SUMMARY: Following up our previous post outlining the cliodynamics model of political integration and disintegration, we now analyze our current situation and make some guesses about the future. There’s good news and bad news throughout. Like this is the last election that Trump is likely to be relevant. But, bad news, the Republicans are still coming for our democracy. Cliodynamics suggests that turning off the wealth pump — aka Bidenomics — will cure what ails us. Republicans are likely to continue stymying all attempts to do so and drive us deeper into political violence.
KEY WORDS: Peter Turchin, Trump, I2I4, Cliodynamics, Political Disintegration, Wealth Gap, Wealth Pump, Elites, Overproduction of Elites, Immiseration, Great Depression, Great Recession
I2I4, the rotund, dull-orange, short-fingered, vulgar Star Wars inept larceny bot, will win the Republican nomination no matter what happens. He doesn’t need to campaign. He doesn’t need to run commercials. He doesn’t need to debate. He just needs to be on the ballot. The MAGA base will take care of the rest. That’s the bad news, I guess.
The good news is that This really is Trump’s swan song. This is the end of I2I4. He won’t be a factor after 2024… unless he actually wins. Well, there is that possibility. However, the likelihood is that he’ll lose. He’ll continue to grumble and piss and moan, but his influence will wane and MAGA will drift off to do whatever it is MAGA types do with their free time.
Even though, we’re likely to be done with Trump, it doesn’t mean that our democracy is safe. Republicans are all in on authoritarianism, oligarchy, kleptocracy, and fascism. They really do mean to continue weakening our democracy until it is just a hollowed out carcass stuffed with the rot of autocracy. Do you think Maddog Greene, Gym Jordan, Cancun Cruz, Sister Lindsey or any of the rest of the crew are going to quit the grift just because I2I4 has left center stage?
I2I4 is a symptom not a cause of what is happening to us right now. He’s the magicians distraction, if magicians used morbidly obese poorly dressed vulgar stage assistants. He’s the wrecking ball that the GOP is using to hammer our democracy into rubles — Hammer it into rubles… RUBLES! Get it, rubles? Not rubble? Oh, man, sometimes I just crack myself up.
Welcome to part 2 of our series on the cliodynamics model of political integration and disintegration. In part 1, we looked at the basics of the model, and, now, we’ll apply the findings of the model to our current situation to see what might be in store for us in the years ahead.
Cliodynamics and the Model of Political Integration and Disintegration Briefly Explained
Cliodynamic is the application of deep data to the study of history as developed by Peter Turchin and explained in his book End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration. Reliable data from various historical societies is encoded in a large database, the numbers are crunched to determine which factors were pertinent to the rise and fall of each society, and then sifted through to find trends and a mathematical model. The model has been tested by using data from societies not in the data set to predict their outcomes. All of this was inspired by Tengrain’s post on Mock Paper Scissors wondering whither the Republican Party would be going post-Trump.
The Role of the Wealth Gap and the Wealth Pump in Political Disintegration
One of the key factors in this model is the wealth gap and the wealth pump. The wealth gap is the difference in wealth that is controlled by the top 10% of the population compared to the bottom 90%. When that gap grows, the model predicts trouble. The wealth pump is the transfer of wealth from the lower 90% of the population to the top 10% causing the wealth gap to widen.
Money has to go somewhere, so, if the middle class isn’t saving or spending its money, it’s going to the 10% through the obscene Republican tax cuts. Given that we’ve gone through four iterations of these tax cuts, the wealth pump has been turned up to eleven. They’ve been milking us for every farthing since Reagan. It’s no wonder the wealth gap has grown to Grand Canyon proportions and no one in the middle class feels like they can get ahead no matter how many jobs they work. That’s the real reason everyone no one is feeling Bidenomics.
The Role of the Overproduction of Elites in Political Disintegration
Seriously, every society who has an over-production of elites and a huge wealth gap has ended up in trouble. There are only so many positions for the well-heeled to occupy and right now we’ve got too many elites and not enough dead-end jobs for them. It used to be that you could shunt them off to ambassadorships or the senate or give them two billion in petty cash and let them go play with themselves in a corner. Every room has only got four corners…
Because the number of elites suckling at the teat of the middle class has sky rocketed, there is now a bloated burgeoning bored band of elites who cannot find anything useful to do other than cause trouble like common Tucker Carlsons or Steve Bannons.
