Antipolitics and the Two Evils Theory

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As promised in my last post this will be the last post centering my approach to electoral politics for the near future. I will get back to writing about Palestine in my next post.

I got some rude comments (which I deleted¹) on my post, Why I Vote. The tl;dr of that post was that I used to reject politics but now I engage in politics, and how I have learned that the US political system is structured in such a way that once every four years one of two parties (Democrats or Republicans) takes control of the government.

The person whose posts I deleted felt that was all the evidence they needed to conclude that I am a dumb, uneducated puppet of the oligarchy-owned state and probably on the payroll of the oligarchy myself. Why the oligarchy would need to hire me to defend the state they already own is a mystery to me, but I’m not very smart.

The truth of my financial situation is that the startup I was working for up until last November folded and I burned through my personal savings (not counting retirement savings) in a few months. Since then I have been burning through my retirement savings, paying about a 30% premium for fees and taxes on every withdrawal. I could probably get another job if I were looking, but I have spent the vast majority of my time in the past 10 months learning about and advocating for the Palestinian cause.

I don’t want a cookie for this, I’m just pointing out that nobody is paying me to write. In about a year I will have burned through my retirement account (it wasn’t very well-funded to begin with) and then I’ll have to find a job or sell my house and spend another year (if I’m lucky) living off the equity. Yeah I’m not much of a planner but I’ve made it this far. I have lots of advantages over lots of people. I’ll be fine.

What nobody is paying me to say is that I will vote for the Democrats in the fall because I believe there are myriad ways in which a government run by the Democrats is better than one run by the Republicans, and as I mentioned in the opening paragraph I understand those are the choices. There is no third option.

Bullshit, you say. There are plenty of third options! Jill Stein. Cornel West. RFK Jr. Not voting. Donald Trump. Civil war! To borrow a line from Qasim Rashid, let’s address this. The reality of the US political system today, and for the foreseeable future, is that one of the two major party candidates is going to win in November, and their party is going to take control of the executive branch in January. Same for Congress.

The only way this isn’t going to happen is if there is a revolution and the government is overthrown by the people. There are very few indications that the US electorate is primed for such a revolution, and to the extent that those indications exist I really hope they don’t come to fruition because they strongly favor a right-wing outcome.

I have said before that I have hated Donald Trump since the 90’s and I think his presidency was disastrous, but I’m not afraid of Trump per se, I’m afraid of the Republican Party taking control of the government. If Trump died tomorrow I would be afraid of whoever they slotted in to replace him. That’s because the Republican party has become the Christian Nationalist party, and they have a blueprint called “Project 2025” that outlines how they intend to rule and it is extremely radical.

Try a thought experiment. Close your eyes and thrust yourself six months into the future. Visit one of the camps set up in every state where immigrants are being interred as they await deportation. Maybe see if you can talk to a twelve year old girl who is pregnant with her abusive step-father’s baby but can’t get a legal abortion, or the family who can’t have children because IVF has been banned. Or a woman who is part of a huge spike in unwanted pregnancies resulting from bans on contraception. Find an Arab-American who is sad about not being able to see their family because the new Muslim ban prevents anyone coming or going to Muslim countries. Now in each case imagine explaining to them how you decided this was just the price that must be paid to protest the Biden administration’s support of the genocide in Gaza.

I am anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, anti-racist, and yes, anti-genocide. Another way of saying it is that I am pro-human rights, equality of opportunity, internationalism, and rule of law. I probably lean communist but I’ll take liberal democracy over an authoritarian theocracy. I find US foreign policy abhorrent, but as I said:

The problem with US foreign policy--especially with regard to our "special relationship" with Israel--is a problem with the United States as a whole, irrespective of which party is in power. There is no scenario where not voting (or voting third party in a swing state, which is effectively the same thing) results in a more humane foreign policy. It might accelerate the complete collapse of the US, but by many measures that collapse is already in process. I can't think of any way that accelerating that process improves anyone's quality of life.

As I also mentioned in my previous post I totally understand hating politics. It often seems like it’s just smoke and mirrors that hand-in-hand with the mass media and entertainment industry is designed to keep us docile and pacifistic. Especially if you don’t fully understand or appreciate what it’s for or how it functions. You think “why can’t politicians just say what they mean and mean what they say?” or “all politicians are liars and cheats, it doesn’t matter what they say”, etc.

The thing is (and I might have only just realized this a few days ago) expecting straightforward and clear communication from a politician is like expecting your opponent in chess to verbalize their strategy as they play. I’m not suggesting that it’s us against them in some kind of competition, just that every politician has a ton of constituents with different, often conflicting, priorities and interests. Therefore straight communication on any controversial topic it going to automatically alienate someone else in their coalition, and endanger their ability to stay in office.

As much as we might hate the game, what’s the alternative? How do have a pluralistic society with equal opportunity and rights for all despite often dramatic differences in beliefs, values, and priorities, without some means of facilitating cooperation? Politics may be messy, frustrating, and often corrupt, but we need politics. The only people who benefit from anti-politics are right-wingers and the ruling class.

