September 20, 2020

Riots target squishy Democrats in (failed) attempt to amp up turnout, not Republicans to intimidate enemies

When the riots first started, I discussed the importance of who they were targeting -- namely, their fellow liberal urbanite Democrats. The rioters were not heading off to the suburbs, rural areas, small towns, or red states -- where their conservative, non-urban Republican enemies live. It is a fragmenting of the Democrat electoral coalition, which portends defeat in the general election just as it did in 2016. (GOP elites had plenty of internecine warfare back then, but not among the actual voters, who overwhelmingly backed Trump over all the other Republicans.)

As the rioters have continued to terrorize their fellow Democrats over the summer, and now especially after the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, it finally clicked for me what they're doing. It's not aimless destruction in an urban area that coincidentally catches their fellow Dems in a friendly fire -- they're deliberately targeting squishy Democrat supporters just like the whip does in a legislature.

They're the enforcers of party discipline, making sure everyone on the team attends the proper meetings, performs the proper rituals, shows up to vote, votes the proper way, and does second-order enforcement on their own -- dragging others out to vote, badgering those acquaintances into voting the proper way, putting the proper signs in their windows, donating their life savings and 40 hours a week of their time, and so on and so forth.

In a system where the patrons and their clients are in a symbiotic relationship, the patrons offer positive patronage in exchange for the collective support of the client base -- buildings, roads, water, electricity, security, etc. But when the elites devolve into parasitism, they only offer negative patronage -- all stick, no carrot. Drop everything you're doing and devote your life to helping our campaign win, or we'll burn down your neighborhood next, your city next.

Is there a rational basis to the whip's desperation? Of course -- lots of the urban working and middle class did not show up to vote in 2016, out of apathy and disenchantment with the neolib Dems, when Trump offered a break with the rotting status quo. And a large-enough minority actually voted for Trump outright -- that's how he flipped all those blue states. There's no more blood for the GOP to squeeze out of the rural and suburban stone.

Rather, it was counties with at least 100,000 residents that were decisive, ones that hadn't voted red for decades. Erie, PA; Dayton, OH; Saginaw, MI; and many others. These Rust Belt states are the ones seeing major rioting, in addition to safe blue states. The one region that is being entirely spared is the suburban Sun Belt -- some of the major counties there flipped from GOP to Democrat for the first time in decades, the mirror-image of Rust Belters for Trump. Orange County, CA; suburban Houston, TX; and suburban Atlanta, GA. No way are the Democrat party's paramilitary whips going to attack the brand new defectors from the other party -- they need to be welcomed and integrated first, before they get the stick like old-timer members.

This time around, the DNC is not taking any chances with squishy Rust Belt urbanites. The yuppies are already gung-ho, and are therefore being spared punishment. But the working class and lower-middle class in the non-yuppie neighborhoods? They might just stay home like last time, and a handful may even vote for Trump. The party thought they had the election in the bag last time, and didn't bother cracking the whip ahead of the election. But now that it's likely Trump will win, they're leaving nothing to chance and are pulling out all the stops to motivate the squishes.

That's why they've amped up the rhetoric about this being "the election of our lifetimes" etc. They're obviously not talking to Republicans, nor are they just preaching to the choir of fellow hardcore Democrat partisans -- they're letting the squishes know that this is not just any old game that they can sit out if they feel like it. It requires 100% turnout, and 100% Democrat votes from those turning out. They're not offering anything positive in exchange, it's still negative -- but just chastising words, with the destruction and terrorizing left up to their paramilitary arm of Antifa, BLM, etc.

When they only looked to lose the presidential election again, that was bad enough. But now they're going to have an even smaller minority presence on the Supreme Court, so that's only going to make the elites crack the whip harder on their reluctant and apathetic client base. The only potential mitigating factor now is that summer weather is over, and testosterone levels are going to fall from their seasonal peak. That still leaves plenty of fuel for the fire, though.

