The Mass Customisation of Politics

Business in the social media age is all about mass customisation. Industries such as telecommunications, banking and transportation have figured out that the key to success is to have economies of scale while allowing individuals to have products and services that are tailored to their needs. The commercial behemoths of old that insisted on one-size-fits-all have fallen by the wayside as new businesses exploit flexible manufacturing and service delivery models to accomodate individual consumers' needs.

Politics in the 21st Century is the same. Voters are increasingly unwilling to be boxed into traditional political definitions - left, right, socialist, nationalist. etc. Ironically, this is happening at a time when political labels such as 'extreme', 'Fascist' and 'Nazi' are being bandied about with increasing abandon and usually without justification. 

Many people, myself included, have a political philosophy that does not sit comfortably with most established party manifestos. We are a little bit left, a little bit right, and a whole lot completely outside the spectrum. This is not the same as being purely pragmatic - we have a philosophy that is well thought-out and articulated and are prepared to vote to maximise its realisation. We have little in common with the David Camerons and John Keys of this world who don't believe in anything much and who are willing to do whatever it takes to stitch together a coalition to keep them in power. We may vote for the lesser of evils but it doesn't mean we will accept the bland and uncommitted.

So how do we achieve mass customisation in politics when many countries seem to be locked into a traditional left-of-centre/right-of-centre, two-party paradigm? Partly it is achieved through breaking down the paradigm, and we have seen this with the rise of third parties in many Western countries. The other way it can be achieved is through localisation of politics.

Politics in many countries in recent decades has been characterised by greater centralisation. The European Community is the most obvious example and in the United States we have seen the growth of the federal government at the expense of the state or local government. The problem with this is that it means greater homogenisation and less opportunity for people like me, whose views don't fall into the traditional political buckets, to have our views represented. Localisation of political decisions means we can enjoy, at least at a local level, a more flexible set of policy setttings, and if we are not happy with the decisions of our local government, we can seek out somewhere more compatible with our political views.

It was the intention of America's founding fathers. particularly Jefferson and Hamilton, that the US Republic would be a place where different communities could experiment with different political and social settings, subject only to the universal rights enshrined in the Constitution. America today has become a highly centralised bureaucracy with the Federal Government interfering in every area of Americans lives from health care to what children eat in their school lunches. The complete dominance of US politics by the two major parties means that people who don't fall into the traditional Democrat and Republican camps have no real alternative, except that last year they chose a rebel Republican in Donald Trump to be president. Trump's support came from the disaffected middle and working classes, who rejected the big statism and identity politics of the Democrats and the social conservatism and crony capitalism of the Republicans, and is therefore understandable in terms of the mass customisation paradigm. Brexit was similarly a rejection of the traditional political choices.

Those who insist on seeing today's politics in terms of past dichotomies will continue to be surprised and bewildered by voters' choices. I think that the rejection of tradition political boundaries it is a very positive development but it needs to be accompanied by a decentralisation of political power if voters are to have genuine choices.

I don't have a dog in this fight

Politics in 2017 has degenerated into a Fascism vs Marxism fight

Last week I read a tweet by Mark Steyn about the toppling of Confederate statues and he said that he didn't have a dog in that fight - it was today's Democrats arguing about statues of yesterday's Democrats. The comment is true, of course - it may surprise the historically challenged to learn that the slavery-supporting political party of the Confederacy was the Democratic Party, and if you think that the old Democratic Party is so far removed in time from the progressive Democratic Party of today, then consider that the Democrats had a segregationist presidential candidate (Governor George Wallace) as recently as 1976, and as Steyn pointed out, the last-but-one Democratic president, Bill Clinton, spoke at the funeral of a former Ku Klux Klan 'Exalted Cylcops' (Senator Robert C Byrd).

Steyn's comment about not having a dog in the fight is true for me as well but in a much broader sense than he meant it. I don't have a dog in the fight between the political right and left. Both sides believe that violence is justified in human relations where it serves their particular view of the collective good. They differ on their meaning of collective good - the right usually defining it as the interests of a nation or race, and the left as that of a class or other identity group - but both are prepared to resort to violence in pursuit of their interests. This isn't something that is confined to the extreme ends of the spectrum but is characteristic of mainstream politicians on both sides - like the Missouri state senator who called for Trump's assassination.

