\u201cIt\u2019s the System, stupid,\u201d was my motto.\u00a0 The oligarchical capitalist system generates unprecedented increases in social inequality and economic insecurity.\u00a0 The military-industrial system enriches itself through imperial expansion and endless warfare. \u00a0The political system is increasingly indentured to mega-donors and the corporate media. \u00a0And the cultural system is debased by a tribal ethnonationalism that solves nobody\u2019s personal or social problems.\u00a0 The assumption that I made (like many on the Left before me) was that those whose needs are not satisfied by existing systems will see that it is these bad structures, not just bad leaders, that need to be changed.<\/p>\n
What I did not anticipate was that a new popular movement advocating social transformation would emerge on the Right, not the Left, and that, in the United States, it would be led by a partisan moralist par excellence \u2013 a figure whose personal characteristics would come to dominate the political consciousness of most of his followers and<\/em> most of his opponents.<\/p>\n But this is what happened.\u00a0 Rather than seeing that systemic failures had opened the door to the manipulation of popular discontent by right-wing institutions like the Heritage Foundation and leaders like Donald Trump and Elon Musk, most Democrats found themselves attributing the changes associated with the MAGA movement to Trump\u2019s evil influence. That is, they became partisan moralists par excellence themselves, obsessing over the bad leader\u2019s immorality, illegality, and mental instability. The problem was not that these characterizations were false or the products of TDS.\u00a0 It was that those focusing on Trump\u2019s character defects failed to identify the systemic sources of discontent and to propose transformational solutions of their own.\u00a0 That there is still no Democratic or progressive equivalent of the Heritage Foundation\u2019s Project 2024 is a result of this personalist obsession.<\/p>\n A dramatic example of this obsession, in my view, is the insistence by many of Trump\u2019s progressive critics that he be punished for alleged crimes, re-impeached, or removed from office because of alleged mental incapacity.\u00a0 I disagree with former Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz \u2013 an apologist for the Gaza genocide who has now joined the Republican Party \u2013 about almost everything.\u00a0 But Dershowitz was right to argue ten years ago that criminalizing political differences polarizes politics to the point that democratic norms, already undermined by autocrats like Trump, can come close to collapse.\u00a0 When Trump was first elected president, instead of calling for an F.B.I. investigation of his alleged ties to Russian intelligence, the Democrats should have investigated their own failure to satisfy working people\u2019s basic needs.\u00a0 Even now, most of their leaders refuse to accept responsibility for this gross error, which set a vengeful president on the path of retribution.<\/p>\n Rather than continuing on this tit-for-tat path of criminalizing differences, the opponents of the Trump\/MAGA regime need to design programs radical enough to start solving fundamental social problems, yet practicable and saleable to the vast majority of working people. Three missing programs seem particularly worth noting.\u00a0 What are the progressive solutions to the problems of endless warfare, socioeconomic insecurity, and political corruption?\u00a0 Or to put this more positively, how can we begin to move toward a nation at peace with itself and with the world, a society in which work and its rewards are fairly shared, and a political community based on mutual affection, respect, and democratic norms?<\/p>\n A post-imperial program<\/em>. Living at peace with the world depends on recognizing (in the words of the conservative historian, Niall Ferguson) that the U.S. is \u201cthe empire that dare not speak its name,\u201d and determining to dismantle it.\u00a0 Many Democrats still consider the topic taboo \u2013 or else they implicitly deny that the nation the wish to lead is a bellicose, world-dominating superpower like the other empires of world history. \u00a0A post-imperial program, on the other hand, will declare that imperialism is undemocratic, unconscionable, and, for those interested in religion, unchristian. It will recognize that military-industrial supremacy not only deforms U.S. foreign policy but also cripples public services such as health, education, and job creation. It will propose cutting military expenditures to the level needed to provide genuine national defense and will indicate how federally supported production for war can be converted to production designed to satisfy basic social needs.\u00a0 Such a program will also answer the question of how the 5 million or so jobs now dependent on military production and activity can be saved and expanded under a new economic regime.<\/p>\n A post-oligarchical program <\/em>will help to answer the jobs question.\u00a0 Its aim (transcending current calls to \u201ctax the rich\u201d) will be to adopt humane, effective measures to limit the wealth, power, and political influence of the oligarchs and to empower working people to make decisions formerly reserved to the holders of great wealth. \u00a0A genuinely populist economic program will guarantee all workers a livable minimum annual income and will explore the question of public vs. private ownership of enterprises vital to <\/em>satisfying basic social needs. To avoid both the market fetishism and speculative excesses of late capitalism and the administrative abuses of old-style socialism, it will propose funded public, private, and mixed programs designed to furnish people with meaningful, remunerative jobs in the information age. \u00a0It will fulfill decades-old promises to eliminate extreme urban and rural poverty and will work to raise general levels of education, health, and happiness to those of the most advanced welfare states. It will also propose to solve the problems of labor shortages and requests for asylum by adopting a rationally planned and administered immigration system.<\/p>\n A post-polarization program <\/em>will advocate methods of resolving the underlying social, cultural, and psychological problems that undermine people\u2019s trust in each other and in their ability to act collectively to satisfy their basic human needs.\u00a0 Post-oligarchical reforms are part of the answer; restoring trust in government depends (among other things) on ending the dependence of politicians on Big Money donors and \u201crevolving door\u201d jobs.\u00a0 But progressives need to recognize that the painful personal and social issues currently addressed by churches and other private institutions also require creative solutions if \u201cwhite power\u201d and other false solidarities are to be transcended.\u00a0 What local and national programs and activities are needed to help communities deal with crippling problems such as mass drug dependency?\u00a0 Violence against women? Mental illness?\u00a0 Family instability?\u00a0 A program aimed at generating real\u00a0 solidarity will not mistake anti-social symptoms (such as reliance on guns and fear of strangers) for the disease.\u00a0 It will find ways to organize and enact caring for each other.<\/p>\n These programmatic notions are merely brief suggestions, of course. But they are intended to illustrate the sort of thinking that may help those appalled by the inhumanity of the current U.S. regime (and other regimes like it) to move beyond partisan moralism toward the analysis and cure of systemic ills.<\/p>\n Time passes quickly. To remain obsessed by a leader\u2019s personal failings plays his game and leaves oppressive systems in place.\u00a0 Let\u2019s focus \u2013 now! — on creating something better.<\/p>\n __________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n When Trump is criticized, when his mental stability as well as his moral character is called into question, he has a ready answer: TDS- “Trump Derangement Syndrome…” Time passes quickly. To remain obsessed by a leader\u2019s personal failings plays his game and leaves oppressive systems in place.\u00a0 Let\u2019s focus \u2013 now! — on creating something better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[249,70],"class_list":["post-316038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial","tag-trump","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=316038"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316038\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":316039,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316038\/revisions\/316039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=316038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=316038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=316038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/Richard-Rubenstein-scaled-e1592126260707.jpg\")
<\/a> Richard E. Rubenstein is a member of the <\/em>TRANSCEND Media Service<\/em><\/a> Editorial Committee, of the <\/em>TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/em><\/a>, and a professor of conflict resolution and public affairs at George Mason University\u2019s Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter Center for Peace and Conflict Resolution. A graduate of Harvard College, Oxford University (Rhodes Scholar), and Harvard Law School, Rubenstein is the author of nine books on analyzing and resolving violent social conflicts. His most recent book is <\/em>Resolving Structural Conflicts: How Violent Systems Can Be Transformed (Routledge, 2017). <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"