It’s Patriarchy

Bill Clinton famously summed up the major issue in his first presidential electoral contest as, “It’s the economy, stupid.”

We will get plenty of post mortems about the US election but it is hard to dismiss rank prejudice against a woman, never mind one also of mixed, non-white, race, as a pivotal factor in the results. Between the two variables, however, it’s patriarchy.

And “stupid” needs redefinition, because it was precisely the most educated sectors of the US electorate whose thinking failed  us.

Issues and positions were not at play here, clearly, not when the extreme, radical, alternative was Trump. Many voted against Harris as much as for Trump, but for the reasons I state, not because, e.g., voters were voting against a Democratic party successfully tarred as left-wing. Harris is solidly moderate, centrist, as is Biden, and only dynamics other than well known facts could have led any voters to imagine her as extreme in any way.

As we know, Latino men, and men, as a group, tended heavily to Trump. Patriarchy is alive and extremely powerful; in the case of Latino men, clearly overriding racial identity and solidarity. When race is up against patriarchy, patriarchy wins. Obama winning — twice — and Hillary Clinton losing backs that proposition.

In the case of white men voting Trump, it was not even a contest between identities, a conflict. It was pure misogyny, the crudest male chauvinism; male “identity politics”– behavior that supposedly marks the left end of the spectrum– in the successful branding of those no less marked by it.

I kept saying: what those of us who supported Harris found revolting in Trump and his friends, half the US electorate (at least), found APPEALING. That is what we rational types, wedded to facts, records, empirical reality, substantiated cause and effect, were not taking in. I pity Professor Timothy Snyder, the eminent historian, who spent months trying to convince people of Trump’s danger to democracy, to the world, because of his associations, including business associations and interests, with tyrants and demagogues, in particular, with Putin. As if, once explained, it is self-evident that the rule of law embedded in founding, inalienable principles and rights, and constitutional, accountable, democracy, with enforced rules of succession, is the best governing system, and that autocracy and “tyranny” (to cite the title of one of Snyder’s books), and the corruption inevitably associated with them, are bad. All it takes is explaining (and thoroughly demonstrating) this as Sydner does in his books; the right action is then self-evident. Only it isn’t self-evident. Not at all.

Our revulsion, our empirically argued positions, were/ are, not only not self-evident; half the US electorate found them irrelevant, or worse– repellant, the arguments of “elitists.” Arguments about law and the rule of law, about fair tax policy, health, economic, climate policy, about mental stability, even, hit teflon.

We are now contending with unrestrained patriarchy. With a celebration of power in its own right, as its own justification (this is a major definition of fascism and a component, as well, of patriarchy, albeit, in the latter, justified with many rationalizations, religious, pseudo-biological-racist). We are contending with a celebration, a vindication, of privilege and oppression, of utter corruption—with glorification of it. Trump’s convictions, his incitement to violence, glorification of violence and of violent people, his abuse of women, did not work against him, as we rationals absurdly expected; they worked for him with many, who rationalized and celebrated all that– and it did not deter tens of millions of others who don’t necessarily like violence (against others, always, against others).

Unrestrained patriarchy, and a host of other, allied, mortifying dangers, very much including fascism, face us.

The elevation of all that in the US has grave implications for us here, in Israel.

And those of us who are very worried about here had better start coming up with arguments that don’t just satisfy us and are self-evident to us, but that reach those not already convinced. The worst among us are masters of reading popular emotions, the psychology of the masses, and of manipulating them. The opposition — in all senses of that word — had better start learning some new lessons in marketing. In politics. Because being right is not nearly enough.