More On Authenticity

Yesterday I talked about Trump's authenticity, but I thinbk authenticity goes both ways. What aboslutely nbody has mentioned about Kamala is her forced upper-class style, fully visible in her Vogue cover last month. I did some web searching on "upoper class style" and got answers like this:

The biggest thing I learned about these kinds of women is that they signal their wealth to others in their social class through hair, skin, and nail care even more than clothing. Upper-class women go for natural and subtle. They want you to think their hair and skin are just naturally gorgeous.

So no loud or unnatural colored hair, and a great, simple, flattering cut. If you color your hair, find a skilled stylist who can make it look super natural with highlights and lowlights, and be willing to pay for their skills. Rich women will notice a poor dye job immediately and will perceive you as cheap. I am dead serious.

Fake nails are a big no-no, it's judged as trashy. I mean those super long, brightly colored, square-tipped nails that are big right now. The kind you see on women like Cardi B or Billie Eilish, with nail art and such. Instead, you want to keep your hands well-manicured at all times and looking as natural as possible. Very rich women often have their nails manicured bi-weekly (the manicurist comes to their home) and have them buffed to a shine instead of using polish of any kind.

Skincare is a big thing among these women. If you have great skin, show it off using just a little bit of subtle eye and lip products, and let your good skin glow. If you need something to cover imperfections, go for a high-quality BB cream rather than a foundation. Korean and French skin care brands are the most well-regarded.

In clothing:

Cultivate a high-end look through minimalist shapes, neutral colors, and quality fabrics. Look for clothing or accessories crafted from luxurious natural materials. Opt for simple yet classic designs with earth tones and neutrals like black, white, beige, and navy. Make your style exude sophistication and class.

. . . Jewelry can be a trap. A little of it cries out "rich," but too much of it cries out "poseur." Think Jay-Z more so than Trinidad James, and Queen Elizabeth more than Snooki. A few pieces of stylish jewelry can give your look rich elegance.

Among Kamala's handlers must certainly be a fashion consultant. CNN describes her outfit:

Dressed in a mocha-colored sharp lapelled suit (a Gabriela Hearst piece from her own collection, according to Vogue) and a plum satin blouse, Harris assumes a relaxed yet considered power pose.

But there are also incongruities in her style that can't be fixed with a fashion consultant. Other upper class characteristics include:

A well modulated voice, devoid of too much emotion.

. . . We make certain assumptions about other members of our clubs. Private clubs are still socially homogeneous and there really is no way that middle or working class people can participate and consequently can’t learn club etiquette.

. . . There is a common thread and that’s that the mannerisms are learned from an early age and are natural, not artificial or obviously “learned”,

Her nasal voice and the cackle clearly don't fit, and no amount of coaching appears to have helped. This contributes to her overall air of inauthenticity, despite the effort her handlers put into her wardrobe and grooming.

But the biggest problem is her eagerness to talk in what she thinks are ethnic or working-clas accents:

Kamala Harris has raised eyebrows on the presidential campaign trail for using 'fake accents' that experts suggest could be a result of a confidence issue.

Harris, who was born in California and spent some of her childhood in Canada, has been accused of putting on Midwestern, Southern and even French accents during depending on who her audience is.

Psychotherapist Jonathan Alpert, who owns a practice in New York, said there are two main reasons people alter their accents, which in psychology circles is known as 'mirroring' or the 'chameleon effect.'

. . . While her shift in policies has come under fire over the years, her 'fake accent' has taken center stage in the last few months and some Americans have viewed it as superficial.

'By altering her accent she might be perceived as inauthentic or manipulative and ultimately could undermine trust if the audience feels she is not genuine,' said Alpert.

This has become a particular problem with African-Americans, who see her as clearly affecting a white upper-class wardrobe and look, married to a rich white man who's suddenly decided to identify as an observant Jew in order to accuse Trump of being a Nazi, while variously adopting black and other ethnic speech patterns in an effort to appeal to the working class and minorities.

It's phony, and people notice. My instinct says that most people can't wait to get Kamala, her husband, and the Walzes out of the public eye, they're all so phony they're annoying.

Trump Puts On A Hi-Vis Vest

I don't think we've seen a presidential politician with a visual instinct like Trump's since either Roosevelt, and that includes Reagan. The harumphs from the corporate media have been non-stop, George Takei, Star Trek has-been, said, “In fairness, it’s not really a Trump garbage truck until it’s on fire.” Rolling Stone's headline was, "Bizarre: Billionaire Trump Awkwardly Dresses Up as a Garbage Truck Driver". Newsweek says, "Video of Donald Trump 'Struggling' to Enter Garbage Truck Goes Viral". CNN said,

Donald Trump broke out the props Wednesday in the final days of this chaotic campaign as the former president seized on a garbled remark by President Joe Biden that seemed to insult Trump voters as “garbage.”

