The Current Frozen State and Ctl-Alt-Del

In which a friend forwards me the further correspondence continuing the discussion posted by me earlier….

It’s funny you should mention Ctl-Alt-Del in that message, as in my head that is the 2012 campaign slogan of the new Conservative Party of the United States of America (the other CPUSA, just to burn em).

To answer your closing question: not all that wedged, really.  I’ve been following politics and reading every piece of political commentary regarding the US, UK and Canada that I can get my hands on since I was 15 years old.  While admittedly nothing more than an amateur dilettante, I’d like to think that all that time and analysis has had some beneficial effect.  Despite my current position, I also have one leg always firmly planted in the White, lower-middle-class to working-class community from which I came.  This gives one a much different perspective.

In short, I know my Jacksonians.  I have read a lot of criticisms of Walter Russell Mead’s four classification of American political types, but none have pursuaded me that he is incorrect.  What has to be borne in mind is that what Mead presents is a model, and there are always exceptions to the rule and special conditions wherein any large-scale model doesn’t work.  However, those exceptions do not invalidate the central thesis.  When you step back and take a 36,000 feet view of the grand sweep of the political history of the Republic, you see Mead’s four archtypes again and again and again.  Here and there they are in power, here and there they are in coalition, here and there they are in opposition, occasionally they are consigned to the dustheap of history only to re-appear.  To refresh your memory, here is a short description of Mead’s four American political players.

Nevertheless, the American war record should make us think. An observer who thinks of American foreign policy only in terms of the commercial realism of the Hamiltonians, the crusading moralism of Wilsonian transcendentalists, and the supple pacifism of the principled but slippery Jeffersonians would be at a loss to account for American ruthlessness at war.

That ruthlessness being supplied by the Jacksonians, who, still to this very day, are VASTLY over-represented in the combat branches of the Armed Services.  While politicians like to talk about the number of Blacks in the Army, etc., anyone with eyes who looks at Infantry and Armor Divisions knows that most are White, lower to middle class, and the South is overrepresented.  No surprise to me there. The only exception to that rule is the Latinos in the Marines, who are mostly Mexican-Americans of a certain sort—a sort I know very well—who are actually Jacksonian in outlook themselves.  You’d be surprised at how “redneck” the discussion in Whittier barber shops is when it comes to “fucking illegal aliens”…. 

The levers that are currently stuck at stuck in a Hamiltonian-Wilsonian coalition, in which the Wilsonians are a minority who have given their assent to Hamiltonian leadership because Hamiltonian economic globalism allows them the means to carry their international message along with the trade, while the Hamiltonians put up with the Wilsonians because their divine purpose and lofty ideals provide lots of great press and cover for the search for markets and profit and for re-organizing the state as both the lender and the insurer of last resort, a fact that would have been dismissed as the ravings of a conspiracy theorist a few years ago but is now obvious to everyone and spoken of openly in the Wall St Journal.  The Jeffersonians are in opposition (despite thinking they won the last election).  And my poor Jacksonians are not only in the wilderness, they are being replaced by Latin Americans rapidly, and not by accident. 

So, if you are playing a game with four pieces, and two of the four meld together to form one over-large piece, it is the winner.  So long as the other two remain apart, it can’t lose. So, we’re stuck. 

As should be obvious to any political strategist, but isn’t (because they are wed to the illusion that the current wedge-stuckiness is The End of History, the Best of All Possible Worlds, and Just The Way the World Works, Kid), the only thing that need be done is to merge the other two pieces.  The Hamiltonian-Wisonian coalition has been in power so long now even it’s best intentions stink to high heaven, so pushing it over wouldn’t be too hard. 

How would this work?  The CPUSA is a new political force, a coalition of Jacksonians and Jeffersonians.  What would such a coalition look like? 

Well, it certainly wouldn’t look like the Republican Party.  To be general and quick, I think it would look something like this: 

For the Jacksonians:  America First foreign policy, a quick and very violent end to Iraq and Afghanistan, a warning to Muslim states to be on the their best behavior, EU goes its own way, as does Japan, a strengthening of the Armed Services and a purge of its current commissars in favor of war fighters, Wall St gets smacked around and economic policy is re-organized around affordable family formation, with an emphasis on the return of the one-wage-earner family.  Border enforcement, expulsion of aliens, an end to massive illegal immigration, a sensible legal immigration policy a la Canada. 

For the Jeffersonians:  Real peace with the Muslim world, as soon as the wars are brought to an end. An end to car-culture and re-introduction of rail and streetcars. An end to massive energy use with tightly controlled usage via an ever-increasing tax on per-watt useage above a certain level, same with gasoline. An end to industrial food prodution in favor of local production.  Mass rollback of the intelligence community (who are useless anyway) and the national security state.  An end to the war on drugs, and massive devolvement of power back to the state level. 

Now, that’s a conservative party. The two wouldn’t like each other, but the Hamiltonians detest the Wilsonians too.  That’s not the point.  The point is that each gets something of what they want, and they can overlook the bits they don’t particularly like as the price to get it.  In my estimation, a CPUSA along those lines would completely re-align American politics as the Republican Party did in the 19^th Century. 

The problem is that the current configuration has been around for so long that it has had a profound affect on American culture and is, in fact, literally changing the demographic conditions of the country at a world-historical rate.   

So, you see, what we have here is a race.  Which happens first: The Jacksonians and Jeffersonians learn to get along and fight side-by-side?  Or the Hamiltonians succeed in turning the US into an easily-controlled Latin American nation in which they remain the elite.  Or, to paraphrase Brecht:

 

After the uprising of the 17th June

The President of the United States

Had leaflets distributed in the malls and all Wal-Marts

Stating that the people

Had forfeited the confidence of the government

And could win it back only

By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier

In that case for the government

To dissolve the people

And elect another?