Yascha is absolutely right that it is time for Democrats look into the mirror and ask some hard questions. However, the soul searching needs to be expanded beyond the political establishment and into the ruling class in general, including the institutions that Persuasion is associated and allied with. I have read columns after columns by Persuation that skirt the deeper issues beyond the loss of trust in ruling elites by average Americans. None has been willing to look into the mirror themselves. It is simply not enough to bemoan the loss of high trust American society of yesterday without diagnozing the why and explore the how to restore it. It is simply not enough to protect democracy without understanding what democracy is for. The social and cultural reality of our time require us to reflect more deepely and innovate more daringly than the rulign elites have heretheto been willing to. This election should be a wake-up call for the elites if they wish to stay relevant.
Entirely agree. However history should warn us that the high elite ruling class whenever they have become so detached from the earthy realities of the majority, do not wake up. They simply double down on abuses of their power.
- i think it’s fair to characterize my family as historically center right or maybe even right.
- Everyone went never Trump or democrats when Trump emerged, except one.
- One family member - my brother - voted for Trump and was adamantly pro-Trump. It caused a pretty deep rift among the family and especially siblings.
- My wife is from Lviv and moved to the USA at a young age after the Soviet Union fell. They were fleeing violence from the early version of the FSB. This violence culminated with a machine gun being held to my wife’s head when she was five years old.
- This can get deeply personal really quickly. And it did, even with a brother.
- There was a year or more - maybe two - where I did not speak to my brother (and vice versa).
- I genuinely believe that many of the reasons I voted for Biden ended up not being honored. As a lawyer, I found the abuses of the democratic processes to often be just as egregious as Trump’s — they were often just more subtle and less obvious to anyone that did not have a close eye on the federal agencies and did not have experienced context for what is normal and what is decidedly not normal. Was it as bad as the worse of Trump’s abuses? Maybe not. But it often seemed far more extensive. I don’t know if this was Biden or just people slipping stuff past an old man who couldn’t monitor everything. But it deeply disturbed a lot of liberal leaning lawyers I know.
- This deeply angered me because it’s not what I voted for. I still respected the Biden, particularly in light of his masterclass performance on Ukraine.
- Nonetheless, I spent these past few years seeking to learn. As part of trying to restore my relationship with my brother, I worked hard to try to understand Trump’s appeal.
- You know what? Trump is often remarkably on point in so many ways. But this is a “vibe” or “intuitive” level understanding rather than the kind of deep policy knowledge that most of us are accustomed to in leaders.
- Thing is…Trump’s instincts identified a lot of problems that a lot of people who were engaged in group think on fundamental issues just missed or dismissed or didn’t talk about.
- Here’s an example: Globalism. It’s clear that in the aggregate it’s good for the USA. But - as a nation and society - we didn’t take its localized costs seriously enough.
- How many decades did one administration after the other spend oxygen talking about job retraining to help the rust belt out? But no one really worried about the total absence of middle class jobs in the rust belt to replace the jobs that were lost.
- The expectation - clearly - is that people would move to find their new job and opportunity. Except that there is absolutely no data to suggest this is a remotely reasonable expectation. Most people spend most of their life living very close to their birthplace and if they move away, they tend to move back.
- At best our approaches to address the localized costs of globalism were largely doomed to fail. At worst, we never really cared.
- Many Medicare and Medicaid budget cuts that occurred over the years were just screwing hospitals by discounting what the government paid them. As a result, hospitals receive payments that are below their cost of providing care. There are areas of the country that predominantly rely on Medicare and Medicaid. This quickly drove these hospitals under, resulting in dramatically reduced availability to healthcare, shortened lifespans and had the additional benefit of gutting what was often the primary employer in the area. In short, it causes concentrated devastation.
- This kind of so-called budget cut became big-time in 1997. But the two parties do go back to this trick from time to time.
- The area in question that is most affected? You guessed it: Trump Country. This is one of the reasons why rural care is abysmal in the USA.
- Yes there is frustration about shouldering defense for NATO without much help. But I am not sure how deep that frustration really runs.
- I do not think people fully understand the extent to which we also subsidize the healthcare for the globe.
- The WTO is supposed to protect patent rights. i.e., the monopoly pricing power afforded by patent rights. Except, after agreeing to this construct, every other country runs around and puts in place a single payor system or other mechanism to cap prices or regulate prices. And apparently these devices that gut the purpose of creating worldwide patent protections are not a problem under the WTO because it’s domestic policy.
- So who is left holding the bag? The U.S. The sole sucker left supporting a free market structure designed to fund R&D into much needed pharmaceuticals. This kind of research is incredibly expensive and even the U.S. buckles under the strain of paying for the planet’s pharmaceutical R&D costs. It’s also not just prescription costs. Because drug costs are the primary driver in other - more material components- such as inpatient / outpatient care and in long-term care. In these kinds of context, it’s hidden as a hard to find sub-bullet, such as doctor administered drug. Or some such. But it’s a huge driver in the cost of US healthcare differential vs other countries.
- The numbers here are staggering and people would be frothing at the mouth if they fully understood the cost internalized by the U.S. to keep research going for the globe.
- But while people may not fully understand the ins and outs, 1/3rd of Americans have stopped taking their prescription drugs because they can’t afford them. People do understand this kind of stuff. And they do understand being unable to retire because it requires saving an exorbitant amount just to die with grace and dignity.
- They know something’s different and this isn’t how it used to be.
