Building a movement

Subject: Building a movement.

The values, or rather a lack of value now seems to identify modern societies as they becomes more and more immersed in systems which rely on a monitory bottom line and hesitates to 'reign in' any segment which might contributes to that bottom line. The source of news these days for many young people are platforms like YouTube on which anyone can post virtually anything regardless of its validity. People who seek their news from such as YouTube leave themselves open to any story as propaganda and its this new phenomena, unheard of in previous generations which distorts our understanding of current affairs. It's not difficult to keep people stoked up with anger and distain for another persons point of view by simply finding bad things to say and identify people who believe in an  opposite point of view. This polarisation of society into, 'them and us'  has the detrimental effect that it closes down all communication and without communication we lose our ability to see value in another persons judgement, especially if they have been targeted as 'the enemy'.

In the past we knew who the enemy was, they belonged to another nation and another culture but today we see in the United States people from the same city, even the same street, sometimes the same congregation at loggerheads not over some concrete objection but rather an ideological clash of ideas. There's no give and take. Trump has unleashed a diatribe of vitriol on anyone who doesn't support him. It's not even policy differences or policy objectives which is at stake rather, are you in my camp or his without clearly defining what each camp represents. It's political hubris mixed in with a personality trait of delusional self worth which we often see in a megalomaniac. 

How this man captivated a nation will be the work of social scientists for decades to come but the flaw which is at the centre of his appeal is the disparity within this so called. neo-liberal capitalist country where poverty has been induced by the people who court big business whilst proclaiming to have the ordinary man's interests at heart. It's been the flavour of American social ghettoisation for years, the casting off of chunks of industrial heritage in favour of the quick buck made on the financial markets, leaving an underclass to suffer whilst billions of dollars are made on the largely unregulated spree of the money market. It doesn't seem to matter about our own population, their health or their prosperity so long as we bypass them for labour markets on the other side of the globe for a fraction of the price.  The "left behinds", the men and women of the "Rust Belt" have found a voice who uses their plight to his own ends. Nothing he has done in the past has shown he cares for those people in fact his business ethic,  if you can call them that, would not give these people a moments notice except that he saw an opening, a 'constituency' waiting for a spokesmen and each with a precious vote, each consolidated in swing states, each a partisan group on which to build a movement.

Of course the Democrats have been complicit in this disengagement of huge swathes of people from being able to hold down a job. The way the Constitution separated the powers of the President  from the affairs of running individual states with their representatives, the Governors sitting in the Senate. Without any bipartisan attempt to run the country the power to pass bills is stymied, deadlocked in ideological differences which harm everyone who are dependent on the bills bing passed. 

Already as Joe Biden announces this morning his election to President his hands are tied and will remain so for the next 4 years. Even the popular Barrack Obama failed in much of what he wanted to do because of the power of the Senate to block him. 

Any American President must envy Mr Putin or Xi Jimping, Victor Orban and Jair Bolsonaro who don't have these problems and can be as authoritarian as they please, what they say goes. Even Boris, in our unwritten constitution, where the country elects a party not a leader and the party has to have a majority to govern. It then elects someone from within its own ranks to lead and in so doing gives him or her, carte blanche to do as they please.

At least someone has at last put their head above the parapet but the legal ramifications are set to roll on into the new year.