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This weekend, I witnessed the Vibe Shift firsthand.
When we met for lunch, my mother’s first topic was the DNC. Who spoke and how great they sounded. How excited she was about the whole thing. She corrected me on “Comma-lah’s” name, which I’d apparently been mispronouncing, and used that as a springboard to discuss Kamala t-shirts. She didn’t mention that watching the DNC had been inspiring enough to get her volunteering to write postcards and stuff mailers. It was clear that she was all-in on the program without ever discussing policy—or even Donald Trump.
Dad chimed in a couple times to note that the overall messaging was much more positive, except for Bernie Sanders, who sounded unchanged from the last ten years. He appreciated this. I’d say he represents a section of the populace with immense distaste for Trump, but a comparable disdain for politicians who spend too much time talking about the man.
I had been under no illusions that Mom would vote anything but Democrat. Dad, not so sure; I’d have given good odds of a protest vote if the Libertarian candidate wasn’t such a non-entity. More likely that he abstained. But the last couple weeks appear to have left him much more comfortable voting D. The same has to be true for Mom, too, as I never saw this level of enthusiasm for anything Biden did or said.
That’s the Vibe Shift: apathy to enthusiasm.
It doesn’t take a coordinated blitz of friendly op-eds, since my parents were getting this straight from the TV. It doesn’t take an iron grip on that TV presentation; the DNC herds their cats, but they can’t convince Bill Clinton to get off stage. And it doesn’t even take a winning policy slate. The Democrat base, the casual never-Trumpers, maybe even the grillpillers? They’re just glad to have a candidate under the retirement age.
I’m probably not a good representative of Harris backers, but I’m definitely way more enthusiastic about her than I was about Biden. I’d say this boils down to the fact that she has a decent chance of winning if polls are to be believed. Going from certain defeat to having a fighting chance is invigorating. Something akin to a last minute touchdown that ties up a game. All of this is in spite of the fact that I find the majority of her policy positions abhorrent.
How do you justify this, given that you find the majority of her policy positions abhorrent?
It's simply a vote against Trump. He's the linchpin holding the Democratic coalition together. Once he's gone, many of us want nothing more to do with the Democratic party.
As for why I'm so against Trump I have a couple of reasons. They basically boil down to a) I like living in a stable society and b) I like living in a rich society.
Stability:
There are really only 2 stable forms of government: Autocracy or aristocracy. We live in an aristocracy. These tend to be the more stable of the two, since there are competing factions with overlapping interests. Because of that, it's hard to enact change without stepping on anyone's toes. So change comes slowly. This allows a lot of institutions to be built on the bedrock of a (somewhat) stable system.
When an aristocracy changes into an autocracy, things usually get ugly. You get a lot of purges, and often a bunch of erratic government behavior. Look at the early Roman empire. For a more modern analogy, look at China. They were briefly an aristocracy with competing factions holding each other in check. Now they're an autocracy with Xi making questionable decisions. Life in China now does not look as good as it did a decade ago. Yes, there are multiple reasons for this. But the change in government structure is certainly one of them.
I think the whole "stolen election" affair moves us a lot closer to autocracy. Mainly by casting doubt on the electoral process, but also by normalizing the use of extra-legal means(fake electors) to hold on to power. To be fair, i don't think Trump will become an autocrat. He's not Julius Caesar. But he might be the Gracchi. Using populism to upend the old order doesn't usually lead to a better system. Instead, you just get chaos.
Wealth:
The US has a large empire. It is largely economic but there is a military component. The US dollar is only the reserve currency because the US is able to project force around the world. When the perception of strength goes, the huge inflows of cash will go too. The more the US leans into isolationism, the faster this will happen. And Trump's refusal to support the provinces/maintain the boarders is really pushing us in that direction.
All that being said, I'm not a big fan of the current culture of the "aristocracy" in the US. I think it's decadent and weak. But I also think that reform from within is possible. I think culturally the pendulum is swinging. Maybe not back to where it was, but certainly away from some of the craziness that we just saw over the last decade. I'd much rather see where that process goes, as opposed to opting for populist chaos.
At the end of the day I'm an institutionalist. I think the institutions in this country took a long time to evolve, and I'm not ready to abandon them, even if some of the people running them are crazed cultists.
Granted, I don't understand economics very well, but I don't understand the argument that the dollar is the world's reserve currency because the US can militarily dominate huge regions of the world. I can potentially see some indirect and relatively weak mechanisms that would connect the two, but I don't see any clear direct mechanism by which the military power would have a dominant impact on the dollar's status as the world's reserve currency. Isn't the dollar the world's reserve currency because the US economy is huge, fairly dynamic, and - most importantly - stable?
If the US became isolationist but retained a very strong and stable economy, why would other countries switch to using some other currency other than the dollar as the reserve currency?
I'd also like to briefly address your point about Trump as a destabilizing factor. In my opinion, while he is destabilizing, the impact of this is effectively contained by our political system. The chances of him becoming a dictator, as you at least somewhat agree, is extremely small. Meanwhile, the Democrats are also a destabilizing factor. For example, I personally think that the combination of weak law enforcement in Democrat-run cities and frequent leftist street riots is significantly more destabilizing than everything that Trump has ever done put together, since it contributes to a sense of physical insecurity and a sense that one is living in anarchotyranny. The destabilizing effects on people are both directly physical - in the sense of street crime - and mental, in that living in such an atmosphere can make one rather grim, pessimistic about the country's future, and bitter at one's political opponents.
Trump might inspire a future Caesar, but the way I see it Democrats are already, right now, working on ripping apart our social order in a deleterious way. That's not what the vast majority of them think they are doing - they think that they are working to make the world a better place, but I believe that is what the actual consequences of some of their policies are.
The dollar is backed by the navy keeping shipping lanes open, as the pound was before it, and the Spanish dollar before that.
Of course, Spain and Britain are wealthy countries today. They happen to be much less so in world standings than they were at the height of their power(Britain in particular). But the average Brit didn’t start seeing real declines in standard of living until very recently.
The real question is ‘who becomes hegemon if the US collapses?’ Don’t make me laugh by saying China.
Leaving aside the very historically likely "something completely out of left field due to totally unforseen factors", the question is really just to ask ourselves who today can muster the most competent complex organization and is willing to swing power to get their way.
I think there's a real possibility for a corporation to be a contender this time. The power of nation states has been waning for quite a bit and they're all so exhausted that the idea the next Great Man and his retinue would be in the public sector almost seems silly.
On one hand, military power is a very jealously guarded privilege. On the other hand, large parts of the tech industry are aligning themselves to weapons manufacturing, automation and infrastructure in a way that could make something like this happen. Maybe the non-extractive parts of the MIC decide they're tired of subsidizing morons, cut out the middle man and rule the world directly.
My base case is that there won't be a great hegemon for a while though, that we're due for a long period of decentralization and diminishing power until someone kicks off the imperialism again from a direction that may be impossible to even imagine right now.
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