Thoughts on the so-called election

Who are the real contestants?

Because both factions of the legacy uniparty are suggesting they might refuse to recognize the official 2024 election results, I thought it would be a good time to write down a few preliminary thoughts about how a new American revolution could play out if it happens in the very near future.  This post was inspired by a recent comment from John Michael Greer:    

Just as the capitalist elite of the 1920s crashed and burned, and was replaced by a managerial elite in the 1930s and 1940s, the managerial elite of the 2010s is crashing and burning, and will be replaced by an entrepreneurial elite in the 2020s and 2030s.  @JMGreerWriter on Xitter, 10/26/2024¹

To me, the “capitalist elite of the 1920s” and the “entrepreneurial elite” of today appear to be about the same:  basically new money oligarchs with a smattering of old money for the sake of maintaining upper crust cultural continuity.  Upper crust cultural continuity is one of the main resources that must be conserved in order to legitimize conservative politics.  Somebody has to establish signaling standards.  Somebody has to say what sort of spending counts as highbrow conspicuous consumption versus mere lowbrow improvidence, for example.  The new money people can try to rebel against this and perhaps even toy with the idea of being class traitors, but that is not really in their material interest. The majority (and the overwhelming majority of their progeny) will do their best to comply with upper crust cultural standards, and they will do so long before they qualify as old money. 

Greer’s “managerial elite,” on the other hand, appears to be the socio-economic group known in the United States as the Professional Managerial Class, or PMC.  Greer’s prediction suggests to me that our current political conflicts are really a clash between the interests of these two groups of elites, and that we should be careful how much credence we give to superficial name-calling between the Democratic and Republican factions of the legacy uniparty. 

If the real battle is between the PMC and the oligarchs, then it seems to me the PMC should be thought of as a revolutionary force rather than as a branch of the hereditary elite.  Very few of the PMC started out as part of the oligarch class.  Most of them started with some level of social and economic privilege, but it takes a lot more than that to qualify as an oligarch.  The PMC succeeded in gaining power during the twentieth century by organizing into something resembling a gigantic trade union, but more comprehensive.  Their class power was institutionalized first within universities, and the universities became the gatekeepers to determine who could be elite without being rich enough to qualify as an oligarch.  From there, PMC class power spread to most other institutions because those institutions only accepted people for institutional leadership positions after they had been properly acculturated and accredited by universities. 

It is interesting to note that the PMC seems to have organized itself and gained control of critical institutions without achieving lasting class consciousness.  PMCs are hyper-aware of the distinctions between themselves and non-PMCs, and they are also hyper-aware of the privileges they feel are their due. I expect to return to the theme of what PMCs think their goals are. For now, suffice it to say that class consciousness requires an awareness that things could be otherwise, and today’s PMC are profoundly shocked and discombobulated by any suggestion that institutional elites could be selected and institutions could be managed any other way. 

Accordingly, the PMC for the past several months have been profoundly shocked and discombobulated by the realization that Donald Trump’s legions of deplorables might prefer a different system.  I would venture to say that this is the main source of the recent increase in Trump Derangement Syndrome. The failure of the deplorables to recognize the inherent authority of university accredited experts is literally unthinkable to the PMC. They have no choice but to assume that such heresy will automatically lead to rounding up 100 million liberals and putting them in concentration camps if the deplorables are allowed to think it, no citation necessary.  Even if Trump wins and wants to do that, I don’t think it will happen for basic logistical reasons. Which brings us back to Greer’s prediction.

The gist of Greer’s prediction is that the oligarchs are on track to replace the PMC.  I think this is premature.  There is a story (perhaps apocryphal) about Churchill and Stalin during the Second World War.  When Churchill suggested that perhaps the Pope could play a part in planning for the war and its aftermath, Stalin said “How many divisions does the Pope have”?  When analyzing large-scale conflict, it seems important to start by considering material bases of power.

The PMC Power Base 

I’ve written about the PMC before, so I won’t spend a lot of additional time describing them today. The PMC is much more numerous than the oligarch class, but the PMC is nowhere near a majority of the voting population.  The PMC collectively controls a substantial amount of money and they are in charge of most of the major institutions in our society.  They set the norms that must be accepted if you want to be a professional or a manager. That’s a hell of a power base, but the PMC faces a built-in challenge because of the friction that exists between managers and workers. Workers still make up the majority of the population, so that counts against the PMC at election time. As I said in the previous PMC post, “the bourgeoisie and the proletariat seem to be uniting behind, of all people, the anti-expert, Donald Trump!”

