Pix Credit: William Blake the Great Red Dragon and the Beats from the sea
It appears that the political classes are doomed to repeat past errors. Or perhaps political classes have made a virtue of the vices that both bring them to power and that make inevitable the collapse of the "good feeling" that made their rise to power plausible.
These are the thoughts that came to mind as I observe the vanguard of public intellectuals and what passes in modern form for press elements and perhaps as well the insertions of commentary by the propaganda departments of foreign and domestic actors respecting what has at least momentarily been names the "blue tsunami" referencing the election of candidates put forward by a fractured Democratic Party that managed to hold itself together long enough to present a plausible united front to voters at least when measured against that motley crew of Republican Party cadres put forward by their parties, and in many cases endorsed by the President, and, it turns out, serving primarily as grist for the mill of popular entertainment for the masses.
I was reminded of all of this as I returned to an earlier assessment of the failures and cautions of another election cycle--the Presidential election of 2020, and its analysis of lessons and cautions to be learned. Neither Party did--the Democratic Party in 2024 and the Republicans in 2020 and (again) in 2026. As the Trump Administration Fades into the Shadows of History (and Myth) Lessons Left Unlearned (8 November 2020).
I noted in 2020 the likelihood that lessons would tend to go unlearned or if learned, ignored.
And so, while they are fresh in mind, perhaps it serves some small purpose to briefly list some of the long term lessons that might be lost in the euphoria of the narrative of casting demons back to Hell--the moral of the story that is evidenced by our collective behaviors--now exposed. These are purely idiosyncratic. They will quickly be forgotten, buried beneath the glorious incantations of the myth making that will provide the catchy tunes that can distract the masses and keep them on course. Still, the recognition of demons might provide even marginal protection against temptation. We might in the end find solace in the fact that the temptations to which we will succumb will be different that those of our ancestors, and to that even myth making may prove of some value; clarity more. (As the Trump Administration Fades into the Shadows of History (and Myth) Lessons Left Unlearned)
So collective organizations find it hard to learn, or collective memory in the US is short, sharp, and brutal. Certainly the Republican Party and this President have been here before, in the course of an election that produced what one would have thought would be core lessons for politics moving forward. But that is the ting about ideological positions within cognitive cages of ordering belief. Both Democratic and Republican Parties remain infected with this virus which, to the delight of those who produce and sell political those sort of certified pharmacopeia for alleviation (but not cure--there is no money in cure) of the symptoms of political cultures that appear to enhance the cyclical nature of mandate-disaster that appears to be the resting state of the American political environment at the moment. And, of course, there is another lesson--whatever one's cognitive cage, politics, like markets, is unforgiving of failure. A bad merchant is subject to penalty as severe as that which awaits a failed institutionalist, gloablist etc. Thus is a lesson learned over and over from the time of the Bush 1 Administration but never internalized.
Of course this is all meaningful at the margins. The American Republic is still blessed, to a lesser extent perhaps, but still blessed with highly fractured political bases and a highly segmented political-economic-social framework within which collectives have room to battle. Even if each of these collectives are themselves highly centralized--like the political parties, the core of economic sectors, the ruling elements of religious collectives, and identitarian socio-political collectives, there is enough fracture that mitigates the effects of these cyclical changes (within the parameters of the cognitive orders within which they occur).
That plausible reality (as we understand that term in the here and now and among a semiotically collective aggregation of people/things/objects/ideas) does not minimize the power of the margins. American love the marginal. Marginalia is what tends to drive change and distort as well what appears to be the heartland of signification. But then that has been the case for a long time. But marginalia as driving forces can produce a simulated environment of signification within its communicative structures (the press, Tik-Tok, social media, sewing circles, agitation on the streets) that is itself quite potent. And the failure to play effectively to the margins tends to produce the simulacra of reality that then might be realized--for example in elections.
In 2020 I offered these "lessons" that were then and appear again (2020) and again (2026) left unlearned. These are the lessons that serve as food for thought for Republican Party cadres and a warning to the cadre organization(s) of the Democratic Party especially now when in the intoxicating atmosphere of victory it may well slip back into old patterns fueled, in the American style of this century (and part of the last) by arrogance, delusion (mandate versus narrow victory) and vanguardist dreamscapes that are belied by the fracture of the populace whose welfare (not that of the cadres or their political collectives) is their charge.
1. The privileges of the press have produced quite poisoned fruit. News media are deeply political actors embedded in their own webs of ownership and control; the temptations of those webs, and of the class and political interests of those who serve press organs, have been both realized and effectively deployed. But in the process the Americans have lost their press, at least their myths about the press and press purity.
2. Cruelty never pays. The temptation to be cruel runs deep in American politics--of both the left and the right. The Trump Administration gave in to the temptation of cruelty. So did the Biden Administration after 2020.
3. Respect the dead and dying. American cultural taboos remain strong in connection with the dead and dying; especially those who are dead or dying and who have given service to the state. Their political views, the correctness of their positions, or their alignment with a speaker make no difference. Leadership that fails to respect the dead and dying produce the sort of feeling of dirtiness that inevitably shows up in the polls. Both Parties partake in full measure the rejection of this lesson in their lust to rise up of the corpses of their enemies.
