STS: It's about the neoliberalism, stupid

Photo by Kevin Grieve on Unsplash

First off some housekeeping: for those who do not want to read my non-soccer content, I’m going to make it easy. For anything that has a political angle, I’m going to put STS (Stick to Soccer!) in the title, for music or pop culture posts I’ll put M&P there, for sports other than soccer it will be OS and anything else that doesn’t fit those descriptions will have the label NSR (Not Soccer Related). That way, you can scan your email and decide if you want to check it out or not. Fair?

This is not a post about Donald Trump or the US Presidential election. Not entirely, anyway.

If you know my politics, you’ll appreciate that I share the same concerns about what his return to the White House will mean to democracy (and world stability) that many of you do. However, expressing those fears here doesn’t accomplish anything.

Many people will be doing just that today and in the days ahead. My voice isn’t required.

Rather what this is, is a post looking at the more general shift to the right (or far right, in many people’s minds) that is happening in much of the developed world right now, and a sincere attempt to articulate my feelings around that and why I feel it is happening (and will likely continue to happen without a significant change).

Before I get into that, I want to make something clear. I recognize that my reality — I’m a straight, Middle Class, white guy in Canada — allows me the luxury to be more philosophical today than someone from a more marginalized community would be. The divisive nature of politics today means that certain groups of people have been demonized in a cynical effort to use fear and ignorance to score cheap political points. In turn, that puts those people at legitimate physical risk.

To deny that is to be blind or deliberately obtuse.

For those people, today is about survival. I have nothing but empathy for them.

Let’s talk about empathy for a minute. It’s in pretty short supply these days and that’s a problem. If I were to narrow down the biggest problem that the digital age has created, I think it’s that: The absolute inability — by pretty much everyone — to see things from a different perspective is tearing us apart. It’s so very destructive.

I want to stress that “pretty much everyone” part again. Both sides of the political divide have become intolerant of any viewpoint that doesn’t perfectly align with theirs. It’s pure tribalism and it makes having a conversation about ideas and solutions to problems nearly impossible.

To bring this back to the topic of the blog, that’s a situation that benefits the right. Check that. It benefits populists, who are generally on the right, but not always. Left or right, what populists hold in common is an adherence to suggesting simplistic solutions to complex issues, usually under the guise of “common sense.”

Populists are anti-expert and often anti-government (which is why they are generally seen as right of centre). They tend to tell people what they want to hear, rather than what they need to hear.

We’ve been embracing these populists for more than 40 years now, starting with the OG himself. Ronald Reagan was a populist with a simplistic answer to a complex problem (inflation and general financial unease around the world in the 1970s). It was all big government’s fault. Cut the tape! Cut the tax. Trickle Down to prosperity!

Boom! The era of neoliberalism was born.

We’re still living in Ronnie’s world — a world where power isn’t held by governments, but rather by capital. So long as we continue to operate in a neoliberal environment, decisions will be made in the best interest of the moneyed class.

What’s in the best interest of the moneyed class is not in the best interest of the rest of us. That should be obvious to anyone who gives it even a second of consideration — how does the ability to have unchecked wealth and power in the top 1% benefit those of us who are struggling to pay for groceries?

It doesn’t. It never has. Yet, we continue to lean into that idea election after election in every western democracy. In fact, this self-destructive voting choice seems to be getting worse. If you’ll allow me a moment to directly address last night’s result, you are deluded if you think Donald Trump is going to pump the breaks on the type of unchecked capitalism that created the world that allowed him to become Donald fucking Trump.

Here’s the thing, though. People are catching on that something is off. Lots of people feel financially insecure and that unease is making them search for solutions. That search for a way out makes them vulnerable to charlatans offering them easy answers. That’s where the populist gains traction.

Put the mess to my south aside for a moment — as I touched on earlier, there is an ugly undercurrent to the situation there that does not allow a more detached evaluation of the environment that exists around the world right now. If you take that step back, what you’ll see is that there’s no positive choice for those who feel financially insecure by neoliberalism. The left (or what passes for it, anyway — the shift to the centre-right by the parties considered left-wing is a topic for another post) isn’t running on much more than a “don’t vote for the monsters” platform. There is no alternative vision that speaks to the unease, which drives a lot of people into the hands of those who are going negative.

“The left” has become the status quo in many people’s minds. They have become that because they are when it comes to economic issues. Nowhere is anyone challenging the neoliberal underpinnings of our economy. They aren’t giving voice to the very real economic unease people feel and instead are focused on identity politics and other social issues that just don’t resonate with the average person.

Yes, some people who vote for monsters do so because they identify with them. A certain percentage of voters yesterday are racist, homophobic and sexist. That’s undeniable. However, there’s not enough of them to carry the day. I truly believe that.

So, a significant amount of people voted for the monsters despite not sharing those (lack of) values. They do because they don’t view them as monsters. Instead, they see them as the path from a status quo that is not working for them.

To be clear, I think those people are tragically wrong. So obviously wrong. That doesn’t change the reality though and that reality is that they have been sucked into believing the lie.

So, what does the left have to do to reach them (because I believe they are reachable)?

It starts with actually being left. By inching further and further to the economic centre (and probably over it, if we’re being honest) the left has allowed right-wing populists to gain traction among those disillusioned with neoliberalism. It’s the ultimate irony: Voters angry over the economic theory that is a near religion to right-wing parties vote for those same right wing parties to express their dissatisfaction with that theory.

It’s absurd, but where is the alternative vision?

Because I sure as hell can’t find one.