I recently read an article called The Triumph of Anti-Politics, in which the author argues that there are four main trends in anti-politics at work today. Three of these strands he identifies as right-wing, and one left-wing. He identifies the first three as technocracy, market fundamentalism, and Trumpian populism, and the fourth as ‘wokeness’. I found his analysis very compelling because it captured a lot of different concepts I’ve seen developed by other scholars across a range of disciplines.

The different versions of antipolitics circulating in the United States today have this in common: they all share the conviction that the political system has failed in its most important task. For technocrats, this task is to manage the fearsomely complex challenges of postindustrial society. For the market fundamentalists, it is to safeguard the sacrosanct market system from interference by disruptive interest groups. For the Trumpian populists, it is to protect real Americans, genuine Americans, from being ruined by elites and overrun by strangers who share neither their heritage nor their values. And for the “woke,” it is to protect historically oppressed groups from further oppression and to repair the damage done to them.

Vijay Prashad talks about democracy vs technocracy in the great book Struggle Makes Us Human. He writes “Loss of faith in democratic institutions, the turn of these institutions toward technocracy, creates the opposite of democracy.” One famous technocrat, Peter Thiel, is VP candidate J.D. Vance’s mentor and patron.²

Another of my favorite reads in recent months was The Big Myth, by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, the main theme of which is the concept of ‘market fundamentalism’ - an ideological obsession some have (especially Libertarians) with the notion that an illusory “free market” solves all problems. It’s one of the most detailed and clear-headed dissections of neoliberal economics I’ve read, and although it stops short of identifying capitalism itself as the problem, which I find disappointing, its critique of the free market mythology is first rate.

I don’t think I need to say much about Trumpian populism since we all know what that looks like, but the fourth thread of anti-politics the author identifies, ‘wokeness’, is worth talking about in a little more detail. First I should make clear that if ‘woke’ means antiracist, feminist, or just plain compassionate, then I am proudly ‘woke’ and I’m sure the author of this article would agree. It’s only when ‘wokeness’ is used to shut down political deliberation that we take issue with it.

But as figures such as Madison and Tocqueville so keenly argued, political deliberation need not always be, indeed should not always be, democratic, in the sense of reflecting the conscious and immediate desires of the majority.

The author explains that part of the disconnect is differing understanding of what constitutes politics. People who identify as ‘woke’ tend to center “hegemonic belief systems” and have strict guidelines about who is allowed to speak about them.

Heavily influenced by Foucault, they see modern societies as fundamentally shaped by hegemonic belief systems grounded in exclusion (of women, people of color, sexual minorities). “Political” work consists of exposing and challenging these belief systems and the exclusionary practices that stem from them. From this point of view, collective deliberation about the public good is only authentic and productive when it takes place among those who have done the work of exposing and challenging. The only legitimate political discourse is dissent. In practice, it is a stance that makes the vast arena of legitimate political activity — both in terms of who can participate, and which issues they can debate — vanishingly small.

The whole article is worth reading but I’ll just leave it with this brief summary of the problem with anti-politics. There are so many problems with our system, from blatant corruption to the horrific support for genocidal regimes. But as hopeless as voting might seem, righteous indignation is not a theory of change.

Above all, though, all these streams of thought thrive on the conviction that politics itself has failed in the United States, leading to the conclusion that key elements of the public good can only be preserved and advanced by extra-political means. And, of course, the ever more bitter political strife that they generate in pursuing these extra-political means turns the conviction into a self-fulfilling prophecy, as endless outrage and controversy chokes the political system and drives it ever further into paralysis.

All that being said, I don’t want to overstate how much of an impact any one of us can have on the systems that define our reality by engaging in electoral politics. When I see people making declarations like “Politicians work for us! They are interviewing for a job!” or “They have to EARN my vote!” or “They deserve to lose if they don’t do the right thing!” — all of these things are technically correct as moral declarations, but not a solid basis for a material analysis of the situation. Most politicians are very well situated to cope with the loss of their elected position. Chuck Schumer and Joe Biden are going to be just fine under a Republican administration. It’s the rest of us, especially women, POC, and immigrants, who are going to have to pay a hefty price.

I like to say I have a lot of strong opinions, loosely held, and acknowledge that I’m always learning and evolving. I might look back on this post in a couple years in embarrassment, not unlike the feeling I get when I look back at what I wrote about politics in 2020, 2010, 2000, etc. That is to say I appreciate different perspectives.

1. The comments section on my Substack is not a free-speech zone. I have a thick skin and will tolerate a certain amount of hostility in the context of discussion, but comments that are rich with insults but devoid of substance will be deleted and the account banned.

2. This may be a non sequitur but to my mind technocracy is closely related to the myth of ‘meritocracy’ that has supplanted a belief in the value of civic responsibility, which is thoroughly debunked in the Michael Sandel’s brilliant The Tyranny of Merit.