American politics used to be based on the model of "Our plausible centrist is better than your plausible centrist."
Looking at Post-War Presidents, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon, Carter, Bush (senior), and Clinton all fit effortlessly into this pattern. With a little bit of oil, even Ronald Raegan and Bush (junior) can be made to fit the groove.
However, since that "golden age," on which much of the world's security was based, things have changed quite a bit.
Now the dominant principle of US politics is one group of voters rubbing the other group of voters' faces in the shit, so to speak.
This is essentially what Trump is, namely an attempt by the Republicans to rub the faces of the Democrats in the manure. More than anything else, more than any actual policies, Trump has become a form of performative anti-centre-leftism that is designed to mainly trigger the Libs. Actual politics hardly comes into it!
But this weird crap didn't just fall from the sky. It was caused by what was essentially a Democrat attempt to do the same, that is to gently massage the faces of their Republican opponents in a similar steaming pile of dung.
The Dems did that back in 2008 by choosing as their Presidential nominee the worst nightmare of White conservative Christian Republicans, an actual Black man who wasn't an "Uncle Tom" token candidate of the kind that both sets of voters were comfortable with.
Whatever Obama's merits or demerits as a politician and a human being, his main attraction to Dems in the primary season of 2008 was the delicious realisation that he had a chance to win and in so doing would trigger the fuck out of conservatives.
At first, the 2008 nomination was Hillary's for the taking and she even had the slightly triggering aspect, for conservatives at least, of being a woman. But, sadly for her, she was also a throwback to the old paradigm of "our plausible centrist is better than your plausible centrist." In 2008 that was not where the Dems were. After eight years of Bush (junior) and seven years of "forever wars," they were pissed and weren't content with playing that game anymore. They wanted to move onto the new game of rubbing their opponents' faces in "le merde."
Obama was the solution and so Hillary was quickly shunted aside.
But nothing is without consequences, and in 2016 and 2024 the Republicans were ready with their own massive shit sandwich to cram back into the face of their lib opponents. In fact, the 2024 election was a case of two-way traffic, with the Dems making a late switch to the mini-shit-sandwich of Kamala Harris.
So, what caused this climatic sea change in US politics that is now destabilising the globe?
The simple answer is the strain put on the US system by a group of Arabs with boxcutters crashing planes into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.
That's what caused President George W Bush, an already underpowered version of an "our plausible centrist is better than your plausible centrist" politician, to become something more toxic to America's centre-left and put the appetite in them for something to "reverse the triggernometry" at the next election.
After a brief dalliance with Hillary, they found their guy in a Black man who even came with the bonus of a "Muslamic-sounding" name. Polarised (and depoliticised) US politics hasn't looked back since.
The big questions now are whether the US can switch back to its old more stable model and, if not, where the new model leads.
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Now the dominant principle of US politics is one group of voters rubbing the other group of voters' faces in the shit, so to speak.
This is essentially what Trump is, namely an attempt by the Republicans to rub the faces of the Democrats in the manure. More than anything else, more than any actual policies, Trump has become a form of performative anti-centre-leftism that is designed to mainly trigger the Libs. Actual politics hardly comes into it!
But this weird crap didn't just fall from the sky. It was caused by what was essentially a Democrat attempt to do the same, that is to gently massage the faces of their Republican opponents in a similar steaming pile of dung.
The Dems did that back in 2008 by choosing as their Presidential nominee the worst nightmare of White conservative Christian Republicans, an actual Black man who wasn't an "Uncle Tom" token candidate of the kind that both sets of voters were comfortable with.
Whatever Obama's merits or demerits as a politician and a human being, his main attraction to Dems in the primary season of 2008 was the delicious realisation that he had a chance to win and in so doing would trigger the fuck out of conservatives.
At first, the 2008 nomination was Hillary's for the taking and she even had the slightly triggering aspect, for conservatives at least, of being a woman. But, sadly for her, she was also a throwback to the old paradigm of "our plausible centrist is better than your plausible centrist." In 2008 that was not where the Dems were. After eight years of Bush (junior) and seven years of "forever wars," they were pissed and weren't content with playing that game anymore. They wanted to move onto the new game of rubbing their opponents' faces in "le merde."
Obama was the solution and so Hillary was quickly shunted aside.
But nothing is without consequences, and in 2016 and 2024 the Republicans were ready with their own massive shit sandwich to cram back into the face of their lib opponents. In fact, the 2024 election was a case of two-way traffic, with the Dems making a late switch to the mini-shit-sandwich of Kamala Harris.
So, what caused this climatic sea change in US politics that is now destabilising the globe?
The simple answer is the strain put on the US system by a group of Arabs with boxcutters crashing planes into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.
That's what caused President George W Bush, an already underpowered version of an "our plausible centrist is better than your plausible centrist" politician, to become something more toxic to America's centre-left and put the appetite in them for something to "reverse the triggernometry" at the next election.
After a brief dalliance with Hillary, they found their guy in a Black man who even came with the bonus of a "Muslamic-sounding" name. Polarised (and depoliticised) US politics hasn't looked back since.
The big questions now are whether the US can switch back to its old more stable model and, if not, where the new model leads.
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Colin Liddell is the Chief Editor of Neokrat and the author of Interviews & Obituaries, a collection of encounters with the dead and the famous. Support his work by buying his book here (USA), here (UK), and here (Australia), or by taking out a paid subscription on his Substack.
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