The Emperor's New Clothes

Hi. Well why not? Let’s break down the Presidential election. But don’t worry: I won’t rehash the latest mainstream media coverage which, in a nutshell, is: “Can you believe Trump said THIS? Has he finally gone too far!?” or “Can you believe Hillary e-mailed THAT? Why hasn’t she switched to texting like everyone else?”. Eighth grade student council presidential races have been covered with more depth, insight, restraint, and compassion than the 2016 road to the White House. Must be all those raging hormones from the 60-something and 70-something candidates.  

I think this race has shown us something more interesting than the fact that an orange haired, orange skinned trash talker with a boardwalk empire but zero political experience can be considered just what this country needs if it wants to be great again. Or that a raspy voiced, pressured speech septuagenarian with hair that looks like he may have recently been electrocuted by a blow dryer and talks about “supa delegates” is the hippest thing on college campuses since Twenty One Pilots. (The common denominator: they both talk about student loans).

But have enough people noticed something (I think) more interesting? On one major issue, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders agree with each other—pretty much in opposition to Hillary, Cruz, Obama, George W. Bush……. The issue is free trade. Both oppose it. For Trump free trade is a game America is losing and China and Mexico are winning (“We’re getting KILLED by Mexico, no wonder they’ve gotten so cocky by crossing the border and raping our women! Now if you’ll excuse me I’m about to be welcomed to Moe’s so I can dominate a Homewrecker” said The Donald in so many words) while for Bernie it’s just a permission slip for corporate greed: exchange US workers for Mexican and Chinese workers earning slave wages and getting beaten with a not yet fully assembled Macbook Pro if they refuse to work their normal 20 hour shift and you don’t even have to worry about tariffs when you import those cheap goods back here. Win and win.

Yet Trump and Bernie disagree on virtually every other issue. That’s why Republican and Democrat labels don’t always mean as much as we think they do. When the Founding Fathers got together in Philadelphia to try to write The Constitution it turned into a weeks long ugly tug of war between the federalists like Washington and Hamilton who wanted a strong centralized government that superseded state governments and the anti-federalists like Jefferson who wanted each state to remain its own independent government—like kings in Europe or slave driving Pharaohs in ancient Egypt. The federalists of course won in the long run. Now we have a globalized word and I think the biggest question is whether America should still think of itself as a country or are we an empire? And does leaning too far in either direction inevitably compromise the other?

But of course “empire” has a slightly menacing, undemocratic connotation—the Roman Empire, The Empire Strikes Back---so that term is never really used in the mainstream. Instead George H. Bush used the term “new world order“ (before that term itself obtained a menacing connotation) and later people started saying “neoconservative” or “neoliberal” (before those terms acquired a shadowy phantom menace). But it seems like they all mean roughly the same thing: that as the lone remaining superpower in a globalized, interconnected world, America’s (primary?) responsibility is to oversee the rest of the world and steer it in a way that best suits our interests and theirs. “Neo” thinking seems to mark a true 180 degree turn in America: we began as a colony that fought an eight-year war to free ourselves from colonization, now we fight eight year wars to colonize other countries---colonize with our lofty ideals, of course, not a permanent (complete) occupation. We don’t want to rule them directly like an old-school colony, we just want to decide how they are run and who runs them. Communism in South Vietnam? Oh HELL no. Despotism in Iraq? Sharia law in Afghanistan? GTFO! It’s all about democracy and capitalism, baby.

So for the neoconservatives, the Iraq war was a self-help class. First we’re going to help you get rid of all this negativity in your life (Saddam Hussein) and then we’re going to coach you on self-empowerment by rebuilding your country as a democracy! An extreme makeover. A whole new you, Mesopotamians. On paper, was this wrong? Who can argue that a free country is better than a dictatorship or an Islamist state where you have all the rights of citizenship—unless you’re a Sunni in a Shia majority country, a Shia in a Sunni majority country, a Jew, a Christian, or a woman….everyone else is cool.   The problem is America always finds itself singing that same sad song along with Bonnie Raitt “I can’t make you love with me if you won’t”. Why do we think we can convince nations to follow our noble lead when the icebreaker isn’t a handshake and a smile but dropped bombs (and food aid because we’re really nice when you get to know us!). Also we don’t share their religion. Also we don’t speak their language. But why can’t they understand how awesome democracy and Quarter Pounders are? These people just won’t listen! The neoconservative dream of exporting democracy and free markets seems to make more sense in a think tank than in reality. Our democracy pitch is like running Five Guys ads in a country of vegetarians.

But are the neoliberals that much more in touch with reality? As best as I can understand, they are the cousins of the neoconservatives who may not be QUITE as keen as using military might to spread Americanism across the globe but are no less devout in their missionary zeal to remake the world in our own image. Last night I caught the end of an interview with Obama’s treasury secretary Jack Lew on Charlie Rose. (By the way, after all these years when will a guest finally say, “Charlie, would you mind turning up the lights? I don’t know if we’re in that stage of our relationship for mood lighting”). This guy was basically reading from the neoliberal handbook. Asked about corporate taxes, he began with something like, “This system is broken”. For a split second I was hoping against hope for a Bernie Sanders-style attack on corporations ducking taxes. Nope. He bemoaned the high rates of corporate taxes and rather than forcing American companies to stop sheltering their money in Ireland, his answer is to be their best friend and lower taxes enough so they will maybe, possibly, cross-their-fingers-and-hope-to-die bring their money back here. Again, he’s a Democrat, not a Republican. A government official, not a CEO. And we wonder why Bernie supporters are so rabid?

