What if Trump voters were actually onto something that wasn't just fascism or racism?

I keep wondering what motivates Trump voters to be so apparently dumb and gullible.  How do they continue to support obvious authoritarianism and allow themselves to be manipulated?

I ask this because I don't honestly think they're actually cognitively deficient or foolish.  I suspect they are animated by a set of amorphic and ephemeral realities about the status quo of economic, political and social life.  Systemic critiques are hard and the Trump side has lacked for intellectual leadership.  Or perhaps it would be better to say that its best intellectual support is probably not ideologically aligned with free market capitalism.

Trump voters complain about globalism, immigration, political corruption, and a host of other culture and lifestyle issues which veer into racism and bigotry.  I think at the root of most of their complaints lies the core issue of income inequality and the secondary issues which income inequality enables.

Globalism.  What does it mean?  It's a bunch of things with varying levels of relation to international movement of people, goods, capital.  In terms of economics and income inequality it means low-skill jobs moving overseas and the decline of low-skill jobs domestically.  It means migrants moving to the US.  It means a certain level of cosmopolitan internationalism which seems to be opportunistic, self-serving and lacking in loyalty.

In many ways, globalism is a synergistic element of income inequality.  The movement of low-skilled jobs overseas is no doubt beneficial in some kind of economic sense, and it's been nearly impossible to find an academic economist who doesn't support it in terms of pure economics.  But gets the benefits?  Largely these have been captured by the owners of capital.  If you worked at a lawn mower plant in Ohio and they moved production overseas, you didn't get automatically moved into a better job.  The better jobs, if they were created at all, went to someone else, along with the increased profits from decreased factory labor.

Immigration -- the "incoming" element of globalism -- like offshoring low-skilled labor, also has its chorus of economists supporting its economic benefits.  Workers to do jobs "nobody else will do" (why isn't it "at pay nobody can live on"?), a rebirth of old neighborhoods, new forms of commerce, adding more people is good for economics.

However, it's also economically threatening.  Most immigrants are low skilled and come from poor areas with very low lifestyle expectations.  A flood of workers willing to accept less -- a lot less -- does not contribute to economic confidence.  In fact, it likely contributes to economic paranoia, as people who will accept less money for labor can seem like a conspiracy to drive down your income and lifestyle.  Even in the IT field there have been complaints about a fairly transparent use of H1-B visas as a means of suppressing labor costs in aspirational technology labor fields.  Like offshoring, this element of globalism delivers economic benefits captured by the few at the expense of the many.  Even if economists claim broad benefits to the economy as a whole, these benefits are intangible and ephemeral if your bank account isn't adding zeros at the end.

While the opposition to immigration often seems to have a racist tinge to it -- hostility to Latinos, for example.  Some of this I think can partly be explained by the upstream problems of income inequality.  As schools, healthcare systems, and governments try to adapt to immigrants, such as by supporting bilingual -- or even multilingual -- communications (as one example), people see limited resources being diluted.  A slice of a small pie is getting smaller.  The people who pay most of the taxes are making less money, agreeing to tax cuts or not increasing taxes, reducing the pool of money available for services.  Without income inequality?  Maybe taxes go up slightly or maybe the services are generally good enough to begin with that people feel like they can be shared without losing access or seeing them degraded.

Even though its a tiny part of the global phenomenon, especially for Americans, the idea of easy global movement is mostly a benefit for the affluent.  And to the extent that ordinary American see the affluent making business deals in Shanghai, vacationing in France, they see an elite that cares first about their own gains and their own luxuries.  "Rootless cosmopolitanism" has some ugly anti-Semitic roots, but it remains an apt means of capturing an elite mindset which is loyal only to itself and lacking in solidarity with national or ideological identity.

Political corruption is -- or should be -- an obvious symptom of economic inequality.  Economic elites capturing government regulation, rulemaking and leadership naturally steer decision making in their favor.  Decisions which almost always result in further economic advantages for those already advantaged economically.  It appears even more insidious when the political alignment of those in control seems tightly coupled to globalism.   Politics seems to be a cynical game of personal advantage and spoils which go to rich benefactors and the capital class.

