When the center no longer holds

The center cannot hold. The triad of institutions (the RNC, the DNC and MSM) that defined the norms and themes of 20th century politics is now coming unglued, quickly. This has been described by conventional political analysts as a ‘populist moment’ but that narrative does not capture the reality that we are witnessing a rare seismic shift from one political paradigm to a new and unsettled dynamic which is still unfolding before our eyes.

This kind of political sea change has happened several times in American history and the process of creative destruction of outdated political models is underway.

Several key factors have converged to induce this transformation. The collapse of financial capitalism in 2008 has permanently scarred the national psyche, leaving behind enduring social instability and hardening structural economic inequality. This global fiasco has finally ended the long hegemonic reign of ‘free market’ capitalism as the sole legitimate authoritative ideological operating principle. The failure to address the economic suffering of the shrinking middle class and the socially incendiary hardening of an economic caste system has disintegrated the intellectual and moral authority of the ruling elites. Reaganomics and Third Way DLC neo-liberalism are functionally dead, even if the bodies are still twitching. The corporate media system that fronted for the plutocracy and helped manufacture social consensus for the elites has broken down as a direct consequence of the Telecommunications Act that deregulated media ownership under the Clinton Administration in the 90s. Another major factor is the ascendance of an oligarchic class that has used its vast wealth to purchase the political system, a dynamic that was accelerated by the disastrous Citizen’s United Supreme Court decision.

The fourth driver of the dissolution of social stability is the rapidly changing demographic mix, which has left many members of the formerly dominant white majority culture desperate to regain the perceived privileges that they have lost. Finally, the gathering global crisis of anthropogenically generated climate change is destabilizing the international order. The 20th century institutions that shaped and framed political discourse are in disarray.

Paraphrasing a comment from my favorite Internet political podcast, ‘The Professional Left’: The Democratic primary is like watching a heated family argument over real issues. Unfortunately, now that the Democratic contest has become uncomfortably close, the relative civility of the early debates has dimmed and the Clinton campaign (and a misguided wing of Sanders supporters) has started throwing elbows. Even so, to the extent that the corporate media moderators have allowed, the debate has been focused on genuine issues like dark money in politics, structural income inequality, global climate change, reforming the broken criminal justice system, protecting constitutionally guaranteed rights for women and sexual minorities, best practices for combating jihadist terrorism, and international trade regimes. The Republican primary looks like watching a cab full of crazy people drunk-driving a loaded gasoline truck flying dual Confederate flags backwards at 100 mph, fists jammed out the window, screaming ‘Benghazi! Benghazi! Benghazi!’

They are operating in parallel (and unequal) universes. The 2016 presidential primary has been a protracted exercise in finally burying the corporate media trope that ‘both sides’ are in some kind of rough equilibrium of competing political narratives. The mainstream media is still constitutionally incapable of speaking the dreadful truth that one party is engaging in a reality-based dialog and the other has finally spun off the deep end into madness. That would be bad for the media business, which depends on propping up the fiction of two evenly matched horses in a neck-and-neck race in the notional ‘contest of ideas.’ An exiled and marginalized class of progressive intellectuals, who are never allowed a seat at the marquee network TV talk show panels, has been pointing with growing alarm at the steady degeneration of the crazed bull elephant in the room for several decades, but now the raw fact of Republican political derangement is in full view. They are no longer a political party; they have devolved into a dangerous mass cult. The front-runners in the Republican primary, Trump and Cruz, are respectively a neo-fascist authoritarian and a theocratic fundamentalist.

The centrist corporate media lacks the software to process the implications of this final stage of political decay. All their models and assumptions cannot permit them to comprehend how to react appropriately. They are in a state of panicked denial. As the Millennial generation withdraws from TV and terrestrial radio for their news sources and is in the process of migrating to the burgeoning field of online news and commentary, the old reliable metrics of money spent on TV and radio ads equaling quantifiable political outcomes are breaking down. We are lurching uncertainly into the new terrain of the 21st century without a compass. It’s a great time to be alive!

On the local level, I will offer my unsolicited endorsement in the 1st District County Supervisors June contest. Incumbent Supervisor Susan Gorin has shown a steady hand as Board Chair during a challenging time. I first met Supervisor Gorin when she served on the board of the Living Wage Coalition and was impressed with her willingness to move out of her affluent social liberal ideological comfort zone and learn the languages of organized labor and the progressive movement. She has the rare capacity to listen to all the elements of the community and to make informed political decisions that serve the common good.