Jolly Escaped Asses

 One of the grossest things about this post-election week is how exuberant the U.S. stock market has been at the result. Trump campaigned on threats of mass deportation and destroying the Earth's climate—and now the country's richest seem positively gleeful about that fact. 

From a certain perspective, of course, all this makes sense in terms of crass self-interest. A Republican victory in the election almost certainly means the extension of Trump's tax cuts when they expire next year. Plus there's deregulation and all the rest of it. 

Of course, this is very short-term self-interest. But short-term thinking is baked into the stock market. There's a massive collective action problem there. The individual investor can always cash out before the long-term problems set it—and leave others holding the bag. 

For every period of purely "paper prosperity," as Thomas Love Peacock once wrote, there eventually comes a "day of reckoning." (See his Crotchet Castle). But some equity holders will make damn sure that they are long gone before that day comes. 

But even recognizing the self-interest involved here—I think there's something more than economic rationality behind the recent run-up in asset prices. There's also, share we say, something spiritual going on here. People are secretly exulting at Trump's victory. 

And on some rotten level—to be perfectly honest—I get it. This is always part of the dangerous allure of fascism. It's the prospect that the mask of civilization could fall. The id might be unleashed. We can finally let it all hang out, and not pretend anymore. What fun!

It's like if the kids got to take over the school for the day, and kicked out all the teachers. The grown-ups are not in charge anymore. That means we never have to go to boring class again! From now on, we declare: it's all-day recess! Free french fries for all!

Orwell wrote a long time ago that one of the greatest challenges for the Left is that its stern egalitarian virtue and disciplined political morality is simply not fun. The fascist pitch, by contrast—"let all your basest appetites out of the cage; go and run wild"—appeals to people's sense of joy. 

It's Carnival time in America—a great big charivari, with the Lord of Misrule himself heading the parade. 

I think, stripped of all pseudo-economic and sociological rationalizations, this is what the American people were actually voting for on November 5. All that nonsense about inflation was an excuse. The real explanation is that people were voting with their Id. They wanted to let the beast out of the cage. 

D.H. Lawrence, with his perfect ear for the unconscious motives of human behavior, captured the mood perfectly. People were sick of the stern superego that presides over every left-wing promise of "revolution." In place of this, he proposed: 

If you make a revolution, make it for fun,

don't make it in ghastly seriousness,

don't do it in deadly earnest,

do it for fun.

 [...]

Don't do it for equality,

do it because we've got too much equality

and it would be fun to upset the apple-cart

and see which way the apples would go a-rolling.

Don't do it for the working classes.

Do it so that we can all of us be little aristocracies on our own

and kick our heels like jolly escaped asses.

That's obviously what's going on in the MAGA revolution. That's what Americans were actually voting for. It's not because of "prices" or the "border" or whatever other nonsense. It's because they were bored (as I said in a recent post). 

It's because they wanted to see what would happen if there were no more grown-ups. It's because they wanted to see how it would go, if the kids got to run the school for a change. 

It's because they wanted to "upset the apple-cart/ and see which way the apples would go a-rolling." It's because they wanted to kick up their heels "like jolly escaped asses." 

And asses indeed we all are. Asses indeed, celebrating our sham-freedom, gleefully reveling in the stock market...

Because the truth is that fascism is never actually fun in practice. It's not so fun once the guillotine blade starts falling. It's not so fun once the "apples" that go "a-rolling" turn out to be people's heads. 

Or rather, as our parents told us, "it's all fun and games... until someone gets hurt." When that day of reckoning comes, we will be sorry we put the kids in charge of the school. We will wish we hadn't kicked out all the teachers and elected the Lord of Misrule to govern us. 

We will quickly realize that the Lord of Misrule is a worse tyrant than all the experts and administrators we thought we were freeing ourselves from... And that when you declare a policy of free french fries for all—you very quickly run out of french fries.