The Possible Outcomes of Political Disintegration
According to Turchin’s analysis, most countries that are going through what we’re going through right now, experience a decline in overall population or a decline in the number of elites either through downward mobility or death. Here’s a summary of his findings:
- POPULATION LOSS: Half of the societies studied experienced a decline in their population. Let’s see we’re having deaths of despair and shorter life-expectancy. At the very least, our population — our white population — isn’t growing.
- MAJOR EPIDEMIC: Thirty percent had a major epidemic that decimated the population. We did have the #COVID-19 pandemic, which contributed to a dramatically shorter live expectancy.
- DOWNWARD MOBILITY: Sixty-six percent lost elites to the lower classes due to poor economic performance. The Great Recession certainly set us back, but we’ve been growing new millionaires and billionaires like they was bamboo rabbits.
- EXTERMINATION: While none literally ate their rich, as the saying goes, one-sixth did genocide the rich. Tempting as it is, it does go against all of our liberal values.
- ASSASSINATION: Forty percent had their “ruler” assassinated. Aren’t you surprised that we haven’t had an assassination or real solid attempt yet? I know I am.
- CIVIL WAR & REVOLUTION: Seventy-five percent experienced civil war or revolution or some combination of the two. And, you wonder why the right is constantly harping on about civil war.
- DISSOLUTION: Sixty percent resulted in the state disintegrating into pieces or being conquered, either way, it ceased to exist. We tried and failed in the 1860’s to dissolve the country, maybe we’ll succeed this time.
A few states were able to avoid these fates. They did so by shutting off the wealth pump and weaning the elite from seemingly endless bounty of middle class wages. The two best examples we can use are the Great Depression and Great Recession.
Lessons in Responding to Political Disintegration from the Great Depression
They were so frightened, that they were willing to join FDR’s Big New Fucking Deal that ushered in nearly fifty years of social cooperation between the elites, white workers — No one was so frightened that they thought they’d have to include the Blacks in this deal — and government. White workers could unionize and share more fully in the profits generated from their labor. The social safety net would be funded by higher tax rates on corporations and large incomes. The Southern aristocracy went along with it because Blacks would continue to suffer.
During the Great Depression, the remaining elites were genuinely afraid that there would be a communist revolution in the country. The Great Depression halved the number of millionaires over night.
That’s how disaster was averted in the Great Depression. It was a crisis of such magnitude that the wealthy made a bargain with the devil to stave off complete disaster, and the US entered into a period of prosperity unmatched in human history.
Lessons from the Great Recession
During the Great Recession, Republicans were drug kicking and screaming to the negotiating table and we barely passed The American Recovery and Rescue Act. No House Republican voted for the act, and only three Senate Republicans did. And, it barely did the job, hobbling the recovery. There was no compromise between elites, workers, and government in the face of the vast immiseration sweeping our land. The Republicans did not meet the moment with empathy and concern, they met it with an eye for political advantage.
Cliodynamics: The Good News and the Bad News
Cliodynamics suggests that Biden is right. The solution to the problems that ail us is to cut off the wealth pump and tame the overproduction of elites. That’s the essence f Bidenomics. That’s the good news.
The bad news is that the Republican Party is completely irredeemable. Our modern history has been that Republicans destroy the economy with their tax cuts to the wealthy, Democrats restore the economy, only for the cycle to repeat. It took the Great Depression to stem the flow from the wealth pump to the elites and force them to address the structural issues in our society. We’ve now been through four crises, the Great Recession, the #COVID-19 pandemic, the Insurrection, and a growing climate crisis. None of them appear to be cracking the hard-edged shell of short-term self-interest that Republicans have encapsulated themselves with.
I can only assume that means that a greater more horrific and violent crisis is looming on the near horizon. Perhaps, if I2I4 loses, and Biden’s vision of growing the economy from the middle class out, we might avoid the worst of it. But, bad stuff, really bad stuff, is about to happen unless we rally around Biden and elect Democrats up and down the ticket in 2024.
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“Councilmember Brooks Hosts Rally for Philly Wealth Tax 9-21-2022” by PHL Council is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
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Categories: Cliodynamics
The Psy of Life 
Hey Jack- I wonder how Trump can function as President from prison. No he won’t be able to pardon himself! By the way, how do arrive at the key words stated beforehand for your blogs? Is there a website you use?
