In both Europe and North America, populist movements have shattered existing party systems and thrown governments into turmoil. The embattled establishment claims that these populist insurgencies seek to overthrow liberal democracy. The truth is no less alarming but is more complex: Western democracies are being torn apart by a new class war.
In this controversial and groundbreaking new analysis, Michael Lind, one of America’s leading thinkers, debunks the idea that the insurgencies are primarily the result of bigotry, traces how the breakdown of mid-century class compromises between business and labor led to the conflict, and reveals the real battle lines.
On one side is the managerial overclass–the university-credentialed elite that clusters in high-income hubs and dominates government, the economy and the culture. On the other side is the working class of the low-density heartlands–mostly, but not exclusively, native and white.
The two classes clash over immigration, trade, the environment, and social values, and the managerial class has had the upper hand. As a result of the half-century decline of the institutions that once empowered the working class, power has shifted to the institutions the overclass controls: corporations, executive and judicial branches, universities, and the media.
The class war can resolve in one of three ways:
– The triumph of the overclass, resulting in a high-tech caste system.
– The empowerment of populist, resulting in no constructive reforms
– A class compromise that provides the working class with real power
Lind argues that Western democracies must incorporate working-class majorities of all races, ethnicities, and creeds into decision making in politics, the economy, and culture. Only this class compromise can avert a never-ending cycle of clashes between oligarchs and populists and save democracy. — Book promo @ goodreads.com
Almost all of the political turmoil in Western Europe and North America can be explained by the new class war. The first class war in the West ended with the establishment of democratic pluralist systems on both sides of the Atlantic after World War II. Trade unions, participatory political parties, and religious and civic organizations compelled university-educated managerial elites to share power with them or defer to their values. Then, between the 1970s and the present, the terms of the uneasy democratic pluralist peace treaties between national working classes and national managerial elites were unilaterally abrogated by the latter. No longer restrained by working-class power, the metropolitan overclass within Western democracies has run amok, provoking a belated populist rebellion from below that has been exploited, often with disastrous results, by demagogues, many of them opportunists from elite backgrounds, like Donald Trump and Boris Johnson.
Antisystem populism, the force behind the election of Donald Trump, the Brexit vote in Britain, and the rise of populist parties in continental Europe, has been triggered in different nations by different causes—deindustrialization here, immigration or tax policies there. But whatever the immediate stimulus, the underlying cause is the same—long-smoldering rage by non-college-educated workers against damage done to their economic bargaining power, political influence, and cultural dignity during the half-century revolution from above of technocratic neoliberalism.
I wanted to use my Yubikey security key with my Samsung Galaxey A9+ tablet but it would not work. An internet search revealed that this is a common problem with Samsung. So I contacted Solokey and they claimed that their Solo 2C would work. Received it yesterday and it did light up but does not work unless I get verified AGAIN by id.me. I gave that a try yesterday but could not understand anything that was said in the visual contact with the id.me representative. Tried twice and gave up in frustration. I’m going to see if I can get some interpreter help from someone here in in the Park and try again within the next few days.
The only other thing that I have done is re-started the conversion of old HTML pages and maps to WordPress pages. Now beginning to work on the Teardrop trips which is going to take a long time.