It's also a spiraling phenomenon, as each incremental increase in benefits to the wealthy reduces the voices and opportunities to slow the decline in income inequality while simultaneously increasing the advantages of the economic elite, further pulling politicians into their orbit.  And more often than anyone would like, it feels like an overt conspiracy when illegal bribery, kickbacks and favoritism are publicized, let alone the huge flow of campaign contributions.

Even domestic racism seems ultimately driven by income inequality.  Like areas with high immigration, most parts of the US are constrained on taxation, which means they're constrained on spending.  Social welfare spending in the US may be large in absolute terms, but its otherwise been gutted and discredited.  This drives social malaise and crime, particularly in its most disadvantaged populations.  This in turn drives hostility to those disadvantaged populations, who are seen only as criminals.

I think ultimately the Trump voter is really complaining about income inequality. Their complaints are unfocused, misguided and tainted with a crass and crude ideology, misdiagnosing their own complaints with racism and misguided hostility.

Ironically, their ideological adhesin to capitalism and free markets has almost certainly blinded them to the true root cause of their problem.  It also contributes to outcomes which are worse for them -- opposing social welfare, public spending, and taxation of the rich.

They say the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was getting people to believe he didn't exist, and in many ways this represents what Republicans have done to Trump voters.  They have used their Americanism against them to cause them to believe that the solutions for their issues are what they oppose, and the things that drive income inequality are actually to their benefit.

I keep wondering if a leader will come along and harness their discontent in some kind of constructive manner and show them that doubling down on more income inequality driven policies and politicians is only further worsening their problems.

The problems of police violence -- rooted in labor organization?

Much has been written about the problems of police violence, police militarization and lack of police accountability.  One thing that seems to be missing from these analyses is a question about the basic class basis of police officers and the types of labor organization and policies that reinforce them.

Policing has long been largely a blue collar occupation.  Until very recently, few places required much, if any, higher education, and when it was required it was often 2 year degrees tailored for policing in "criminal justice" or similar fields oriented towards classroom vocational education for police work.

Thus the actual job and labor organization of police departments has been the kind of labor organization common to blue collar work -- rigid, central authority imposing complex work rules designed to extract maximum work effort for minimum pay.  Layered on top of this has been a paramilitary command structure borrowed from the military, which exacerbates these hierarchies and makes for increased conflict between labor and management.

Over time, this has resulted in the unionization of police officers.  Most of the public isn't aware that much of the business of police labor unions is little different than the business of non-police labor unions -- improving working conditions, salaries and protecting workers from exploitation by management.

Over time as policing has become more politically controversial and become tied to issues of racial equity and other political pressures, these unions have also served as bulwarks protecting individual officers from the political challenges of police work.

This mix of essentially workplace-rights advocacy and political advocacy winds up creating a fairly powerful situation for the police union and its leadership and winds up empowering police unions.  On one hand, reasonable police officers with neutral political stances may support more politically radical union leaders because these same leaders are strong advocates for pro-labor policies.

What you end up with is what we have more or less now, a police union that is firmly entrenched and has gained workplace rights originally meant as labor rights now serving as a significant barrier in enforcing policing conduct standards.

I wonder if the solution, then, is changing the labor model for police work.  Essentially, treat it as a white collar job, where workers default to a broader and more sympathetic set of workplace rules.  This would possible attract a higher caliber of worker (fewer "blue collar" employee types) and less push for stringently negotiated work rules for regular labor issues (sick time, time off, etc).  Now you're in a position to impose more policing conduct rules because they are not hamstrung by contractually negotiated ordinary labor policies.

All the sex scandals

It's quite difficult to wrap your head around the sexual scandal epidemic.  It's really shocking to hear that some men have been literally assaulting women for years and getting away with it.

I can't help but get the feeling, though, that this isn't about some new epidemic of forcible rape and many of the cases don't really represent that.  Take Matt Lauer for example -- one of the recent exposes was by a co-worker who said she had been called to his office and then had sex with him.  She did not portray this as forcible rape.

