Class and Politics in America
The Republicans are the party of the middle to ordinary upper classes, while the Democrats are the party of the highest upper class using the lower to lower-middle class as cannon fodder. Has been that way since the formation of the Republicans in the mid-19th century.
This is a common class-political constellation. The highest level of an upper class wants to rule, and the primary obstacles to its rule are those with the connections, leisure and educated competence to effectively resist such rule. This means not the lower classes, but the middle classes, and even the more recent entrants into the upper classes. The obvious strategy is to offer to loot the middle and middling-upper classes and give the plunder to the lower classes, in return for lower-class votes. This is why the Classical Greek philosophers concluded that democracy inevitably leads to tyranny.
The big change in the American class-political system over the last century has been that American blacks, who used to support the party that had freed them over the party that still wanted to keep them enslaved, inexplicably switched allegiance in the mid to late 20th century and decided that only the Democrats truly valued them. And the Democrats did truly value them. Why, slaves went for hundreds of dollars, even thousands, a head back before the Civil War!
American blacks are now so solidly Democrat that they really treat any non-Democratic black as some sort of "race traitor" -- non-ironically, without bothering to consider the absurdity of the whole assumption that a "race" is a political entity toward which one should be "loyal" as one would be to a nation-state. That political assumption comes straight out of 19th-century racialism, the very philosophy which was used to maintain first slavery and then the Black Codes against them.
This sort of class-based looting is, of course, absolutely inimical to the project of maintaining a classical-liberal political economy, in which the role of the State is to act as impartial referee preventing the use of force and fraud within a civilized economy. But it is consistent behavior on the part of the Democrats: back before the 1960's, they used force to loot the labor of the blacks for the benefit of rich whites; now they use force to loot the labor of the middle classes (of all races) for the benefit of rich whites.
Nothing has changed in that regard. What has changed is that the looting by the State has reached a level unsustainable in the long run: the looters are running out of wealth to plunder. This means that either the looters must lessen their depredations, or convert their political position to that of naked tyranny (and thus no longer need to loot as much to pay off masses who will be then more cowed by the threat of force than bought by the promise of plunder).
In other words, we must either restore the Republic, or commence the Empire.
Which shall it be?
This is a common class-political constellation. The highest level of an upper class wants to rule, and the primary obstacles to its rule are those with the connections, leisure and educated competence to effectively resist such rule. This means not the lower classes, but the middle classes, and even the more recent entrants into the upper classes. The obvious strategy is to offer to loot the middle and middling-upper classes and give the plunder to the lower classes, in return for lower-class votes. This is why the Classical Greek philosophers concluded that democracy inevitably leads to tyranny.
The big change in the American class-political system over the last century has been that American blacks, who used to support the party that had freed them over the party that still wanted to keep them enslaved, inexplicably switched allegiance in the mid to late 20th century and decided that only the Democrats truly valued them. And the Democrats did truly value them. Why, slaves went for hundreds of dollars, even thousands, a head back before the Civil War!
American blacks are now so solidly Democrat that they really treat any non-Democratic black as some sort of "race traitor" -- non-ironically, without bothering to consider the absurdity of the whole assumption that a "race" is a political entity toward which one should be "loyal" as one would be to a nation-state. That political assumption comes straight out of 19th-century racialism, the very philosophy which was used to maintain first slavery and then the Black Codes against them.
This sort of class-based looting is, of course, absolutely inimical to the project of maintaining a classical-liberal political economy, in which the role of the State is to act as impartial referee preventing the use of force and fraud within a civilized economy. But it is consistent behavior on the part of the Democrats: back before the 1960's, they used force to loot the labor of the blacks for the benefit of rich whites; now they use force to loot the labor of the middle classes (of all races) for the benefit of rich whites.
Nothing has changed in that regard. What has changed is that the looting by the State has reached a level unsustainable in the long run: the looters are running out of wealth to plunder. This means that either the looters must lessen their depredations, or convert their political position to that of naked tyranny (and thus no longer need to loot as much to pay off masses who will be then more cowed by the threat of force than bought by the promise of plunder).
In other words, we must either restore the Republic, or commence the Empire.
Which shall it be?