4. Loyalty is a prime value. Abandonment is certainly the prerogative of empire--but it runs against core principles of American morals. Loyalty, honor, respect--these are crucial elements in the American social order--derogation of which without sufficiently powerful explanation harms those engaging in these behaviors as much as their targets.
5. Bullying plays well to the masses; but only for a short time. The psychology of the bully is well established, even in national and international relations. It is a sign of weakness and while tolerated for a while (short term value of concessions to bullies may be useful in well thought out), one might want to be able to use bullies without being one That was a lesson unlearned after 2016. And it is the great lesson that will have to be learned by other great states, and their helmsman int he coming decade. The bully eventually falls if only because, left to her own devices long enough, it becomes possible for former enemies to unite or establish a short term alliance to rid themselves of the bully.
6. Social media is now a political territory in private hands. The tweet will never be the same again. All actors are now learning the art of managing twitter accounts and of the development of policy through tweets. Only the old worry about this. The revolution in communication invites suppression, displacement, and the passions of mobs which can be used effectively but which also consume those who deploy them.
7. Your friends are not your enemies and your enemies are not your friends. The lesson is in the way in which friendships are managed and cultivated. A hierarch makes for a very bad ally even when the reality of the relationship is hierarchical. Bu worse, of course, is the appearance of treating friends contemptuously while appearing to cultivate the friendship of enemies. The strategies underlying communication might have been sound, the performance of that strategy was both sloppy and dangerous for the Republic.
8. If one is going to be ruthless one should not hold back. Playing "footsie" with adversarial states is one thing; failing to be ruthless when it is required is another. There are any number of situations that serve, in this respect, as contemporary traps for both the Republican and Democratic Party visions of the world. Proportionality is the way that hierarchs disappear and become subaltern. Perhaps that is that awaits the Republic, and it is a choice that its polity is always free to make by remaking their own cultural norms that transform the unacceptable into the natural.
9. Sloppiness is fatal in an administrative state. This is a lesson that will likely be learned well. The Trump Administration became famous for its administrative gestures--through executive orders, and the discretionary decision making of its officials in areas deeply unpopular with Administration's political enemies. For 2026 I would add that the failure to ruthlessly drive home the point of judicial overreaching and to use media sources and political action to create and refine a narrative of judicial encroachment on the powers of the legislature and executive (especially with respect to their equity powers) magnified the opportunity for enemies to create a marvelously effective narrative of impotence.
10. If you are going to break something have an alternative already prepared. The corollary is that if one is going to blow stuff up, one must plan well for the consequences of the explosions. This is a lesson that neither Party feels much interest in learning precisely because the blowing up produces the necessary short term capital. Long term investments are harvested by those who come after. Follow through as opposed to media driven gesture has now become a rarer species of political action. It survives beyond political space, and that makes such spaces worth protecting against the political cadres of vanguardist collectives.
11. If you want to be a star be sure that the camera likes you and that you know your lines. There is almost nothing more revealing than the lens of a camera. Americans became aware of that during the Nixon-Kennedy debates more than half a century ago. Americans love a pretty face, they tend to be horrified by camera presence that exposes. Yet they cannot get enough of either. And while scandal (manufactured, amplified, or distorted) brings attention the simulacra of the lives of candidates must be closely managed to be effective.
12. "Not my President" has become an irresistible tactic of American politics. The opposition first to President Obama and then to President Trump refined the value of the agit-prop technique of "Not my President." Other related theatrics now serves as the fetish of politics--as entertainment and solidarity building between one and the "other". Both political parties and the fringes around them have turned what had once been marginal theatre into the core of a strategy which has become too useful to resist. But the price of its use is increasingly steep. Control is an illusion best served up post mortem.
13. Majorities do not make mandates. The myth of majority power continues to exert a fatal influence on elected officials whose inclination to believe their own election propaganda leads to the sort of hubris that produces fatal miscalculations. Bare majorities ought to counsel caution and respect for the entirety of the polity, especially respecting subtle and complex issues of policy grounded in easier to understand (if not to embrace uniformly) core principles. That lust to treat a majority as a mandate is an object that exacts sacrifice--one usually paid by the Republic rather than by those officials who invoke the myth.
14. Personal disloyalty produces betrayal. This was an administration notorious for the extent to which its former members engaged in increasingly passionate betrayals of their former leader. There is a connection but it is more complex than the usual quid pro quo analysis. Embracing a culture of disloyalty tends to attract like minded people. The charterer of the leader s then reflected in her subordinates. An office the operative glue of which is disloyalty would also tend to embrace betrayal as a useful (defensive and offensive) tool.
I expect a repetition of these errors by the victorious candidates in the last election, whose victories I salute and whom I wish well enough. Beyond that there is myth making; necessary myth making--because reality is only what can be made to be believed, and one can cause many things to be believable. Perhaps myths are the most useful product of analysis.That ensures the sort of stability in cyclicity that the Republic for some reason now appears to have embedded in its architecture. And it is always an antidote to bad television.
