By Jonah Goldberg
Wednesday, August 19, 2015
A new chapter in American politics has begun.
Millions of Americans on the right and left have lost
faith in their political parties, their government, and even the economic
system. Only one in four Americans are satisfied with the way things are going.
Policy experts will offer various arguments why at least
some of these people are wrong to feel this way, but the discontented will not
tolerate arguments that amount to “don’t believe your lying eyes — or wallets.”
In politics, feelings are more important than hard numbers.
Consider immigration. I still believe that immigration is
a net benefit for America, but those benefits aren’t felt uniformly throughout
society. Obviously, immigration is a huge boon to the immigrants themselves,
something nobody disputes. Employers, whether in the tech sector or in
agriculture, also reap disproportionate rewards. But for the typical consumer,
the positive effects (cheaper food, construction, software, etc.) are hard to
tie to the causes (the importation of cheaper labor).
Meanwhile, the negative effects seem all too apparent, at
least for many Americans. This is true not just for people who believe,
accurately or not, that their wages are lower and jobs are more scarce because
of immigration (legal and illegal), but also for people who dislike the
cultural disruptions that come with millions of non–English-speaking migrants
pouring into the country.
Similarly, free trade has been an enormous boon to
American consumers, but it doesn’t feel like it, particularly to the workers
who lost good jobs they’ll never replace.
Add in the very understandable impression that the
government is lying about — and incompetent at — taking these problems
seriously, and you have the perfect preconditions for a populist backlash. And
that’s exactly what we are seeing.
On the left, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont is
unapologetic about his socialist views. He offers a searing indictment of
modern capitalism and vows to “transform” the country.
On the right, Donald Trump, the GOP front-runner, is
equally unapologetic about, well, everything, but in particular his
nationalism. He lacks the vernacular of your standard nationalist, but the
message comes through. He boasts that he is “the most militaristic person” in
the world. His favorite national-security idea is to build a wall — and to
punitively make Mexico pay for it. His second-favorite idea is to use the U.S.
military to take Middle Eastern oil at gunpoint. (Thirty years ago, he wanted
to seize Iranian oil; now it’s Iraq’s oil where it’s under the control of
Islamic State.)
In his just-released immigration plan, which is not the
joke many of its critics claim, one of his core principles reads: “A nation
that does not serve its own citizens is not a nation. Any immigration plan must
improve jobs, wages, and security for all Americans.”
The first part is nonsense. A great many nations do not
serve their own citizens; no one would seriously argue that North Korea or
Panama aren’t nations. But the second part taps into a very real perception
about the moment we are in. Millions of people are convinced that the system is
rigged against them. We constantly hear that income inequality is our greatest
problem, and yet the Democrats insist there is essentially no downside to ever
more poor people coming here legally or illegally. Republicans concede that
illegal immigration is a problem, but they have proven feckless at fixing it.
What is fascinating is that though Sanders and Trump
couldn’t be more different culturally, their programs overlap a great deal.
“What right-wing people in this country would love is an open-border policy,”
Sanders said recently. “Bring in all kinds of people, work for $2 or $3 an
hour, that would be great for them. I don’t believe in that.” Trump’s
immigration paper states that “real immigration reform puts the needs of
working people first — not wealthy globe-trotting donors.”
Trump has said that there’s little daylight between them
on the issue of trade, while Sanders has praised Trump’s favorable statements
on single-payer health care.
The establishments of both parties have proved pitifully
inept in fending off their respective nationalist and socialist insurgencies. I
suspect they’ll eventually succeed. But I also suspect this is not the end of
the challenge, merely the beginning.
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