[political]

In an age of reaction, it is tempting for liberals to lapse into defeatism. They should not.

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A quarter of a century ago, liberalism appeared to have triumphed. After decades of division, the Cold War officially ended. In Europe, a dozen countries founded the European Union through the Maastricht Treaty. In the United States, after 12 years of Republican rule, Bill Clinton was elected president. “What we may be witnessing,” wrote Francis Fukuyama in The End of History and the Last Man, “[is] the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalisation of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.”

That was long before the 11 September 2001 attacks and the resultant “war on terror” inaugurated a new era of global insecurity. Seven years later, the financial crisis ended the illusion of perpetual growth. Yet progressives were little prepared for the political humbling they have since endured.

In defiance of its allies, the UK voted to leave the EU. It did so after a Leave campaign that shamelessly exploited fears over immigration. Many sorrowfully remarked that the UK was not the country they thought. In a state historically hailed for its tolerance and respect, racist and religious hate crimes rose by 41 per cent. Ministers floated the idea of forcing companies to publish a list of their foreign workers. Immigrants old and new testified that they no longer felt welcome.

........

However, in an age of public distrust and defensive nation­alism, technocratic social democracy will not suffice. Politicians must combine a reinvigorated public sphere with radical devolution and transparency. They must craft a progressive patriotism that neutralises the exclusivism of the nationalist right. And they must speak a language that brings them closer to the public, not one that takes them further away.

Just as it was premature to declare liberalism’s triumph, so it is premature to speak of its demise. But the old platitudes will not work. A left that is simultaneously more reflective and more ambitious can begin to regain the ground it has lost.

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It is evidently premature to declare the end of days for liberalism, especially when liberals have proven so adaptive ever since the French Revolution.
Liberals grew lazy in their Ivory Towers of Triumph and have forgotten that lies are defeated in the public domain through live debate and not by ignoring or sidelining them as mere nuisances. 2016 has been the wake-up call that was required to reawaken their reflexes. The silver-lining for centrist liberals around the world is that the higher liberal non-sense of identity politics may be put aside in an attempt to focus on more substantial issues, the casino capitalism of the neo-con-liberal order has also been defeated which sets up the debate for more progressive & social leaning policies, while coherent & rational patriotism can reinvigorate the broken spirits of a stupefied mass.

[Suska]

Clinton won the popular vote because California is so Democrat Californian Republicans don't bother. The Electoral college actually protected the say of 49 states from the reflex party bias of left coast. The executive office is an imperial cult, fueled by the IRS, protected by the CIA, and owned and operated by a community of insiders who may as well be space aliens for all their self-satisfaction; this was the real triumph of 2016, the outing of that self-satisfaction and indifference, ever since Lincoln the slaves are states. When our differences become too much this will have to be re-addressed, America is no longer a republic.

[quetzalcoatl]

The differences between the various varieties of liberalism (neoliberalism, US-style conservatism, progressivism, and social democracy) have proven themselves meaningless - all of them, when given access to political power, are ineffectual in meeting basic demands of governing.

So, no, there will not be a return to social democracy, of either the FDR variety or the Nordic model. The first order of business will be US-style hard core conservatism to exhaust itself, now that it is in total control. That is, until it has disqualified itself as an actual alternative to the status quo (rather than just another means of supporting it), there will be no path forward for liberals or anyone else. This 'disqualification' has to occur in the eyes of its most ardent supporters in the American south and rural midwest. Therefore, nothing less than total wrecking and privation will do the job.

Will Trump be up to the wrecking? Given his cabinet choices, the answer may be yes. We don't yet know if Trump is a Czar Nicholas II, Bismarck, or some other as yet unspecified beast.