Trump emerged from his plane ahead of a rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin, wearing a bright orange and yellow safety vest before climbing into a garbage truck – with a big “TRUMP” sign emblazoned on the side – to take questions from reporters.

. . . Still wearing the safety vest, Trump opened his Green Bay rally – one of his final chances to address Wisconsin voters before next week’s election – by speaking at length about the props. He praised his “very capable people” for getting it all together so quickly and then recapped their discussion beforehand.

“One of my people came in and said, ‘Sir, you know the word ‘garbage’ is the hottest thing right now. Out there, the hottest thing out there. Sir, would you like to drive a garbage truck?” Trump said. “They pulled up this garbage truck. I don’t know how the hell they did it so fast. I have very capable people. They put a big sign on the truck. Did you see it?”

I have a feeling Trump is minimizing his own role in the stunt here. Two weeks ago, I thought he couldn't possibly outdo the imagery from his McDonald's gig, but all of a sudden, he's done it. Before that, I marveled at how the image of his fist in the air under the flag at the Butler rally evoked the famous Iwo Jima flag photo, while the shot of the Secret Service agents helping him down from the stage there somehow brought Michelangelo's Pieta to mind.

This reflects Trump's instinctive ability to suck all the air out of public debate. His detractors call it narcissism, but the problem with that is that narcissists are phony, and many people instincively respond to phony. It's hard to find insightful disccussion of Trump's authenticity, but here's a take from a UK writer, Gunn Enli:

Trump’s perceived authenticity, a rarity in the polished realm of politics, has been a cornerstone of his unexpected 2016 triumph and remains a potent force as he positions himself at the forefront of the upcoming race. But what underpins this connection with voters, and why is it problematic for the health of our democracy?

At the heart of Trump’s relationship with his base is a performance that has been meticulously crafted to exhibit traits which are valued by his supporters: consistency, spontaneity, ordinariness, outspokenness, and outsider status.

. . . This strategic performance of authenticity is not without its perils. The problem arises when authenticity is conflated with virtue. Being perceived as authentic gives Trump a troubling latitude to engage in behavior and rhetoric that, under traditional scrutiny, would be considered unacceptable or even reprehensible. His ‘authentic’ persona allows him to navigate past scandals and missteps with an ease not afforded to traditional politicians.

Enli then worries that if his authenticity gives Trump a free pass to violate social boundaries, he might turn into Hitler, or something like that. I think there are key reasons why this won't happen. The first is that Trump has a sense of humor, even a self-deprecating one, when for instance he said he'd continue to wear the vest because it made him look slimmer. This isn't Hitler. Nazis didn't have a sense of humor.

The second is that Trump is a truthteller. By their nature, truthtellers violate boundaries. This is Groucho Marx's secret, and it's worth pointing out that Trump has a Hollywood sense of the visual and a comic's sense of timing. Like Marx, Trump often sneaks the truthtelling past the boundaries by dressing it up as humor.

The conventionally minded are having a difficult time wrapping their minds around the election outcome as things stand. Nobody seems to know quite what to do about Trump in a hi-vis vest -- Trump in a McDonald's apron was bad enough.

No One's Mentioning This In Corporate Media

Politico has a piece from yesterday that I can only call wishful thinking:

Kamala Harris is counting on suburban voters to do what they’ve done since Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016: reject him.

It may be the single most important piece of her electoral math. While Donald Trump has made inroads with Black and Latino men, polls in the late stage of the election show the suburbs could still power her to victory. The latest Wall Street Journal poll found Harris leading among suburban voters by 7 percentage points, while a Reuters/Ipsos analysis showed the vice president winning suburban households by 6 points.

. . . Inside the Harris campaign, aides said they believe they will improve on President Joe Biden’s performance with suburban voters in 2020, driven by college-educated voters and women who are turned off by the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and by the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

Another piece there from yesterday claims this is in fact paying off:

There’s a new kind of gender gap in the 2024 election: Women are voting early in huge numbers, far outpacing men.

It’s giving anxious Democrats — who see female voters as key to a Kamala Harris victory — newfound hope heading into the final week of the campaign.

