Posted on 09/29/2018 2:36:24 PM PDT by oblomov
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It’s a thrilling autumn for British and US liberals. The UK’s Conservative party is so mishandling Brexit that the whole thing might never happen. American liberals — already uncharacteristically energised for November’s midterm elections — are rooting for the torpedoing of Brett Kavanaugh, still, at the time of writing, Donald Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, liberal NGOs raise fortunes while newspapers pile on subscribers. The liberal dream is that Anglosphere populism — an old people’s movement — will fade away.
But we may be hitting peak liberal resistance. It’s still very likely that Brexit happens next March, and highly plausible that Trump will get re-elected in 2020. Longer term, it could be the liberals who fade away, to populist cries of “good riddance”. In this scenario, the urban educated class abandons politics, just as the white working class did in previous decades.
Brexit is likely to happen because the leaders of both main British parties intend to deliver it. Either Britain strikes a deal on the EU’s terms, or it initially gets no deal, but then probably crawls back to Brussels and agrees to whatever the Europeans are willing to offer.
Trump, despite his unpopularity, could easily win in 2020. If the economy is still growing by then, the 11-year expansion would be the longest ever measured in the US. Democrats could win the most populous liberal states of California, New York and Massachusetts by even larger margins than in 2016, piling up millions more essentially useless votes, and still lose the electoral college (while Republicans in swing states such as Wisconsin and Georgia suppress minority votes). Meanwhile, Trump will see either Kavanaugh or another conservative justice confirmed, and possibly others, too, given the ages of liberal justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg (85) and Stephen Breyer (80). Then the Supreme Court would be reliably conservative for decades.
There is such a thing as stable long-term extreme nationalist rule. Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, in office since 2010, won another four-year term this spring. Benjamin Netanyahu has governed Israel since 2009, while the liberal secular left has collapsed. Poland’s PiS government looks set for re-election next year. Extreme nationalism in these countries is self-reinforcing, because urban liberals are emigrating. Hungary in particular is exporting the highly educated, feminists, gay people, NGO staff, cultural workers and Jews. The ageing country suffers a net loss of one inhabitant every 16 minutes, notes Cas Mudde, scholar of populism at the University of Georgia. Ironically, the émigrés’ remittances — along with subsidies from Orbán’s hated EU — help keep the Hungarian economy going.
If Trump and the Brexiters can find the competence to establish long-term populism, liberal Britons and Americans will have to choose a response. Most will stay put. In 2016, over a quarter of Americans polled by Vox said they would consider moving to Canada if Trump won, but in the event hardly anyone left. It turns out that well-off urban liberals (unlike, say, poor Hispanics) can live well under Trump. They are on the right side of rising US inequality. As one rich New Yorker told me: “If people in red states want to give me a big tax cut, I didn’t vote for it, but I’ll take it.” Moreover, being anti-Trump gives liberals a purpose in life, a common identity and the perfect neighbourhood conversation-starter. They are feeling bad about the US but good about themselves.
British urban liberals will suffer relatively more from Brexit. If freedom of movement with Europe ends, their passports will be downgraded. Brexit will also devalue one of their favourite career paths, the civil service: the fresh graduates who traditionally flood into Whitehall each year are exactly the cohort who despise Brexit and won’t want to spend years trying to make it work. Still, educated people will continue to find good jobs in London.
But they risk being politically sidelined post-Brexit. Liberal debates in universities, media, political parties and think-tanks will feel irrelevant. Former centre-left politicians will migrate to TV shows such as Strictly Come Dancing, or make money consulting businesses on how to navigate Brexit.
If Trump and Brexit establish themselves, educated urban liberals will go into internal exile, cultivating their roof gardens, getting their kids into the right schools, hunting for the perfect coffee and doing the odd spot of local activism — for bike lanes, say. They will detach from populist relatives in the heartland, and, gradually, from a sense of shared nationhood. “Not my government,” will be the attitude. If the Supreme Court allows red states to drive out abortion, that won’t affect New York or San Francisco.
Urban liberals across continental Europe led similarly comfortable, apolitical lives before 1848; their Chinese and Russian peers lead them now. I saw it in Moscow this summer: the liberal elite gets its playground (hipster cafés and roller-skating in Gorky Park) and is allowed to prosper on condition it doesn’t get political. I saw an earlier version of this on childhood visits to my grandparents in apartheid South Africa: urban liberals sat around their swimming pools mocking the government that privileged them, while black maids served cake. It’s a surprisingly sustainable way of life.
It will get violent.
And do I hope I am wrong.
There are many laws that the libs have not broken yet.
“If Trump and Brexit establish themselves, educated urban liberals will go into internal exile, cultivating their roof gardens, getting their kids into the right schools, hunting for the perfect coffee and doing the odd spot of local activism”
Except that lie-berals don’t have kids
Have we reached peak liberal resistance?
no - the camps are not yet set up, nor have the pogroms begun; the incinerator and shredder contracts have yet to be let.
There is nothing liberal about today’s left.
We ain’t seen nothing yet. Be prepared patriots.
Wait till Ginsberg dies or resigns..... then all hell will break loose...
The answer to the question is no. Buchanan is right if the Rats get control the Kavanaugh Assassination attempt is just a warm up for what coming at Trump. It’s going to be a shitshow the likes of which we have never seen.
“There is nothing liberal about today’s left.”
I am astonished by the level of hate and pure emotion I see in the Lefties I know. I try very hard to never say anything political around them as you never know what will set them off; literally spitting their angry, often illogical retort.
Keep your powder dry, Patriots.
The hostility towards dissent and suppression of opposition is getting worse.
“Do you like American Music?”
I like American Music.
I need a date to the prom.
Who will go to the Prom with me?
I think a lot depends on what happens in November. If the “blue wave” turns out to be a puddle splash they may dial it back. They have turned off many many independents with their antics in the Kavanaugh confirmation and if they keep on doing stuff like that their party will permanently lose the moderates.
The evil, vile socialists are rising to a peak and will be expelled like Satan’s vomit.
If the soros funding of the tee-tee and copycat groups dry up then the big protest violence will fade out a bit or perhaps shrink in size.
The proglibs will continue to be very vocal in their efforts to “out-victim” each other and make absurd sjw declarations.
With any luck a lot of the outlandish indoctrination of the kids in school will be rebelled against as they grow older and see it (proglibism) for the utter disaster that it always is.
We’ll see...
.
...Have we reached peak liberal resistance?...
There is no such thing. They will escalate, no matter what, when in a corner of loss of power over the USA.
It’s like a heroin addict looking for a fix.
No question the mid terms are now a referendum on this show trial and not so much DJT.
It will be interesting to see some of the “internal” polling which is much more accurate and this publicized crap that hits the headlines.
I don’t think the show trial recruited any new voters to the Democrat side of the ledger but I do think it fired up the GOP base and I’m hearing many independents were shocked and frightened at the outlandish demonstrations in the Senate chambers the this last minute hit job.
No question the mid terms are now a referendum on this show trial and not so much DJT.
It will be interesting to see some of the “internal” polling which is much more accurate than this publicized crap that hits the headlines.
I don’t think the show trial recruited any new voters to the Democrat side of the ledger but I do think it fired up the GOP base and I’m hearing many independents were shocked and frightened at the outlandish demonstrations in the Senate chambers the this last minute hit job.
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