- In addition; this also impacts American companies. Where did American manufacturing go? Well. It didn’t have to go anywhere. Except part of the WTO is that there aren’t supposed to be subsidies. Except lots of countries can quite cheaply nationalize healthcare and they don’t have to worry about a socialist reform breaking the market because the U.S. is there to keep the market functioning. All the benefits of socialism with none of the risks or costs of human propensity to break the market with a command and control approach.
- The kicker? Their companies now operate without the cost of healthcare as an expense. BOOM. They can immediately produce high quality products at lower prices than American manufacturing.
- All of a sudden there is this big sucking sound in the middle class as American companies have to move manufacturing offshore to stay alive.
- Huh? So the U.S. subsidizes the world and supports the WTO while the world turns around and plants a big knife in the U.S. back. And somehow this is all fine under the WTO? Okie dokie.
- But the U.S. retaliating economically for this kind of behavior? That’s a problem under the WTO. Because of course it is.
- I don’t know that Trump fully understands this stuff. He certainly hasn’t messaged it well. But this is really only part of the picture and it’s pretty god damned egregious.
-People often aren’t going to be able to figure out exactly how they are getting screwed. But they are also often intelligent enough to intuitively know when they are getting screwed.
- That’s America First. That’s MAGA. That’s why this movement is here to stay until things get fixed in a way that is more equitable for Americans.
- When I worked through a lot of those stuff, well, suddenly voting for Trump seemed a whole lot less crazy.
- Do I like Trump? No. Have I voted for Trump? No. But the Trump movement - as a political and economic movement devoid of its cult of personality - makes a helluva lot of sense.
- It’s time for the world to pay their own way. The U.S. is done doing it. Honestly, everyone is
lucky there is a pacifist element to isolationism bc this quickly sends steam flying out of the ears.
- Perhaps at first it was about the Cold War. Then maybe it was all in pursuit of establishing of a new world order of peace and utopia. Funded by America because otherwise we would never get there. Kind of sounds like that well-intentioned adventure in Somalia that had nothing to do with foreign policy interests and ended with Blackhawk Down.
- At any rate, I think the U.S. is done subsidizing the leisure and budget flexibility of other nations. Rightfully so.
Incredibly well said... wish we could bottle your thoughts here. and send them to all points, north and south, east and west. And to every elitist that screams about the cost of America's healthcare compared to other countries; you said it best, America subsidizes it!
It’s pretty audacious when you further realize that every time Congress is talking about this issue - real quiet like, lest the American people absolutely go berserk when they figure it all out - the foreign governments send in the big pharmaceutical companies from their country and actively lobby the USA: “Oh No! You can’t do what every else does because then this whole house of cards collapses and there will be insufficient levels of R&D & if people want to continue enjoying the current (rapid) of pharmaceutical advance, they’ll actually have to - you know - pay for it. In which case we won’t be able to have our annual 3 month holidays and other extravagancies.”
And this works. Because the USA is quite seriously concerned that if it doesn’t continue being the sucker, it all falls apart.
And then the USA somehow has gotten itself guilt tripped into this “health equity” concept. I am fine with talking about this domestically. But internationally? This is mind-boggling. Healthy equity? Anything more advanced than Tylenol is a gift from the USA. But in furtherance of “health equity” we eat higher costs for really expensive drugs and shop out some of our supply to lesser developed countries?
Ok. Look. I am ok with doing this if we are quite conscious about the multiple stacks of largesse being gifted by the USA to other countries.
But. Jesus H. Christ. No one should ever feel guilty about saying: Wait until we get our supply and pay what the medicine costs. Because we have already subsidized this cost.
But now that the USA is kinda sorta waking up to this, you see countries trying to get out of the “worst offenders” bucket. For instance, Germany is trying to edge up to around 2/3rds of our prescription costs (which is only part of the issue).
Honestly. This is insane. Why are we subsidizing the largest economy in Europe? The economy that can’t fund their own national defense unless they see that Russia might run over them and the USA may let it happen. And then, sure they may drip feed defense spending a little. Eventually.
And then you realize this is happening all over the planet?
It is absolutely crazy making.
Insane.
If Trump could articulate this message he would win by 15%.
Yascha is correct. His book is correct. All that the Democratic Party needed to do was offer a candidate that was competent and moderate. The list of don’ts is long. Don’t warn about threats to democracy while undemocratically selecting a candidate. Don’t lie about the president’s health. Don’t be too cozy with the spy agencies. Don’t abuse the justice system. Don’t spend like maniacs and load future generations with debt. In short, just be less of a threat than Donald Trump. The fact that the managerial class cannot do what should be the easiest task in the world justifies mistrust of them.
I think the existence of Persuasion (and The Free Press and The Dispatch and others) will probably do more than any specific advice you offer. You, by your talents and training, seem to be a proposer of Grand Theories. You handicap the fore- and back-sliding of Democracy at the level of nations and the whole world. I sometimes find these things fascinating and explanatory -- depending on the quality of the ideas and the writing -- but how often are they actually predictive? Not often, I think.
My view is closer to ground-level and what's missing here is sensible information. The problem is not the lack of trust in our sense-making institutions. I don't want or need to take their word for anything, I just want them to do their jobs of making sense, leaving me to decide based on my lying eyes and common sense how skeptical to be about what they're saying. That they have abandoned that vocation for activism -- on all sides of the political spectrum -- is to my mind our biggest structural problem and why these new publications give me a modicum of hope.