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Howdy James!
I’ve been using the WordPress AI assistant. It’s one of the blocks you can choose. I don’t let it do much of my writing, but I ask it for advice on SEO and straightening out my tortured syntax. It does a great job on both.
When I asked it about improving my SEO, it suggested the summary and keywords (also headings and subheadings and key term repetition). I had seen posts on professional blogs, mainly on psychology, lead their posts with a summary and list of keywords, so I asked the AI assistant to help me write a one hundred word summary and ten to fifteen keywords. I usually revise the summary heavily and omit many of the keywords, but it always gets me thinking and pointed in the right direction. I do the same with headings and subheadings.
For today’s post, I asked it to help me with a couple of particularly convoluted sentences that I was struggling with and pointed out that my brand was snarky, sarcasticky, and profaney, and it made snarky suggestions. It was funny.
I feel like my visits and views are up since I started using it, but it is hard to tell.
If you get a professional account, they have an SEO app you can use for help and a place in the templates for summaries and keywords. I have to sing and dance every year to renew my account as it is. Ma Belle Femme wouldn’t tolerate a professional account.
Huzzah!
Jack
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Thanks Jack. I’ll take a look at this feature.
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Thankfully, both of us will be still alive to see the demise of Trump in the near future, I reason.
Check out the Carl Bernstein novel- It’s good reading about what makes journalism matter.
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Howdy James!
Trump is definitely on his way out. But we’ve still got the authoritarian racist nazis to deal with. Fortunately, after the 6 January insurrection, they seem to be in disarray. Carl Bernstein, I’ll check it out. Thanks for the tip.
Huzzah!
Jack
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I’ve learned down through the years they best thing to do with The Gift is not use it
It’s not much more than a feeling, but I just don’t think things are going to turn out as everyone is expecting them to turn out. Counting chickens before they hatch, be they your own or anothers’, is none-the-less counting chickens before they hatch. There’s a lot of unaccounted variables
Which isn’t to say we’re not in a world of shit …
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Howdy Ten Bears!
There are a lot of variables, but not all of them are pertinent. That’s the thing about the Law of Big numbers, you can begin to sort out which variables are important and which ones aren’t, if you have enough data points. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t an outlier, though.
One of the other points of cliodynamics is that countries tend to revert to their traditional governing models. Our traditional model is democracy. We are likely to favor democracy when it is challenged, so if the Dems can make the election a referendum on democracy, then they’ve strengthened their hand.
However, another tradition is white supremacy and the Southern aristocracy, which explains the vulnerability white people have to racist dog whistles. In a single-party pseudo-democratic autocracy, white people will still vote, which may be enough to fool them into believing they live in a democracy. Apparently, white people are easily fooled.
The wild card here is the increasingly undeniable consequence of climate change. It is growing into a crisis of unheard of proportions. Who will the voters blame, if anyone? Who will they think can handle it the best? Those are definitely wild cards that no one is factoring in as of yet.
Huzzah!
Jack
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Apparently, white people are easily fooled keeps with my notion that while my ancestors thought they were snookering the ‘Indians’ buying up the barrier isles with baubles the natives were snickering in their fists in anticipation of the nookie said baubles will get them ‘selling’ marginal hunting grounds
I have been a bit concerned of late about my confidence in the American People but as I’ve noted here and elsewhere these past couple of days that it looks like
the topmast of a three-masted schooner just clearing the horizonjust out there where you can barely see it that the tide is turning against him. And like that rowboat turning a tanker it’s slow at first but exponentially steadyThere a lot of reasons he might not be in it next year, notably he might be any number of places not here (the US), including in a box. I can’t really put my finger on it (that’s the nature of The Gift), but I just don’t think he’s gonna’ be in it
Did I tell you about my thesis connecting Druidic tattooing, cascading memories and dBase technology (the original accounting and database platform, runs the Internet though nobody knows it)? Asimov called it psychohistory: when the population grows sufficiently large enough its’ behavior becomes more anticipatable. Think of your intuition as the database, the sum of your life experience, the keys are the stimuli that lead to a conclusion … sometimes you just can’t put your finger on how your arrive there
Maybe it was the Cavaliers who were so easily fooled, and the class consciousness cum racism they brought with them trickle down lowe these fifteen generations. There were, afterall, the lesser sons (and daughters) of England (be honest with you, I think Australia got the better people) …
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Howdy Ten Bears!
