ACCORDING TO Olivia Pierson, Americans are currently deciding whether to keep capitalism or embrace “Green Communism”. If you’re an American for capitalism, you must also be an American for Donald Trump. Americans voting for Joe Biden, whether they realise it or not, are voting for an Eco-Communist United States. I have no doubt that Olivia is deadly serious about the choice Americans are making. What puzzles me is how she came to advance such an unlikely proposition.
Let’s begin where all good investigations should begin: with the money. Those in a position to know have been telling the world for some time now that Biden is outspending Trump by a wide margin – both nationally and, more crucially, in the key battleground states of Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.
Now, some of that money will have been raised from Joe and Josephine Six-Pack in $5, $10 and $20 donations, and that’s good. The Democratic Party likes to present itself as the party of low-income Americans, and publicising the volume of small donations pouring into its coffers helps it to do that. But don’t be fooled. The overwhelming preponderance of the Democratic Party’s campaign financing (and the Republican Party’s) comes from corporations and the super-rich.
That being the case, what does Biden’s much bigger war-chest tell us? That’s right! It tells us that America’s corporations – and the super-rich – are strongly of the view that Trump has to go. This poses something of a problem for Olivia. For her analysis to stack up, we need to be convinced that some of America’s largest corporate entities and a majority of its super-rich citizens are pouring money into a campaign dedicated to transforming the USA into an Eco-Communist republic.
Forgive me, but that does not seem in the least bit likely. Silicon Valley billionaires, Hollywood moguls, Wall Street money men and Democratic Party-friendly CEO’s from the Fortune 500 do not strike me as the sort of people to favour the radical economic, social and political democratisation of American society. These are, after all, the people who have been funding “Sleepy Joe’s” political career for the past 40 years. I think they would have noticed by now if he were a communist. (Or even a liberal Democrat!) What their 40 year acquaintance has taught them, however, is that Joe knows what needs to be said to win elections. In 2020, that means sounding just a little bit like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. (And when I say “a little bit” like AOC, I mean “hardly at all”.)
So much for the money. What about Biden’s support-base? Is it really a seething mass of revolutionaries just waiting to storm the downtown corporate skyscrapers of America in search of CEO heads to stick on pikes? (Where would one even go looking for a pike these days – Amazon Prime?)
Again, the answer is “No.” The key demographics of the Democratic Party’s voter base are White Professional Women, Respectable African Americans, White Youth Engaged in Tertiary Study, White Professional Men, Public Servants, Trade Union Members, Hispanic Americans, Suburban Mothers. Not quite your average Workers’, Peasants’ or Soldiers’ deputy to the Petrograd Soviet – are they?
Would these Democratic Party voters like to see Biden bring in a more progressive tax code – especially for those earning the really big bucks? Almost certainly. Would they welcome a comprehensive plan to upgrade America’s decaying physical infrastructure? Yep. Would they endorse a rigorous investigation of America’s Police Departments to discover the true extent of racism within their ranks? Ummm – maybe. Would they welcome a major upgrade to Obama’s Affordable Care Act? Hell yeah! And, would they support a serious effort from the Federal Government to meet the challenges posed to the USA’s future well-being by Climate Change? Probably – so long as they still get to drive their cars.
Now, if that modest agenda – which amounts to little more than adopting the policies of the world’s most advanced capitalist economies – can be called “Green Communism”, then we are faced with what the scientists and philosophers call a “taxonomic difficulty”.
Taxonomy is defined as: “the practice and science of classification of things or concepts, including the principles that underlie such classification.” With that in mind, I think it is fair to say that Olivia is guilty of a classification error. What most of the rest of the world would classify as Regulated Capitalism, or, at a pinch, Social-Democracy, Olivia has chosen to classify as “Green Communism”.
I would like to be able to say that hers is an easy mistake to make, but it’s not. To describe the Democratic Party’s platform as “Green Communism” is a wilful misrepresentation of its content. It speaks to the proclivity of so many Trump supporters and defenders to engage in the most inflammatory exaggeration of their opponent’s political objectives. Their purpose? To raise the emotional temperature of ordinary democratic discourse to a level where rational discussion and even basic inter-personal civility becomes impossible.
Why would you want to do this? Who is served by this strategy of increasing polarisation?
In essence, the strategy amounts to an acknowledgement that the configuration of one’s own support-base no longer allows for discussion to take place within the parameters of “agree-to-differ” political maturity. The respectful acceptance of honest disagreements over evidence-based propositions, so essential to a properly functioning democracy and (as we seem poised to discover) judiciary, requires the preponderant participation of men and women of intelligence, education and forbearance. If the social and cultural composition of a political party’s electoral base makes it impossible for such individuals to either represent or lead it, then the deliberate cultivation of extremism offers a way out. Shut down the moderate centre, and all that remains are the immoderate extremes.
Paul Thomas, writing about the US Presidential Election in the latest issue of The NZ Listener (November 7-13 2020), describes the choice confronting American voters very differently from Olivia. Rather than “It’s Trump or a Green Government Commie Take Over”, Thomas simply observes that: “Trump has based his political career and staked his future on the premise that his fellow countrymen and women are gross, ignorant, gullible, fearful, venal, bigots. It’s up to them to prove him wrong.”
Certainly, the election will turn on just how many American voters fit Thomas’s unedifying description. In the meantime, it distresses me that a writer of Olivia Pierson’s intelligence and verve seems determined to increase their numbers. Grossness, ignorance, gullibility, fear, venality and bigotry offer nothing of moral worth to United States – or New Zealand.
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