I'll try to explain a bit better, though as I indicated, I'm not much for Grand Theories. I have no need to "trust" the media or the CDC in the sense of considering them authoritative. I would like to trust them like I trust my grocer to not intentionally short-change me. I'll check the restaurant bill every-so-often for items that I didn't order, but since I rarely find any I can save time and effort by generally accepting them as is. It's a Bayesian thing -- every time an assumption proves right or wrong affects my confidence in it going forward. That's why at this point I wouldn't trust the New York Times for baseball scores (if they publish baseball scores and if I read them). I'll listen to the CDC and read the Great Barrington Declaration and, taking into account the arguments and the backgrounds of the authors and the attitude that comes across and whatever else I perceive, decide what to do (I'll also take into account the gravity of the decision, the likelihood that I can figure it out and the effort needed to do so). I don't have the desire to outsource my decision making or to believe I can know things that I really can't.
That's why I wrote here recently of my skepticism towards your democracy-handicapping and have written similarly about other cases of people getting all worked up over things of whose truth and significance they have no reason to be confident -- which description covers at least 95% of our political discourse. Perhaps if the sense-makers were to rediscover the value of professional ethics and personal probity (i.e. trustworthiness), we could dial all that down.
Her makes us think, and is not afraid of looking at and discussing both sides of issues. That, in itself, is remarkable in this age of "activism media" as you put it so well. Thank-you, enjoyed reading your response.
The NYTimes does indeed publish baseball scores -- in their offshoot publication, The Athletic -- for which they make you pay extra. That seems like a perfect allegory for the entire overall situation!
As always, a clearheaded take from Yascha Mounk. We really do have the mistakes of the Democratic party to thank for these results - another four years of Trump's incorrigible narcissism, his vile, hateful discourse and no doubt attempts to corrupt our democratic institutions, with congress behind him. I hope that, this time around, the Democratic party will learn from its mistakes and start running candidates and campaigns that actually inspire a majority of Americans again and align with their common-sense values. There are so many Americans who voted for Trump who would have been happy to vote for a Democrat instead, if only the Democrats hadn't made themselves so unelectable. (For the record, I voted Democrat down the ballot but wrote in alternatives for Pres/VP because I saw Harris for what she was, a Trump enabler).
I agree completely with your essay. I feel that the Democratic party, along with many of the most respected institutions of the country, has been captured by an extremist fringe of the cultural left. I hope that Trump's victory leads liberals to recognize the threat posed by their own identitarian fringe.
I think you're right that the American academic and professional elite were less resistant to the tyranny of political correctness that triggered the loss of trust you highlight than their European counterparts, but this is partly due to the sclerotic paralysis of European institutions -- they just CAN'T change as fast and as recklessly as the American ones (unfortunately) did. But there is another component to this that you omit, and that is probably at least as important as the woke stuff. That is the degree of just plain ignorance in the American public more generally, which far exceeds the degree of ignorance in any developed country. The American school system is a complete disgrace, but that isn't an independent variable, it's autocorrelated. The institution as a whole (including textbook publishers, teachers' colleges, unions, etc.) homeostatically resists all concerted efforts -- of which there have been many -- to raise its educational standards.
This is because unlike Japan or any European country, the US is and always has been, from early in the 19th century if not before, a peasant country; the overwhelming proportion of immigration came and still comes from the peasant strata of European (and now worldwide) societies. I don't think this election (or the whole trajectory leading to it that you describe) can be understood in isolation from this particular aspect of American exceptionalism -- which underlies BOTH the woke excesses that triggered the loss of trust AND the Trumpian overreaction to them.
Oh, please. Mounk neglects to factor in the money poured in by billionaire technocrats such as Peter Thiel, the lies of right-wing media who, for many deliberately ignorant Trump voters, is their only source of information, and Russian bomb threats at polling stations, which may have cost thousands of votes. Don't blame the Democrat party, or any party, for that matter. Parties can only attempt to persuade, not control. The majority of voters exercised free will and voted for fascism, perhaps ignorantly. We may not have another chance in 4 years. Democracy may be gone.
Well said, Yascha. The wound to the Democrats is largely self-inflicted, and we are all paying the price for their distorted perception of reality. All week long I have heard journalists and commentators on NPR continue with their distorted perception of reality, many of them labeling half the country as fascist. It is the water they all swim in. I fear that they won't take an honest look in the mirror; they will not explore their assumptions and biases, and they will not practice what they preach. I remain a proud liberal, but I left the Democratic Party quite a while ago.
The problem is that the old dichotomy of right/left is no longer sufficient or explanatory. Are woke left? They think they are, but what is the connection between them and traditional Marxism? Is Trump a rightist? No more so than Chavez. Even the opposition of populism/democracy no longer works. Trump's sweeping victory is, in a way, a triumph of people's will over the elite institutions. We need to rethink the entire mapping of politics. And perhaps we need to re-embrace elements of populism that the woke left has discarded, such as patriotism, nationalism, and color-blindness.
Thank you for calling out the refusal for so many to step outside of their own political silos. I could see this cultural division in US public discourse dangerously deepening in 2000/2001. At that time the silencing of anyone who raised questions about where the US was headed, from any political background, was both self righteous and fierce.
How much of this conflict and division is rooted in unresolved historical injustices and how much in present day hyper capitalist’s imposed social iniquities remains a challenge to analyse.