Australia probably did get the better folks since your average criminal is no different than your average citizen. Criminal behavior, like so much else, is more situationally driven than personality.
I tend to agree with you about Trump. I think the stress and strain of his legal and financial situation — he’s been using bail bond companies to post his bail rather than cash, suggesting liquidity issues — might be more than his lardy heart can take. Other than death, the nomination is still Trump’s to lose as was evident by the debate the other night. The presidential seeming debaters — Haley, Pence, and Christy — don’t have a chance of winning regardless of Trump’s participation. Trump will win regardless of whether he runs an ad or holds a campaign rally, so being tied up in court next year won’t hurt his campaign, and it will give him lots of free publicity and a “news” worthy platform to further propagandize from. Same for the presidential race, which he’ll lose because the base is the ceiling.
Huzzah!
Jack
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That bit about the Aussies is a bit tongue-in-cheek, I’m just not sure it’s a fair comparison: they got the hookers, card-sharps and radical writers, we got religiously genocidal maniacs; the slavers, bankers and insurers (but I repeat myself)
I understand how genocide can be situational … to a point. Beyond that is something else
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Howdy Ten Bears!
That’s the danger of using phrases like genocidal maniacs. It ain’t insanity that drives people to genocide. We will all participate in genocide in the right circumstances. Some of us just have a wider range of circumstances than others. But, it is in us all.
If you look at the way the Aussies have treated and are treating the Aboriginals, it is pretty much the same as what happened in North America. The only difference is that the Aussies never took to wholesale slavery like we did.
The history of the British Empire is genocide and atrocity on a global scale.
Huzzah!
Jack
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The Democrats need to leave no Republican unchallenged in this election, even in deep Red places. Many of those candidates will be seen as sacrificial lambs, but they have to show up. As the investment of the IRA gather steam and actually create jobs and other benefits in the Red zones, the mantra of the Democrat candidate for Congress has to be, “That other guy didn’t want you to have this.”
It would help a lot if the Federal Reserve can get inflation visibly down by next Summer.
The percentage of the population who have been personally, expensively, and unmistakably hit hard by climate change will only be increasing. The GOP isn’t going to stop denying the problem. Hammering them in the “follow the money” mode to drive home the “They don’t represent you on what really counts in your life.” is a way to cut through the noise and distractions of the culture war issues.
Then, there is the abortion and reproductive rights vote that keep winning whenever it is on the ballot, another “They don’t represent you where it matters.” opportunity.
We need some really viral grade memes of the Wealth Pump.
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Howdy Bob!
I’m liking that the Democrats are constantly pointing out when Republicans are taking credit for IRA investments that they voted against. I think that will resonate. I also like it that the Freedom Caucus is threatening to shutdown the government while the Democrat-led Senate is trying to use a bipartisan approach to funding the government.
There is evidence that the average American is really tired of chaos and controversy. They really just want to get back to business as usual. The Republicans are clearly identified as those sabotaging the return to normalcy, which should give the Democrats the advantage in the toss-up House districts.
It’s going to be an interesting election.
Huzzah!
Jack
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If memory is serving me well, I don’t recall the voters ever rewarding the Republicans for forcing a government shutdown. The radicals might be thinking they can get away with it because this isn’t the election year, or, more likely they just can’t resist trying to burn it all down. Add to that their constantly talking about ending Social Security and Medicare.
Yes, it will be interesting.
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Howdy Bob!
Not only haven’t the voters ever rewarded the Republicans for a government shutdown, they’ve consistently ferreted them out as the cause and punished them for it. Fear of government spending will only take the party so far since spending hasn’t really hurt us so far, and, really, it has only helped us. If Democrats can break through the firehose of deceit with their messaging, they can point out that the deficit is declining and has declined under Democratic presidents since Clinton.
The issues in 2024 strongly favor the Democrats but, will it matter in lieu of the firestorm of lies, misinformation, and dog whistles that the Republicans are going to flood the airwaves with? Whither goes the middle class suburban white voter, goes the democracy. In the past three elections they have gone for Democrats.
Huzzah!
Jack
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In this case, it is a minority of the GOP caucus in the house that has made a point of throwing monkey wrenches into the machinery with abandon, especially in trying to use default or shutdown to beat everybody into submission. They don’t have to be ferreted out. They’re shouting it from the rooftops.
