Luc Brunet – 5 November 2016
It has been a long time since my latest New Letter as I wanted to avoid going into speculations about who shall win the US elections. Today is the day for a new Letter!
To be honest I expected such kind of Trump victory, but not as strong as it actually turned out. While many people express shock and emotion, I think we should look objectively at the result and try to understand why it happened.
The ones reading my Letter since 2006 or so, know that even at that time, I listed a number of reasons why the “neo-liberal” system was going head first to the wall. Of course I was by far not the only one, and many more famous and reputed people had the same view, all considered by the official media as outdated fools.
I also at that time compared the western system to the Soviet system over the 20 last years of the USSR, and looking at what happens now in the US completely confirms my comments 10 years ago.
It strikes me to see the “establishment” people in the US (and the analysis is valid for the EU) being today “surprised” by the results, just like the European elites have been “surprised” by the Brexit vote.
Those people have reached a fascinating degree of isolation from the real world and from the day to day life in the country. Just like Soviet Nomenklatura elites, they are surrounded by advisers paid to provide them with good news, good statistics, good predictions, and the ones daring talking about possible failure risk to lose their job and privileges. Just like the Soviet Nomenklatura, they live in a world adapted to the on-going ideology. In the USSR the ideology was the one of world-wide bright future for the working class where the individual was reduced to be part of a group, while the ideology of today’s liberal elites is believing on a world-wide auto-regulated financial market that shall generate growth until the end of times, in a world where the individual is more important than groups like nations.
One ideology assumes a natural tendency of human kind towards equality, the other one a natural tendency of the markets to be virtuous, and a natural tendency of people to dump their local culture and traditions to fit into a universal consumer role, oblivious of nations and their values. Both ideologies have or shall fail, because there is something more than ideology in the world, called reality of human nature. That reality cannot be ignored for long, even if some part of it is not always nice to look at. Yet, people are greedy, tend to want more if they have already plenty, people like power, people tend to be lazy and look down at others if they are different, but you know that list already.
Socialism without counter-power proved to be the less possible efficient system where people work only if they have fear and only very few enjoy privileges, hidden from the masses to comply to the ideology of equality. Unregulated capitalism turned into a turbo engine to destroy the social and production structure of the country, while all wealth is concentrated in the hands of very few who show off and brag about their billions because the ideology allows it.
The US elite wakes up today with a hangover and this is good. They may finally stop listening to their menial journalists and advisers and realize that the country they believe they live in simply does not exist any more. They may realize that the US is not limited to the group of friends and business relations they play golf with, or the ones they have dinner with in fashionable restaurants in Manhattan or in Santa Monica.
The real world is simply fed-up with their elites. They lost confidence and respect for those elites and in the political world in general, because they – rightly – feel that they are no longer part of the equation, they are left out in the liberal game, where big players are mainly interested in delocalization of jobs to increase company profits within one of the avatars of the liberal ideology – Globalization.
Trump won because he showed an interest in the white (and not only white) middle class that was smashed by the crisis started in 2007, while big banks at the origin of the crisis were saved and could increase the bonus of their management. Trump won because he showed concern about jobs being taken by migrants – and it does not make a racist out of him, although the Burberry dressed elites in the US or Europe consider that any concern about migrants is a sign of racism and fascism. Trump won because he talked about less military spending and a more friendly attitude towards Russia, as most Americans are tired to see soldiers coming from their ranks dying in unfamiliar countries, while the children of the elite like the junior Clinton family launch investment funds in their mid 20’s. Trump won because journalists working for the elite are constantly hiding the truth. Trump won because justice is twisted in favor of the powerful, sending whistle-blowers to jail but protecting the powerful.
Many of those things happen in many other countries for sure, but it reached such a level of arrogant and self-confident form in the US that something had to happen. It did yesterday.
And the map of States is clear. Clinton won on the West Coast and in the New England/NY regions, the ones less impacted by the ruin of the middle class and where high level education is still common. Interestingly, Democrats (at least they carry that name) won in the privileged regions while Republicans won in all other regions. Rings a bell to you, European readers?
Now what is waiting for us in the next 4 years?
First of all, political science is worst than weather forecast and nobody can really know what Trump has in his hat, what he shall do, and how far he is ready to challenge the system. One option is what I call the Tsipras option, where big plans and revolutionary programs rapidly decompose and the same politics are resumed as before, like what happened in Greece some time ago.
Although Trump seems to have more self esteem and character than Tsipras, this option cannot be considered as excluded, but is on my views not very probable.
If Trump really intends to change things, he shall turn into a US Putin, saving the nation from total collapse. Like Putin in 2000, he inherits a corrupt and uncontrollable system. Like Putin then, he shall have to play hard with the oligarchs and may be shall have to make an example with some of them (a la Khodorkovsky). The game shall be dangerous and he shall need good allies in the police and military. Shall he be able to combine that with a forced reduction of the military budget? This is on my views the key question and the key danger for Trump’s program and indeed for his personal life.
Only after acquiring such a strong position with the police and military shall he be really in position to change policies, reduce military presence abroad, and re-orient resources towards large investment programs in the country, renovating aging infrastructure and create new real jobs. Liberals shall cry fool and protest about soviet style economy, because they shall never understand the difference between the real economy and the what they believe are free markets.
Good luck Donald! You and America need it.