The necessary cause was the toxicity of the Democratic brand to many voters, toxic to the point that we are not competitive at all in many states and have finally frittered away the Blue Wall. The Democratic chattering has devolved into the admonishing class and can find no better explanations for political failure than systemic racism, sexism, with transphobia bringing up the rear. The sufficient causes were neglect of the porous border to the point of demonizing anyone who was concerned about it, and inflation, which soured people on economic policies that have in fact seemingly given us the will o' the wisp of the soft landing and increased chip production via industrial policy. Put these necessary and sufficient causes together, and the rest of the factors are footnotes, interesting and motivational immaterial, but footnotes. Footnotes such as Harris' bungling of the "what would you have done differently from Biden" question on The View, and the outlandish (it swayed 2.7% of voters who viewed it to Trump in internal tests also verified by the Harris campaign) "trans surgeries for prisoners at your expense" ad.
As usual, I love reading your thoughts. As I've said in the past, I may not agree with all of them BUT I respect the points of view. I agree with many of the above points you make. I've said this to you before, Americans are voting for Trump because they completely distrust the media and elites, PERIOD. America is a land of the "moderate middle road". And they don't need to be condescended too by the east coast and Hollywood elites as well as the media. But the liberal elites will never understand that as they cannot be wrong. I hope Trump does what he says without going "scorched earth". I trust America will be fine. But I know as well as see today, that the media and elites are blaming everyone but the ones in the mirror... As you said so well. Yascha, they have lost the pulse of America, I do not believe they have the guts to look in the mirror. Thank-you.
"A small cadre of extreme activists obsessed with an identitarian vision of the world—a vision that pretends to be left-wing but in many ways parallels the tribalist worldview that has historically characterized the far-right"
The Left has always had an identitarian, victim-victimizer approach to society. They view the poor as victims, and the wealthy as oppressors. The Nazi party viewed the volk as victims of the wealthy oppressor Jewish class. If you read Marx's On the Jewish Question, it makes clear that he perceives Jews as members of the oppressor class; please re-think the above statement.
While I agree with much of this article, to my mind it fails to consider what I think to be the essential problem here. America has just elected to the presidency, for the first time in our history, a man who has long since proven to be utterly disdainful of the democratic process, the Constitution of the United States, and the rule of law.
To do so, for whatever reason that any one of us may find sufficiently compelling is to deny the very idea of America. Our failure here is that we have failed, as a nation, to educate ourselves and our children to the nature of the country we were founded to be.
That portions of our founding ethos were flawed cannot be questioned, but the basic purpose of the nation the Founders created was to discover if ‘We the People’ could together find enough of the courage, the honesty, the understanding, the tolerance, the compassion, the wisdom, the humor, the hope, and the sheer common sense to rule ourselves from the bottom up. That we have signally failed to do, and so we have elected a man who has never in his public life shown any of those characteristics. No amount of excusing any one of us simply because we are unhappy with our lot in life is sufficient.
As Americans we were promised only the chance to maintain the great idea of America - to ask, as John F Kennedy reminded us, not what our country can do for us, but what we can do for our country. In electing Donald Trump we are asking our country to promise to do something for us without doing anything for the preservation our country’s great promise, That is the nature of our failure.
"America has just elected to the presidency, for the first time in our history, a man who has long since proven to be utterly disdainful of the democratic process, the Constitution of the United States, and the rule of law."
They elected someone who was open about it, but just the latest in a long string of people who are actually disdainful of the democratic process. I think you wildly underestimate how sick ordinary people were of 'meet the new boss, same as the old boss'. I think part of his appeal is that he is too stupid and incompetent to actually get anything done, which is a bonus if you believe that the ratchet only ever moves one way, regardless of who is nominally in charge.
Well, let’s look at the presidents I’ve known. Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, two George Bushes, Barak O’Bama, Joe Biden, Donald Trump. Hard to imagine a group of men so ill defined as ‘new boss same as the old boss.’
In any case, people who blame politicians for their unhappiness always forget that ‘we the people’ put them there. As the cartoon character Pogo once noted, “We have met the enemy, and they is us."
God know how Trump will govern, but it is true that the Democratic Party needs a serious moment of self -reflection. Apart from specific errors such as Biden deciding to run again (and perhaps selecting Kamala Harris as VP in the first place), the party needs to go deep into the reasons that so many Americans voted for Trump despite his divisive behavior and rhetoric. Why are so many voting groups (working class, women, minorities, etc.) trending right? Besides the big issues (mentioned often), the economy and immigration, there are also cultural issues that likely engaged specific groups of voters: 1. Identity politics that forces people toward tribalism and promotes views that the white race is inherently racist. 2. Recent acts of antisemitism badly managed by those in authority. 3. Transgendered athletes’ rights that force young women athletes to compete against former men. 4. Fear of Asian Americans that their children will be discriminated against when they apply to competitive colleges. 5. Fear of young white men that they will be discriminated against in job application in favor of women, minorities or gays. 6. Push to defund the police which resulted in a rise in crime and inability of cities to hire enough police. 7. The wokism and cancel culture that has existed for some time not only in universities but in the publishing industry and in the media. 8. Abortion which proved not be such a big benefit for the Democrats as many individual states pass laws to protect abortion. 9. The argument that America is an oppressive, racist society promoted by the 1619 Project, certain authors, professors and others. I am sure that there are many other issues that trouble specific voting groups and deep analysis of voter opinions will ferret these out. In general, I would say that as long as the Democratic Party allows its ideologically progressive faction to influence the party, it likely to experience more trouble at the ballot box.
