The political year, 2020

The status of the center rose, even if it remains far below levels it reached sixty years ago. Just looking at the outcome of the Democratic Presidential nomination contest and the House elections, the body politic did not show an appetite for radical progressivism. I could also cite the failure of the affirmative action referendum in California.

Libertarians had a terrible year. Hong Kong’s freedom got crushed. All over the world, officials exercised unprecedented power over individual behavior, with control over the virus the stated intention but not the result, at least in Europe and here.

Government spending and the Fed advanced deeper into the economy. Both political parties continued to retreat from economic liberty, and both seem eager to find a way for government to exploit the economic and technological power of the big tech firms (that is what politicians mean by “regulating big tech.”) In referenda, a higher minimum wage did well.

Looking for a silver lining somewhere? The marijuana legalization movement had more gains, if that’s what gives you a buzz.

Radical progressives had a disappointing year at the ballot box, but otherwise the religion that persecutes heretics had a fantastic year. Cancel culture came to the New York Times. It made major inroads in corporate America and in major investment firms.

Tyler Cowen made a number of predictions for the effect of the pandemic on relative status, and those mostly proved correct. But he did not predict George Floyd’s death, which led to the conversion millions of Americans to Wokeism. Even foreign demonstrators joined the flock.

The resistance to that religion has become more overt, but the religion itself enjoys powerful momentum. Mr. Trump’s executive order to stop preaching the religion to government workers is certain to be reversed.

Vitalik Butarin writes,

If a project having a high moral standing is equivalent to that project having twice as much money, or even more, then culture and narrative are extremely powerful forces that command the equivalent of tens of trillions of dollars of value. And this does not even begin to cover the role of such concepts in shaping our perceptions of legitimacy and coordination. And so anything that influences the culture can have a great impact on the world and on people’s financial interests, and we’re going to see more and more sophisticated efforts from all kinds of actors to do so systematically and deliberately. This is the darker conclusion of the importance of non-monetary social motivations – they create the battlefield for the permanent and final frontier of war, the war that is fortunately not usually deadly but unfortunately impossible to create peace treaties for because of how inextricably subjective it is to determine what even counts as a battle: the culture war.

Pointer from Tyler.

Think of the history of the Catholic Church. The Church translated its cultural power into tremendous wealth (have you seen the Vatican museum?) and political power. Not surprisingly, it attracted some very unsavory people to become popes and cardinals. The Woke religion is in its infancy.

32 thoughts on “The political year, 2020

  1. Woke Thought:

    Gender is a social construct; there are no differences between the sexes. All men are bad.

    Race is a social construct; there are no differences between the races. All white people are bad.

    No culture is better than another. Western Civilization is bad.

    Diversity of skin color is good. Diversity of thought is bad.

    Religion leads to conflict and war. Islam is the religion of peace.

    An especially harsh winter in one part of the globe does not disprove global warming. A single extreme weather event proves it.

    Marriage is oppression. Opposing same-sex marriage is oppression.

    The absolute truth is that there are no absolute truths.

    The Left’s violence is free speech. The Right’s free speech is violence.

    White silence is violence. White speech is violence.

    Segregation is bad. Separate black college dorms and black graduation ceremonies are good.

    Stereotyping people is wrong. All white people are racist oppressors.

    “White flight” from inner cities is bad. White migration to inner cities (aka “gentrification”) is bad.

    Diversity strengthens us by bringing in different viewpoints. Adopting diverse viewpoints is “cultural appropriation.”

    Noting cultural and racial differences is racist. Not acknowledging the different strengths and contributions of other cultures and races is racist.

    Your thoughts and beliefs are nothing but excuses for dismissing the beliefs of others and subjugating them. I therefore dismiss your beliefs and demand the right to subjugate you.

    Government must be directed by the will of the people. Government must be directed by a technocracy that is shielded from politics.

    Merited success condemns merited failure therefore no success is merited.

    The Constitution is a living document. The Supreme Court’s “Roe v Wade” decision is carved in stone.

    Raising the cost of cigarettes will discourage people from smoking. Raising the cost of employing workers will not discourage businesses from hiring.

    Slavery – an economic system in which people can arbitrarily demand others’ time, labor, and produce – is bad. Social Justice – a philosophy that holds that “the oppressed” can arbitrarily demand others’ time, labor, and produce – is good.

