What sets the American workforce apart from the rest of the developed world is its unquestioned servility to corporate interests. As Larry Kudlow likes to point out, class warfare is un-American. What he really means is that strip-mining the middle class relentlessly IS American, fighting back is un-American. Make no mistake, class warfare has been raging for decades, with only one side winning.
Corporations have invested substantially in cultivating a segment of the population that NEVER questions rapacious capitalism no matter how much it marginalizes them. Always willing to vote against their own economic interests, having had their traditional values surreptitiously swapped out for corporate values by Faux News. We can thank South Park style garbage entertainment for systematically dumbing down the populace for profitable exploitation. Corporate self-medication has certainly eased the ever-mounting pain of true believers, if not thinned their ranks. For a time after 2008, during the reign of the black Islamic commy, they lost faith in "the system". But then the great white dope came along and restored their faith in rampant fraud. Now at cycle highs. When they went ALL IN, the smart money went ALL OUT.
Many on the right make the specious argument that Democrats capitulated in their role as "protector" of the working class. Focusing instead on the diversionary battlefield of social values and identity politics. This was largely due to the fact that as the U.S. populace aged, the country became more economically conservative and therefore more steeped in the mythology of U.S. capitalism. 1960s hippies morphed into 2019-era geezers fretting over their 401k balances. A demographic shift that came at the unfortunate intersection of free trade and Globalization. An aging population will always prefer return on capital over return on labour. Persistent economic McCarthyism in the post-Reagan era meant that only the bravest of outliers - aka. Bernie Sanders were willing to hang a shingle on workers rights.
Which is where this all gets interesting.
Because a year ago MAGA was booming. Confidence among investors was high. GDP growth was 4%. 2020 looked solid. One year later and professional investors have left the building - now the least confident in TWO DECADES. Insiders have cashed out. CFOs are not investing. The last ditch far right MAGA Titanic is now at risk of capsizing with all of its true believers still onboard.
Waiting in the wings will be a very timely long overdue shift back to the center. Thanks to Millenials, the U.S. is finally realizing that corporations have plundered the country to the detriment of the national future. They're not usefully deterred by the word "socialism", nor do they believe the Rush Limbaugh style blowhards who constantly defend bailed out capitalism.
Even Tucker Carlson admitted at the most recent conservative confab that corporations have strip-mined the country:
“Big Business Hates Your Family:” Tucker Carlson Savages Corporate Libertarians at National Conservatism Conference"
“The main threat… to your ability to live your life as you choose does not come from the government anymore, but comes from the private sector.”
Of course Carlson is merely a shape-shifting opportunist - who like so many other conservatives has conveniently abandoned forty years of Republican free trade orthodoxy, as if it never happened. Under their watch. He has re-cast himself as a man of the people, notwithstanding decades of support for policies that destroyed the middle class. Carlson has admitted that he wants to steal all of Elizabeth Warren's ideas.
Democrats may have cowed to economic McCarthyism in the past, but they are waiting in the sweet spot for where this all lands one year hence.
Out of the ashes of failed empire, will be born a country. One based upon real values and not false promises.
What will be the most profound change in the days ahead is the extent to which the U.S. workforce is no longer willing to be corporate chattels. The "great men" of Ayn Randian folklore will be greatly diminished if not duly incarcerated.
Trump sold himself as a "man of the people", but of course it was all just one last ditch con job which merely served to allow the smart money to cash out at the end of the cycle. Leaving only the most brainwashed "believers" left holding the bag. From a political standpoint, three years into a first term, about as lethal a political situation as anyone could imagine.
The mythology of American corporate greatness will perish in the nadir of the impending collapse. What will today's young people inherit? In the words of the always cynical Jimmy Kunstler, not much - an indictment of this corporate strip-mining excavation if there ever was one. Nevetheless, credibility and political control are a start.
Because the other side won't have either. And most importantly, they won't have the slightest chance to gain it back.