. . . It’s impossible to know who these women are voting for, including whether Democrats are winning over unaffiliated or moderate Republican women disillusioned with former President Donald Trump. But the gender gap has been one of the defining features of the 2024 campaign, and Harris allies see the lack of a surge of male voters as an encouraging sign.

Here's the problem I see. Reports from the field, especially Pennsylvania, indicate that there are hours-long lines for early voting -- but local government operatives are trying to get people to leave before they vote. Farther down in the thread, a post noted that if people are in line before 8 PM, they're entitled to cast their votes. Elsewhere in suburban Bucks County, we see this:

DISENFRANCHISEMENT: At least 50 voters in Levittown, PA at the Lower Bucks Government Services Center were denied the opportunity to vote in person today. Throughout the afternoon, certain individuals paced the line of voters making statements like “oh the lines really long we… pic.twitter.com/zhuCEgCBWq

— Paul Giblin 🇺🇸 (@dreamlessod) October 29, 2024

Levittown is quintessentially suburban -- if the suburbanites waiting in line for hours to vote are there to support Kamala, as Politico claims they are, wouldn't the polling staff want to give them every chance to vote, sooner rathee than later? Elsewhere in suburban Bucks County, we see this:

🚨 ⁦⁦@TheDemocrats⁩ are running around in Bucks County, PA with badges trying to pretend like they are elections officials.

These people are not officials.

Intimidation tactics! pic.twitter.com/M3ILEEQPNg

— James Blair (@JamesBlairUSA) October 29, 2024

So operatives who aren't even election officials are trying to look like they are, and they're telling Bucks County suburbanites to go home and come back later, although as long as the voters are in line by 8 PM, they can cast their votes.

🚨 Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

There’s been lines like this for days across counties in PA. Only for elections officials to come out and push people out of line and tell them to come back.

Voter suppression! pic.twitter.com/aYrR1N1AeD

— James Blair (@JamesBlairUSA) October 29, 2024

As of this morning,

The Trump-Vance campaign has filed a lawsuit against Bucks County, Pennsylvania, accusing county election officials of obstructing GOP voters from participating in on-demand mail-in voting.

Speaking at a packed rally in Allentown, RNC Chair Michael Whatley emphasized the historic momentum of Republican voters across the state and blasted Bucks County officials for attempting to halt the red wave sweeping Pennsylvania.

“Now, I know that a lot of you today have seen these videos of people being turned away at the polls in places like Delaware County and Bucks County. And last night, we even saw one of our great local leaders, Val Biancaniello, arrested at the polls for telling people to stay in line. All she was doing was telling folks, ‘Stay and vote.’ They took her away in handcuffs,” Whatley said during the rally.

“Folks, here’s what’s happening: Democrat election officials are seeing our numbers. They’re seeing our turnout. They are seeing us breaking early vote records across Pennsylvania. They are terrified, and they want to stop our momentum. We are not going to let them suppress our votes. We are going to fight.

Lancaster County, which is rural Amish country and more traditionally Republican, also had long lines for early voting:

Voters attempting to vote early at the Lancaster County Elections office were met by lines that stretched out the door and out onto the sidewalk earlier this week.

Tuesday was the last day to apply for a mail-in ballot and take advantage of Pennsylvania’s version of early in-person voting for this year’s presidential election. Voters from across Lancaster county – many voting early for the first time – attempted to cast their ballot through an unfamiliar process.

. . . Her story was not uncommon among the voters gathered at the elections office Monday and Tuesday for early voting. Many had never done in-person early voting and were pushed toward this method by circumstances or a distrust of mail-in voting.

The post below is from a voter in Pittsburgh suburb Bethel Park, where again there are hours-long lines waiting to vote early. In this case, busloads of Spanish-speaking voters were escorted past the lines to vote ahead of the others, apparently faciolitated by poll workers -- but if the Harris campaign believes college-educated suburban women are going to tip the balance, why interfere with them this way?

BUSSES of non-english speaking "citizens" are guided past Americans who had been waiting in line for hours to cast their early votes. These people, all wearing Harris Walz stickers, were directed through the voting process by a handful of "translators". pic.twitter.com/AkHWWBHQ9e

— Emma Cawwod (@emmagcawood) October 27, 2024

This all has my contrarian instincts tingling.

If The Election Is So Close, Why Is The Smart Money Acting As If It Isn't?

Attribute whatever motive you want to Jeff Bezos, for instance:

ex washington post editor: “Trump waited to make sure that Bezos did what he said he was going to do, and then met with the Blue Origin people,” he said on Saturday. “Which tells us that there was an actual deal made."