Voters don’t mind government spending when they can see they are getting something for it. They object when they think it is going to somebody else (unless it is cleverly hidden in tax cuts). That’s the point of the Democrats going around pointing out the things the IRA is paying for in Red zones.
Another thing that tends to be overlooked and also lied about by the Repubs. Inflation is slowing. Prices of some things are actually going down. More economists are thinking that the Federal Reserve could actually deliver the Soft Landing, maybe even before the election.
The Republicans seem intent on pissing off the suburban swing voters, especially women. That’s just plain dumb.
I wonder when those Republican “candidates” (other than Christy and one other) will get it that the MAGAs will never vote for anybody other than Trump as long as he has a pulse, and maybe longer. They have to let them go and stop defending Trump, and find a message for other voters. If they’re going to run against him, they have to run against him or around him.
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Howdy Bob!
Christy seems like the only “viable” candidate who is trying to create a realistic path — albeit, a long-shot, but still a viable shot — to the nomination. The Trump apologists who hope he collapses somehow so they can pick up the MAGA voters don’t stand a chance. Trump doesn’t need to actively campaign, so he can sit in court and sit in jail or home confinement or whatever he is sentenced to, and still win the nomination. He can run for president that way, too.
Trump brought voters to the polls. He inspired seldom or first-time voters to come to the polls. None of those running on the MAGA ticket will be able to do that if they are on the nominee. Their MAGA ceiling will be much lower than Trump’s because of it. It isn’t a viable campaign plan. It should be obvious. Other than DeSantis, everyone else running is trying to help Trump get the nomination. DeSantis is self-deluded enough to believe his own BS and think he could win and out-Trump Trump.
The Congressional MAGA Republicans are playing a fool’s game. They think they’ve got something. They don’t really have anything other than a district so gerrymandered — except for Fully-Loaded Bobert — that they cannot help but win. It is the illusion of populist politics and popularity.
All of that should drive the toss-up districts to the Dems and we should take back the House, possibly by a healthy margin. If we lose Montana and West Virginia, as seem likely, we probably lose the Senate, though. The state races will be interesting to watch.
who wins state-wide and how the legislatures shift. Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Arizona may be in for a bit of surprise.
Huzzah!
Jack
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That narcissistic self-impressedness and inability to see that there really is an opposition (“We are the natural majority.”) is one of the hazards of gerrymandered can’t lose districts. The winners of those tend to think they won on their own merits and popularity rather than by a very small minority of potential voters turning out for the primary. The Freedom Caucus gang really do think the vast majority of Americans are with them. The same is true for Trump and the MAGAs.
One of the best arguments Democrats running for Senate have is the anti-women and other downright bizarre rulings by Trump appointed (actually, McConnell appointed) judges.
Yes, the state races will be interesting.
I want the DNC to seriously (as in $) go for there to be no uncontested offices on the ballot at any level. A party can’t win if it doesn’t show up.
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Howdy Bob!
I think that was one of Sanders’ best contributions to the Dems when he was running, a fifty state contest. It is also one of the biggest disservices of the Electoral College since it focuses attention only on a few crucial states. The coattail effect of the presidential contest could pull a few Dem candidates in red and purple states to victory.
Last year I read an article by the sociologist, Arlie Hochschild, who wrote “Strangers in Their Own Land” about her five year participant observation study of rural conservative Christian whites in southern Louisiana. In it she remarked that one of the things that her contacts would tell her about MAGA rallies is that they were impressed by their numbers — “look how many of us there are!” It creates a false impression of popularity.
The same is true of those in heavily gerrymandered districts, as you point out. Nikki Haley remarked in the debate that Trump can’t win a general election, for which, she was resoundingly booed, adding to the illusion of majority popularity. That’s an old trick of the Republicans, to flood meetings with a minority of loud angry participants who claim to be speaking for a larger group. It worked for the Tea Party, for example. A fake it til you make it approach.
Huzzah!
Jack
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When our county library board head a meeting at the branch in Highlands, a much smaller building than the main one, the book burners packed the place. The board wisely decided not to have a public comment period so they could get some actual work done.
It is also the, “If you can’t be numerous, be loud.” approach.
Nikki seems to be good at reading polls that don’t tell her what she would rather hear.
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