Our Red-vs-Blue Political Divide

We all agree the system is broken, but next...

Throughout my life and career, I have frequently made the mistake of believing that if I know a big thing it should be easy for others to either grasp or change my mind about the big thing.   But… it is not the case and it is why we need to see more of these explanations published. 

One big thing that I know is confirmation of the point above in that Brexit and Trump are explained by competition for scarce resources (access to prosperity) and not racism nor xenophobia.  In fact, it is competition for scarce resources that causes tribalism that disingenuous and corrupt forces mistake for racism and xenophobia. 

The clarity of all the parts to this explanation make me want to scream for all the people lacking the clarity. 

November 2016 I was hosting business clients and partners at a bar on top of a hotel in arguably one of the most beautiful cities in the world.  My staff in attendance included Millennials and Baby Boomers whose political views are very left of center.  One young female employee was watching the election results on her phone and making distressed sounds in between more frequent than normal glasses of wine.  I asked her how she was doing, and she unloaded on me telling me that she could not believe HE was winning and that the world was certainly coming to an end.  

I told her to look out at the 360-degree twinkling-light city night view from this swank hotel where her company was paying for everything.  I asked her to consider that most of the people voting for HIM would never experience something like this in their lifetime.  They were voting for him because they see their family economic opportunity falling away... while their media feeds report on the good life that people like us are living.  She was very contemplative of my point.  I guess her college professors failed to explain the political conflict of growing economic class stratification. 

With respect to the opposition to immigration, that is the tribal response.  That is all.  The human animal is an evolutionary pack animal.  We are independent in our search for survival and contentment, but when we are stressed in our pursuit we congregate in our pack (our tribe) and go to war with other tribes to secure our piece of the inadequately sized pie.   Successful corporate leaders know this.   Successful coaches of athletic teams know this.  It is in our nature collaborate with a team to win... unless we see the individual opportunity path and then we ignore the need for tribal alliances.  We may even fight within our tribe if we see it benefitting our individual pursue of needs fulfillment.  Good leaders get the team to perform greater than the sum of its individual parts.  But if there is a perception of unfairness, the team will splinter. 

And this is one of the big secrets of American success.  Tocqueville and others were confounded by American success with so much cultural and ethnic diversity.  It never matched up with the historical record of tribal conflict that would tear nationals apart... unless held together by dictatorial or totalitarian power.   How did it work?

The secret sauce was an abundance of individual opportunity.  Frankly, neighbors of different races and cultures care less about those differences when those paths are abundant and open.  That is why we would all watch Robin Leach "Lifestyle of the Rich and Famous" and not get triggered.   The working-class stiff would think "my kids have a good opportunity to get there... and even I have a good opportunity to move up to be closer to that lifestyle."

In the 1960s and 70s the upper-class and the working-class lived together in the same neighborhoods... shopped at the same stores... attended the same entertainment.... ate at the same restaurants.... attended the same churches... kids attended the same schools.   Not so today.  I was thinking about Gavin Newsom’s mask-less dinner attendance at the French Laundry.   I have eaten there.  The average dinner tab with wine is $900 per person.  The new upper class – the professional class – do not live in the same neighborhoods.  Their kids often attend private schools.  They don’t consume the same entertainment.  They don’t vacation the same way.  But it is the professional class lifestyle that bombards us in the media.  It is the “normal” portrayed and it triggers resentment in those that don’t see access to it.  Murray covered this point in his book “Coming Apart”.   The middle class cleaved into two.  Tribal class wars began. 

We also failed to stop the exportation of good-paying industrial jobs to other countries with cheaper labor costs.  As the rust belts formed, agriculture slumped, manufacturing jobs disappeared... the explanation was that high-tech was here and it would back-fill those jobs.  Don’t worry we were all told.  But those jobs also disappeared.    

At the same time Clinton backed down over liberal activist demands and made welfare and social benefits available to immigrants.  In 1990s the US saw a HUGH spike in immigration... both legal and illegal... and it never stopped.   The flood of poor and uneducated started and they migrated to the poor neighborhoods and took over service industry and trade jobs... and depressed wages. 

Then the repeal of Glass Steagall, China in the WTO and NAFTA.... three more punches to the gut of the American working class (and minority Americans poised to move from low income to middle-class).  The professional class never had it better (even considering the hit from the Great Recession).  Real estate values rocketed forward in the cities where the professional class lived.  The investment markets continued their upward trends.  Professional class wages kept up with inflation... but more importantly the professional class industries provided upward mobility for individuals.  

Our ruling class basically exported working-class prosperity to other countries while importing other county’s poverty and all the problems connected to poverty.  The moves improved economic opportunity for the already privileged (generally with generations of college-degrees); but destroyed it for everyone else.

The same happened in Europe and it is why Brexit happened and also explains France’s yellow jacket protests.

But our professional ruling class isn’t motivated to fix any of this.  Instead, their tribe has decides that those blue-collar working-class people are part of a substandard tribe to be denigrated and put down.  The reason for this is that THEY, the white-collar professional-class feel threatened in losing THEIR opportunity paths… however privileged.   

Here is another thing I think I know.   The pursuit of needs is constant and relative to what has already been achieved.   This explains why we have billionaires fighting with each other for bragging rights over their space program achievements.   This is why Hillary Clinton would call Trump supporters “Irredeemable Deplorables” and why Barack Obama would comment “Those Republicans love their guns and religion”, and why Nancy Pelosi would lament that “Trump is threatening everything you believe in” (meaning threatening her position of power) and why they rage with Trump Derangement Syndrome against the man that tells them they are part of a swamp and unworthy of the position of moral virtue that they claim.   Here is another secret… many of them are not.

Jordan Peterson covers this in his explanation of the lobster pursuing a social dominance hierarchy.   Humans have the same prehistoric brain structure.   We want to be high on the hierarchy… or at least feel like we have access to it.   That is the other part of the American secret sauce.  We were not class stratified.  We had great income mobility.   Rags-to-riches was the plot of the story.   Work hard, grow mastery skills, launch a small business, build a better mouse trap, grow the small business… have a good life and be a voice in your community that is respected.  Move up the hierarchy with hard work, persistence, self-determination, focus, goal setting, etc.   Everyone can do the same.

But it has all changed.

Social media is another stain on the Great Experiment as it causes the position on the social hierarchy to be not based on skills to invent, make, grow, build or fix things… but toward pop-culture popularity.  It isn’t even connected to the skills to entertain.  What in the hell do the Kardaisans own in the form of entertainment skills to explain their wealth accumulation and popularity? 

But the people that have obtained a high position are not going to let it go without a fight.  And any return to a system that reward people for their actual skill-based productive success threatens them in their relative position on that hierarchy.  

That is why we are coming to a civil war.  That is why the elites on the left have launched Critical Theory.  That is why the elites on the right don’t stop it.  

The civil war is the lower class against the upper class.  The upper class is motivated toward totalitarian control to subjugate the lower class.  They are offering government handouts to garner enough turncoat support from the enemy of this growing conflict.    They might win this battle, but they will not win the war.  They will not win the war for two reasons:

1.       They will run out of other people’s money

2.       The lower class will eventually wake up and turn against them as the money runs out (remember, the need to advance is constant and relative to what has already be achieved), and they realize that access to a rise on the social dominance hierarchy has been fundamentally blocked (you are one of those public assistance people and you cannot get out of it).   

So what is the correct course?  Clearly it is to go back to what made America great to begin with.  We have to because there are no other viable choices.    This isn’t a red-vs-blue debate.  It is debate about what works and what does not work.   The US previously worked.  Today it does much less so and it is on trajectory for failure.