The implication is that Bezos offered to squash a potential Washington Post endorsement of Harris in return for giving Bezos's Blue Origin favorable treatment for contracts in an upcoming Trump administration. Let's accept this -- Bezos has never had Rockefeller-level PR -- but then, let's also grant him the cupidinous instincts this implies.

Why would Bezos see the point in making this deal? If the election were flip-a-coin close, which among other things might imply that a WaPo endorsement could tip it to Kamala, why change course? I think a reasonable conclusion is that insiders seem to think it's not close at all. Here's the headline at CEO Today: Trump’s VIP Tech List: CEOs Scramble to Suck Up to the Ex-President!

In a series of recent statements, Trump asserts that several tech CEOs are actively reaching out to him. Prominent figures like Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, and Mark Zuckerberg, head of Meta, have faced criticism from Trump in the past, particularly regarding what he perceives as the suppression of conservative voices on their platforms. Yet, as the polls tighten in the race against Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump claims these leaders are becoming more favorable toward him, aligning their interests with the possibility of a Trump victory.

According to reports from the Washington Post, influential business leaders are adopting a cautious approach, potentially recognizing the implications of Trump’s return to power. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has made his support for Trump explicit, contributing financially to his campaign.

The link goes into more derail on Bezos's business interests as they relate to Trump:

Former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has recently faced scrutiny for the Washington Post’s decision to refrain from endorsing presidential candidates, which Trump criticized. According to Trump, Bezos called him after the assassination attempt, expressing amazement at the unfolding events. Trump noted, “Despite the fact you own the Washington Post, I appreciate it.” Bezos' connection to government contracts, particularly through Amazon Web Services and Blue Origin, adds another layer of complexity to his relationship with Trump.

A Trump presidency could lead to significant changes in how Amazon operates, particularly regarding government contracts. Historically, Trump has leveraged federal contracts as a tool for both rewarding and punishing companies based on their alignment with his administration’s agenda. If Trump were to regain office, Amazon might find itself navigating a landscape with more direct ties to the federal government, influencing everything from regulations to contract awards. Additionally, Trump’s focus on domestic manufacturing could pressure Amazon to adjust its logistics and supply chain strategies to prioritize U.S.-based operations.

Again, if the election were the tossup we're being told it is, why would people like Zuckerberg, mentioned here, Bezos, or Warren Buffett, via Business Insider, suddenly be hedging their bets?

Warren Buffett has not endorsed Kamala Harris or Donald Trump, and made it clear this week he will not publicly back either presidential candidate.

. . . The Berkshire CEO's reticence may seem surprising as he's previously thrown his weight behind Democratic presidential candidates. He organized fundraisers for Barack Obama in 2011 and stumped for Hillary Clinton in 2016, even walking on stage at a rally to hammer Donald Trump over his bankrupt businesses, reluctance to publish his tax returns, and rude treatment of others.

Yet the 94-year-old billionaire explained why he's now keeping his mouth shut during Berkshire's annual shareholder meeting in 2022. Buffett said he'd learned that "you can make a whole lot more people sustainably mad than you can make temporarily happy by speaking out on any subject."

Translation: Buffett doesn't want to make Trump sustainably mad at him, when it's not worth making Harris temporarily happy, because it's certain Trump will win on November 5, and she will lose. His BNSF Railway won big when Biden canceled the Keystone XL Pipeline, because it meant oil shipments from Canada would continue to come by rail. It was to his advantage to support Biden early in 2020; now he needs to appease Trump early in 2024, because he needs to control the damage when Trump reverses this policy.

Yet the Wall Street Journal, thought to be the organ of plutocracy, still feigns obtuseness:

A week from the election, we have bipartisan consensus on two points regarding Pennsylvania.

The first is that the presidential contest is way too close to call. The second is that only one contender has coattails. Both candidates for Senate—Republican challenger Dave McCormick and Democratic incumbent Bob Casey—agree on who that is: Donald Trump.

If the election were really "way too close to call", why is Casey acting as though Trump is going to win? Now we even have Alan Dershowitz saying he can't vote for Harris:

Like everyone else here, he won't say he's voting for Trump, but if he;'s saying he won't vote for Harris, that's the same thing. I think he's too smart to throw his vote away by voting for Jill Stein.

November 5 isn't going to be cloae at all.

Did Kamala Pay Lizzo And Beyonce For Their Appearances?

