Let's say a planet is discovered, and it is populated by
humanoids at the pre-industrial level. We communicate with them, they become
aware of our advanced state, and they ask us to help them develop.
You are chosen to go work with them and achieve that goal.
You get on board a spaceship that is equipped with an all-knowing computer, and
spend a great deal of time consulting it as to the best way to fulfill your
assignment. You ask the computer to identify the approaches that were followed
on Earth to bring about progress both at the material level and the moral
level.
The computer finds that Earthlings developed in two basic
ways. First, many things were accomplished on Earth because someone said: Here
are the resources I have and so, I'll work on ways to use them and make useful
things. Second, many things were accomplished on Earth because someone said:
Here is what I wish to accomplish, and so I'll go look for the resources I'll
need to succeed, and I won't quit till I find them.
That, my friend, is the analogy that will help us understand
what is happening on the political stage in America , especially with the
Republican Party that won the election because it destroyed itself. In that
process, the resulting fracas created a large pool of debris that can be used
as raw resources to put together and make useful things.
In that vein, there are people who look at the debris and
see in it elements that can be put together and build a useful monument. And
there are people who have an idea what monument they wish to build, thus search
in the debris for the elements they'll need to do that. One of the people
discussing the future of politics in America is Charles Krauthammer. He
wrote an article under the title: “How the new Republican majority can
succeed,” published on November 11, 2016 in the Washington Post.
Reading the article you quickly develop the sense that the
end product – the monument that Krauthammer wants to build – is the Republican
Party; and he has an idea how it should look like when all is said and done. To
him, everything else is but the debris with which the monument can be built.
Krauthammer makes that point at the start of his
dissertation: “It is incumbent upon conservatives to think through how to make
a success of Republican rule.” And he makes it again at the end of it: “The key
to success for a Trump presidency is for the Reaganite and populist elements to
advance each other's goals even at the cost of ideological purity”.
Was Krauthammer shortsighted in choosing that path for
reaching the desirable outcome, rather than choosing the alternative? To be
sure, he was aware of an alternative, having mentioned it in the second
paragraph of his article: “As House Speaker Paul Ryan noted, Trump heard 'a
voice out in the country that no one else heard.' Trump spoke to and for a
working class...” Could Krauthammer have made the interest of that working
class the monument to build, and gone on to look for the raw resources with
which to build it?
Yes, he could have. But he had one problem to which he
alluded but offered no solution. Here is what he said. After mentioning the
working class that was squeezed, he added this: “...and ruined by technological
and economic transformation … The principal task is to craft an agenda that
actually alters their [working people] lives and prospects … it was this
constituency, left behind by the digital economy, that delivered the presidency
to Trump”.
All that may be true but only in small part. The larger
truth is that the digital economy that was created by technological
transformation, started to happen long before the Y2K scare. And the world,
including America ,
adapted to it quickly. To look for the woes that have kept America 's
middle class behind in those events is to look in the wrong places.