Matisyahu's Blog

In the wake of recent events there appears to be a narrative doing the rounds by prominent liberal talking heads making out that they’re shocked as if this was the first and only case of politically motivated violence in the United States. This is the same sort of deliberate ignorance of history that far too many liberals tell themselves when it comes to how Trump came into being – everything was going perfectly well up until 2016 then big bad Trump came along and ruined a perfectly functioning system. When I see these narratives being weaved it really shows the disconnect that far too many liberals have when they ignore almost three centuries of political violence – from the treatment of Native Americans through to lynching, slaving, Jim Crow, the many, many, many civil rights leaders assassinated and much and much more.

Donald Trump didn’t appear in a vacuum but rather he is a product of the very system that far too many liberals are bending over backwards to defend. The rolling back against the welfare state by the Republican Party goes back to the establishment of the New Deal followed by the grand bargain between capital and labour – an honest days work for a fair days reward. The problem is that the capitalist reluctantly went along with it while propping up fringe ideas that eventually culminated in a set of policies that are colloquially known as Neoliberalism. As noted by Naomi Klein in the book “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism” it was a matter of the capitalist class waiting for a crisis to emerge to implement those ideas aka “There is no alternative” (TINA) to quote Margaret Thatcher.

In the 1970s there was the oil shock along with stagflation thus creating the scenario of stagnation with high inflation. The leaders of the time in multiple countries attempted to address it through keynesian policy that at best did nothing or at worse exacerbated the problem. Then in response to that we saw the Reagan Revolution, Thatcherism, Rogernomics and Keatingnomics – the response by the Democrats was, rather than a vision for a Social Democracy for the 21st century they positioned the party as a watered down version of the Republican Party. The best way to describe it is ‘The Ratchet Effect”:

The net result for the last 45-50 years has been a gradual push to the right, when Democrats get in you don’t see a reversal but rather things don’t get worse and when there are changes they’re basically watered down Republican-Lite solutions such as the ACA which is based on Romney Care which goes further back to centre right think tanks during the 1980s. Then add to that the mainstream media claiming that anything that isn’t the preservation of the status quo as being ‘far left’ – advocate single payer? far left! advocate unions? far left! this is the reason I keep pointing out that the media is the mouthpiece of the capitalist class – ensuring that the overton window is never pushed back to the centre by claiming that the centre is always where they say it is (see ‘Manufacturing Consent’).

Now picture this, you’re stuck in a bad situation, the party that use to be the party of the workers have abandoned you to pander to the patagonian jacket wearing microdosing tech dudes of Silicon Valley (made worse by the likes of Rahm Emanuel telling you to “just learn how to programme), your town is falling to pieces, manufacturing is disappearing, the candidates put up by that party is repeating the same talking points from the Clinton era. In that environment there emerges a person, a giant loud mouth talking about how the system is rigged, how both parties have failed, how the elites have gotten the US stuck in never ending wars and foreign entanglements at the expense of domestic concerns.

What did the average person know about this loud mouth from New York when they voted for him in 2016? They voted for the persona they saw on television, the saw a man who appeared to have made decisive decisions and was willing to use language that the average man in the street could relate to: “you’re fired!”, “get that built!”. After seeing both parties procrastinate for years and failing to get anything remotely useful passed here came someone who, based on the average layman’s understanding of who he was, would come in and shake things up.

Then add to that the mythology of the American dream where the worshipping of billionaires is a religion in its own right thanks to the cult of meritocracy and toxic optimism (Barbara Ehrenreich wrote a great book entitled ‘Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America’ and many interviews dealing with that cultural cringe that exists in US mainstream culture) – a cult of personality caused by a toxic mixture of desperation and the belief that proximity to someone they perceive to be successful will result in the benefits rubbing off on them if they get behind this person. This why you see Trump supporters see Trump as almost a messianic figure, a Moses who promises to lead them to the promised land of milk and honey. Trump of course understanding the spell he has over his supporters, play the same game that dictators do: “I am the living embodiment that is the will of the people, to attack me is to attack my supporters and thus making you the enemy of the people”. It has been something invoked many times whenever Trump receives push back or criticism (no matter how tepid it is) he invokes the “he is attacking me to get to you”.

Regarding where Charle Kirk fits into this – he was an opportunist with no real philosophical worldview underpinning his politics. He happily jumped into politics in the era of the Tea Party and was quite happy to throw away all the beliefs regarding small government, low debt and low taxes the moment that the grift was coming to an end and a new one emerged in the form of MAGA. Like so many online commentators, as others have pointed out, Charlie Kirk played a character when he went to these universities.

In other words, what you saw him say was a character and at the core of his being I don’t think he believed in anything – going from a position of ‘low taxes, low debt and small government’ to a candidate who spends like a drunken sailor, unilaterally imposing tariffs, making extensive use of executive orders (while unironically claiming Obama was an ‘imperial president’ because of the number of executive orders he signed) etc. tells me that his affiliation with the Republicans had less to do with a philosophical world view and like for many Gen Z basically voting based on vibes.

Did the Republicans even value Charlie Kirk? based on the performative replies on Twitter/X what it clearly demonstrates is that they saw him a means to an end as demonstrated by Trump who could have spent time talking about Charlie Kirk as a friend but instead he deflected the attention onto the ball room he is wanting to get built. Imagine someone thinking so little of your passing that they would sooner talk about a ball room than your passing, would sooner talk about their ball room than extending sympathies to your family.

What this tells me all I need to know about the Republican Party – it isn’t a party that is bound together via a shared philosophical world view (which explains why, when you ask them what their healthcare plan is you end up with 10 people give 15 different answers – a menagerie of half baked ideas and no coherent policy) but a party of grifters riding on the back of vibes with no meaningful solutions to deep seated problems that exist and haven’t been addressed when they have been given the levers of government. The only thing they’ve taken care of is the needs of their donors while using BS culture wars as a ‘flood the zone’ strategy to move the focus away from the fact that they’ve done nothing productive after being in power for almost a year.