Do recessions cause polarization?

[pbrower2a]

The Great Depression destroyed the American Right that had dominated American politics in the 1920s. The people who usually bought the politicians were more concerned about economic survival than about fine-tuning politics to fit their dream of high prices (through monopolization), soft regulation, and cheap labor.

As Americans feared another Great Depression in 2008 they became less polarized politically -- but that trend reversed itself as the danger abated. By 2010 the irresponsible people who believe that the rest of Humanity exists solely to suffer for cruel rapacity and unbridled indulgence of those elites were back in the business of buying the political process, beginning with the Tea Party and culminating with the Trump near-dictatorship. 'Near' recognizes that the GOP lost the House in 2018.

[pbrower2a]

Obama caused the polarization we have today during his second term. Obama was fairly moderate during his first term and then became a left wing radical during his second term.

The Right had a well-funded, strident campaign to promote an ideology in which the elites are entitled to everything and the rest must suffer for that elite. Ir intends to destroy the prosperity and independence of the middle class so that America can be a society of lords and serfs 95% of the people are to suffer for the upper 2% who get to enjoy unrestrained gain, indulgence, and power. Such fits the narcissism commonplace among heirs and bureaucratic elites who want a society with German productivity and South Asian pay. Such is a Christian and Corporate State in which the economic elites get complete power to cut wages at will and monopolize the economy while privatizing everything while the elites offer Pie in the Sky When You Die to people who ar left with nothing else. Of course anyone who resists will get eternal damnation.

In essence, economic Calvinism (God has shown his blessing upon those who have already Made It and cursed those who have not) justifies extreme inequality. American elites dispense with the idea that people other than themselves need a stake in the system if they are to not find socialism, let alone Marxism, attractive.  Gone for all but the elites will be the consumer society.

The American Right has been extreme in its narcissism, and such manifests itself in its political and economic agenda.   


The elites pitted the white working poor against the middle class and was successful with Trump, the biggest @$$hole that America has ever had as President, someone delighted to transform America. Those elites toy with us as a cat toys with a doomed mouse. They want us to believe that so long as we accept their terms, toiling to the greatest extent possible and demanding as little as possible in return so that the elites can live as lords -- and in return the worker gets the privilege of survival. The heritage of the planter has melded with the worst expressions of selfish greed of early capitalism. Should the Hard Right ever gt its way, Orwell's image of a boot grinding itself into the face of a helpless person will be the metaphor of economic reality. 

I hate what America has become. If I were younger I might have emigrated by now. Should Trump become the norm of politics, then all that I will have to look forward to is the Hereafter.