away from the Legislature. These reforms were expected to produce competitive elections, and they certainly have. I suspected that the Republicans would lose seats, but I am slightly surprised that their defeat was this thorough this quickly.

The Democrats will now have a supermajority in the Legislature. Previously, the Republican minority had been able to hold off many proposed tax increases, since the state constitution requires a two-thirds majority to pass such legislation. All the while, though, the Democrats have argued that higher taxes are desperately needed to solve California’s fiscal problems, and the people have seemed to agree, approving taxation initiatives (at least when ostensibly aimed at the rich) on a fairly regular basis.

The people of California have spoken, so who am I to stand in their way any longer? Maybe we really can tax and spend ourselves into prosperity, so let’s get to the business of soaking the rich—whoever they may be. If they don’t like it, they can just move to some benighted flyover state.

Like it or not, the Democratic Party owns California now … and all its problems.

Occupying Wall Street

As I’ve said before, emotions run high in hard times, and people look for someone (usually someone other than themselves) to blame for their financial woes. That observation has been starkly illustrated in the last few weeks as thousands of mostly young people have rallied to protest flaws in the American economic system. This so-called occupy Wall Street movement began in New York but has spread to other cities.

Actually, my description above is a charitable one. Most of the protesters don’t fully understand what they are protesting. Instead of challenging they very real problems within our economic policy and regulatory structure, they are lashing out at big corporations, free markets, and capitalism in general—and griping about having to repay their student loans.

The more strident critics of the “occupy” movement are quick to point out the apparent hypocrisies and contradictions among the protesters. The protesters, they note, have arrived wearing designer clothes, bearing the latest smartphones, and enjoying many other accoutrements provided by the very corporations that they’ve come to decry. However, such criticism is as misdirected as the protests themselves, even if the observation is an extremely important one for a different reason … which I will explore shortly.

Predictably, the “occupy” movement has been met with approbation from the leadership of the Democratic Party and generally favorable reporting by the mainstream news media. In his panegyric for CNN, Douglas Rushkoff writes that the protesters “are pointing the way toward something entirely different than the zero-sum game of artificial scarcity favoring top-down investors.…” While something different may be on the horizon, Mr. Rushkoff displays some of the same economic ignorance shared by the protesters he admires.

Before I explain why they are misdirecting their rage, I must confess my sympathy for the “occupiers.” I understand their desires and frustrations. It is perfectly natural to want more for oneself and to envy those who appear to already have it. Channeling those feelings onto productive courses is the challenge that we all face.

Now, here is where they’ve gone wrong. Economics is not a zero-sum game. In fact, capitalism itself is predicated on an increasing-sum paradigm. Therefore, investors aren’t trying to take wealth from others via any sort of zero-sum chicanery. They are instead risking some of their existing wealth to build even more for themselves and by extension for society at large. The evidence of this and for capitalism’s unmitigated success is so ubiquitous that it often escapes notice. Capital investments and market forces have created and distributed so much wealth in a few short centuries that it boggles the mind. Human expectations are only just now catching up with this economic accelerando.

So the wealthiest people who have ever lived are presently complaining about the very economic engines that have delivered their wealth. Yes, if you have fine clothes on your back, magical electronics at your fingertips, and thousands of calories easily within your grasp, you are rich in absolute terms. Some of us have more than others, but we are all rich beyond almost any previous imagination.

And that brings me to why so many people are so angry. Our imaginations and expectations can expand. Revolutions may be triggered when expectations rise more quickly than they can be met. That is clearly the environment we see today, even if many of the heightened expectations are still unwarranted … still belonging to a future that we can’t quite touch.

Nevertheless, a new economic revolution may be on the horizon. Unfortunately, revolutions are always an uncertain business, prone to failure and fraught with potential danger. If there will be change, we must identify the right targets for reform, but that is not what I see happening within the “occupy” movement. If this economic anguish remains misdirected, it risks being co-opted by the very forces that have always sought to maintain that anguish for political gain.

I don’t know what shape the new economic model for a “post-industrial” America will take, but I do know that the best course into the future won’t be the quickest or the easiest one. Let’s begin with an inventory of our enemies and allies on the journey forward. Capital investments and free markets are not our enemies. They are our tools for building and distributing wealth. (We just have to learn to use them correctly.) Our only real enemies are those who would abuse economics for political gain and those who would abuse politics for financial gain. They aren’t that hard to identify.

Meanwhile, here is the best way to occupy Wall Street.


If you have no stake in the system, then you have no right to change it. Fortunately, in a free market, you can buy yourself a stake. Your dollars will often speak louder than your votes or your misdirected rage.

Nefarious Organizations

My father recently confessed that he had looked me up on Google and remarked that I belong to several “nefarious organizations.” Indeed, I have made no secret of my various memberships and affiliations, but I also rarely go out of my way to talk about them. Today, though, I think I will discuss some of my more nefarious connections and activities.

I am a card-carrying* member of the oft reviled American Civil Liberties Union. Yes, this organization frequently stands up for some real unsavory characters, but while the ACLU is defending the dregs of society from persecution, the rest of us are much less likely to find ourselves among those dregs. In other words, the ACLU helps keep normal people from becoming direct combatants and possible casualties in the war on civil rights.

I am also a member of the equally reviled National Rifle Association. This may seem at odds with my ACLU membership, since that organization’s national leadership fundamentally misunderstands the firearms issue for reasons that are as irrational as they are forgivable, but the NRA and the ACLU do complement each other, even though their actual collaboration may be rare. Of course, the NRA promotes and defends gun ownership and the right to arms.

Based on many of my posts here at Loyal Sedition, you can tell that this last point is very important to me. I have been increasingly active in the right-to-arms movement for several years now, in my own small way at least. This is not because I think that the right to arms is our most important civil right—it isn’t—but because it is the one with the best opportunity for real progress at the moment. The most dramatic progress is currently happening in the courts, so I am a financial contributor to the Calguns Foundation.

I am also a member of the Libertarian Party mostly as a statement of my political support for social and economic freedoms, which are really the same thing—but it’s considered greedy and insensitive to be concerned about money unless you don’t have any. I might call myself a communist, if communism didn’t violate the second law of thermodynamics and the first law of human laziness. However, I don’t limit my political defeat to one party. I was registered as a Republican during the last two elections, and I sometimes even vote for losers from the Democratic Party.

Finally, some interesting stereotypes can be derived from my on-line activity. I am a frequent poster at Calguns (dangerous gun owner), an occasional poster at Libertarian Undergound (heartless libertarian communist) and Cool Mini or Not (freakish gamer geek), and a formerly active poster at Sword Forum International (scary blade lover). I also write this blog and make comments on other people’s blogs from time to time (lonely Internet nerd). Oh, and I recently joined Facebook (unskilled Internet plebeian).

Next year, I may even register to vote as a Democrat.

*I don’t like to have a lot of cards in my pocket, so I don’t actually carry my ACLU or NRA cards, but I do have them.