Yascha is absolutely right that it is time for Democrats look into the mirror and ask some hard questions. However, the soul searching needs to be expanded beyond the political establishment and into the ruling class in general, including the institutions that Persuasion is associated and allied with. I have read columns after columns by Persuation that skirt the deeper issues beyond the loss of trust in ruling elites by average Americans. None has been willing to look into the mirror themselves. It is simply not enough to bemoan the loss of high trust American society of yesterday without diagnozing the why and explore the how to restore it. It is simply not enough to protect democracy without understanding what democracy is for. The social and cultural reality of our time require us to reflect more deepely and innovate more daringly than the rulign elites have heretheto been willing to. This election should be a wake-up call for the elites if they wish to stay relevant.
Entirely agree. However history should warn us that the high elite ruling class whenever they have become so detached from the earthy realities of the majority, do not wake up. They simply double down on abuses of their power.
True. They need to be replaced. I think Trump already has a plan or at least is formulating one. Here is my take of it: https://open.substack.com/pub/yansong/p/american-industrialization-30?r=o1gg5&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
- i think it’s fair to characterize my family as historically center right or maybe even right.
- Everyone went never Trump or democrats when Trump emerged, except one.
- One family member - my brother - voted for Trump and was adamantly pro-Trump. It caused a pretty deep rift among the family and especially siblings.
- My wife is from Lviv and moved to the USA at a young age after the Soviet Union fell. They were fleeing violence from the early version of the FSB. This violence culminated with a machine gun being held to my wife’s head when she was five years old.
- This can get deeply personal really quickly. And it did, even with a brother.
- There was a year or more - maybe two - where I did not speak to my brother (and vice versa).
- I genuinely believe that many of the reasons I voted for Biden ended up not being honored. As a lawyer, I found the abuses of the democratic processes to often be just as egregious as Trump’s — they were often just more subtle and less obvious to anyone that did not have a close eye on the federal agencies and did not have experienced context for what is normal and what is decidedly not normal. Was it as bad as the worse of Trump’s abuses? Maybe not. But it often seemed far more extensive. I don’t know if this was Biden or just people slipping stuff past an old man who couldn’t monitor everything. But it deeply disturbed a lot of liberal leaning lawyers I know.
- This deeply angered me because it’s not what I voted for. I still respected the Biden, particularly in light of his masterclass performance on Ukraine.
- Nonetheless, I spent these past few years seeking to learn. As part of trying to restore my relationship with my brother, I worked hard to try to understand Trump’s appeal.
- You know what? Trump is often remarkably on point in so many ways. But this is a “vibe” or “intuitive” level understanding rather than the kind of deep policy knowledge that most of us are accustomed to in leaders.
- Thing is…Trump’s instincts identified a lot of problems that a lot of people who were engaged in group think on fundamental issues just missed or dismissed or didn’t talk about.
- Here’s an example: Globalism. It’s clear that in the aggregate it’s good for the USA. But - as a nation and society - we didn’t take its localized costs seriously enough.
- How many decades did one administration after the other spend oxygen talking about job retraining to help the rust belt out? But no one really worried about the total absence of middle class jobs in the rust belt to replace the jobs that were lost.
- The expectation - clearly - is that people would move to find their new job and opportunity. Except that there is absolutely no data to suggest this is a remotely reasonable expectation. Most people spend most of their life living very close to their birthplace and if they move away, they tend to move back.
- At best our approaches to address the localized costs of globalism were largely doomed to fail. At worst, we never really cared.
- Many Medicare and Medicaid budget cuts that occurred over the years were just screwing hospitals by discounting what the government paid them. As a result, hospitals receive payments that are below their cost of providing care. There are areas of the country that predominantly rely on Medicare and Medicaid. This quickly drove these hospitals under, resulting in dramatically reduced availability to healthcare, shortened lifespans and had the additional benefit of gutting what was often the primary employer in the area. In short, it causes concentrated devastation.
- This kind of so-called budget cut became big-time in 1997. But the two parties do go back to this trick from time to time.
- The area in question that is most affected? You guessed it: Trump Country. This is one of the reasons why rural care is abysmal in the USA.
- Yes there is frustration about shouldering defense for NATO without much help. But I am not sure how deep that frustration really runs.
- I do not think people fully understand the extent to which we also subsidize the healthcare for the globe.
- The WTO is supposed to protect patent rights. i.e., the monopoly pricing power afforded by patent rights. Except, after agreeing to this construct, every other country runs around and puts in place a single payor system or other mechanism to cap prices or regulate prices. And apparently these devices that gut the purpose of creating worldwide patent protections are not a problem under the WTO because it’s domestic policy.
- So who is left holding the bag? The U.S. The sole sucker left supporting a free market structure designed to fund R&D into much needed pharmaceuticals. This kind of research is incredibly expensive and even the U.S. buckles under the strain of paying for the planet’s pharmaceutical R&D costs. It’s also not just prescription costs. Because drug costs are the primary driver in other - more material components- such as inpatient / outpatient care and in long-term care. In these kinds of context, it’s hidden as a hard to find sub-bullet, such as doctor administered drug. Or some such. But it’s a huge driver in the cost of US healthcare differential vs other countries.
- The numbers here are staggering and people would be frothing at the mouth if they fully understood the cost internalized by the U.S. to keep research going for the globe.
- But while people may not fully understand the ins and outs, 1/3rd of Americans have stopped taking their prescription drugs because they can’t afford them. People do understand this kind of stuff. And they do understand being unable to retire because it requires saving an exorbitant amount just to die with grace and dignity.
- They know something’s different and this isn’t how it used to be.