The Oligarch Power Base

The oligarchs obviously have a lot of money, but they are very few in number.  Past oligarchs made up for their small numbers in two ways:  (1) they used their money to buy some people’s loyalty directly, and (2) they used the bought people to propagate fear, prejudice, and resentment among the peasantry. Exploiting fear, prejudice, and resentment was the key to persuading people who had very little money or power to seek stability by backing those who have money and power.  This pattern was pretty consistent since ancient Athens, up until the twentieth century. The PMC emerged precisely because twentieth century oligarchs believed the PMC could control workers in a more sophisticated and scientific manner. But because today’s PMCs seem to have lost the ability to keep workers in line (or relate to workers at all), many oligarchs are reconsidering that bargain. With the advent of Trumpism, more and more oligarchs are returning to Trump’s version of the original oligarch governing model, and I think more will follow if he wins.

I’m a former liberal, so the first draft of this post simply left it at that—the Trump campaign is based on exploiting fear, prejudice, and resentment among the working class, what the New York Times recently called the politics of grievance. But liberals dismissing their opponents as simpletons and troglodytes, literally calling them garbage and accusing them of bitterly clinging to guns and religion, is a big part of what got us into our current political mess. So I resolved to do better.

In 2014, Scott Alexander wrote a blog post that helped rekindle my interest in blogging after I had lost all hope due to the Great Obama Betrayal of 2009. The post was called I Can Tolerate Anything Except The Outgroup. It describes how the Blue Tribe (at least partially synonymous with the PMC) displaced all of its outgroup hatred from traditional outgroups (based on race, religion, sex, whatever) to hatred of the Red Tribe. I think the post holds up pretty well ten years later, with one exception. At that time Alexander suggested the Red Tribe was still pretty focused on scapegoating traditional outgroups. Now I think Red Tribers hate the Blue Tribe more, which creates a kind of parity that could be good for traditional outgroups if they can avoid the general carnage between the Blue Tribe and the Red Tribe.

Unfortunately, designating half of the country as an outgroup that cannot be understood or bargained with is not a long-term defensible position for either side. In order for a quasi-democratic political system like ours to function without mob violence, it is absolutely necessary to acknowledge that the other side has beliefs, interests, and grievances. Trying to get to the bottom of what Trump voters want and why they think Trump will deliver it is beyond the scope of this post, and I don’t actually claim to understand it at any deep level, but here are a few discussion points for starters.

1. Uncontrolled immigration obviously hurts American wage laborers. Obviously. Any sensible person who has been involved in hiring a yard guy or a nanny in the United States knows this. Undocumented immigrants (or conditionally documented immigrants) are willing to do the work for far less money and accept harder conditions than any reasonable person with secure U.S. citizenship rights would ever accept. PMCs will twist themselves into pretzels denying it, arguing for the sacred human rights of these immigrants even while they support the mass-genocide of Palestinians, because PMCs do not want to mow their own lawns or raise their own children. This aspect of immigration is a legitimate economic issue, but I do not believe Trump will fix it because oligarchs want cheap labor even more than the PMCs do. Trump will do what Republicans in the U.S. have been doing since I was a small child—grandstand on crime and not do anything effective to stop it. If the party of the PMC would take this issue seriously and look for a real solution, they could do a complete end-run around Trump (and no, Biden’s hastily cobbled-together immigration bill during election season doesn’t count as a real solution).

2. Offshoring manufacturing under Reagan and Clinton was a terrible, nation-threatening mistake. Not only did it destroy the ability of wage laborers to be part of the middle class, it also created the current situation where we cannot manufacture things like basic arms and ammunition needed for our imperial ambitions abroad. I’m not sure tariffs are the solution, and I’m not even sure there is a solution without doing something radical such as giving up imperial ambitions. But again this is a legitimate issue for which the party of the PMC has no practical answer (and giving international corporations billions of dollars to build robotic microchip fabs that will probably never operate doesn’t count as a solution).

3. Religious and ethical objections to abortion, gay marriage, and gender reassignment surgery for children are mostly based on good-faith beliefs that are unquestionably protected by the First Amendment. I am not religious and I don’t want other people dictating to me or anyone else based on their religious beliefs, but at the same time it is constitutionally very clear I am not entitled to suppress religious views. To the extent the state has any interest in regulating these issues, they will remain subject to political dispute and we must find a stable compromise if we want things to be stable. To anyone who doesn’t want the state regulating these things, I suggest you start pushing for more bodily autonomy based on the Fourth Amendment “right of the people to be secure in their persons.” My body my choice. But if people have more bodily autonomy, sometimes it might apply to things you disapprove of, such as refusing to be vaccinated.

It must be admitted that Donald Trump delivered on some promises last time. He appointed anti-abortion judges, and he implemented some tariffs (which the Biden administration kept in place). Still, it is hard for me to understand why the Red Tribe thinks that oligarchs will protect them from immigrants (the main source of cheap labor) and the depradations of the PMC (who are employed by the oligarchs precisely for the purpose of making workers comply with a cultural system causing all that is solid to melt into air).

