The Devil Has All the Best Tunes
#566
One of the most stunning revelations from the American elections was that Kamala Harris got 20 million fewer votes than Joe Biden did in 2020, while Trump’s vote remained roughly the same. It’s not that the United States has become wildly Trumpist, it’s that the Democrats – even with a massive cash advantage – failed to get the turn-out they required.
All those women who were incensed about abortion rights, those latinos furious about the slurs on Puerto Rico, the angry black voters, the disaffected Republicans, and the many other groups expected to rally behind Harris in huge numbers, didn’t materialise.
It would be easy to say it was because the American population is so inherently racist and sexist they couldn’t bring themselves to vote for a black woman. There’s obviously a lot of truth in this, but the real problems run much deeper. If it’s a recognised syndrome that working class Americans in depressed areas vote against their own interests in blindly supporting the Republicans, it may be just as notable that special interest groups declined to vote for the Democrats for a range of reasons.
Firstly, there were those pro-Palestinians who felt alienated by the Biden government’s ongoing support for a belligerent Israel. To many Muslims it must have seemed impossible to vote for Harris while the US continued to supply arms to the IDF, but was there any real alternative? To withhold one’s vote and allow Trump to retake the White House meant assisting a candidate who tried to impose a “Muslim ban” while in office. It's notable that the first foreign leader to congratulate Trump on his victory was Benjamin Netanyahu.
For the Democrats there was no clear path through the catastrophe of Gaza. They obviously wanted an end to the slaughter, but couldn’t risk alienating the Jewish vote. Had they been elected they might have been able to apply more pressure, which is why Netanyahu took advantage of the election campaign to push on so violently.
The lesson is that there is little strategic thinking where the emotions are engaged. With angry Jews on one side, and angry Muslims on the other, the government couldn’t win, while Trump had only to say: “I’ll fix it,” providing no plans or details.
To lose the Muslim vote is no small matter in those vital swing states, but there was the additional issue of natural Democrat voters caught up in the tangled logic of the Culture Wars. What can one make of those people who stand around in demonstrations with banners saying “Queers for Palestine”, and similar stuff? Being pro-Palestine is one thing, being stupidly immersed in a subculture is another, especially when that subculture puts you at odds with the cultural values of the group you are now championing.
By contrast, Trump’s supporters had a much simpler view of the world. Their main concern was with their hip pockets. Suffering from the effects of an economic downturn they laid the blame on the government of the day. Although the Democrats could point out that under Bidenomics, employment was rising and inflation falling, nobody was listening. While the Harris campaign thought spreading a message of “joy” would draw voters away from Trump’s relentlessly negative, hate-filled diatribes it probably only succeeded in pushing them more firmly into the opposition camp.
People looked at their bank balances and didn’t feel at all joyful. They were looking for someone to blame and some way of working off their frustrations. Trump was the solution.
All that joy, all those celebrities lining up to sing Kamala’s praises merely served to alienate Trump voters who refused to be swayed, even though there were endless reasons to reject his angry, incoherent, self-aggrandising platform. Trump’s constituency identified more strongly with his grumpy, vulgar persona than with a sophisticated, black Californian woman who wanted everyone to hold hands in a beneficent vision of the future. Not Kamala, but Kumbaya!
Beyond economics there were those areas where Harris chose to dodge commitments. Instead of speaking out against the appalling gun culture that sees hundreds of innocent people murdered every year, she told an interviewer that she herself owned a gun and would use it. On the subject of climate change and renewable energy she was virtually silent, even though it is arguably the greatest challenge facing the USA and the world today. With the exception of Ukraine, it’s the renewable energy sector that stands to lose most from Trump’s return to power, and if America gives up on Net Zero other countries are sure to follow. Already in Australia we have the Coalition touting nuclear energy as a miracle solution, and still bleating that because we’re only a small population we need not commit to stronger emissions targets. “It’s not our fault – it’s China, America, India…. Let them do the cutting.”
The historic victory of a vicious, amoral candidate who apparently did everything wrong, should act like a bucket of cold water thrown over those political puritans who believe they are making the world a better place with their dogged romance with identity politics. There’s every reason to believe what they are really doing is hastening the breakdown of liberal democracy all over the world.
“There are many people,” wrote Aldous Huxley in The Devils of Loudun, “for whom hate and rage pay a higher dividend of emotional satisfaction than love.” This insight should be written over the door of every political party, not as a useful tip for winning elections, but as a terrible warning.
What the Trump voters – and more worryingly, those who declined to turn up and vote for Harris – might argue, is that they are deeply concerned about the way minoritarian issues have begun to take a dominant role in the political process. This means the sudden over-emphasis on race and gender topics, the frivolous obsession with pronouns, the concern with trans athletes competing in female sporting contests, and so on.
No-one could reasonably argue that the world is a fair place, or that huge injustices have not been perpetrated against minorities, but the greatest achievements in terms of social progress have been won by longterm, well-organised campaigns intended to win equal rights for historically marginalised groups. In this sense, the two biggest successes of the past 50 years have been Women’s Liberation and Gay Liberation. The greatest speech on behalf of African American rights, was Martin Luther King’s call for an ideal equality between blacks and whites.