    Monopoly by corporations – which must satisfy their customers to survive – is bad. Monopoly by government – which can use deadly force to survive – is good.

    We must take decisions out of the hands individuals who understand local conditions, can quickly respond to feedback, and who will pay a price if they choose poorly and place them in the hands of central planners who have limited knowledge, imperfect feedback mechanisms, and who pay no price for being wrong.

    We care so much about the plight of others that we will willingly give them the shirt off your back.

    Police departments that oppress left-wing rioters, looters, and arsonists must be defunded. Police departments that arrest Christians who refuse to wear masks while worshiping outdoors must be strengthened.

    The ATF, CFTC, CPSC, DEA, EEOC, EPA, FAA, FCA, FDA, FCC, FDIC, FERC, FHA, FRA, FTC, NLRB, NRC, OSHA, SEC, and Federal Reserve regulatory agencies must be strengthened because unfettered capitalism is failing.

    California’s state government has wisely banned nuclear, coal, hydroelectric, and natural gas power plants. Free enterprise has failed to keep the lights on in California.

    We are wisely teaching our children that 2+2=5. Unemployment is rising among high school and college graduates, proving that capitalism has failed.

    Our ideas are contradictory only in the light of Western logic – a patriarchal and racist tool of oppression.

    • +1 but, you forgot to note: silence is violence, but actual violence is “mostly peaceful” protests.

        • Rallies during lockdowns are super spreader events (e.g. the Sturgis motorcycle event). Protests for “racial justice” during lockdowns are unequivocally not super spreader events. Anyone that tries to draw a distinction between the two is obviously a racist.

      • I remember earlier in the year when asdf lectured Richard on hot dog stand economics.

        We Texans, including Richard, were like, wtf are you talking about? Medallion type buyouts…huh? And, that pretty much said it all. Long live Texas!

        And, please stay away from here unless you’re pro enterprise.

        • please stay away from here unless you’re pro enterprise

          You Lone Stars may think you’re charmed and can afford to sit out the flood (and enjoy pissing on the ones floating past your hill), but is that actually the case or is it wishful thinking? Austin and some other destinations are already filling up with California ruin voter refugees, with predictable changes in trends. 王其圖之。

          • By chance, are you watching the Rose Bowl? Couldn’t be played under any circumstances from its home location in Pasadena, CA. But, totally ok from Arlington, TX (down the highway from us) and…at 50% capacity.

            The rumors of the bluing of Texas have been vastly overstated.

            Republican governor and state legislature. Republican U.S. Senators and a state constitution that makes it almost impossible to ever implement a state income tax.

            And personally, we’ve got a lifeboat at our disposal in the unlikely event that our family needs it. Plenty of other underrated red states out there for our next move.

            So, I’m feeling pretty good and enjoying my popcorn while I watch the blue states slowly self-implode over on the Fox News.

  2. “and both seem eager to find a way for government to exploit the economic and technological power of the big tech firms (that is what politicians mean by ‘regulating big tech.’) “
    Well I guess this is a bad thing if you believe that tech giants should be able to acquire most of the major news outlets in the country and collude to control the public’s access to information and to suppress non-approved information. Which is fine. I am sure people in North Korea think that their media is wonderful too. Libertarians are more about fear of others’ liberty and what a democracy might do than they are about political liberty being exercised through a democratic republic system of government.

    What seems awkward though is the simultaneous pearl clutching about wokeism censoring academics. If you are for tech giant control of public access to information and suppression of dissidence, then why not support wokester control of information and suppression of dissent? Tech giants and wokesters are more not mutually exclusive categories. Is it that control of the little people is a good thing because populism bad, and therefore control of elites is bad because little people bad and need elite control?

    A prerequisite for democracy is freedom of speech and access to information. Tech giant monopolization of the press and license to suppress different is fundamentally incompatible with democracy and is a violation of human rights under the UN Declaration of Human Rights. The overt racism and hostility to human rights of wokesterism creates an environment conducive to apartheid and genocide that is doubly dangerous when exercised in collusion with big tech press monopolists.

    • I think you’re missing the point. What do you think chances really are that government regulation of big tech will turn out the way you want it to?

