Implosions don't normally work this way

One of the major failures of imagination we are seeing from almost everyone, including really smart commentators like Jonathan Chait, is the assumption that the basic political structure of the country, particularly that of the Republican Party and the conservative movement will remain more or less the same after the collapse.

A republican loss is far from a foregone conclusion (we live in an age black swans), but a major electoral setback does seem highly probable at this point, possibly a historic one. While this is becoming the consensus view, most analyst seem to be thinking of this as another V-shaped recovery. Trump will go away. Things will go back to normal. And the republican party of 2028 or even 2024 will look a great deal like the republican party of 2012. That may be possible, but I very much doubt things will play out that way.

The success of the conservative movement over the last few decades has been astounding. They have managed to build upon a generally unpopular platform and shrinking demographics and have nonetheless held a remarkably large chunk of political power. There is a tendency of political commentators to want to play armchair sociologist and construct elaborate theories about why various aspects of the movement emerged when the answer is that it was engineered to do so.

There is virtually nothing spontaneous here, nothing that demands explanation. No part of the base that has not been cultivated. There is nothing but Astroturf as far as you can see and if you try to explain it with the language and tools of grassroots, you’ll make a fool of yourself. These attempts to treat social engineering experiments as organic sociological phenomenon leads to analyst and pundits spending a lot of their time mystified at what should be obvious.

Why do main stream news organizations like the New York Times routinely let Republicans like Paul Ryan get by with obvious lies? Maybe it has something to do with decades of working the rafts, message discipline, and playing carrot and stick games with access. Why do members of the Republican base believe they are a persecuted minority living in a socialist nightmare, under attack by other religions and dangerous extremists? Perhaps it has something to do with one of the most massive propaganda campaigns ever attempted outside of a state run media.

Media, of course, is just one part of the system. There is voter suppression and other techniques for making sure that some people count more than others. There is the push to get as much money as possible and maximize its leverage. There is an emphasis on strategically valuable offices and elections, particularly those in years not divisible by four. There is an emphasis on party discipline. All of these components are interconnected and each supports all of the rest. That means that when one is successful, it makes it easier to succeed with the rest. Unfortunately for the movement, however, this same interconnectedness leaves the system vulnerable to cascading failure.

In 2020, almost every component of the system is under stress and most are starting to buckle. If things do start to collapse, the only thing we can say with any certainty is that nothing is certain.