In thinking about this, I ask myself what she was thinking in that situation.  Was the situation so coercive in regard to her career and status within the network or show's production that saying no was the equivalent to getting fired?  I think that currently that this is being accepted prima facie in every case, but is it true?

I wonder what alternative narratives work in this situation -- you're in Matt Lauer's office, and he starts suggesting you have sex right then and there in his office.  Is there a chance that in the moment this was actually an appealing idea in some way?  He's attractive, he's important and having sex in the office has an erotic appeal all its own.

Bottom line:  Is there an element to this situation that implies some affirmative agency on the woman's part?  That beyond mere "consent", that some element of the act that took place was desired?  Not that it was solely desired without some doubts, but that desire outweighed doubt?

She claimed to have felt bad afterward, even going so far as to have contacted her estranged husband to tell him about it.  That in itself is a strange outcome, with an entire laundry list of conflicting and hard to fathom motivations -- typically, someone you divorce isn't your first choice for a sexual confessional.

The theory I have that seems to explain this situation better than anything is that women often approach sexual situations with conflicted emotions, even in normal situations involving long-term and familiar partners.  I'll go one step further and imply that women are often lacking a specific innate drive for sexual contact.  Their choice to engage in sexual activity isn't pre-defined by some erotic urge, it is something that arises out of a situational context of emotions in the time and place which directly precede the sexual act.

Women who are married or in long-term marriage-type relationships can all describe situations where their husbands initiate sexual activity that they themselves don't share as a defining motivation or desire.  They allow it to proceed because of complex interlocking motivations.  A sense of marital obligation, as an effect of intimate stimulation leading to erotic desire, some kind of transactional reward for their partner's contribution to their relationship, or as an act that will further their partner's commitment to the relationship.

None of this is to state that women do not at times have an innate erotic drive for sexual contact.  Defining a woman's sexuality as always muted or without an affirmative drive isn't true, but I suspect that it is more often true than false and often more driven by complex higher-order goals or even less conscious reproductive urges.

So when Matt Lauer approaches his coworker in his office for sex, I suspect she enters his office without any erotic desire and her consent is derived by a set of situationally emergent emotions.  Perhaps she has a latent sense of unsatisfied sexual urges, Matt's looks, money, power and general charisma make him an appealing partner, the practical situation of a sexual encounter in an office has an appeal.  But this is balanced by negative emotions -- Matt's marital status, the lack of an ongoing emotional relationship with him, the general and specific ethical problems of engaging in sex with a coworker in the office, and perhaps some doubt that Matt has a specific interest in her and is only really interested in her sexuality.

Because she gave consent at the time, it would seem that the positive appeal outweighed the negative appeal in the moment.  She had sex with him in his office.  And only after did the negative aspects of this encounter outweigh the positive aspects.

The thing I find troubling about this and what makes it such a specifically interesting example is that women seem to be achieving an interesting change in sexual dynamics.  Sexual consent is moving from an irrevocable choice which defines the morality of the encounter to a choice which can be revoked post-hoc by a women's later emotional re-assessment of the situation.

I think in many of the cases in the latest string of sexual scandals (excluding those which meet conventional definitions of sexual assault) we are seeing women enforcing consent on a retroactive basis -- "I consented at the time, but upon reflection, my negative emotions about the encounter now outweigh my positive emotions and I retract my consent and believe I was wronged."

It's an open question whether this is positive potential change or a negative change.

On the positive side, perhaps women should be allowed some kind of moral authority to retroactively alter their consent.  Perhaps in a world where this was given and accepted, men would approach sexual situations with women with more trepidation and less opportunism.  They would participate in fewer sexual encounters which have exist in an atmosphere of emotional and motivation ambiguity.

On the negative side, however, it seems obvious it can lead to a wide range of potential injustices.  Women can use not just the retraction of consent but the threat of retraction as a means of manipulating men.  Is it remotely fair or just to change yes into no after the fact and expect punishment or compensation for a change of emotional feeling?