- In addition; this also impacts American companies. Where did American manufacturing go? Well. It didn’t have to go anywhere. Except part of the WTO is that there aren’t supposed to be subsidies. Except lots of countries can quite cheaply nationalize healthcare and they don’t have to worry about a socialist reform breaking the market because the U.S. is there to keep the market functioning. All the benefits of socialism with none of the risks or costs of human propensity to break the market with a command and control approach.
- The kicker? Their companies now operate without the cost of healthcare as an expense. BOOM. They can immediately produce high quality products at lower prices than American manufacturing.
- All of a sudden there is this big sucking sound in the middle class as American companies have to move manufacturing offshore to stay alive.
- Huh? So the U.S. subsidizes the world and supports the WTO while the world turns around and plants a big knife in the U.S. back. And somehow this is all fine under the WTO? Okie dokie.
- But the U.S. retaliating economically for this kind of behavior? That’s a problem under the WTO. Because of course it is.
- I don’t know that Trump fully understands this stuff. He certainly hasn’t messaged it well. But this is really only part of the picture and it’s pretty god damned egregious.
-People often aren’t going to be able to figure out exactly how they are getting screwed. But they are also often intelligent enough to intuitively know when they are getting screwed.
- That’s America First. That’s MAGA. That’s why this movement is here to stay until things get fixed in a way that is more equitable for Americans.
- When I worked through a lot of those stuff, well, suddenly voting for Trump seemed a whole lot less crazy.
- Do I like Trump? No. Have I voted for Trump? No. But the Trump movement - as a political and economic movement devoid of its cult of personality - makes a helluva lot of sense.
- It’s time for the world to pay their own way. The U.S. is done doing it. Honestly, everyone is
lucky there is a pacifist element to isolationism bc this quickly sends steam flying out of the ears.
- Perhaps at first it was about the Cold War. Then maybe it was all in pursuit of establishing of a new world order of peace and utopia. Funded by America because otherwise we would never get there. Kind of sounds like that well-intentioned adventure in Somalia that had nothing to do with foreign policy interests and ended with Blackhawk Down.
- At any rate, I think the U.S. is done subsidizing the leisure and budget flexibility of other nations. Rightfully so.
Incredibly well said... wish we could bottle your thoughts here. and send them to all points, north and south, east and west. And to every elitist that screams about the cost of America's healthcare compared to other countries; you said it best, America subsidizes it!
It’s pretty audacious when you further realize that every time Congress is talking about this issue - real quiet like, lest the American people absolutely go berserk when they figure it all out - the foreign governments send in the big pharmaceutical companies from their country and actively lobby the USA: “Oh No! You can’t do what every else does because then this whole house of cards collapses and there will be insufficient levels of R&D & if people want to continue enjoying the current (rapid) of pharmaceutical advance, they’ll actually have to - you know - pay for it. In which case we won’t be able to have our annual 3 month holidays and other extravagancies.”
And this works. Because the USA is quite seriously concerned that if it doesn’t continue being the sucker, it all falls apart.
And then the USA somehow has gotten itself guilt tripped into this “health equity” concept. I am fine with talking about this domestically. But internationally? This is mind-boggling. Healthy equity? Anything more advanced than Tylenol is a gift from the USA. But in furtherance of “health equity” we eat higher costs for really expensive drugs and shop out some of our supply to lesser developed countries?
Ok. Look. I am ok with doing this if we are quite conscious about the multiple stacks of largesse being gifted by the USA to other countries.
But. Jesus H. Christ. No one should ever feel guilty about saying: Wait until we get our supply and pay what the medicine costs. Because we have already subsidized this cost.
But now that the USA is kinda sorta waking up to this, you see countries trying to get out of the “worst offenders” bucket. For instance, Germany is trying to edge up to around 2/3rds of our prescription costs (which is only part of the issue).
Honestly. This is insane. Why are we subsidizing the largest economy in Europe? The economy that can’t fund their own national defense unless they see that Russia might run over them and the USA may let it happen. And then, sure they may drip feed defense spending a little. Eventually.
And then you realize this is happening all over the planet?
It is absolutely crazy making.
Insane.
If Trump could articulate this message he would win by 15%.
Yascha is correct. His book is correct. All that the Democratic Party needed to do was offer a candidate that was competent and moderate. The list of don’ts is long. Don’t warn about threats to democracy while undemocratically selecting a candidate. Don’t lie about the president’s health. Don’t be too cozy with the spy agencies. Don’t abuse the justice system. Don’t spend like maniacs and load future generations with debt. In short, just be less of a threat than Donald Trump. The fact that the managerial class cannot do what should be the easiest task in the world justifies mistrust of them.
I think the existence of Persuasion (and The Free Press and The Dispatch and others) will probably do more than any specific advice you offer. You, by your talents and training, seem to be a proposer of Grand Theories. You handicap the fore- and back-sliding of Democracy at the level of nations and the whole world. I sometimes find these things fascinating and explanatory -- depending on the quality of the ideas and the writing -- but how often are they actually predictive? Not often, I think.
My view is closer to ground-level and what's missing here is sensible information. The problem is not the lack of trust in our sense-making institutions. I don't want or need to take their word for anything, I just want them to do their jobs of making sense, leaving me to decide based on my lying eyes and common sense how skeptical to be about what they're saying. That they have abandoned that vocation for activism -- on all sides of the political spectrum -- is to my mind our biggest structural problem and why these new publications give me a modicum of hope.
