Electoral Shock: A Paradigm Schism, Not a Paradigm Shift

Political parties' alternate realities leave working people behind.

Political perception has become a hologram, where what you see depends on where you stand. Or a Rorschach test, where your deepest fears and desires take shape in the formlessness. Or a multiverse, where every possibility is a reality somewhere.

People are rethinking their assumptions after Trump’s victory, which is a good thing. But they’re also reaching very some odd conclusions.

I’m not worried that we’ll see a “paradigm shift” (to use a phrase that’s re-entering the lexicon). I hope we do. I worry about a paradigm schism—a rupture in our communal perspective so profound that even reasonable people no longer occupy a common reality.

We’re already living in a schismatic world, of course. But the runaway fragmentation of our perceptions could soon engulf us all.

At times, the GOP’s been open about its efforts to re-engineer our perceptions, as when JD Vance openly admitted to “creating stories.” But it’s worse when people don’t even know they’re manipulating reality. Killer immigrants, “demonic gateways” over the White House: the GOP list is long and strange.

But there’s a Democratic paradigm schism, too. Democrats insisted that voters’ very real economic pain was nothing more than a “vibecession.” They talked about “defending democracy” in a political system most people realize is broken. They spoke of protecting people of color as they rained down fire on the people of Gaza.

What’s worse is that, like Republicans, they believe this stuff. How can we ever address our common challenges if people don’t even believe they exist?

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On the economy:

Democrats wanted voters to reward them for a reduced rate of inflation. That’s like asking a drowning person to celebrate the fact that they’re sinking more slowly than they were an hour ago.

(For more detailed takes on economic voting, start with this and this.)

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A lot of Democrats turning their ire on voters.

Voters? Why blame them? We lock them in damp dark basements, feed them nothing but shit—and then act surprised when they behave like mushrooms.

How about blaming the people who could have told them the truth and didn’t? You know, the ones who wouldn’t listen when they said they were suffering—or, worse, insisted that their suffering wasn’t real?

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Before we go any further, a kind word for people whose perceptions differ from mine.

Millions of women are in despair. To them, this vote means that they’re still considered less than fully human. Who am I to say otherwise?   Women I trust have explained that to be female in this society is to be dismissed and demeaned from birth, to have your essence—body, mind, spirit—subordinated to an invisible hierarchy.

That perspective is beautifully presented in an op-ed my daughter sent around yesterday. Monica Hesse writes about hoping she could go into her 3-year-old daughter’s room on election night and whisper into her sleeping ear that “America had elected its first female president.”

How can anyone fail to be moved by that? Who can miss the truth of it?

That’s not “woke ideology,” by the way. It’s just empathy.

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Regarding Americans of color, I’m reminded of what Imam Zaid Shakir said the first time Trump was elected. The imam noted that “there’s more than racism at work here” but added that “some elements” were emboldened by Trump’s racist rhetoric. That frightened some Muslims, he said.

“But not all Muslims,” he added. “Some Muslims understand it's just another day in the hood.”

That last line stayed with me. For some Americans, this outcome is a shock. For others, it’s the agony of business as usual. Their truth matters, too.

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To deny the grief of millions is heartless. To deny their vision is to lose depth perception—in a world with many dimensions.

And to those who share my systemic/economic view of the world, a caution: if you think these comments undermine class consciousness or ignore the politics of empire, you might want to re-read your Hegel.

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I honor the pain and experience of others. But let’s also remember that nothing the American people will experience in the next four years will come close to the horrors we will visit upon Gaza in the next hour.

That said, things don’t look so good. The US government increasingly resembles the kinds of oligarchies it has long imposed on so many other countries. The hand that strangled so much of the world is around our throats now. We saw it in the heavily militarized response to Occupy, to Black Lives Matter, to the Gaza encampments.

We only seem free when we’re not a threat. The harder we fight, the greater the oppression.

Who, then, will we become? Israel, a profit center for arms dealers ruled by religious fanatics? Indonesia under Suharto, Chile under Pinochet, Vietnam under Ngo Dinh Diem? Or will we invent a new model for an old evil?

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The political schism is built on denial, as in, “it’s everybody’s fault but the Democrats.” That idea’s gaining in popularity—among Democrats, anyway.