A recent feature of the Harris campaign has been the disappointing appeaarances of celebrities Lizzo (in Detroit October 19) and Beyonce (in Houston October 25) to endorse Kamala. Lizzo spoke, at least according to YouTube clips, for about seven minutes, notably claiming that if Kamala wins, the whole country will be like Detroit, but didn't perform. This also happened with Beyonce at the Houston rally:

Beyoncé fans were left furious after the singer failed to perform at a Texas rally for Kamala Harris.

The star took to the stage in her native Houston to endorse the Vice President on Friday night.

Some fans had waited more than 12 hours before packing into the city's Shell Energy Stadium expecting a performance, after rumors she would sing swirled online and the Washington Post reported on her expected appearance.

The singer appeared to come tantalizingly close to delighting the crowds when she began to talk about how it is time for America to 'sing a new song'.

However, rallygoers were ultimately left disappointed when the 'Single Ladies' hitmaker made a brief appearance in which she said she was not there as a celebrity, but as a mother.

Typical reaction was Slugga: The Beyoncé bait and switch is the most Kamala thing ever. But this left observers with a nagging question: had the Harris campaign paid Lizzo and Beyonce for their appearances, even though they didn't perform? The fact checkers were on the case, at least as far as Lizzo was concerned:

In person, attendees applauded Lizzo’s brief speech. Online, some social media users said Lizzo’s support cost the campaign a pretty penny.

"BREAKING: Lizzo charged the Harris-Walz campaign $2.3 million for a single appearance at a Detroit rally," read an Oct. 22 post by an X user whose account is affiliated with a conservative account, @ConservativeOG.

Other Republicans shared this claim on X, including Sean Spicer, onetime press secretary to former President Donald Trump and an account. "You have to be pretty desperate to pay @lizzo to appear at a rally," Spicer wrote when he reshared the $2.3 million claim on X Oct. 22.

. . . We found no evidence that Lizzo was paid to make those remarks. The Harris campaign confirmed to PolitiFact that the posts’ claims are untrue.

We searched using Google and Nexis, a news database, and we found no credible news reports or other indications that the Harris-Walz campaign paid Lizzo for her appearance at the Harris event or her endorsement.

Similar questions have come up over the Beyonce appearance:

You tellin me Kamala paid Beyoncé 10 million to speak….. and they couldn’t even work it in the deal that she performs?

Shows you how desperate they are and how bad they are at negotiating business

You trust these people wit ur money? 😂

— AB (@AB84) October 27, 2024

Kamala Harris gets booed off stage in embarrassing attempt to mix a political rally with a free Beyonce concert.

Rumor has it Beyonce demanded a large sum of money and refused to even travel outside of Houston, Texas, where she lives. Beyonce has a private jet and could have… pic.twitter.com/U7kc8Oaonj

— Matt Wallace (@MattWallace888) October 26, 2024

So far, there's been no official fact check of these claims, but frankly, they have the ring of truth. Celebrities at that level see value in their names alone. I would imagine that their agents must be involved in any potential use of their names, and they aren't going to give this valuable asset away to anyone, fashion brand, breakfast cereal, or political candidate -- and even if the celebrities wanted to give away their endorsement for free, their agents wouldn't allow it.

So why was there no performance if the campaign paid them so much just to show up? I would assume that if either were going to perform, there'd be multimillions more involved, band, backup singers, stage sets, lighting, and so forth, and this would be for a free concert. People who buy tickets pay for this:

The prices for standard tickets to Beyoncé's concerts from StubHub start at approximately $102 on the lower end to nearly $400, depending on the venue. Vivid Seats offers similar price ranges for standard Renaissance World Tour tickets, ranging from about $100 in Las Vegas to $375 in Houston.

Beyonce performed at Mercedes Benz Stadium in Atlanta on Aug. 11-12, 2023 which had an attendance of 156,000 fans. It took in $39.8 million. These numbers would be beyond the capability of the Harris campaign to hold a "free" concert, and her agents wouldn't allow the product to be cheapened for anything less.

How on earth would anyone think they could get into a concert that normally costs $1-400 for free? What does it say about the Harris campaign that they'd even try to bamboozle the crowd this way?

What this does say about the Harris campaign is that it almost certainly had to pay big bucks for even a short segment of Beyonce's time and the use of her name, and it could only try to get away with a vague suggestion that anyopne who attended would get something more.

Did any of this pay off? According to Newsweek,

Vice President Kamala Harris' odds of winning the 2024 presidential election have worsened over the past 24 hours, according to a leading bookmaker.