I'll try to explain a bit better, though as I indicated, I'm not much for Grand Theories. I have no need to "trust" the media or the CDC in the sense of considering them authoritative. I would like to trust them like I trust my grocer to not intentionally short-change me. I'll check the restaurant bill every-so-often for items that I didn't order, but since I rarely find any I can save time and effort by generally accepting them as is. It's a Bayesian thing -- every time an assumption proves right or wrong affects my confidence in it going forward. That's why at this point I wouldn't trust the New York Times for baseball scores (if they publish baseball scores and if I read them). I'll listen to the CDC and read the Great Barrington Declaration and, taking into account the arguments and the backgrounds of the authors and the attitude that comes across and whatever else I perceive, decide what to do (I'll also take into account the gravity of the decision, the likelihood that I can figure it out and the effort needed to do so). I don't have the desire to outsource my decision making or to believe I can know things that I really can't.
That's why I wrote here recently of my skepticism towards your democracy-handicapping and have written similarly about other cases of people getting all worked up over things of whose truth and significance they have no reason to be confident -- which description covers at least 95% of our political discourse. Perhaps if the sense-makers were to rediscover the value of professional ethics and personal probity (i.e. trustworthiness), we could dial all that down.
Her makes us think, and is not afraid of looking at and discussing both sides of issues. That, in itself, is remarkable in this age of "activism media" as you put it so well. Thank-you, enjoyed reading your response.
The NYTimes does indeed publish baseball scores -- in their offshoot publication, The Athletic -- for which they make you pay extra. That seems like a perfect allegory for the entire overall situation!
As always, a clearheaded take from Yascha Mounk. We really do have the mistakes of the Democratic party to thank for these results - another four years of Trump's incorrigible narcissism, his vile, hateful discourse and no doubt attempts to corrupt our democratic institutions, with congress behind him. I hope that, this time around, the Democratic party will learn from its mistakes and start running candidates and campaigns that actually inspire a majority of Americans again and align with their common-sense values. There are so many Americans who voted for Trump who would have been happy to vote for a Democrat instead, if only the Democrats hadn't made themselves so unelectable. (For the record, I voted Democrat down the ballot but wrote in alternatives for Pres/VP because I saw Harris for what she was, a Trump enabler).
I agree completely with your essay. I feel that the Democratic party, along with many of the most respected institutions of the country, has been captured by an extremist fringe of the cultural left. I hope that Trump's victory leads liberals to recognize the threat posed by their own identitarian fringe.
I think you're right that the American academic and professional elite were less resistant to the tyranny of political correctness that triggered the loss of trust you highlight than their European counterparts, but this is partly due to the sclerotic paralysis of European institutions -- they just CAN'T change as fast and as recklessly as the American ones (unfortunately) did. But there is another component to this that you omit, and that is probably at least as important as the woke stuff. That is the degree of just plain ignorance in the American public more generally, which far exceeds the degree of ignorance in any developed country. The American school system is a complete disgrace, but that isn't an independent variable, it's autocorrelated. The institution as a whole (including textbook publishers, teachers' colleges, unions, etc.) homeostatically resists all concerted efforts -- of which there have been many -- to raise its educational standards.
This is because unlike Japan or any European country, the US is and always has been, from early in the 19th century if not before, a peasant country; the overwhelming proportion of immigration came and still comes from the peasant strata of European (and now worldwide) societies. I don't think this election (or the whole trajectory leading to it that you describe) can be understood in isolation from this particular aspect of American exceptionalism -- which underlies BOTH the woke excesses that triggered the loss of trust AND the Trumpian overreaction to them.
Oh, please. Mounk neglects to factor in the money poured in by billionaire technocrats such as Peter Thiel, the lies of right-wing media who, for many deliberately ignorant Trump voters, is their only source of information, and Russian bomb threats at polling stations, which may have cost thousands of votes. Don't blame the Democrat party, or any party, for that matter. Parties can only attempt to persuade, not control. The majority of voters exercised free will and voted for fascism, perhaps ignorantly. We may not have another chance in 4 years. Democracy may be gone.
Well said, Yascha. The wound to the Democrats is largely self-inflicted, and we are all paying the price for their distorted perception of reality. All week long I have heard journalists and commentators on NPR continue with their distorted perception of reality, many of them labeling half the country as fascist. It is the water they all swim in. I fear that they won't take an honest look in the mirror; they will not explore their assumptions and biases, and they will not practice what they preach. I remain a proud liberal, but I left the Democratic Party quite a while ago.
The problem is that the old dichotomy of right/left is no longer sufficient or explanatory. Are woke left? They think they are, but what is the connection between them and traditional Marxism? Is Trump a rightist? No more so than Chavez. Even the opposition of populism/democracy no longer works. Trump's sweeping victory is, in a way, a triumph of people's will over the elite institutions. We need to rethink the entire mapping of politics. And perhaps we need to re-embrace elements of populism that the woke left has discarded, such as patriotism, nationalism, and color-blindness.
Thank you for calling out the refusal for so many to step outside of their own political silos. I could see this cultural division in US public discourse dangerously deepening in 2000/2001. At that time the silencing of anyone who raised questions about where the US was headed, from any political background, was both self righteous and fierce.
How much of this conflict and division is rooted in unresolved historical injustices and how much in present day hyper capitalist’s imposed social iniquities remains a challenge to analyse.
