The Electric Slide and Populism

One hop this time! 

Populism has taken center stage in the American political landscape of 2016. Populism is a term that refers to a political movement focusing on the current conceptions (usually related to economics) of the “general population” or, in other words, “the common folk,” “the people.” Historically these movements have either faded into the nether or incited sweeping political revolutions, most extremely resulting in military coups and violent uprisings. Usually cooler- heads or the “status-quo” prevails, but hopefully having heard and listened to the concerns of the disillusioned common people. Today we are getting calls for drastic revolution from both sides of American politics. On the right we’ve watched Donald Trump drudge up outrage based on exclusionary populism suggesting that the jobs of hard-working Americans that were lost ‘due to’ the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) allowed Mexico to “win” by taking our manufacturing jobs out of the country. This is often echoed by those on the left, with different rhetoric, who are staunchly opposed to NAFTA on the grounds that big businesses profit through such trade agreements because of a lack of government oversight and regulation.

So for Trump: ‘Sliiiiiiide to the left!’

But don’t take that too seriously, for Trump supporters it’s less about a lack of government oversight and more just bigotry and xenophobia. He still supports “yuge” tax-cuts for the rich so anyone who would support Trump for his disdain towards NAFTA just doesn’t understand economics at all.

Donald, go ahead and hop, then sliiiide right.

The Populist movement on the left led by Bernie Sanders is at least consistent, but still radical populism. The anger from progressives towards trade agreements like NAFTA and the newer Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) are completely logical if their hope is to tear down the concept of American capitalism entirely and start fresh with a socialist model based on protectionism. Protectionism? You mean like isolation and abstinence from global economics? Yep. That’s what I’m saying. 

So to keep this cute:

Bernie,  sliiiiiide to the right.

(I realize this doesn’t make him right-wing but bear with me i’m working within a drunk-wedding-dance format.)

Being against big business certainly does not make you conservative, by any means, but the implications of rejecting foreign trade deals over and over again suggest that you would prefer our country to close our borders to foreign trade and shut us off from participating in the global economy. This might come across as xenophobia, if you’re not careful.

The hatred for any and all foreign trade had it’s loudest protest in the recent upset in Michigan, where Bernie Sanders took home a massive victory over Hillary Clinton. Many have suggested that this upset was largely due to the frustration of un-educated, blue-collar workers flocking to Sanders because of his hard-line opposition of such deals. 

Since this upset, Hillary has also prostrated herself in front of these rustbelt voters in hopes of reminding them how similar the two Democrats really are on the issues. But this is barely worth mentioning in the context of The Electric Slide since Hillary is famous for her political dancing skills. The ‘criss-cross’ is every real politicians best move.

But to get down to the specific reasons that these workers dislike foreign trade as opposed to the reasons Bernie cannot support these particular deals gets sticky. The workers who lost their jobs due to outsourcing are under the impression that it is trade with foreign countries, in general, that is costing them their jobs. It is completely understandable that these folks did not actually look into the specifics of these deals because, let me tell you, as someone who has put a lot of time into trying to make sense of them, they are very hard to read. But, if you try to make sense of bits and pieces of them, or more helpfully, read what people on both sides have written about them, there’s actually nothing in there about moving money and jobs overseas. The reasons that ends up happening, and the reason Bernie Sanders is so fervently opposed to them, is about the unregulated freedoms that big corporations take advantage of when navigating these deals. 

So basically they couldn’t hear the DJ, some slid left, some right, and a lot of people bumped into each other.

The corporations that eventually end up profiting and screwing over hard-working Americans have the best, most-expensive economists on their teams to find the best ways to profit off of these deals. But it’s not foreign trade, or even these deals in particular that is responsible for this, it’s our lack of corporate accountability to the governments involved in these deals. Also, contrary to what we hear from some folks opposed to NAFTA and the TPP, the impact of these deals on the American labor force is actually so incredibly minimal, that sighting that as a reason to oppose trade makes very little sense. The reason for job losses due to out-sourcing is the profit motives of the executives of these companies, and if they want something, they’re going to get it. 

The way to fix this is not shutting ourselves off from participating in the global economy, or scrapping existing international partnerships. Nor is it a realistic option to assume that we could somehow remove corporations from being a part of these deals. I’m sorry, it’s just not possible, the people with money are the people in charge of the money, nobody is going to take it from them. The centrist, arguably reasonable alternative would be to create a dialogue between governments and corporations, insisting on oversight from the U.S. as well as foreign governments involved in these deals and enacting a variety of restrictions on the ways in which we proceed with global trade in the future. 

Some might say that The Electric Slide isn’t really a dance at all, but rather a series of pre-determined checks and balances that ends up with most people in roughly the same place they started, some with bruises, some embarrassed, but overall a sense of community and cooperation. If we all try not to slide too far in either direction, participating in the the global economy could one day inspire a similar sense of disinterest and giggles.

White Junkies Matter

 The Hypocrisy of Our Concern

There’s a drug epidemic in America! Heroin and prescription opioids are killing U.S. citizens left and right!

