Manipulated

By Crispin Sartwell

Leftish commentators often picture the Republican electorate as being emotionally manipulated, responding to subtle or not-so-subtle appeals to their anger, resentment, or anxiety. At times, average middle-class or working-class Republicans are portrayed as voting against their own interests.

     There may well be something to that. But now I'd like to assert that the left side of the political spectrum has also been manipulated - we might say primarily cognitively, rather than emotionally - into voting not so much against their own interests as against their own ideals. Election after election, passionate advocates of economic justice vote, directly, for oligarchy.

   If Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee, they'll do that again this year: they will be egalitarians voting explicitly for extreme hierarchy, like a Muslim voting for Trump.

   For decades, under both parties, economic inequality has grown while real working-class wages have slumped. It seems an intractable problem, almost puzzling. But to explain it, perhaps we have to follow the money rather than the rhetoric, and there is no easier way to do that than by taking the case of Goldman Sachs.

   Both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush appointed Goldman Sachs CEOs as Treasury secretaries, and instituted a revolving door at all levels of government economic policy-making and regulation with the investment banking industry. And through these administrations, investment bankers were among the largest contributors to candidates for both political parties.

   This trend was intensified when the Clinton Administration deregulated Wall Street in the late 1990s, including repealing the Glass-Steagall act limits on the sorts of activities in which banks and investment firms could engage. That was hardly surprising, considering who contributed Bill Clinton's campaigns and who served in his administration.

   The top contributors to Hillary Clinton's campaigns from 1996 to the present are Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, DLA Piper, JPMorgan Chase, and Morgan Stanley. [source below] And then, according to Mother Jones, Goldman-Sachs "has donated between $250,000 and $500,000 to the Clinton Foundation." According to the Wall Street Journal, "Eight firms, including Goldman Sachs and Citibank, paid the foundation between $1.6 million and $3.5 million combined for speeches by Mr. and Mrs. Clinton." Goldman Sachs' trading in derivatives and other activities helped drive the economy into crisis in 2008, and the firm received about $10 billion in TARP funds from the Obama administration.

     Such facts are familiar, though worth recalling. But the rhetorical frame constructed by such Democratic politicians as the Clintons - a vision of equal opportunity, of turning government toward the interests of middle and working-class people, of racial, gender, and sexual equality - make leftist voters feel comfortable being represented by people who are themselves emblems of privilege.

   Democratic columnists and commentators in the mainstream media mobilize the whole left side of the spectrum also by vilifying Republicans incessantly, playing in the familiar manner on fears and feelings of superiority. What Trump does to immigrants, Democratic consultants and pundits do to Republicans: portray them as dangerous, evil, and stupid: as profoundly alien. It's a sort of festival of self-congratulation, and it means 'I (and you who agree with me) are so smart and so good.' It would be more useful to think about the concrete results of electing the person you are proposing to elect.

   The compromise or contradiction is finalized by the two-party system: in the general election, if Hillary Clinton and (say) Donald Trump are the nominees, the whole left will regard themselves as forced to vote for Clinton, acting just as though they were enthusiastic advocated of oligarchy. And if the Republican nominee is Ted Cruz, the right, too, will be out of options other than a politician whose rise was funded by Goldman Sachs. Well, right and left, we appear to agree on one thing: we should be governed by investment bankers.

   As inequalities of wealth and power grow ever-more extreme and ossified in the second Clinton administration, the political left will wonder how, or why. To which the right answer will be: because you voted for this. This is what you want.

Even leftists who would diagnose the basic problem of the whole world as capitalism, and would identify capitalism or 'neo-liberalism' as the fundamental system of world oppression, vote again and again to be governed from the very top of the capitalist pyramid.

If we're going to call ourselves a democracy, people's ideals must be represented and not merely manipulated in political discourse. People must be able to pursue their wide-scale interests and visions for the future. By that rather simple standard we are failing utterly. And I must point out that to a large extent it is our own damn fault. A little more critical focus on what underlies the rhetoric, and a little courage in voting one's actual ideals might make a big difference.

If you're on the left, you can do better, but you're going to have to insist on it.