On Friday, Betfair offered odds of 6/4 (40 percent) on Harris achieving victory on November 5, compared to 4/6 (60 percent) for former President Donald Trump. As of Saturday morning, Harris' odds had lengthened to 8/5 (38 percent), while Trump saw his odds cut to 5/8 (61 percent)—suggesting that those placing bets didn't think Harris' rally with Beyoncé on Friday gave her an immediate boost.

. . . Speaking to Newsweek about the change in odds, Betfair spokesperson Sam Rosbottom said: "Despite Harris' chances improving slightly this week after her Obama and Springsteen rally on Thursday, punters appear unconvinced by her A-list backers.

"And Harris' hopes that Beyoncé might help her run the world appear dashed, too, after the megastar's appearance at a Democrat rally in Houston failed to move the needle in her favor."

So this was a Hail Mary, or maybe more accurately, an attempt to pull off a Hail Mary on the cheap. It failed.

The Proletarian-Middle Class Realignment

Let's continue down the road I started yesterday, a contrarian-revisionist reinterpretation of "Fabian socialism", which has been the consensus social democrat strategy in the West since the late 19th century. It is effectively a delaying strategy to appear to make concessions to the threat of class revolution, but the concessions, although expensive, are token, while they're made and financed by the middle class and upper proletariat (Paul Fussell's "high proles"), and the institutions of upper-class privilege remain untouched.

One feature of the Trump era is that key demographic groups are beginning to recognize that this strategy in fact doesn't work for them, even though it had been sold as to their benefit. For instance,

Barbara Clark is the perfect example of a voter—whether black, white, Hispanic, or from any other ethnic group—who defies stereotypes. This defiance often leads to voters such as her being overlooked as people who could change not just the presidential election, but also the majority in the Senate.

Clark is a black female who has been a registered Democrat for almost all of her adult life and voted for former President Barack Obama twice.

. . . “After we got Obama in the first time, and nothing happened, nothing changed, I said, ‘Whoa, what’s going on?’ And the local Democrats told me, ‘They won’t let him,’” Clark explained.

. . . “My answer to them was, I said, ‘Well, he’s got to step up and say, “I’m the president.”’ But nothing changed in our community,” she added.

This is echoed in a recent essay by Amity Shlaes, We Are Living In Lyndon Johnson's America:

Counterintuitive as it is to recall, the riots that ripped up Los Angeles and Detroit in the Johnson years [1965-67] came after passage of Johnson’s two great civil-rights laws, not before. As [aide Joseph] Califano reports, the Watts riots so distressed Johnson that he chose to disappear for more than twenty-four hours, an eternity for a chief executive.

. . . Rather than consider the possibility that African Americans were saying they needed something beyond more federal laws, Johnson, upon his return, simply passed further measures, including the Model Cities program, another Washington try at bettering the life of cities’ middle classes and the urban poor.

In short, these experiments were not experiments in the true sense, for they lacked science and accountability. They were actually plays, or Hail Marys, or political forays.

In other words, Johnson's Great Society legislation wasn't so much an effort to address the actual problems of civil rights and poverty as it was to create an impression that something was being done, when on one hand, it wasn't, but on the other, the huge and feckless expense would be borne by middle-and working-class taxpayers in the form of increased taxes and inflation. Shlaes continues,

While in office, Johnson, all politician, never . . . . took time to parse the downside of welfare-state expansion, or to consider that inflation caused by his spending might ravage paychecks. He did not consider that basing American immigration policy on compassion rather than logic or trade-offs would make it difficult for future lawmakers to control the nation’s borders. He did not ponder what increasing longevity would do to the fiscal outlook of his most beloved program, Medicare. In 1966 or 1967, he was too busy to think about all that.

. . . Though a failure of Johnson’s great military buildup in Vietnam is usually offered as the reason he did not choose to run again in 1968, one suspects that an eagerness to avoid seeing the ugly outputs, the results of his domestic work, played a role.

But Shlaes, at least here, doesn't cover Johnson's shift from Southern-state segregationist as Senate Majority Leader to ally of Dr King as president. This is the Johnson who is reported to have said in 1963,

These Negroes, they're getting pretty uppity these days and that's a problem for us since they've got something now they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppityness. Now we've got to do something about this, we've got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference. . . I'll have them n****** voting Democratic for the next two hundred years.

This suggests that Johnson's legislative moves weren't made with a pure heart or the best of intentions; his aim wasn't to fix the race issue, it was to "give them a little something", which would in reality be paid out in riots that set the community back for decades.