Across the country, but predominantly in rural areas, we have seen a steady increase in deaths linked to opioid overdoses. While this is, of course, an issue that needs to be addressed and remedied, many have pointed out the hypocrisy of our concern. This is far from the first time we’ve seen a drug epidemic sweep the country. Yet the way we’ve been discussing, and attempting to deal with this crisis is in stark contrast with the way we’ve addressed all of our previous drug epidemics. While in the past we blamed the victims, got ‘tough on crime’, or started a ‘war on drugs,’ this time around, the rhetoric being used is startlingly more forgiving.  Even Republicans, who love nothing more than extolling the Reagan presidency and its infallibility, have been making statements that are in direct contradiction with Ronnie and Nancy’s ‘War on Drugs’. Remember when it was as simple as ‘Just Say No’? Turns out it’s more complicated than that. Now it seems like we’re all ready to have an in-depth discussion about drug use.

But why do we care about the victims of this new epidemic so much more than we have in the past? Well you know how I said “predominantly rural areas” earlier? That means white folks. We care now because the people being affected are white.

Unfortunately, this is far from a revelation to those of us who are all too familiar with institutionalized racism. It comes as little surprise that when there’s a problem that affects mostly minorities, the government, media and the general public turn a blind eye, chalking it up to uncivilized behavior that needs to be stopped and thrown in prison; but when white people are dying it’s a more complicated problem. While I am far from the first to blow the whistle on this glaring discrepancy in the country’s position on drugs, I thought it might be useful to dig a little deeper into our persistent inconsistency when it comes to drug policy in America.

Let’s take a look at how we’ve dealt with drug epidemics in the past.

The most obvious example being, the Crack catastrophe of the 1980s.

As the story goes, (with my own little rosey spin on it,) at some point around 1984-85, there was an enterprising entrepreneur/purveyor of cocaine with a real flair for business. He believed that his product had seen its heyday a decade earlier and that perhaps the white powder had gone the way of disco, as the ‘70s became the ‘80s. But he had a plan. If he could somehow make it appealing and accessible to unrepresented, poor minorities a whole new market would open up. So after some intense scientific exploration, research and testing, (“dissolving powder cocaine in water, adding baking soda, and heating. The cocaine and the baking powder form an airy condensate, that when dried, takes the form of hard, smokeable ‘rocks.’”[i]) this innovative industrialist had invented a sure-fire way to put cocaine back on the top of the drug market. The Harvard study that taught me how to cook crack (cited above) goes on to explain:

“Crack is an important technological innovation in many regards. First, crack can be smoked, which is an extremely effective means of delivering the drug psychopharmacologically. Second, because crack is composed primarily of air and baking soda, it is possible to sell in small units containing fractions of a gram of pure cocaine, opening up the market to consumers wishing to spend $10 at a time. Third, because the drug is extremely addictive and the high that comes from taking the drug is so short-lived, crack quickly generated a large following of users wishing to purchase at high rates of frequency. The profits associated with selling crack quickly eclipsed that of other drugs. Furthermore, unlike most other drugs, crack is often sold in openair, high-volume markets between sellers and buyers who do not know one another.”

Besides the fun image of these Harvard statisticians sitting around smoking crack for research purposes, it seems they did their homework. Crack use spread through vulnerable, under-privileged, inner-city communities like wildfire. The government’s response, under the Reagan administration, was a militaristic law enforcement policy in the areas most greatly affected, changing judicial protocol to make drug offenses easier to prosecute, and establishing mandatory minimum sentences for many crimes but most severely for those that were drug related. The result of these drastic measures was what has only recently been referred to as ‘The Age of Mass Incarceration’. The entire country had been whipped-up into such a frenzied fear by the media’s portrayal of ‘crack-babies’, crack related gang violence and the unforgivable, savage, animalistic crack-head, that the repercussions of this new tough approach seem to have been entirely overlooked. Not only did our prison population continue to skyrocket, quickly surpassing that of any other country in the world in comparison to its aggregate population, but the people being incarcerated and falling victim to our new mandatory minimums were not a representation of the country’s population. To this day, while the total population[ii] of the United States is roughly 77% white and roughly 13% black, the total prison population[iii] is 37% black and 32% white. While there are a variety of overtly oppressive factors that play a part in this[iv], the policies enacted during the Reagan administration’s continuation of Nixon’s war on drugs certainly contributed to this striking disparity.

Today we’ve been hearing about what a disaster our current drug problem is and what we have to do about it. But not once has there been a call for increased policing or a judicial crackdown on sentencing for drug crimes. Only tears and sympathy. The fear of many white Americans that white supremacy is beginning to lose it’s grip on the most advantageous and powerful positions, has led many to realize they are not entitled to certain things that their parents were. And many of these people are now committing suicide, voting for Trump, or turning to drugs rather than face the possibility of eventual racial equality. So while I’m so sorry to hear that they’re upset, I’m having trouble finding sympathy for victims of this epidemic since we as a country have never given a crap before.

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[i] http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/fryer/files/fhlm_crack_cocaine_0.pdf

[ii] Based on the 2013 US Census

[iii] Based on The US Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics’ 2013 male prisoner data

[iv] http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/10/the-black-family-in-the-age-of-mass-incarceration/403246/