I believe that violence has no place in the interactions between human beings and that force may only be used to defend against the initiation of violence by others. This central tenet of my political philosophy means I fit into neither the right or the left of the spectrum. Some have described my views as extreme because my application of the non-aggression principle means the state should not force people to pay tax or to go to war, but I find it is somewhat oxymoronic to be considered an extremist for my non-violent philosophy and I take some comfort from the fact that many considered Mahatma Gandhi's and William Wilberforce's views extreme at the time.

I posed a question on Twitter last week about how in hell has politics degenerated into a Fascism vs Marxism fight in 2017, but the question was rhetorical. In any real dog fight, it is always the most aggressive dog that wins. We have watched the left and right resort to violent protests in recent months and it was inevitable that this would escalate to the point where we are now beginning to see deaths - and the violence isn't all coming from one side. Once the debate turns violent, you can't be surprised that those who are willing to use violence prevail.

Marxism and Fascism are equally repugnant, misanthropic and inherently violent philosophies, and any reasonable person should stand up against those who advocate for either of them. If we allow them to set the rules and the language of our political debate then the discussion will be over and violence will prevail.

No, Hillary, you lost it all on your own

Hillary Clinton gave an interview at the Code Conference this week in which she blamed everyone under the sun for her election loss - the Russians, Wikileaks, Macedonian fake news sites, a British data mining company, the dumb American electorate - in other words, everyone but herself. Her interview was cringe-inducing. This woman has lost her grasp of reality and if nothing else, it proves why she should never have been president. Has she no self-awareness at all? 

I have argued in an earlier post that it was not in the interests of Russia to have Donald Trump elected president of the United States, but if they did try to influence the election, they didn't do a very good job of it. A Stanford University study has shown that fake news probably had no effect on voters intentions. Even Hillary Clinton herself admits in the interview that the emails of DNC Chairman John Podesta's that were dumped by Wikileaks were 'anodyne to boredom' (sic). 

Hillary lost because of herself. She was a stinker of a candidate - an inarticulate, boring, elitist politician who has always had a whiff of corruption around her. She had no credible policy positions, having changed her stripes so often - on free trade, gay rights, health care and foreign policy amongst others - that two-thirds of Americans said they didn't trust her during the election campaign. She had the full support of the legendary Democratic Party electoral machine and the endorsement of almost every major media outlet, political commentator and celebrity in the country.

Trump had almost no support from the mainstream media and commentariat, and he didn't even have the unequivocal support of his own party. He won because he was (in the words of Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson) 'pure message'. You mightn't have liked his message, but you have to admit he stuck to it - on immigration, trade, climate change, etc. He bypassed the mainstream media through his use of social media and his hugely-popular rallies all over the country, to communicate that message directly to the electorate, and enough of the electorate in enough states liked enough of what they heard to give him 57% of the electoral college, 60% of the states, and 80% of the counties. And he worked harder than Clinton, doing twice as many campaign events as Clinton.

No one likes a sore loser and Clinton is particularly pathetic with her 'I was robbed' whining. Her political career is over and it is time she stepped aside and let the Democratic Party refocus and rebuild, and to be the responsible opposition party that America needs in the Trump era.

A megalomaniacal motormouth or an inveterate liar

Well, it looks like it's going to be a Trump-Clinton race. It is a pity Ted Cruz has dropped out - he was becoming almost likeable in a hang-dog sort of way. The Donald is becoming even less appealing as he tries to bring his tourette's-like tongue under control and appear as a candidate who is less than completely deranged - now, he's not even entertaining, let alone credible. And as for Hillary - am I the only one who thinks she looks like a con artist who knows she is about to be sprung?

I predicted that Trump would become the Republican candidate and also that Trump will beat Clinton in a head-to-head presidential contest. It gives me no pleasure to see that the first part of that prediction is now almost certainly right. I don't claim any great prescience when it comes to US politics but I do understand the immense frustration of many Americans over the direction of their country. 

