I've been rewatching an Adam Curtis documentary and it just so happened to touch on the time the Red Army Faction trained with Syrian paramilitaries.
The specifics of which I'll get into later but the main point I'm gonna try and explain is this: there is no conflict between socialism and capitalism, we live in postmodern technocracy. This is not a critique of our internet addled culture or "woke" anything, but rather the transition from modern liberal capitalism into postmodern technocracy began in 1945. World War II was the end of the old empires and also the end of the grand 18th Century revolution in liberal capitalism. The war economy was the New Deal on steroids. Big government didn't so much reign in big business as they merged, and that synthesis has persisted no matter how much tax cutting Reagan did. His whole schtick, when you get down to it, was less about economic transformation and making America "great" again than it was ameliorating the popular outrage - and malaise - of the transformations of the 1970s. When the rates of profits began to fall and the postwar revolutions failed.
So here's that aside in the lede - back in the early '70s, the German Maoist terrorists Red Army Faction went to train with some Syrian militias that were fighting Israel. These RAF Germans were committed leftists and also very cognizant of their nation's crimes in the holocaust. And they were aghast at their Arab "comrades" who venerated a portrait of Hitler. "Good man. Killed lots of Jews." The Syrians didn't see a problem with this but the Germans suffered from cognitive dissonance, because all their Marx and Mao had taught the Revolution would be international and liberatory for all the working classes. And then here was a particular national liberation movement embracing exactly the kind of genocidal atavism they thought they were fighting back home. The RAF's way of "fighting" was also bombing department stores to shock the middle classes into understanding social democracy was built on global exploitation, and they were equally baffled when the German working classes reviled them as murderers.
Now, how this ties back into the larger point (admittedly clumsily) is how you have a corps of committed ideologues who are both baffled that the rest of society thinks they're pricks and also fighting a battle that was already decided. That's the modern rightwing in America. They genuinely believe banning abortion and trans bathroom panics are the most pressing concerns. So they double down on this, expecting society at large to agree with the intrinsic goodness of their project - as they see it. Then they lose every state referendum on abortion. Then they lose elections in traditional southern enclaves like Virginia and Kentucky. If enough racist grandparents have been migrating there, like Florida, they can look successful but it's like winning class president at a special needs school. "Oh, good for you!" pat on the head, move on.
However, this isn't because more Americans are virtuous liberals. It's because more Americans are just normal. "Normal" being a subjective thing - I remember growing up in the DC suburbs, it was quite "normal" for all the DOD and State Department contractors to decry the big government that paid their mortgages. Today, it's far more normal to think people screaming about "groomers" aor election conspiracies are both unhinged and - worse - annoying. Trump is really annoying these days, and that's gonna hurt him worse than all the trials. His only hope is another electoral college fluke, which is a non-zero probability but so is nuclear war. And again, like the RAF, this is a lost battle. The country's going "woke" no matter how much Trump's fan club whines, no matter how much the really committed try to "rise up" and usually shoot a dozen people with an AR before getting vaporized by the police state. They're not waking up the normal Americans to their manichean "truth" and are just slotted into yet another crime story.
And here we get to how Joe Biden is like Ronald Reagan. Like Reagan, he's presiding over a transition in American society that's so slow and unconscious that it's hard to spot. Like Reagan, he's a bumbling old guy who is nonetheless endearing, even to those who criticize him. Yeah, lots of young people gripe about Ol' Joe, but that doesn't mean they're gonna vote for the bathroom-creeping Republicans. Where Reagan presided over the enrichment of a corporate oligarchy and suburban culture war that began under Nixon, Biden is presiding over a fuller technocratic transition - "rule by experts" - and the burying of that culture war that began under Obama. Nixon's silent majority were the normal people of their time, annoyed at the hippies. The Democrat voting base of today isn't DSA - I feel like they've just disintegrated since the end of the Sanders campaign - but the normal people in the professional classes. The ones who want peace, order, and good government - in contrast to the Republican base who think everything is a secret Marxist conspiracy. Crying that transcommies are turning your kids gay is the new blaming (bombing) department stores for being counter-revolutionary. Even if you can logically explain the theory, it still sounds fucking nuts to a person not plugged into the deep end of internet political discourse.
To be clear, this is not a hopeful assessment. These same normal people are tuned out to climate change and the gigafication of the economy. I'm not arguing the triumph of technocracy will lead to human flourishing - I'm even skeptical it will ameliorate human want, which is about the only good argument for a dictatorship of the scientists. But I see this as the direction of things. Marxist revolution was a byproduct of liberal capitalism, an attempt to inject some Christian compassion into an exploitative economic machine. And too many latter-day "Marxists" just want to keep the middle class material comforts they grew up with, but not feel guilty about it. Like the MAGA faithful, it's yesterday's fight. The real struggle is against an ever more hostile biosphere, to be met with resilience and managed retreat. Which is also why I don't label my predictions of technocracy as "the good" - too many of these political theorists are just moralizing by other means - because shrinking resources and northward migrations are going to make even more draconian border controls agreeable to the aforementioned "normal" people.
Stop worrying about elections. Start worrying about climate adaptation.
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