It may well be the most important thing you can do to prepare yourself for the politics and political economy of the next decade: I want everybody—everybody—interested in the well-being of and hoping to assist the United States of America to, right now, stop what they are doing, and go and read Geoffrey Kabaservice’s superb Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, from Eisenhower to the Tea Party <https://archive.org/details/ruleruindownfall0000kaba>...
Years ago, I did research on American conservatism and came up with five varieties, not four. (Of course, all such sorting isn’t precise.) One type of conservatism is unique to America, the Southern, which is still fighting the Civil War. The main pillar of Southern Conservatism is white supremacy. While the entrepreneurial right isn’t necessarily white supremacist, straight white male supremacism underlies Trump’s populism.
Are libertarians conservative?
While I have never voted for a Republican, I do feel that regulation and government programs aren’t necessarily good in themselves and should have the burden of persuasion before being put into effect. Does this make me a conservative?
I think this analysis is still one level too high.
These four types are alternative constructions of security.
There's a lot going on right now; it's clear that things are going to keep going
on. Immediate policy responses to the individual crises matter, and can be debated, but that's not the core structural issue.
But seventh and last, people need to be able to feel secure.
You can't feel secure today _without_ being delusional.
That's what has to get fixed.
Fix that, and the market for selling delusion (mostly) goes away.
Don't fix that, and no amount of economic adjustment -- even full redistributive economic egalitarianism -- will be sufficient. And while it's profitable to sell delusion, there's no general social or political fix inside the scope of the US First Amendment.
Could you ever, really, have felt secure since 1870, and the coming of modern globalization and the industrial research lab to overturn the economy every generation? Oh, you could never have felt secure before 1870—but the modes of insecurity were the well-known four horsemen of the apocalypse. And it was clear how you worked hard to guard against them as best you could as you sat beneath all the swords of Damocles. But after 1870 the modalities of things that could destroy the pattern of your life change, and become unpredictable...
Olympian statistical constructions of security aren't what anyone uses, in large part because they're inherently lagging. (Like COVID indicators; it takes peculiar mental skills to use a lagging indicator effectively, and more peculiarity to believe one.) In former days, there was a relatively cohesive common social construction of insecurity management, which generally had "work hard" and "follow the rules" in it, but also "and we'll take care of you".
The thing we're seeing now isn't since 1870 -- that's a tech inflection point, not a social one -- but the collapse of the 1950s social construction of security, which was and is a lie, but it was a lie a traumatized generation really really went for. (Much that is blamed on Boomers should be blamed on this.)
And now there's no cohesive legitimacy because the money has been trying (and succeeding) in destroying any concept of civil power, because legitimacy with civil power can tax. So if you're just someone, trying to live your life, you can only find a cohesive message if you subscribe to a consciously delusive one. (If you want to not be delusive, it's a lot of work and skills you, by statistical expectation, do not have.) There isn't anyone out there saying "Ok, this is how you apply statistical expectation" nor is there anyone out there saying "this is what you can reasonably expect and we will do what is necessary to achieve that", not at scale, and a lot of money and effort goes into ensuring that this should be so.
The loss of norms -- which is, of itself, beneficial; presumptive prescriptive social norms kill people and produce unskilled responses to emergencies or even just surprises -- leaves a whole bunch of people who were importing their insecurity management flailing around looking for a supplier. And then they're trying to put the norms back with raw id, because those are the most reassuring suppliers.
I will have to think about this. I see the social construction of security collapsing in the global south rapidly after 1870, and more slowly in the global north. Then I see attempts to restore equilibrium coupled with a major push to say that creative destruction is giving us increasing prosperity up until 1914. Then there is the post-1914 collapse into chaos and genocide, and then a post-WWII rebuilding...
I don't think that timeline is wrong, as such, but the emotional construction of security has a lot more to do with both expectations of continuing to be paid for work and having a social context of approval, call it. The economy, the import replacement and the decrease in shipping costs and the rise of formal process and then automation are all substrate to the feels.
1870 is important to the global south because the colonial powers have re-equipped with cartridge firearms. Never been a larger disparity in military power, and it gets worse until the post-Great-War global firearms surplus and maybe a little longer.
1870 is important to the global north because this is front edge of the rise of the first round of abstracted serfdom; you can be a first-tier oligarch without land holdings for the first time in the history of the world, so both the population and the oligarchical construction of power are moving off the farm.
1980 is about when the whole thing goes full mammonite, which is a larger change than I think is generally recognized.