      • The USA has ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
        ( https://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/ccpr.aspx ) ” Article 19 of which provides:

        Article 19

        1. Everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference.

        2. Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice.

        3. The exercise of the rights provided for in paragraph 2 of this article carries with it special duties and responsibilities. It may therefore be subject to certain restrictions, but these shall only be such as are provided by law and are necessary:

        (a) For respect of the rights or reputations of others;

        (b) For the protection of national security or of public order (ordre public), or of public health or morals.

        It would seem reasonable to allow some form of legal redress to individuals and organizations whose civil rights under this provision are violated by social media, payment processors, online vender/publisher et cetera that are engaged in interstate commerce and who engage in discrimination in violation of Article 19.

        The world didn’t end when civil rights legislation allowed redress to Blacks who are discriminated against by businesses, why would it end when similar standards are applied to big tech? Are you saying Twitter should be able to ban Black users, or just whites?

        At any rate, it would be difficult for the USA to get much worse. It is currently ranked 45th on the Press Freedom Index. If we really tried hard we might be able to catch up to Burkina Faso.

        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Press_Freedom_Index

        • I think you’ll be surprised at how much those exceptions in #3 can cover. I’m guessing just about all of the cancel-culture aficionados feel they are covered by 3(a).

        • I think there’s a lot of failure of imagination these days about just how much worse it can in fact get. And how does regulating ‘big tech’ make press more free? I see it pushing in precisely the opposite direction

          • Well you are right, I suppose it can get worse. Zuckerberg is lobbying hard for new internet regulation so it will be happening regardless. I can imagine things like bans on private blogs, etc. But that is what the election delivered us so we deserve to get it good and hard.

  3. With regard to the failure of the referendum to repeal the California ban of affirmative action, it was encouraging but basically symbolic. Affirmative action has not been banned in practice in California. This is explained in detail in a very interesting report of the UC Academic Counsel Standardized Testing Task Force. They found, to their surprise, that under the guise of “comprehensive review” of admissions applications, all of the schools in the University of California system effectively “race-norm” test scores, which they view as a good thing. They also found that SAT scores are now significantly more predictive of college academic success than high school grades, because over the last twenty years high school grades have become less predictive. https://senate.universityofcalifornia.edu/_files/underreview/sttf-report.pdf

    • +1

      Magnet schools across the country including in my county and our schools old rival in nyc also had affirmative action introduced to lower admissions standards despite a lack of popular support for these actions.

      Let’s not forget the ultimate example, the infiltration of the cdc and public health community by wokeness right when objectivity was needed most. Despite the presidents ban on critical race theory it was used by the cdc to suggest a vaccine distribution scheme that increased mortality because more white people would die. This was only partially rolled back due to mass political outcry and protest by trumps hhs secretary. While some brave governors like in Florida are ignoring this advice I expect it to be the default in many states, some of whom have even increased the wokeness of the their distribution plans (rapists and murderers before grandma).

      Politics isn’t meaningless, as the senior citizens in Florida are about to learn, but the managerial class has immense power to set the default state of things and to rollback, ignore, or corrupt any popular opinion even when it wins elections or plebescites.

    • Good link, thanks and this is consistent with other analysis that I’ve read on the UC system. But, I do think that there is a significant difference between the current “under the carpet” discrimination that we have and the officially approved discrimination that we would have gotten if the proposition had passed. The latter would have been much worse for those of us who believe that students should be selected based on test scores vs. skin tone.

  4. Compliments for your overview, penned with a sure touch. And thanks for the pointer to Butarin’s essay — fresh and sharp.

    Minor comments:

    1) Re: “the status of the center rose.”

    The political year, 2020 will end belatedly on January 5th in Georgia’s Senate runoff elections. If, perchance, the Democratic Party candidates take both seats, political outcomes would shift to the Left, because one party would have (a) a majority in both chambers of the legislature (VP tiebreaker in the Senate) and (b) the Presidency. I suppose the narrowness of majorities would attenuate the shift.

    Perhaps we tend to overstate changes in political status, because first-past-the-post elections often produce changes in representation greater than the somewhat marginal changes in underlying vote distribution?

    2) Re: George Floyd’s death.

    The vivid footage of Floyd’s death in the course of arrest accentuated the power of scandal and innumeracy in political psychology.

