Thread by @SohrabAhmari

I’m beginning to despair of the whole right, but especially the anti-woke formation (much as I loathe woke-ism). There’s no positive vision to it. It’s unserious. It seems designed to stave off real populism at the level of political economy.

The Biden WH has put forward a serious vision for a post-neoliberal order and an industrial policy. You may debate its parameters, but it’s a vision.

Meanwhile, the right is like “get your hands off my Bud Lite.” The two candidates boast about which of them was MOARRR anti-vax.

The other one says “I want to burn the FDA to the ground.” (Yay! Back to Sinclair’s “Jungle”!) The fantasy of restoring a governance structure fit for a pre-industrial idyll of yeoman farmers. The economic model that also assumes a pre-industrial La-La-Land as its backdrop. Dumb!

Or consider: America has had a problem of irrational regional and local banking going back to the 19th century. It makes it anomalous among industrial states. Recently, that perma-problem intersected with Silicon Valley’s own crises to create a mini-bank crisis.

What did Biden do? Act decisively—clawbacks crucially included—and in conjunction with the larger, more stable national banking sector.

What was the right’s response? WOKE-ISM CAUSED THIS.

Yes, there is/was an interesting realignment of part of the working class with the GOP. But even when Trump tried to serve it, he couldn’t and ended up, E.g., putting an anti-union Scalia-Son in charge at Labor.

More broadly the right’s base remains REGIONAL capital—think not the corporate executive, but the regional tire distributor. This is the least visionary segment of the capitalist class. You’re more likely to revive a class compromise with Giant Corp than regional tire distributor

A leftist friend rightly notes that a good part of the left also gets off on the relentless woke/anti-woke dance. In my next book — PRE-ORDER! — I describe this as a symbiosis. penguinrandomhouse.com/books/708057/t…