As turmoil rages, no quick return to halcyon days

Given the momentous and historic lawless disruption of the US Congress on Jan 6, serious and necessary questions are being asked: what is happening in America? I would like to provide some background from my personal perspective on the course of history now unfolding in this country.

The American Republic is on the edge of a death spiral. Civility between the contending parties has been abandoned. Uncivil disobedience, even violent lawlessness, is taking its place. There will be no quick return to more halcyon days even with Joe Biden as our president.

The 2020 presidential election started that ripping up of our domestic political compact.

There never will be closure on the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s victory. Tens of millions of Americans are more than disconcerted by “innovations” introduced into the presidential election process last November.

That the Democrats “stole” a presidential election has now entered the mythology of American history. Too many people — tens of millions of them — believe that to be the fact and they will never change their minds.

For example, Democratic Party activists arranged for the sending of mail ballots to everyone, unprecedented numbers of Americans voting by mail and not in person, waiving voter ID requirements for those afraid of Covid, making available insecure mobile ballot boxes, election officials “curing” and not discarding faulty ballots, and not purging voter registration lists of those not eligible to vote.

Then, one billionaire donated $350 million (10.5 billion baht) to finance election clerks, judges, and vote counters and open more poll locations in Democratic voter strongholds.

Democrats and their supporters vehemently reject the charge that these “innovations” created an unfair election.

And, due to court rules on civil procedure, there has been no trial on the merits of the accusations.

Responsible officials just denied the charges and did not produce any evidence that would substantiate their denials.

The worst possible electoral outcome is now a reality — no truth, just bitterly conflicting partisan narratives.

The failure of the presidential election to establish its legitimacy is the crossing of a political frontier similar to the crossing of the Rubicon River by Julius Caesar with his personal army on Jan 10, 49 BCE when he challenged the legitimacy of the Roman Republic.

This year is the 2,070th anniversary of that dramatic challenge to the constitutional order of the Roman Republic.

In the time of Julius Caesar, the opposing classes in the Roman Republic were, on top, the Patricians — the “Fathers” who gave direction — (also called the Optimates or the “Best Ones”) — let’s call them the “Yellow Shirts” — and, on the bottom, the Plebians — let’s call them the “Red Shirts”. You get the idea about class and cultural conflict.

Caesar’s jaunty quip that day was alea iacta est — “The die is cast”. Civil war was the result. He won the toss but later paid for his victory with his life.

Mr Trump is now having to pay personally for his hubris. He has been impeached by the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives. Like Caesar before him, Mr Trump rose thanks to a dynamic personality but, also like Caesar, that same personality has twisted him into a loser.

I can imagine Karl Marx rather joyfully looking on from wherever he is as we Americans validate his thesis of dialectical materialism. Our culture war has now solidified into a class war. Each class has its separate relationship with our system of production. The ideology of each class, just as Marx insisted, so aligns with its economic self-interest that we might say each rival ideology is a rationalisation programmed to legitimise a class interest.

Our new system of production is more sophisticated than the capitalism studied by Marx. Now finance is not the most important form of capital. Over the past 30 years we have through public agencies created massive amounts of liquidity — trillions and trillions of dollars and every other major currency. The world is floating on a huge sea of currency and currency equivalents as never before in history. That is one reason why the price of money — interest rates — are so low.

Our global post-industrial economy now runs on forms of capital which were once marginal, such as human capital, intellectual property, social capital such as celebrity, credentials, brand equity, customer goodwill, corporate culture, and the asset implicit in controlling regulatory power.

The old form of capital — liquidity — is now most easily appropriated by those who possess the new forms of capital.

Since nearly every sector of the economy is dominated by a few firms, corporations can extract rents over and above competitive market prices. Corporate officers are more and more part of the new ruling elite by virtue of their credentials and human capital, which gives them preferential access to liquidity.

In our current form of capitalism, the middle and lower classes don’t have any of the new forms of capital. An old fashion work ethic can’t compete with credentials or social mediatised status. Mere labour, as always, isn’t much of a capital asset.

So, those who have been called the “Deplorables” have become the new proletariat. They are the social base for the Republican Party. Democrats who are also part of this class have become Republicans.

Republicans who belong to the new capitalist class are becoming Democrats, voting for Joe Biden.

And the Democrats have become the party of the new American ruling class — those who are Woke, well-credentialed, and blessed with White Collar employments in large institutions.

So, America now has in more pestilential form than at any time since the election of 1860 perhaps an irreconcilable antagonism between two social classes, each with its own culture of virtue and each with its own economic reality.

‘‘ The failure of the election to establish its legitimacy is similar to the crossing of the Rubicon River by Julius Caesar.