Years ago, I did research on American conservatism and came up with five varieties, not four. (Of course, all such sorting isn’t precise.) One type of conservatism is unique to America, the Southern, which is still fighting the Civil War. The main pillar of Southern Conservatism is white supremacy. While the entrepreneurial right isn’t necessarily white supremacist, straight white male supremacism underlies Trump’s populism.
Are libertarians conservative?
While I have never voted for a Republican, I do feel that regulation and government programs aren’t necessarily good in themselves and should have the burden of persuasion before being put into effect. Does this make me a conservative?
Allen Kamp
Professor Emeritus
John Marshall Law School
University of Illinois Chicago
I think this analysis is still one level too high.
These four types are alternative constructions of security.
There's a lot going on right now; it's clear that things are going to keep going
on. Immediate policy responses to the individual crises matter, and can be debated, but that's not the core structural issue.
But seventh and last, people need to be able to feel secure.
You can't feel secure today _without_ being delusional.
That's what has to get fixed.
Fix that, and the market for selling delusion (mostly) goes away.
Don't fix that, and no amount of economic adjustment -- even full redistributive economic egalitarianism -- will be sufficient. And while it's profitable to sell delusion, there's no general social or political fix inside the scope of the US First Amendment.
Could you ever, really, have felt secure since 1870, and the coming of modern globalization and the industrial research lab to overturn the economy every generation? Oh, you could never have felt secure before 1870—but the modes of insecurity were the well-known four horsemen of the apocalypse. And it was clear how you worked hard to guard against them as best you could as you sat beneath all the swords of Damocles. But after 1870 the modalities of things that could destroy the pattern of your life change, and become unpredictable...
Olympian statistical constructions of security aren't what anyone uses, in large part because they're inherently lagging. (Like COVID indicators; it takes peculiar mental skills to use a lagging indicator effectively, and more peculiarity to believe one.) In former days, there was a relatively cohesive common social construction of insecurity management, which generally had "work hard" and "follow the rules" in it, but also "and we'll take care of you".
The thing we're seeing now isn't since 1870 -- that's a tech inflection point, not a social one -- but the collapse of the 1950s social construction of security, which was and is a lie, but it was a lie a traumatized generation really really went for. (Much that is blamed on Boomers should be blamed on this.)
And now there's no cohesive legitimacy because the money has been trying (and succeeding) in destroying any concept of civil power, because legitimacy with civil power can tax. So if you're just someone, trying to live your life, you can only find a cohesive message if you subscribe to a consciously delusive one. (If you want to not be delusive, it's a lot of work and skills you, by statistical expectation, do not have.) There isn't anyone out there saying "Ok, this is how you apply statistical expectation" nor is there anyone out there saying "this is what you can reasonably expect and we will do what is necessary to achieve that", not at scale, and a lot of money and effort goes into ensuring that this should be so.
The loss of norms -- which is, of itself, beneficial; presumptive prescriptive social norms kill people and produce unskilled responses to emergencies or even just surprises -- leaves a whole bunch of people who were importing their insecurity management flailing around looking for a supplier. And then they're trying to put the norms back with raw id, because those are the most reassuring suppliers.
I will have to think about this. I see the social construction of security collapsing in the global south rapidly after 1870, and more slowly in the global north. Then I see attempts to restore equilibrium coupled with a major push to say that creative destruction is giving us increasing prosperity up until 1914. Then there is the post-1914 collapse into chaos and genocide, and then a post-WWII rebuilding...
I don't think that timeline is wrong, as such, but the emotional construction of security has a lot more to do with both expectations of continuing to be paid for work and having a social context of approval, call it. The economy, the import replacement and the decrease in shipping costs and the rise of formal process and then automation are all substrate to the feels.
1870 is important to the global south because the colonial powers have re-equipped with cartridge firearms. Never been a larger disparity in military power, and it gets worse until the post-Great-War global firearms surplus and maybe a little longer.
1870 is important to the global north because this is front edge of the rise of the first round of abstracted serfdom; you can be a first-tier oligarch without land holdings for the first time in the history of the world, so both the population and the oligarchical construction of power are moving off the farm.
1980 is about when the whole thing goes full mammonite, which is a larger change than I think is generally recognized.
I think it's still possible to rescue the US from collapse, but I'm increasingly pessimistic whether what must be done will in fact be done.
I mostly blame Roger Sherman and William Paterson, though there's plenty of blame to go around.
Because?
They were the delegates at the Convention principally responsible for the equal representation in the Senate.
Thanks...