Ultimately this may be a stage in the phase change of the ongoing evolution of gender relations driven by both economic and cultural changes.  The previous or initial change may have been that women *do* have a sexual will and are able to engage in free will sexual choices.  This morphed into a sense of obligation, that women *must* engage in sexual activity in order to claim their independence and free will, putting them in a no-win situation of claiming liberated equality but engaging in sex they, in the final analysis, don't really want.  Rejecting these sexual situations results in refuting their liberation and independence.

This new phase of evolution may be women redefining liberation and independence by redefining sexuality generally more on their terms and better reflecting a kind of emotional ambivalence towards it and forcing men to accept this.

It's difficult to understand what kind of male response this shift might have.  It's possible that men may reject this, and seek to exclude women from their social spheres, ultimately denying women economic power and political authority.

Donald Trump and the Uncanny Valley

Many tech-savvy people are aware of the phrase "the uncanny valley", a term which describes a chart of perceived familiarity on the vertical axis (usually described as attraction/revulsion) versus human likeness.  The phrase was coined to describe a paradoxical reaction to synthetic human likenesses where as they become more human-like, their familiarity/likability actually decreases.  The "valley" is the low point on the graph where they have quite a lot of human features but people react negatively to them because they seem less real.  Thus "Robby the Robot" from Lost in Space is actually perceived more positively than a mannequin -- the robot is less like a real human, but despite the mannequin's likeness to an actual human, it has a blankness and unfamiliarity which makes it somewhat creepy.

What's this got to do with Donald Trump?

Donald Trump has basically been in the news for months, pretty much every time he opens his mouth and comes up with a new policy pronouncement, from building a wall along the Mexican border, deporting all the illegal aliens, to barring all Muslims from entering the United States.

Much has been made of late in the media trying to explain Trump's appeal and his seeming inability to lose support despite the nature of his statements so greatly violating many American political shibboleths.  My sense is that it's less the specific appeal of his so-called plans (border wall, excluding Muslims) than it is a desire to embrace anything other than the conventional policies of either party.

And this is where the uncanny valley comes into play.  Donald Trump is kind of the Robby the Robot of politics and the policies of the establishment (on both sides of the aisle) are deep into the uncanny valley.  Trump isn't anything like reasonable (or human, to follow the metaphor) but the policies of the establishment are so crafted, so delicate and so reliant on their own internal logic that the harder they try to make them "more human" the less real they become.

On the issues Trump has highlighted -- specifically immigration and terrorism -- the establishment has held positions that really defy common sense readings and which they have worked really hard to suppress dissent and questioning.

Take immigration, for example.  The business right holds that immigration is good for the economy.  It represents needed labor for jobs "Americans won't do" and they have legions of free-trade economists who step in and claim everyone benefits from the economic growth these new immigrants provide.  The left mostly echoes these broad-brush economic benefits while also claiming a kind of humanitarian mission to accept "your tired, your hungry, &c.".

Both left and right have decried opposition to immigration, the left most vociferously criticizing opposition as representing a kind of racial bigotry against immigrants who are most usually non-white.  The right is more prone to echoing more technical economic arguments that claim opponents are against free trade or advancing American business.

Neither side of the establishment coin brooks any dissension on these issues and neither seems to address any of the obvious criticisms.  Basic, high-school economics suggests that flooding a market with a commodity -- in this case, labor -- tends to push down the price of that commodity.  So ordinary Americans might reasonably ask "Doesn't this mean I'm likely to get replaced in my job or not get a raise because there is an immigrant who will work for less?"  "What does a flood of people who don't speak English mean for my schools?"  "Will these mostly poor people be needing government assistance and what does this mean for my taxes?"

By and large, Americans are being told the policies are real, legitimate, good for them, etc, but they can't quite accept them as real -- the more they are explained, justified, rationalized, the more these policies sink into the uncanny valley and the more suspicious Americans are of both the policy and the establishment that promotes them.

And this is where Trump -- as unreal as he is -- steps in, and despite his lack of polish and lack of resemblance to a normal politician, he is more relateable and familiar even if his specific policies seem extreme or bizarre.  Trump is outside the uncanny valley.