    Wide assent to rhetoric of ‘systemic racism’ revealed remarkably extensive willingness and determination to use quotas in employment and representation to remedy any prima facie disparate impact around white and black races.

  5. Is Wokeism a religion? Let’s check roughly a dozen standard characteristics of religion: dogma, fervor, iconoclasm, transcendence, deity, worship, prayer, rite, commitment, martyrdom, persecution of unbelievers. (I don’t claim the list is complete!)

    Dogma. Yes. Core Woke beliefs about sociology — systemic racism, white privilege — are taken on faith, and are unfalsifiable.

    Fervor. Yes. Woke protesters displayed fervor after George Floyd’s death and throughout the summer.

    Iconoclasm. Yes. Woke protesters focussed on destruction of public monuments.

    Persecution of public unbelievers. Yes. Woke activists ‘cancel’ and blacklist individuals who openly disagree.

    Rite. Yes. Wokeism involves ritual practices; for example, blacking out one’s instagram page, or taking a knee, or confessing privilege.

    Worship. No and Yes. Although Wokeism doesn’t have places of worship, Woke protests often have focal locations (sites of putative injustice).

    Transcendence. No. Wokeism doesn’t invoke an afterlife.

    Deity. No. Wokeism doesn’t invoke gods.

    Prayer. No. Wokeism seems not to involve prayer.

    Commitment. Mostly little. Activists do commit time and energy. Woke individuals don’t tithe. Most do little more than place a sign in the window or yard. Woke corporations commit to racial quotas in representation, and donate substantial sums to Woke movements.

    Martyrdom. No and Yes. Woke persons don’t seek martyrdom, but do cast as martyrs blacks killed by police.

    In sum, Wokeism involves dogma, fervor, iconoclasm, persecution, and rites; but not transcendence, deity, and prayer. The picture with respect to worship, commitment, and martyrdom is mixed.

    Corporations are a special, perhaps opportunistic case. They make Woke commitments (quotas and donations) strategically, in order to deflect previous direct attacks against profit, the one percent, billionaires; and to placate Woke employees. Quotas and donations become a cost of doing business, akin to regulation, insofar as quotas and donations are implemented across firms.

    Back to the question: Is Wokeism a religion? Wokeism is like religion in several ways, but lacks some key features of religion.

    I’m not persuaded. Three key features of Wokeism — dogma, fervor, and persecution of public unbelievers — aren’t peculiar to religion. Freudian theories of unconscious motivations are dogmatic (unfalsifiable), but psychoanalysis isn’t a religion. Secular social movements often exhibit fervor. Wildfires of righteous indignation can motivate persecution of those who openly disagree.

    I would interpret summer 2020 Wokeness as a wildfire of righteous indignation, amplified by social desirability bias and strategic conformity. Unresolved racial tensions constituted kindling. Pandemic anxiety, lockdown frustration, and sharp electoral conflicts greatly heightened social tension, casting dry tinder everywhere. Vivid, disturbing footage of George Floyd’s death sparked a wildfire of outrage. After initial chaos, iconoclasm and cancel culture emerged as performative outlets, much less risky than civil war. Social desirability bias quickly converged on new slogans, weird enough to test commitment (e.g., “defund the police”). Corporations quickly got on board and thereby deflected previous resentments about inequality. The wildfire is past, but Wokeism has become embedded in institutions.

        • Excellent choice, thank you. But, I still gotta go with the original version from Blind Faith.

          In terms of your great analysis…I cannot juggle that many balls at one time. So, I have to boil it down to two:

          1) is it an empirically based movement or is it mostly data free?

          2) can the movement integrate opposing viewpoints or is everyone that disagrees with it labeled “an infidel?”

          In terms of woke culture, I see it as almost completely data free and calling this out makes me a racist. So yes, it reminds me of a fundamentalist religion.

  6. Sorry, Arnold. Your analysis of the U.S. 2020 politics has barely skimmed the surface of what has been happening. We can focus on beliefs (as VB does in his long post), or values (as Bari Weiss does in “Stop Being Shocked”), or the competition for power (as G. Greenwald does in his recent column on The Threats of Authoritarianism) and how they have been changing in the past 12 months.