The abiding principles behind these movements have been fairness and equality. It’s simply unreasonable that human beings should be structurally excluded from social advancement because of their gender, race or sexual preferences. While prejudice still exists, and will always exist, most of these levelling principles have passed into law, and into numerous codes of practice.
The so-called “woke” initiatives threaten to undo all the good work by abandoning the call for equality in favour of an aggressive, revengeful, punitive approach. Nowadays, it’s not enough that we should recognise that black people have exactly the same rights as their white counterparts. The white people have to confess their sins, and beat their breasts. There is an industry in books such as Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility, in which we learn that to be white means being, inescapably, a racist; while being black means one cannot be a racist.
This is so foolish it barely requires refutation. Racism is not limited to any one group, it has been a part of every culture from time immemorial. We cannot deny the reality of racism, we can merely strive to overcome it in out own lives. To tell people they are racists, when they strenuously deny it and act on those beliefs, is an inflammatory piece of rhetoric that transforms sympathy into resentment.
Likewise, the militant attachment to trans issues that affect only a tiny minority of the population has made a powder keg out of a topic that should be approached with the utmost sensitivity. It was a hot button issue for Trump throughout his campaign, as he continually ranted about trans athletes competing in female sports, or schoolchildren getting sex changes. It sounds ridiculous, but it’s no more outrageous than allowing male sex offenders to declare themselves female and be transferred to womens prisons; or posting signs asking women to be understanding if they find someone who appears to be biologically male in their changing rooms.
Beyond the bread & butter concerns of the economy one cannot under-estimate the significance of these ‘Culture War’ themes on the US election. When even the most well-intended reforms are pushed through too quickly, with a pronounced dose of evangelism, they are bound to stir up resentment and resistance. In this sense, the hullaballo about race and gender has arrived like a tsunami, engulfing the provincial, narrow-minded heartlands of middle America. The great awakening has been disastrously counterproductive, stirring hatred and anger in the hearts of millions who would otherwise not be giving much thought to these issues. And hatred, as Huxley noted, pays a handsome emotional dividend.
When one looks at the general drift of American culture, this is completely understandable. Today’s most popular movies are superhero flicks in which magic beings murder thousands of enemies without a second thought, or action films in which violence is the answer to every problem. Meanwhile, the media culture has become so phobic about criticism that it believes every cultural initiative, no matter how bad or unfair, needs to be reflexively supported. Millions of people live in bubbles of belief, taking in only the news that squares with their existing prejudices. What’s true is whatever they like best – or like to hate best.
In the face of sweeping populist movements that threaten to destroy democracies around the world, the Democrats will have to be alert to the looming menace of Trump’s deportation policies, his tariffs, and the misery he will inflict on those who voted for him. They need to concentrate on real-world issues such as economic inequality, gun violence and climate change, and forget about the drift to political correctness that has done so much to destroy their brand. Stand up, let Trumpism take its course, and they’ll be in better shape by the time the mid-terms roll around.
In Australia, Labor faces some of the same strategic decisions. The government has an economic problem that requires its full attention. They should avoid the Culture Wars wherever possible because the Australian population has shown – with its decisive rejection of the Voice – that it’s touchy on these matters. The Boiled Egg has already announced there’ll be no “truth-telling” if he becomes Prime Minister, so it’s clear the Coalition believes the anti-woke agenda is a vote winner. Expect the thrill of “hate” to run like an electric current through the forthcoming election campaign.
One of the reasons I’ve been led down this path again, is because I went to Canberra last week to see Lindy Lee’s Ouroboros, the most expensive work ever acquired by the National Gallery of Australia. There are so many questionable aspects of this commission it would require a very long essay to list them all. I’ve made a start in my art column for The Nightly.
The sheer volume of politically correct packaging involved is overwhelming. As a “Chinese-Australian”, Lee is presented as an avatar of multiculturalism; as a devotee of Zen Buddhism, she is a deeply spiritual person. By virtue of her gender she is a female role model. To complete the recipe there is a volume of Indigenous paraphernalia, from the hiring of Aunty Jude Barlow as the “National Gallery’s Elder in Residence,” to a Queensland blessing ceremony for a small gold model of the sculpture. The endless listing of Aboriginal nations is now standard practice.
This tedious display of virtues disguises the fact that the cost of the sculpture is completely over-the-top; the catalogue appears to be put together by Lee’s dealers, but paid for by the NGA; and the reaction among people in the art world has been far from favourable. By the way, I keep hearing how it’s shockingly phoney for Nick Mitzevich to keep referring to himself as “Dr.” Mitzevich, when his title is an honorary degree bestowed by Newcastle University. I know people with two or three such degrees they never use in this manner. It’s an insult to those who did the work for a real PhD. If Nick came third in the egg-and-spoon race at the school sports carnival he’d have worn the ribbon for a week.
The other review this time around is for Memory, a film in which Jessica Chastain stars as a woman whose life has been ruined by childhood traumas, with Peter Sarsgaard, as a man suffering from early-onset dementia. Does it sound like a romance made in heaven? Not necessarily, but it shows there are many ways of coping with earth-shattering events that turn lives and mental health to mush. After last week’s US election, the whole world might need a lesson in how to overcome its anxieties for the future.
PS. I have to thank my friend, artist, Hazel Dooney, for helping me find my way in this new online environment. Without her tech-savvy assistance I’d merely be googling in hope.