There's simply no other way to interpret this. "We'll burn down every city if our guy doesn't win" -- that cannot be a threat to Republicans or Trump voters, who don't live there. Oh, no, please, don't burn down a libtard city, please, no, don't. Republican voters don't care about urbanites, whether of the working or yuppie classes, whether white or non-white. It's a separate galaxy, one they wouldn't mind seeing go out of existence.

Republican politicians manifestly do not care either, else they would've at least attempted to quell the riots. But how do riots in urban areas prevent the GOP from executing the agenda for their elite sponsors like the National Association of Manufacturers, the Pentagon and other military bases, Big Oil and Coal, and the agriculture cartel? Today's riots are not even targeting an oil pipeline like a few years ago.

Rather, these unhinged Democrat pronouncements are meant as a notice of conscription to the less-than-gung-ho urbanites. You're going to drop everything and join the crusade for our party in the election, or else -- and we're going to burn down a few neighborhoods in a few cities up front, just to prove that the threats are not empty. Don't make us burn down even more -- donate money to our elites now, put the signs on your lawns now, rope 50 acquaintances into mail voting now. We're monitoring your enthusiasm levels, and if we don't see progress in your behavior, we'll unleash the hordes on your neighborhood next.

But as far as I can tell around this Rust Belt metro area, the punishment will not work. I only see BLM and related signs in the rich neighborhoods and on wealthy people's cars, not in working-class areas or on the bumpers of beater cars. The response of the squishes will be similar to 2016 -- mostly apathy that translates into not voting at all, and a handful of angry defectors to Trump, who has pivoted from a general "law and order" theme to one narrowly aimed at these urbanite victims of Democrat party punishment. "Vote for us -- our party discipline doesn't involve burning down the communities of slacker members."

On top of the realignment in the broad agenda that the Democrats need in order to become the new dominant party in a post-Reaganite era, they will also have to start offering positive patronage again. In the deranged conservative's mind, the Democrats are the party of promising "free shit" and letting their voters run amok. In reality, the Democrats insist on tight-fisted non-promises of any goodies, and deploy an elite of enforcers to relentlessly destroy the livelihoods of all lowly voters who aren't 100% on board with each electoral crusade.

No army becomes a dominant force that way, through the privation and humiliation of its conscripts. Expanding armies are held together and driven forward by camaraderie (or really "asabiya," for the Peter Turchin readers).

As for how the party can reverse this trend, it'll take divine intervention -- by the finance gods, who control the party. Simply de-financialize the sub-groups within the party who are responsible for their polarizing behavior that alienates the critical mass of defectors from the Trump base necessary to form a new dominant electoral coalition. De-financialize those who are hell-bent on demolishing solidarity and camaraderie. De-financialize all political aspirants (including think-tankers, NGOs, and the rest of them) who are not going to promise some free shit for once.

And given the abysmal trust that the voting public has in the Democrat party, the finance gods will have to make some kind of down payment first, to prove they're trustworthy. Again, a down payment to the voting public, not to the polarizing partisan retards who have driven the party itself into oblivion.

That's really the only leverage that any member of the Democrat elite coalition can wield against the others. They don't have military force, they don't control food, or the production and distribution of things, or natural resources. But if the finance elites can snap their fingers and make it so Antifa and BLM cannot have a bank account or receive payments, that will go a long way toward weeding out the vindictive enforcers. If a successor to Biden doesn't make some kind of "free shit" part of their platform, no campaign contributions from Wall Street -- maybe outright de-financialization of their campaign.

The media / entertainment elites are the least able or willing to make the changes. They've been stoking the riots worse than any other sector of society. And even if they wanted to weigh in against Antifa and BLM, all they could do is give them bad reputations through their coverage. Oh no, rioters will get a bad reputation! That won't motivate them. But closing them off from all financial services would.

Nor is the IT cartel of Silicon Valley going to lead the way toward realignment. They've been working hand-in-glove with their media / entertainment partners in stoking the resentment and vindictiveness toward apathetic or wayward urbanites. Plus, what could they do even if they wanted to stop them? Ban the rioters from all social media platforms? OK, so they'll communicate through some other way. Coordinate with the media to stain their reputations? The rioters don't care what the internet thinks about them -- only if they're getting their threats through to the squishy urbanites in the neighborhoods they're terrorizing.

