Cicero's Response

Sent originally by Cicero in response to my linking the original article over at Ecosophia

Good stuff for sure. I like Oswald Spengler's mind and ideas, but I am a modern American looking toward immediate results and winning, so analyzing the cycles of world history can only go so far toward adequately explaining what is going on. A general change from A to B can be caused by completely different phenomenon in one case/time versus another. At some point, the details become important to understanding the causes. For the relevant details today, I am wondering if it is necessary to go beyond Marx.

What is the most de-humanizing type of job? How about the examples of coal mining and factory jobs - mind-numbing, brainless work where a person is required to act just like a machine and no more; day in and day out - until the end. This is what we are shooting for apparently. Why? Is this are far as Manifest Destiny and the great American vision takes us?

Other than racism, the fuel for Trumpism is ultimately American consumerism. Trumpism is at root a political sales/con instigated by a salesman who cannot possibly fulfill the order he has taken from the working-class voters. The working classes don’t want factory jobs for any reason other than their will toward better stuff - which, in their cases, must be inexpensive.

What those who have more than enough money (Intelligentsia) want from the economy is essentially less, not more, than the working classes. The rich want for better stuff, while the working classes, in their lives/worlds, want for better and less expensive stuff - the latter requirement being all-important. Where did all the wonderful neighborhood book stores go? They went out of business. Why? Because the people who loved neighborhood book stores preferred to buy better (sooner in hand) and less expensive books when given the opportunity. If those who loved having neighborhood book stores could do the last 10 years over again with the benefit of hindsight, the same fucking result would occur. There you have it.  

It is the working classes that are demanding and getting the so-called globalism phenomenon and the associated loss of jobs, not the Intelligentsia who have no personal motivation to globalize other than what is demanded by consumers. This may sound improbable/wrong, but it is not - the ultimate driver is the consumer. Unlike the working classes, the Intelligentsia will pay more than necessary for products they consume (for many reasons), but the working classes will never be willing pay more than necessary; if they do, then in their mind, they have been conned and they are unhappy.

The percentage of working-class Americans who are willing to pay $2000 more for a $30,000 car/truck, or $250 more for their $2,000 heater/air-conditioner, or $50 more for their weekly groceries - for the purpose of providing good-paying jobs for American workers, is not 100% or 50% or 10% or 5%; it is zero percent. The enemy is us - not the Intelligentsia.           

Trump is a self-extinguishing flame - he is a con man whose plan must always include the final step of getting out of town at the right time. Trump has no sensible plan to help the working classes - everything he has done so far is destructive to creating long-term employment opportunities. Trump cannot survive beyond the point where American consumers realize that the benefits they have been blindly consuming from the global trough (see Walmart prices for example) have been lost. This may take a while - maybe a few years, but it is inevitable.