.
"Indeed, the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 was promoted
by this intellectual group precisely in furtherance of the notion that
concepts such as “national culture” would become meaningless as a result
of immigrant cultural dilution. By the 1970s and 1980s, the objective had evolved to implant the idea that there was really no politics to modernity (Fukuyama’s End of History)
since all governance somehow had boiled down to technocracy: ensuring
effective liberal market functioning--a matter best left to experts. In political terms, the “clearing” of the mind’s inherited cultural
clutter was to be achieved by cultural wars of political correctness."...
11/12/2016, "Trump’s Win—A Rebuke to the Elites," Consortium News, Alastair Crooke. ("Alastair Crooke is a former British diplomat who was a senior
figure in British intelligence and in European Union diplomacy.")
"Donald Trump’s unlikely election is a Brexit-like blow to the global
elites who espoused an arrogant mix of neocon foreign policy and
neoliberal economics that has hurt many common citizens, says ex-British
diplomat Alastair Crooke."...
"There are few – very few – opportunities
for elected officials to challenge the status quo –especially
when Western centrist parties have patently conspired to offer voters
mere nuanced variants of the same “progressive,” liberal, globalized
agenda.
In short, there evidently has been a constituency building up, so
exasperated at the imperviousness of the elites to the true situation of
this constituency, that they want the status quo gone, by whomsoever’s hand is there. Whomsoever:
that is the point. It was never some sort of chief executive beauty
contest: Would Bernie Sanders have been an ideal President? Would Nigel
Farage have been one? Will Trump be able to deliver a new era? — we do
not know (but should not foreclose on that possibility). The Whomsoever aspect rather speaks to the depth of alienation that lay latent in American society.
But the message that is in danger of being obscured by the outsize
focus on the outsize personality of Mr. Trump is precisely that
the “discontents” at democracy, at cultural “identity” politics, at
globalization and its sufferings, will not simply disappear now. Mr.
Trump will succeed or fail, but the uprising
will persist in one form or another – and is likely to spread to other
parts of Europe, leaving the latter in turmoil and politically
incapacitated.
Profound Alienation
It represents a profound alienation. We should not expect any early return of the liberal world, should Mr. Trump somehow fail.
Nor should Mr. Trump be viewed as some sort of outlandish political
freak. In fact, he fits quite closely to one of the mainstream
orientations of American conservatism. It is an orientation that is, by
instinct, doubtful of grandiose schemes of political or social
re-engineering, preferring to take human nature as it is; it is more
inclined to focus on domestic needs, rather than uncertain foreign
adventures; is financially conservative; is not economically
determinist; and tends to see the family as the indispensable
building-block of society. It is a Zeitgeist that sees other countries
(say Russia or China) as normal countries with whom one should talk, and
to pursue common interests.
That Trump should be regarded as some bizarre oddity, rather than as
being in the line of Burke and thrice Presidential contender Pat Buchanan
(who admits to a certain paternity, as it were) – speaks more to the
success of the neoconservative hijack of American conservatism beginning
in the 1960s than reflects the historic spectrum of this intellectual
current.
One might say that the neoconservatives were never Conservative, in
the sense that neoliberals were never Liberal, in the traditional
understanding of these terms. What is new is that the
President-elect seems to have put together a new Republican constituency
of half the American electorate. And this new constituency is not just
one of “red-necks” (white, blue-collar workers). It has cut across
social classes and ethnic divisions. Even Wall Street traders
(supposedly aligned with the Clintons) reportedly were enthusiastically
yelling “lock her up” during Mrs. Clinton’s concession speech – and
college-educated women only gave Mrs. Clinton a 6 percent edge over
those who voted Trump.
It is possible
“that this election [originally] was intended to facilitate the
triumphant return of the neoconservative-neoliberal paradigm all wrapped
up in ‘new packaging.’ For various reasons, the decision was made to
assign this role to Hillary Clinton,” according to the Oriental Review.
Perhaps this was because she was viewed as well placed to fuse the
liberal-interventionist and the neoconservative trends to the Clintonite
“cultural identity politics” base – or possibly, simply because it was
“her turn” at the Presidency. If so, it has failed spectacularly."...
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