The only way to really hit them where it hurts is through the finance sector. If this problem were within the GOP coalition, their elites could send in the police or military to use armed force against their party-destroyers. But Democrats don't have that. Their strongest form of leverage is their monopoly on the creation and flow of money.

It may take this electoral cycle and the next -- and perhaps the next after that -- for the money men to get it. But they have too much invested in the outcome to just let pure vindictiveness among their enforcers drive their party into extinction.

8 comments:

  1. I think its that the Democrat blacks resent any accommodation with workers from the materialist sector, who are generally white working-class. They want to eject any materialist industry interests, and protect the traditional(post-New Deal) Dem patronage network(government workers and service workers, no manual laborers).

    Remember, its the people on the bottom who are most passionate about purifying a political coalition - because any deviation hurts their lives the most.

    Its funny how the upper middle-class liberals("yuppies") can't figure out what's going on. "Why are you guys angry? Is it because of the NEETs???" Many Baby Boom Democrats are apparently totally stuck in the New Deal era, not recognizing obvious tension with the white-working class.

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  2. David Kaiser said a couple years ago that poorly organized "bands" ostensibly representing various causes would likely be responsible for most political violence in late Neo-lib America due to the advanced corrosion of communal spirit. and lack of inspiring leadership (antif-fa in fact explicitly rejects the notion that anyone leads the movement). Expecting too much coherent/well-focused action is probably asking too much at this point (just listen to these "educated" idiots shrieking obscenities and cliches at the top of their lungs toward the police, "non-approved" press, and anyone else they want to eject from "their" streets).

    By contrast, the Progressive era movements saw much greater in-group solidarity and consistent hierarchy (and the New Deal era radicals often laid out a series of relatively well-thought out demands regarding a society that would be more equitable and honest).

    Why don't more of them gather in white suburbs or small towns? I don't think a lot of them feel safe there, and in any event, they are gutless cowards anyway, preferring projectiles and lasers over direct melee combat. And for the record, the Trumptards/Reaganite survivalist loons aren't much better, preferring to sit in their basements and garages rather than forcefully clean the streets up like the purifying Progressives and stoically reliable New Dealers did (back in the 60's, law enforcement and traditionalist groups prided themselves on claiming the scalps of bombers, vandals, looters, and drug addicts). In theory, the New Right should be the stronger force, however, Reaganite individualism and hedonism robs a group of the solidarity that's needed to get headway.

    One other thing: urban areas are full of non-residential property to burn and loot. The plausible deniability regarding "it's only property damage and nobody was really hurt" is much less convincing in the suburbs. Suburban anarchy would inevitably do lots of damage to residential property.

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  3. Working-class people in the Dem coalition are generally government workers and those in the service sector who serve informational and financial workers.

    One thing I've wondered: how many working-class service-sector workers, in services that cater to Dems, went over to Trump in 2016? I remember reading that most Hollywood film crews were pro-Trump(we're talking about the guys who lug around the equipment and props). That's a service sector that generally serves Democratic voters(who watch more movies). How many entry-level workers for Starbucks or Panera Bread voted for Trump?

    We should analyze what service-sector businesses vote Republican vs. Democrat.

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  4. How likely do you think it is that Trump will win reelection?

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  5. I think he'll win, though with a lower share of the popular vote than last time, due to amped up turnout among psycho polarized libs in large safe-blue states like California.

    Last time a Republican lost the popular vote but won the election (2000), the GOP went all in to amp up turnout in their own big safe state -- Texas -- so that the re-election (in 2004) showed a win of the popular vote as well.

    I don't see that this time, whether in Texas, Ohio, or Florida. So losing the popular vote seems guaranteed.

    As for the actual election, there's only one previous case of a disjunctive phase lasting two elections -- 1852 and 1856. The Jacksonian era should've been over by 1856, but the psycho polarizers on the opposition prevented that for another 4 years, and only realigned in 1860. Similar to the anti-realignment push by the entire Democrat party, from leftists to moderates, during Trump's 1st term.