He was also asked about TPP—the Trans Pacific Partnership. This, to this blogger’s expert knowledge, is roughly an expansion of free trade into East Asian countries along the lines of agreements we signed with Mexico in the 90’s and China in 2000. It’s favored by most major establishment politicians on both sides but opposed by, you guessed it, Bernie and Trump. But Lew was gushing over the fact that Vietnam is busy raising its worker standards as we speak to be complaint with TPP! Attempting to play benevolent life enhancers to the Vietnamese…. this sounds familiar. First we tried (and failed) to help South Vietnam avoid succumbing to communism (and it only cost us 50,000 American lives) and now our trade agreements are raising living standards for their workers. The US: the re-gifters that keep giving. But how many of their future workers will replace current American workers?

I’m not arguing for Trump’s idiotic brand of “let’s build a wall!” isolationism. The world is way too interconnected for that to even be possible. I will never vote for Trump in a million years. But can this movement of “let’s put America first again” be written off entirely? Isn’t there a special brand of insanity inherent to expending a decade's worth of effort which cost us $1.7 trillion US tax dollars and the lives of 4,500 US soldiers (more than double the amount of casualties on 9/11) to try to bring peace and freedom to Iraq while simultaneously passing laws like the Patriot Act that reduce our freedom at home? And what about signing trade agreements which have helped prop up the economies of Mexico and China and raised the profit margins of American international corporations but have cost millions of good paying American manufacturing jobs? We can’t be isolationist but can the argument be made that our leaders have sold out country in their quixotic quest to save the rest of the world (and maybe their cynical scheme to further enrich their campaign donors) be dismissed?

It’s odd in a way. We always hear we live in a cynical age, yet all of these policies seem to stem from a tragic naïvete. That's assuming, of course, the proponents of these ideals truly believe what they say. Was it simply naïve to think we could build a flourishing secular democracy in a highly religious, highly divided society like Iraq? Is it naïve to think we can let millions of American workers serve as sacrificial lambs in American multinational corporations’ race to the bottom but our economy will magically reproduce new, better jobs? Where are they? And why would outsourcing create them? Is it because the resulting increased corporate profit margins will beef up R&D and in turn spur new industries and jobs? That seems like a fairy tale only slightly less far fetched than the Easter Bunny or Pretty Woman. Faith in outsourcing and its economic permission slip free trade just seems like a variation of trickle down economics. And trickle down economics should be called economic stenosis. Stenosis in the body is an abnormal narrowing which reduces flow of nerves and blood. Helping the rich get richer only seems to cause the flow of wealth to narrow and remain at the top. Thanks to trickle down economics, CEO’s earn far more than ever while the bottom 80 percent of society has gotten poorer. People who know more than me and listen to less 80's hair metal say our nation is producing just as much wealth. So it’s not a lack of money, it’s a lack of movement and flow of money. Our economy isn’t bankrupt, it’s diseased.

“But don’t be a globalization Luddite!”, some might say. It’s all driven by technology and you can’t stop technological progress, dude. Is it driven by technology or has technology simply caused us to think it’s beyond our control? Is globalization supposedly necessitated by technology the HAL 9000 computer from 2001: A Space Odyssey who says, "Just what do you think you're doing, Dave?" just before you have to unplug it? The Romans said “All roads lead to Rome”. This was actually a reference to technology—roads. Those were kind of a new thing, but they connected Rome to the rest of the world and made it easier to inculcate the Roman Way on all those barbarians and North Africans they conquered. But I say conquered? Oh no. The Romans were about a “pax Romana”—Roman peace. Through war  today and their amazing efficiency, the Romans would bring peace to all tomorrow. The Romans had a little Attila The Hun in them but had plenty of United Nations as well. The Romans themselves were in many ways proponents of technology and globalization (on their terms) 2,000 years ago. A new world order….until it all blew up because they became corrupted from within and too many barbarians like those filthy bearded, beer drinking rednecks and hillbillies the Goths and Vandals decided they preferred sacking Rome and listening to the lamentations of their women to drinking Roman wine and chilling by a fountain. All roads led to Rome….until they led to the Dark Ages.

There has to be some happy medium between Trump provincialism and staunch globalism. The former fails to see the forest through the trees but the latter may focus on the forest so much that it smacks into the trees right in front of it. The original patriots opposed British colonization of America from across the ocean in sharp contrast to the Tories who supported it. Maybe the new patriotism is opposing American colonization of others across the oceans—be it in the form of wars to “liberate” them or outsourcing the gift that is slave labor jobs —particularly when doing so comes at the huge expense of American tax dollars, jobs, and lives. And maybe the old patriots and the new patriots can sight the same justification for their grievances: no taxation without representation. The colonists were being taxed by the British government while being denied even a single seat in Parliament. We’re paying through taxes, lost jobs, and military casualties and have we really gotten what we’ve paid for it considering the price? Do we Americans always end up buying high and selling low in this brave new world? Have oil companies, weapons manufacturers, and tech companies reaped most of the benefits of America’s global empire of influence while we foot the bill with taxes, nemployment/underemployment, and lost lives? 

But join me and we can shatter this empire and return us back to the humble republic we all know and love. I don't know where we're going and I don't have a driver's license but join anyway!