With the American elections almost upon us, it is time to ponder what is at stake here, particularly, with the race for the presidency, and why it is at stake here. But first, I am going to touch on what isn’t at stake here. This is not primarily about a clash between two political philosophies: liberalism and conservatism. If that were the case, we wouldn’t be witnessing the strange spectacle of all these prominent conservative Republicans declaring en masse that they are going to vote for Kamela Harris.
What is at stake is how we want to present ourselves as a nation to the world and, on a deeper level, how we want to function as a nation. In terms of presentation, the question is, as the leader of the free world, do we want to have a president who is a statesman and a serious person in general, or do we want to have a president who is crude, vulgar, and constantly threatening all kinds of different individuals and groups of people. In terms of functioning do we want to have a president who basically wants to transform the United States into an authoritarian populist fascist dictatorship, or do we want to have a president who wants to continue the tradition of the United States as a Western democracy.
This is a presidential contest based both on differences in character as well as differences in vision. Liz Cheney, the former Republican Representative from Wyoming, who is extremely conservative, and, for instance, very pro-life, is campaigning with Kamela Harris in the hopes of being able to swing some Republican women to vote for her. Cheney is fighting to save the American constitution and American democracy. She realizes that the Republican party, of which she and her father, Dick Cheney, had been such an important part for so many years, is no more.
Even if something were to happen to Trump such that he was unable to lead the MAGA Republicans anymore, the cult personalities of Trump’s followers will remain intact as a result of the experiential vacuum which has such a strong effect on them and which causes them to need someone like Trump to pull them intermittently out of their numbness and feel alive. So if something were to happen to Trump, the MAGA Republicans would find a way to pull another arrow from their quiver, another potential dictator to lead the way. By the way, Dick Cheney has announced that he is voting for Kamela Harris.
Now stated another way, Kamela Harris as a political liberal, believes that government has a meaningful role in creating surrogate organic grounding for American citizens. It does this by, among other pathways, creating an economic safety net, a strong surrogate economic organic grounding. When people aren’t so worried about their economic survival, particularly in an individualistic society like the U.S., they are less likely to demonstrate negative emotions towards their neighbors. Now creating a strong surrogate economic organic grounding is a very complex endeavor. Under Biden, many liberal government programs were created that led to large expenditures on infrastructure including highways, bridges and electric grids, a tremendous growth in job creation and caps on the cost of certain vital medications among other things. Unfortunately, one economic effect that the Biden administration didn’t plan for was a high inflation. Nevertheless, Biden, along with the Federal Reserve, was able to gradually bring down the rate of inflation from 8% to 2.4% which is where it was last in February 2021. This was done without generating a recession. However, Americans are still struggling with the high prices generated during this period of high inflation. Particularly, because there has been no raise in the federal minimum wage from $7.25 since 2009.
So, in spite of all the good policies created under Biden and Harris to shore up the social safety net, there is an awful lot of work left to do. Certainly, if Trump gets reelected, the social safety net will be destroyed and people will end up more deeply immersed in an experiential vacuum than ever before. And then the only things left to pull people out of the experiential vacuum will be the tension-pocket crude vulgar statements that Trump makes as well as the abrasive fascistic measures that Trump takes to keep the American people in line. While he and his billionaire cronies continue to rake in their enormous barely-taxed profits from their business investments.
Kamela wants to suppress the negative effects of the sensory distortion from the experiential vacuum and the abrasive tension-pockets that we live in, by creating a more united communitarian society built on the positive emotion of joy. Trump, on the other hand, wants to create a society where people become isolated free-floating figures, where people, rather than communing with one another, butt heads as they knock into one another in their experiential vacuums. The choice for the future of the U.S. could not be more firmly delineated.
© 2024 Laurence Mesirow
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