    But even in the 1856 election, which was the very end of the line for Jacksonianism -- they actually picked up a new state, one that was almost entirely a lock for their *rivals* during the whole era. Kentucky only voted Democrat in 1828, but was a bastion of the Whig opposition for the rest of the era -- until 1856, when it went Democrat.

    That would be like Minnesota going to Trump in 2020. The utterly unthinkable -- but not signifying the final nail in the coffin for the opposition party. But the very furthest that the pendulum could swing in the ongoing direction, before reversing and heading the other way for decades.

    Most leftists have an apocalyptic view of Trump winning the Rust Belt (especially if he picks up Minnesota this time). I.e., that's the end of the Democrats -- or non-Republicans -- appeal to that part of the country, to whites, to the working-class, etc.

    But really it's like Kentucky going Democrat in 1856, or Texas going Republican in 1928 (Hoover's unbelievable landslide, when Texas used to be solid Democrat).

    The left thinks that once an extreme point is reached, it's a steady-state, like growth that has a saturation level that it doesn't move from afterwards.

    But the dynamics are not that way -- there are cycles, booms and busts, etc. Reaching an unbelievable extreme point means the pendulum is very shortly going to swing in the other direction for a long time. So, we're actually seeing the GOP being the weakest it's ever been -- just like under Hoover, notwithstanding his landslide victory that picked up a thought-to-be ungettable state.

    However, the libtards have their own greedy incorrect view -- that the pendulum reverses all on its own, that they're entitled to it, it's the cosmic karmic scales finally going back into balance.

    That's not how it works either -- they have to actively change things in their own party, and their appeal to former members of their rivals, in order to swing the pendulum the other way. No more austerity -- promise free shit. No more wokeness -- muzzle your culture warriors. No more shitting on flyover country -- give them stuff, and treat them like decent human beings and fellow citizens.

    We're clearly not at that place right now, which is why I say the realignment is delayed until at least 2024. But it can stay delayed as long as the opposition refuses to surrender the old battles and fight new ones that will cause mass defections from their old rivals. That could even take until 2028, with as psycho as the left and libs have become by now.

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  6. I'll keep voting Trump until Twitter unbans Aimee Terese. I'm a single-issue non-partisan voter from a Rust Belt swing state. You hold our princess hostage, we'll hold the patronage flowing from the federal executive branch hostage. No more free money for the NGOs, no more libtards on the Supreme Court.

    Like I wrote above, the Silicon Valley and media sectors are the most insanely opposed to realignment -- making it their main goal to deplatform people from the left who want to welcome the Deplorables into their coalition in order to pursue new programs for the masses.

    Wall Street -- if you're listening -- de-financialize the libtard discourse cops who reported Aimee Terese to the Twitter censors.

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  7. I think they're reconciling themselves to the loss of the Rust Belt. I think many Rust Belt voters are becoming disenfranchised, not voting for either party.

    I remember Peter Zeihan's old chart for "Post-Trump" political coalitions. Basically, for the Dems he listed: Greens("Yuppies"), Blacks, Gays, Single Women. That about sums it up - though as a demographic, single women are way more numerous than people realize.

    The key here is that union members aren't really voting for Republicans, either. Trump already gets basically all non-union working-class votes(categorized as "Populists"). For the Republican chart, Zeihan just lists "Populists" and Evangelicals.

    Catholic voters, Union members, Pro-Choicers, Hispanics(whom have long not voted) are all staying away from both parties.



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  8. Threats work -- she's back! Goddamn, I may have to vote Biden after all. If Aimee Terese is safely on Twitter from now until Election Day, I'll vote Biden. Otherwise, Trump.

    You can't keep a good woman down -- get fucked, libtard lawyers!

    Cancel student debt EXCEPT FOR law school!

    (Now there's a bipartisan, nation-unifying platform.)

    Time for a victory lap in our cyber-chariots!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQBF3a9m8Fs

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