Roy Casandra: The Politics of Exclusion
A 2018 look at what influences to expect from Trump and what might be some possible solutions to those influences.
The Austin School
2018
Dr. Casandra suggests that we live in a society that has a Master/Slave relationship. Traditionally we tend to think the master is the one who understands the relationship but he will explore how this may not be exactly true.
Dr. Casagranda suggests that we are an extremely hierarchical society that pretends to be egalitarian while the reality is that your birth determines what your future is.
Dr. Casagranda suggests that one of the things that Trump did in 2016 was appeal to a change in this dynamic. About 55 years ago the US was about 85% white and today it’s about 60% white. And that in the midst of this demographic change we’ve been in an extraordinary “wealth redistribution event”.
Going from about 1900 forward the wealth inequality shrank until about 1973 and that the political polarization shrank during the same period to its least polarized point around 1973. And, that the number of hours we worked per week shrank to bout 41 hours per week in about 1973.
The percentage of people going to college was increasing. The likelihood that you could be born to the lower class and work your way out of the lower class into the middle class was increasing. Life expectancy was increasing.
About 1973 almost all economic indicators turned around and started going the other direction. In about 1973 we were making about 2-½ times per hour in actual quality of life money than what we made in about 2020.
One reason colleges and universities charge tuition is that it takes you out of the “protest force” as you have to get a job to pay the tuition which keeps you from having time to protest. Another reason is because you are saddled with so much debt you will have to take whatever job is available and puts you in a type of “debt peonage”.
Back to the 2016 election and why it resonated when Trump said, “I’m going to Make America Great Again.” Donald Regan, Reagan’s Secretary of the Treasury called manufacturers to meeting to explain that they should want to move manufacturing overseas so they could break the unions. This was because the Reagan (and Thatcher’s) cabal thought that workers in the US made too much money.
So, why and how did it happen that the American “working class” got to a position where they were able to enter the Great American Middle Class? How was it that they were so “cash flush”? Why did the Reagan consensus decide to attack the convergence of the “religious left”, students and unions?
The actual Reagan Revolution was a three-pronged attack on the working class by taking out the “religious left” turning them into the “religious right”; taking the ability of students to influence their futures through “student debt” (ever wonder why Biden chose the lest likely method to undo the “debt peonage” his legislation had placed them under) and demolishing “organized labor”.
A large reason that many of those who supported Trump (and, here’s a clue about how to defeat Trump instead of demolishing our democracy but denying him a place on the ballot) supported Trump because they had personally experienced the Reagan economic downturn which was implemented more under Clinton than under Reagan.
In the 2016 Trump election there was a public that didn't understand how their vote was going to be perceived by the rest of the population—that wasn't thinking about the message the rest of the country would receive. They didn't realize that that portion of the population that's watched their wealth go down the toilet wants to find somebody to blame. It's just they've probably got wrong people but that's the nice thing about about scapegoating you don't really care if the guy you’re scapegoating actually caused your problem you just need to put this on somebody.
The way the system works—there's gonna be a pendulum swing in two years. They're gonna rise in Congress and then, maybe, if things work out they'll get the Presidency back in four years. Who’s lost anything in that equation—you will, but now you're voting for them so it's okay because the DemoPublicans and the RepubliCrats are like heads and tails on a coin. It's the same coin just one is on one side and one’s on the other side and they pitch you off against each other.
What Trump did though was classic and it'll go down in the playbook because he figured something out. The Republicans asked themselves, “Why did we lose?” They concluded that they lost because they didn't reach out to minorities but the Republican Party was too white. Trump comes along and he drops a nuclear bomb and it worked. This is an old playbook.
In the South there was no viable Republican Party and Blacks were defecting to the Democratic Party. We were becoming a one-party system so at that point the November election, just like today, makes no difference because the candidates already picked in the primaries it's the primaries that matter.
If you lived in an area that had a large Black population and you are a white Democrat in the primaries you could not ignore your large Black population you had to reach out to them or you could indicate that you were going to do everything you could to screw them.
That was Trump's playbook; he totally played it and it worked he didn't have to drop the n-word he just had to say nasty things about blacks right and people with disabilities and women and Muslims and Mexicans. What's really weird about those politicians not saying the n-word they dumped it
One of the things that drove me nuts about the Obama years was that the left was in a coma. The left did nothing, except for occupy. All of us woke up and then we went back to sleep.
Obama was as awful as Jr. He did all sorts of really crappy things, for example, surveillance increased dramatically, the police state apparatus increased dramatically, the Fourth and Fifth Amendment's and the Writ of Habeas Corpus were destroyed by the Bush administration—Obama just heaped onto that.
He didn't give us those back he made it worse and the danger here is Jr. created a police state—Obama made it worse and then we elected Trump, a narcissist.
Can we go back and get rid of the police state first because then what's the worst that can happen a Nixon like disaster whereas now that there's a police state in place a lot worse things than a Nixon like disaster for a narcissist is it's like having a match next to a can of gasoline nine times out of ten you might be fine but at one time you're gonna it's gonna be explosive.
The left waking up would be a great thing.
Totally unconstitutional methods of surveillance are being used on all of us right now as we speak and can totally be used against you in a court of law. In fact, you don't even have Habeas Corpus. They don't even have to take you to a court of law they can just put you in permanent prison.
In 2012 Congress passed and Obama signed into law a law that added to the military commissions Act of 2006 which effectively got rid of Habeas Corpus that allows the president to get you arrested and you never have to be tried you can forever be in prison.