What we're seeing in the current election season is a growing alignment between all members of the non-college educated middle class against an alliance of the college-educated and the traditionally privileged. It's explained in tis NPR interview:

Well, we're talking about the education line, and whether or not you have a college degree seems to be one of the biggest predictors of how you're going to vote. If you have a college degree, more likely than not, you're voting Democratic. If you don't, more likely than not now, you're voting Republican. And that's a pretty big shift from what we had seen, you know, in the 1980s or '90s, even the early 2000s.

This brings us back to a less-acknowledged feature of the Fabian socialist project, the widening of access to college education. This is coered from different perspectives in David Brooks's Bobos in Paradise and Alan Dershowitz's Chutzpah. Brooks feels that the post-World War II GI Bill and the introduction of the Scholastic Aptitude Test created a genune meritocracy that in particular allowed Jews to compete for upper-middle-class jobs.

Dershowitz has a much more realistic view that the universities simply disguised their existing Jewish quotas under "diversity" criteria while continuing to give admissions preference to legacies, which simply perpetuated the old upper-class privilege. The middle-class applicants who won the admissions lottery were flattered into believing they'd gotten in on merit, so they enthusiastically supported the new regime, while the legacies, admitted the same old way as their forebears, could hitchhike on the prestige of those admitted on grades and SAT scores.

The problem is in the Trump era, the value of a college degree is declining. Once I switched my own career to tech, I found that the de facto qualifications for most IT jobs did not require a four-year degree, and many of my colleagues didn't have one. But if anything, the snobbery associated with a college degree has only increased, so that there's now an alliance between the newly respectable alumni of elite schools -- David Brooks is a perfect example -- and the legacies.

But again, the aspiring upper middle class that participates in the college admissions rat race finances this putative concession themselves, in the steadily increasing cost of the degree, financed by increasingly burdensome student loans. The legacies don't have this problem.

So what we're seeing incresingly is a recognition amonmg a growing segment of the electorate that the Fabian socialist project is a con -- in fact, an expensive con tha's financed by the people it's supposed to benefit. This is a good part of the basis for Trump's cuirrent success.

What's happening is on one hand a growing recognition of Ferdinand Lundberg's insight that I cited yesterday -- US society does at basis resemble a Latin American structure of a large population of peasants supporting a privileged ownership class -- but a relatively recent twist is that a segment of the peasants have been bamboozled into believing their interests correspond with the interests of the owners. But this is just another part of the Fabian socialist con.

WaPo And The LA Times: He Who Has The Gold Makes The Rules

In Ferdinand Lundberg, The Rich and the Super-Rich (1969):

Those few newspapers that make a practice of printing foreign news occasionally survey Latin American countries. The writers are invariably grieved to find a small oligarchy of big landowners in control, with the remainder of the population consisting of sycophantic hangers-on and landless, poverty-stricken peasants. But I have never seen it remarked that the basic description, with the alteration of a few nouns, applies just as well to the United States, where the position of the landowners is occupied by the financiers, industrialists and big rentiers and that of the peasants by the low-paid employees (all subject to dismissal for one reason or other just like the peasants).

If anyone in the past few days seeks vindication of Ferdinand Lundberg's views, he need look no farther than the events surrounding the decisions by the once-totemic Los Angeles Times and Washington Post not to endorse a presidentiual candidate in this year's election, which amount to an effective endorsement of Donald Trump. And as I covered Thursday, the wealthy plutocrat who owns the LA Times overrode the paper's editorial board in this matter, as did Jeff Bezos, the plutocrat who owns the Washington Post.

These events come in context, though. As I pointed out in Thursday's post, the influential and plutocratic Chandler family, whose fortune had been behind the LA Times, disinvested from the losing business a generation ago. The Graham family, which had owned the Post since 1933, sold the paper as a losing enterprise to Jeff Bezos in 2013. On one hand, the mere fact that the papers continued to be owned by Lundberg's class of financiers, industrialists, and big rentiers is nothng new, as he would be the first to point out.

On the other, the Chandlers and the Grahams both sold out simply to different financiers, industrialists, and big rentiers. Bezos in particular, although noted for highly aggressive business practices, has supported leftist politicians and causes:

According to public campaign finance records, Bezos supported the electoral campaigns of Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, two Democratic U.S. senators from Washington. He has also supported Democrats U.S. representative John Conyers, as well as Patrick Leahy and Republican Spencer Abraham, U.S. senators serving on committees dealing with Internet-related issues. Jeff Bezos and MacKenzie Bezos have supported the legalization of same-sex marriage, and in 2012 contributed $2.5 million to Washington United for Marriage, a group supporting a yes vote on Washington Referendum 74, which affirmed a same-sex marriage law enacted in the state.