Even if Donald Trump wins the election, he faces a very difficult road trying to replace the PMC.  Maybe Elon Musk and a few other oligarchs will volunteer to serve in Trump’s cabinet, but who will fill the next three or four (or five or six) management tiers below them?  Trump can threaten to fire them all, but he doesn’t have institutions capable of generating replacements who will behave much differently than the current management.  Here is an assessment by a young person of the pre-election state of play in higher education. Here is a more recent assessment by the same person. I don’t agree with everything this person says, but I agree that the Trump version of the GOP faces a basic structural problem. If Trump implements massive cuts in the federal government to avoid the need to replace the fired PMCs, that reduces his power base as president.  Even if you assume Greer’s prediction is for a longer-term transition of power, the mechanics of oligarchic control in a technologically complex American system are by no means clear.   

So How Many Divisions Does Each Tribe Have?

The pollsters assure us that the Donald Trump and Kamala Harris coalitions are pretty evenly balanced right now.  If there is going to be an actual revolution this year we probably need to get back to Stalin’s question:  how many divisions do Donald Trump and Kamala Harris have?  Literally. 

I noted earlier this year in a review of a book by Peter Turchin that he does not think the United States needs to be very concerned about a military coup in the near future because the default mode of American governance is oligarchy, not military rule.  Turchin is certainly correct about the prevalence of oligarchy, and he is correct that American military leaders have been indoctrinated to defer to civilian authorities, primarily in the person of the president.  But if the oligarch coalition and the PMC coalition fail to agree on who should actually be the president come next January, then even the most heavily indoctrinated military leaders will be in a quandary. 

I’ve seen many assumptions posted online saying that if things get ugly, Trump supporters will have all the civilian guns plus a military that was mostly recruited from Trump country.  The part about civilian guns may be true in many states, but I have serious doubts about which side the military would choose.  The paramilitary intelligence and national security agencies are even more inscrutable.  While it is true that much of the military is recruited from Trump country, so is much of the PMC.  The active military is necessarily recruited from the kids who were willing to leave their hometowns, wherever those hometowns may be located.  So is most of the PMC. 

The military also accepts the most important principle of PMC power—leaders must go to college.  Thus it is not surprising that most military officers seem to accept the PMC principles of meritocracy by institutional certification and aggressive integration of races, religions, ethnicities, and gender categories, as taught by colleges and universities.  The same appears to be true for the non-military intelligence and national security agencies.  This acceptance of PMC principles is in stark contrast to the “anti-woke” rhetoric back home in Trump country. 

I do not believe the military-intelligence complex is likely to intervene in this election to change the result, at least not any more than they already have by planting stories in the mainstream propaganda organs.  I served in the military, and I have more confidence that the military will try to adhere to legitimate legal standards than I have in any civilian institution, including state and federal courts.  Moreover, I have a feeling (based mostly on pure contrarianism) that the result will not be as close as the media observers say it is. I don’t necessarily think the polls are wrong, but I think the last two or three percent of voters in the heavily contested states will break decisively one way or the other. If the result is not particularly close, then I think the military leadership will go with the side that appears to have actually won, as they should.

A Series of “Ifs”

If the election is close and there is no obviously correct legal result, then I suspect the military-intelligence complex will come down on the side of the PMC, and that means Kamala Harris.  If the active military plumps for Kamala Harris and the veterans and others with civilian arsenals want to come down on the other side, then the Red Tribe civilians may wish they had paid more attention to the “well regulated militia” part of the Second Amendment.

If the military-intelligence complex openly chooses a side this year, whether or not they engage in actual kinetic conflict with civilians, then Turchin’s rule of oligarchy will be broken and I would expect the military-intelligence complex to become significantly more active in determining how we are governed going forward. 

Of course, it is quite likely that the United States will continue on its path of moral, political, economic, and environmental collapse regardless of which faction of the legacy uniparty prevails in the 2024 elections.  Neither of them are offering any realistic solutions to anything important, and they both support genocide in occupied Palestine, so it is a pretty good bet they will be OK with genocide here when it comes down to it. Collapse, domestic genocide, and the resulting chaos might provide a mechanism for oligarchs to regain control by simplifying systems so they don’t need as many PMC managers and PMC-controlled institutions.  If that happens it could eventually vindicate Greer’s prediction, but I don’t think it will happen between now and January. 

Avenues for further thought suggested in this post:

• Does the PMC have class consciousness, and if so what is it?

• How will PMCs maintain their institutional power when they hate workers so much that they can’t actually fulfill their definitional purpose of managing workers?

• What do Trump voters want and why do they think Trump will deliver it?

1. X is not a recognizable name for anything, so I have adopted the hybrid term Xitter. The X is pronounced “sh” consistent with the Pinyin Romanization of Mandarin.