Too many Democrats act as if elections are something that happens to them, not something they participate in. They take credit for their victories but blame their losses on others.

This loss has, literally, become everybody else’s fault—as in, the entire country:

“[The outcome] said more about America than it did about Kamala,” said Donna Brazile, the veteran Democratic strategist.

That’s the political equivalent of saying, “Shit happens.” Shouldn’t a “Democratic strategist” strategize?

“Kamala Harris was not a flawed candidate,” tweeted anti-gun activist Shannon Watts. “America is a flawed country.”

Of course it’s flawed. Everybody’s flawed. To say Harris “wasn’t flawed” is to claim she was perfect. I wish Watts every success, but nobody’s perfect.

Then there’s commentator Jill Filipovic, who tweeted, “This election was not an indictment of Kamala Harris. It was an indictment of America.”

If there’s one thing this election has taught us, it’s that “indictments” don’t carry the political weight they once did.

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Then there’s Rebecca Solnit, who I’ve long respected. Her electoral post-mortem blames “the crisis of masculinity, the failure of the mainstream news media and the rise of Silicon Valley”— all undeniable evils—but dismisses the financial struggles of working people with a wave of the hand.

Missing from Solnit’s critique are the Democrats themselves, who receive full absolution. “We knew what the problems were,” it is claimed, “and we wanted to fix them.”

Apparently not all the problems, since voters are accused of worrying needlessly about “an economy when it is thriving.”

In this corner of the paradigm schism, the fight to put food on the table or get medical care is equated to being “ concerned that a trans girl might play on a softball team.”

A reminder: empathy is a two-way street.

It’s a shame, because much of what Solnit says is true and important. But the Democrats did many things wrong—besides genocide. They include stoking new Cold War tensions, dismissing the economic anguish of working people, brushing off the opioid epidemic, and passing the largest military budget in history.

Political parties are always the co-authors of an election outcome—especially in a two-party system.

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One Democratic “strategist” was, however, onto something. David Axelrod told the Washington Post,

“The Democratic Party has become a metropolitan, college-educated party. And even though it retains its commitment to working people [ed: really?] it approaches them sometimes in a spirit of a missionary — that we’re here to help you become more like us, Implied in that is disdain.”

That’s the real “vibe shift” of the last 50 years.

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I gave Harris a slightly better chance of winning than Trump because she had so much more campaign cash—reported cash, anyway. But I also wrote that  “[Trump’s] “upset” victory in 2016 benefited from a last-minute surge of dark money, and he still has plenty of billionaires in his corner,” adding:

“We’ll find out who the billionaires really wanted soon enough.”

That was a reasonable statement. Studies (Thomas Ferguson et al. and Gilens & Page, etc.) have confirmed that big-money donors disproportionately shape election outcomes.

But I also think it was a little too reductionist. A victory this large has multiple causes. They surely include political malpractice—and the painful truths shared by Monica Hesse and Rebecca Solnit.

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As we were waiting for the election results I thought of the moment in The Picture of Dorian Gray when he’s about to unveil his portrait after 18 years of evil living. Then I thought of the moment when he finally sees how truly monstrous he has become. It’s pure gothic horror.

But we’re not ugly. The system is ugly.

That’s why we need prophetic voices, not soothing ones. That’s why we can’t rely on the status quo.

Besides, this is the status quo now.

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But there’s good news, too—in another corner of our schismatic universe.

“Stocks Soar, Dollar Jumps as Trump’s Win Reverberates Through Markets,” says the Wall Street Journal’s headline. It continues: “The Dow surges to biggest gain in two years, with bond yields and bitcoin also posting sharp climbs.”

Bitcoin’s price spike reflects other contours of this “good news.” It shows us how much prospects have improved for an industry that voraciously consumes energy while undermining global financial regulation.

Shares in the private prison industry are also up, on an improved outlook for the commodification of human bodies. Markets for gun manufacturers and fossil-fuel companies are also smoking hot (no pun intended) as death dividends brighten across the board.

The market’s new winners can jog off their post-election celebratory calories in these newly-released Balenciaga sneakers for men and women. They’re a steal at only $1300 a pair.  

Get yours now! Just like America’s electoral gains, they’re reversible.