The incumbent president and the previous one have been incredibly damaging for America but the next one is going to be worse, irrespective of whether it is a Republican or Democrat. But I believe that the United States has the presidential candidates it deserves. That's what you get when you are intent on throwing away the greatest constitutional republic the world has ever known. Perhaps having a megalomaniacal motormouth or an inveterate liar as president will bring Americans to their senses. 

Why Trump May Become President

The United States' political scene is so much more interesting than New Zealand's at the moment and that's why I write a lot about the former. New Zealand is mid-term in its election cycle with a middle-of-the-road, middling conservative government that is about as interesting as appointment with the podiatrist. The United States, on the other hand, is nearing a presidential election that will see the end of its divisive, two-term, polemical President and the two main parties appear to be intent on tearing themselves apart in trying to select his successor.

The presidential primary races are fascinating. On the Republican Party side you have the neophyte and ultimate political outsider, Donald Trump, leading in most of the polls with the only other candidate coming close being another relative outsider, Ted Cruz, who was elected to the US Senate on a wave of Tea Party activism in 2012. All the Republican establishment candidates from Jeb Bush to Chris Christie are trailing in their wake. On the Democratic Party side you have the ultimate Washington insider, Hillary Clinton, against an avowed Socialist in Bernie Sanders.

The mainstream media are doing their best to undermine Trump with all the subtlety of a jackhammer, but the New York billionaire is a very different candidate than they are used to and they find themselves in a sort of Nietzschean nightmare where the more they try to hurt him, the stronger he becomes. The more outrageous Trump is, the more the US public appear to support him. The media and the political establishment thought he was a flash-in-the-pan who wouldn't last the summer but it is starting to look like his poll results are built from anti-gravity matter.

Trump might appear to be a buffoon but so far he has shown himself to be more politically astute and more in tune with the American electorate than any of the more experienced candidates. He has a sense of the issues that are important to Americans, issues that the political establishment and mainstream media consider to be too toxic to tackle. He has found fertile ground in immigration. This is unsurprising given that the underemployment rate (which includes those working part-time who are looking for full-time employment as well as the officially unemployed) is running at 14%. Rightly or wrongly (and I happen to think wrongly), many Americans see the large number of illegal immigrants in the United States as responsible for their current stagnant economic fortunes. Trump has combined this concern about immigration with the fear of Muslim terrorism, so his plan to put a moratorium on all Muslim immigration is the quinella in terms of political appeal.

Republicans believe their party has sold out. In 2012 Americans elected a Republican majority in both houses of Congress and supporters of the GOP thought this would mean a reversal of four years of President Obama's policies. Four years later they have nothing to show for it. In 2012 they were given a virtually unelectable presidential candidate by their party - a Wall Street banker Mormon - and yet Mitt Romney nearly beat the media's darling, Obama. A candidate that Republicans actually liked and supported would have romped in, given the broad electoral swing to the GOP at that election. The Republican rank and file are not going to make the same mistake and have a safe, establishment candidate foisted on them this time around.

If it comes down to a head-to-head contest between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, I think the former will win. Hillary Clinton is very vulnerable because she has a track record of business, personal and political scandals that will be dredged up and re-examined again and again during a presidential campaign. Trump does not have this vulnerability because his life is a celebrity's open book. Consider Trump's response to Hillary Clinton's recent attack on him regarding his (frankly disgusting) treatment of Fox News presenter Megyn Kelly. Trump counterattacked with Hillary's complicity in her husband's cover-up of his many sexual harassment accusations (including, it now appears, one alleged rape). Trump has sent a clear message - if Hillary wants to take him on, she had better be prepared for a bloody fight in which Clinton has everything to lose and Trump has everything to win.

In conclusion, I think if it comes to a fight between Trump and Clinton, The Donald will wipe the floor with Hillary. Of course, there is still a long time to go before the Republican National Convention in July and I wouldn't put it past the Republican Party establishment to stitch up an anything-but-Trump result, but at this stage he is looking like the strong horse in a weak field. I am no Trump supporter, but his rise is nothing if not fascinating entertainment for those of us who follow US politics.