    I prefer to focus on the competition for power because I think that is the essence of politics. But first, a few words about changing beliefs and values. Although VB’s references to politics are minimal (he poses a very interesting question but then he analyzes the driving forces that he knows well but unrelated to politics), others have been trying to understand the world’s changing beliefs about what government may achieve as a result of the rise of China and other Asian countries. Bari Weiss worries that American liberalism is in danger from a new ideology to the point of ending with these words directed to young American Jews: “We should never be shocked that any ideology that makes war on these true and eternal values will inevitably make war on us.” Yes, there are some Woke intellectuals making a lot of noise with “their ideas” (well summarized by reader Richard W Fulmer in his comment) but together they look like a Freudian nightmare rather than the vision of a new world (do Woke intellectuals seek equality of outcomes by eliminating all sources of inequality?).

    Politics is about finding soldiers and seeking the legitimate power of coercion. Without good, loyal soldiers you cannot compete for power, so we know it’s a very expensive project and most likely financiers expect a high reward for their risky investment. In the old times, a good, loyal army was a necessary and sufficient condition, perhaps because the competition was largely centered on expanding and protecting territories and their population. Today the world’s political order is based on nation-states in “well-defined” territories whose coexistence relies on the benefits of trade and the threat of war. In each nation-state, the army, now a coalition of politicians and their factions, is no longer sufficient to grab and keep power, and the domestic political competition is subject to its own rules, or lack of them if one party has been able to eliminate all competition. In constitutional democracies, the competition is a condition by the competitors’ opportunistic compliance with a constitution which rejects all violence, and the internal organization of large political parties can be described by sets of factions whose chiefs negotiate the party’s leadership and electoral strategy (in one-party political orders its internal organization still is a hierarchy).

    In the U.S., on 1/1/2020, it was well known that in the next 12 months politics would be conditioned by the November election, and Trump was expected to be re-elected to the point that only a big October surprise could change a different outcome. Yes, despite the many efforts of his enemies in the previous 4 years to denounce him as “a fascist-like dictator threatening the previously sturdy foundations of the U.S. democracy”, this assertion was “a preposterous farce” (these are Greenwald’s words taken from the first paragraph of his column). Trump never had the vast powers that previous presidents, Obama in particular, enjoyed (in a 2016 WP column, Greenwald argued that Trump would have vast powers) because he won the Party’s nomination without the support of the Party’s leadership and the presidency by following his own strategy. There were too many Republican officials blocking Trump in the first two years of his Administration, and only after the losses of November 2018, they started to cooperate with him. But if elected, Hillary Clinton would have had those vast powers. Call it what you want, but the Trump presidency was an opportunity to revert the authoritarian threats initiated long ago and denounced by Greenwald in his column. It may turn out it has been only a pause. I disagree with some of Greenwald’s assertions about those pre-Trump threats but well before 2016 democrats have been changing their electoral base and the changes required promises that Obama failed to deliver, not because he cared about the limits of his legitimate presidential powers but because of his personal limits (either his personal interest in a good life as the one he has been enjoying since 1/20/2017 or his lack of ability to negotiate with radical democrats).

    In the first two months of 2020, politics was centered on how Trump’s enemies could prevent him to win re-election. Their grotesque and futile attempt at impeaching Trump made clear that they needed to change drastically their strategy. And then God provided the March surprise: a new plague that threatened all humanity. But it was not enough to prevent Trump to be re-elected, so God provided the late May surprise: a death that sparked the Great American Uprising. But it was not enough to prevent Trump to be re-elected, so God provided the October surprise: the acceptance of Postal Voting. All three surprises were managed by rotten and corrupt democrats: the first by state and local governments with the support of federal agencies; the second mainly by the local governments of some large cities; and third by state and local governments. All three surprises became mass events with the active cooperation of the press and social media controlled by comrades of rotten and corrupt democrats. All three surprises have been financed by people like Gates, Bloomberg, Soros, Bezos, and Buffett connected to rotten and corrupt democrats.

  7. In western culture, we began with Judaism and added later Christianity. Religion has been an essential element of our social success. Now we confront wokeism. This is not the first time that a “religious movement” has attempted to tear our society apart and nor is it the last time.

    When confronted with a new movement we should return to first principles and reflect on some very basic questions. How far can humans evolve morally? Is there an enlightened state where we embrace truth and discover the moral high ground? What would the path to enlightenment look like? Who would lead us there?

Comments are closed.