The necessary cause was the toxicity of the Democratic brand to many voters, toxic to the point that we are not competitive at all in many states and have finally frittered away the Blue Wall. The Democratic chattering has devolved into the admonishing class and can find no better explanations for political failure than systemic racism, sexism, with transphobia bringing up the rear. The sufficient causes were neglect of the porous border to the point of demonizing anyone who was concerned about it, and inflation, which soured people on economic policies that have in fact seemingly given us the will o' the wisp of the soft landing and increased chip production via industrial policy. Put these necessary and sufficient causes together, and the rest of the factors are footnotes, interesting and motivational immaterial, but footnotes. Footnotes such as Harris' bungling of the "what would you have done differently from Biden" question on The View, and the outlandish (it swayed 2.7% of voters who viewed it to Trump in internal tests also verified by the Harris campaign) "trans surgeries for prisoners at your expense" ad.
Wish there were an edit function. I see that I have typed some gibberish.
As usual, I love reading your thoughts. As I've said in the past, I may not agree with all of them BUT I respect the points of view. I agree with many of the above points you make. I've said this to you before, Americans are voting for Trump because they completely distrust the media and elites, PERIOD. America is a land of the "moderate middle road". And they don't need to be condescended too by the east coast and Hollywood elites as well as the media. But the liberal elites will never understand that as they cannot be wrong. I hope Trump does what he says without going "scorched earth". I trust America will be fine. But I know as well as see today, that the media and elites are blaming everyone but the ones in the mirror... As you said so well. Yascha, they have lost the pulse of America, I do not believe they have the guts to look in the mirror. Thank-you.
"A small cadre of extreme activists obsessed with an identitarian vision of the world—a vision that pretends to be left-wing but in many ways parallels the tribalist worldview that has historically characterized the far-right"
The Left has always had an identitarian, victim-victimizer approach to society. They view the poor as victims, and the wealthy as oppressors. The Nazi party viewed the volk as victims of the wealthy oppressor Jewish class. If you read Marx's On the Jewish Question, it makes clear that he perceives Jews as members of the oppressor class; please re-think the above statement.
While I agree with much of this article, to my mind it fails to consider what I think to be the essential problem here. America has just elected to the presidency, for the first time in our history, a man who has long since proven to be utterly disdainful of the democratic process, the Constitution of the United States, and the rule of law.
To do so, for whatever reason that any one of us may find sufficiently compelling is to deny the very idea of America. Our failure here is that we have failed, as a nation, to educate ourselves and our children to the nature of the country we were founded to be.
That portions of our founding ethos were flawed cannot be questioned, but the basic purpose of the nation the Founders created was to discover if ‘We the People’ could together find enough of the courage, the honesty, the understanding, the tolerance, the compassion, the wisdom, the humor, the hope, and the sheer common sense to rule ourselves from the bottom up. That we have signally failed to do, and so we have elected a man who has never in his public life shown any of those characteristics. No amount of excusing any one of us simply because we are unhappy with our lot in life is sufficient.
As Americans we were promised only the chance to maintain the great idea of America - to ask, as John F Kennedy reminded us, not what our country can do for us, but what we can do for our country. In electing Donald Trump we are asking our country to promise to do something for us without doing anything for the preservation our country’s great promise, That is the nature of our failure.
"America has just elected to the presidency, for the first time in our history, a man who has long since proven to be utterly disdainful of the democratic process, the Constitution of the United States, and the rule of law."
They elected someone who was open about it, but just the latest in a long string of people who are actually disdainful of the democratic process. I think you wildly underestimate how sick ordinary people were of 'meet the new boss, same as the old boss'. I think part of his appeal is that he is too stupid and incompetent to actually get anything done, which is a bonus if you believe that the ratchet only ever moves one way, regardless of who is nominally in charge.
Well, let’s look at the presidents I’ve known. Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, two George Bushes, Barak O’Bama, Joe Biden, Donald Trump. Hard to imagine a group of men so ill defined as ‘new boss same as the old boss.’
In any case, people who blame politicians for their unhappiness always forget that ‘we the people’ put them there. As the cartoon character Pogo once noted, “We have met the enemy, and they is us."
God know how Trump will govern, but it is true that the Democratic Party needs a serious moment of self -reflection. Apart from specific errors such as Biden deciding to run again (and perhaps selecting Kamala Harris as VP in the first place), the party needs to go deep into the reasons that so many Americans voted for Trump despite his divisive behavior and rhetoric. Why are so many voting groups (working class, women, minorities, etc.) trending right? Besides the big issues (mentioned often), the economy and immigration, there are also cultural issues that likely engaged specific groups of voters: 1. Identity politics that forces people toward tribalism and promotes views that the white race is inherently racist. 2. Recent acts of antisemitism badly managed by those in authority. 3. Transgendered athletes’ rights that force young women athletes to compete against former men. 4. Fear of Asian Americans that their children will be discriminated against when they apply to competitive colleges. 5. Fear of young white men that they will be discriminated against in job application in favor of women, minorities or gays. 6. Push to defund the police which resulted in a rise in crime and inability of cities to hire enough police. 7. The wokism and cancel culture that has existed for some time not only in universities but in the publishing industry and in the media. 8. Abortion which proved not be such a big benefit for the Democrats as many individual states pass laws to protect abortion. 9. The argument that America is an oppressive, racist society promoted by the 1619 Project, certain authors, professors and others. I am sure that there are many other issues that trouble specific voting groups and deep analysis of voter opinions will ferret these out. In general, I would say that as long as the Democratic Party allows its ideologically progressive faction to influence the party, it likely to experience more trouble at the ballot box.