Neither Bezos nor Patrick Soon-Shiong, the current owner of the LA Times, had previously interfered with the generally leftist editorial positions of either paper, and their refusals to allow their papers to endorse Harris has come as a surprise. We must assume that both Bezos and Soon-Shiong spent many millions to buy these papers, and they did it with their business interests in mind, even if, at least at the time of the purchases, the papers were losing money.

Did something change? Let's assume for starters that Lundberg's view of financiers, industrialists, and big rentiers is correct, and the nature of their interests hasn't changed. If that's the case, we can see that the social environment in which they operate also hasn't changed -- by and large, they're selling their products to the population of sycophantic hangers-on and de facto landless, poverty-stricken peasants, while their papers are at least seeking to manipulate the collective opinions of that same population.

Up to very recently, it was to the advantage of corporate media's owners to project an image of sympathy for leftist agendas, although especially in the case of Bezos, he tended to conduct his day-to-day business much more in the style of post-Civil War industrialist robber barons. Whatever the Post said editorially was neither here nor there, and indeed, his donations to liberal Democrats were mostly to keep them off his own case. But somehow, late in this election campaign, push came to shove for both Bezos and Soon-Shiong, and what their papers said editorially actually made a difference, to the extent that they overrode their editors, who apparently had forgotten they were only hired help on the plantation, and effectively dismssed them.

Let's keep in mind that modern public relations was developed by John D Rockefeller, who was notwithstaning never acknowleged for saving the whales, as a means of humanizing his public image. His son, John D Jr, devoted his own career to remaking the Rockefeller family image as benevolent and public-minded. This strategy was generally adopted by the descendants of all the robber baron families, and my surmise is that they saw this as a means of temporizing with the threat of world proletarian revolution -- give them a little, make it seem like a lot, and defer the worker soviets for a few more years.

This strategy was then modified by the great social theorist Charles Manson, who envisioned an apocalyptic race war. In effect, this gave the rentier descendants of the robber barons a whole new worry -- it wouldn't be just the proletariat, but the inner-city lumpenproles who'd rise up against them, which created a whole new set of interests to be paid off and temporized with.

This was the basis of the race grifts of the 1960s and 70s, which resulted in vast sums of public money being sent to inner-city programs with either no result or unintended consequences. In fact, much of this multitrillion-dollar transfer was simply passed through to Latin American drug cartels. The Black Lives Matter movement was little more than a last-ditch attempt to blackmail the public apparatus into maintaining this charade for a few more years.

I've run into a puzzle over the term "Fabian socialism", which is conventionally defined as "aiming at the gradual rather than revolutionary achievement of socialism". But why would the likes of George Bernard Shaw and the Webbs pattern their strategy after Fabius?

Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus (died 203 bce) was a Roman military commander and statesman whose cautious delaying tactics (whence the nickname “Cunctator,” meaning “delayer,” which was not his official cognomen) during the early stages of the Second Punic War (218–201 bce) gave Rome time to recover its strength. When Rome resumed the offensive against the invading Carthaginian army of Hannibal, Fabius waged a war of slow attrition, avoiding direct engagement whenever possible.

Wait a moment. A strategy of delay and attrition is a defensive strategy, not offensive. But Shaw and the Webbs were, at least ostensibly, promotimg an offensive strategy for implementing socialism. I think this gets things backward. The Victorian bourgeoisie were hardly revolutionaries, at least in a socio-political sense (what they did privately was their own business, and they sure did do it). If anything, we can characterize the strategy of the US post-Civil War industrialists and rentiers as gradually giving in to what they perceived as proletarian demands as a way to temporize while preserving their privilege.

I think this is a more accurate understanding of the "Fabian socialist" project -- it's primarily a way to maintain a privileged class while appearing to give in to potentially revolutionary demands without surrendering what's important. The problem with this model is that the concessions are made at the expense of the lower middle class, and indeed, one of the insights of current commentators like Mike Rowe is that this class is harder and harder to distingush from the proletariat.

Thus the Fabian model -- not the Fabian model of Shaw and the Webbs, but the Rockefeller-based model of gradual but unimportant concessions at the expense of the upper proletariat -- is collapsing, and a current, more avant-garde set of plutocrats including Trump, Musk, and Bezos has begun to see the need to rethink this social strategy.