Is American Conservatism Possible, or can there be a post Trump Republican Party

I suspect not. American conservatism has long been problematic. Trumpism represents its most extreme form and it is a form that millions of American find alluring, if for no other reason that in its utter simplicity. Perhaps in recognition of this, a range of former (and some current) Republicans from previous administrations (and some from Trump's own government) are meeting to see if a new party is a viable alternative. I suspect it isn't, but you can find some information on this here. There are several points to consider.

First, we should not have any nostalgia for the old pre-Trump Republican party. That party was more than willing to make veiled allusions and play off the racist fears of white suburbanites and cosy up to homophobic Evangelical Christians in order to win elections. The coalition that Buchanan and Nixon began to forge in the 1960s (the "southern strategy") constitutes a significant part of the Republican Party today and they show no signs of going anywhere. Biden's tactics, as Mike Davis has noted, were predicated on imperfectly winning back sections of the Democratic vote that had abandoned Clinton.  The Democrats did take steps to broaden their own coalition and draw in new voters, but it did little to shake the Republican base of support, which one could argue is stronger than ever before. 

In this regard, the nostalgia that we hear about American conservatism (particularly on MSNBC) really is looking at the past through rose coloured glasses. Before anyone embraces the idea that there is a real, genuine American conservatism to which the Republicans can return they should pause and think about the corruption of the Nixon administration, the race-baiting assaults on "welfare moms" and women's rights of the Reagan years, the foreign policy adventurism of Bush, Jr., that shrugged off multilaterialist alternatives and engineered wars that led of the rise of ISIS. One should recall that tax cuts to large corporations have long been part of the Republican play book as has opposition to Roe V Wade and rejection of policies designed to promote equity, and opposition to equality for the LGBTQ community.  This is not to explain where Trumpism came from but it is to ask a question: if you reject Trump and you can't go back to a conservative innocent age, what will American conservatism look like and who will actually support it? 

This is a problem for conservatism which, by definition, looks to the past. There can be good reasons for that and I'll try to spell some of those out in another post. But, the problem is that that past -- as it is constituted as part of a Republican political history -- carries with it a heavy burden in the sense that it leads to Trumpism. At the least it is marred by its willingness to encourage intolerance and play on racist fears as part of its political strategies. 

Second, even if a new conservatism were possible, it would be seriously held back by their inability to get their message to voters. One of the things that has changed in the US with regard to politics is the politicization of the media.  This is not new but it is odd. The new media environment in which we live was supposed to encourage debate and discussion through diversity. It has not done that. Instead, what has happened is that a modest number of platforms dominant public discussion. Some are better than others, to be sure. No one watches FOX News thinking that they will get an unbiased perspective. The problem for a new conservatism is that it is (1) shut out of this media market, (2) that the platforms and networks that would give them air time (say MSNBC) are not connected to their potential voters, and (3) they will be subjected to on-going regular attacks from both media outlets like FOX and from evangelical churches. 

Third, a new conservative party will need to find a way to finance itself and while it might, initially, attract some media attention with some big donors, it would need to build a party infrastructure from scratch and that is both expensive and not easy to do. One of the advantages Trumpism has is that it can count on a dedicated body of workers who will volunteer their time. The people who encourage their neighbours to vote Republican, go door to door, donate to local campaigns, etc., will be lacking for this new party. What the new party has, right now, is a series of top level activists. This attracts news coverage (seasoned important Republicans leaving party!), but that has been going on since Trump took over the Republican Party.  It makes news but it does not make a new political party.  Canada is an example: Reform and the BQ initially succeeded not because they had high profile figures (although the BQ did, and Reform, too, but perhaps less so) but because they tapped into grassroots discontent (whether one agrees or disagrees with the discontent) and mobilize volunteers and enthusiastic supporters who joined those parties for their own reasons. 

Is there an enthusiastic body of supporters for a new conservative political party in the US? There might be but, to be honest, I don't see it. In fact, I see a lot of people who are (for a range of reason that have been aptly and seriously discussed by others) who are happy with the Republican Party the way it is. I was watching a group of Republicans condemn Liz Cheney. They seemed fully and deeply committed to the Trumpist direction and had little interest in Cheney, a name brand conservative figure who might, for instance, be a poster person for a new conservative party.  I doubt she would win her seat running for a new conservative party. 

I don't know what the future holds for the Republican Party. But, I don't really see it being successfully challenged by a moderate conservatism for control of the right-wing of the American political spectrum. At the very least, I don't think Democrats should hold their breathe on vote splitting as an electoral strategy. If Trumpism is to be driven back, it will have to be driven back by the Democratic Party. In fact, there might actually be a danger for the Democrats in a moderate conservative party.  Its most likely voters are moderate centrist independents and Democrats. If enough of those people deserted the Democratic party (and it would not take many in a small number of states), Trumpism is back in power.

Thinking After Trump: Canada and US Foreign Policy

 On August 15th, the UN Security Council voted against a US motion to extend the international arms embargo against Iran. The US government then accounts it would use provisions of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (2015) as a way to “snapback” those sanctions for, what it views, as Iranian non-compliance with the original agreement. The problem, of course, as JCPOA members quickly told the US, it had already withdrawn form the agreement in 2018 and was now a non-member since it had, in effect, already rejected the provisions of the agreement two years ago. There are a series of serious issues that go along with this current situation that relate to the extension of US power, the shape of the world environment, and exactly how this situation should be assessed as part of US foreign policy. Virtually no members of the UN Security Council, for instance, supported the US move to re-impose sanctions and European powers were quick to tell the US it had not standing with the JCPOA. 

The question I want to address in this blog is different: what does this tell us about the issues facing Canada on the world stage and Canada’s relationship with the US. After the most recent US aluminum tariffs, I listed to a number of commentators say something like “what Canada needs to do now is simply wait until the coming US election which see the replacement of the current administration with a more reasonable one.” I know the issue is more complicated than that but, at first, I tended to agree.  What I am thinking about now is that there might be a way to Canada to build a new foreign policy relationship with the US in a post-Trump era. I don’t necessarily think this will be easy but I also think that there may be a range of Americans who are interested in the subject even if will undoubtedly be controversial in the US. 

At the heard of the Trump election strategy was the slogan “Make America Great Again.” These words carry with them an at least implicit foreign policy because they assert an international pre-eminence. The Trump administration’s foreign policy has sought this greatness even if its approach been far from consistent. Despite the fact that Trump has drawn on Republicans to direct it, his administration has disavowed many of the key aspects of his own party’s approach to world affairs. One should not have a lot of nostalgia here. The War on Terror, neo-liberalism, rejection of international environmental standards, among other things, were all hallmarks of Republican foreign policy. 

Historically, pre-Trump Republican foreign policy has not been popular either internationally or within Canada. But, key foreign policy thinkers associated largely, if not completely, with conservative politics have tended to argue that Canada needed to follow the lines laid down by the US. These people tended to self-style themselves as “realists.”  They tended to advocated hard power, close military and diplomatic connections to the US, and support for US foreign policy goals. They tended to reject what they saw as “moralism” in foreign policy, arguing that the only standard against which foreign policy should be measured was interests of state. This close connection to the US, they tended to argue, was good for Canada for three reasons. (#1) The US was the pre-eminent power in the world. By having a good relationship with the US, Canada gained power on the world stage, as it were, by riding on US coattails. (#2) Canada needed the US on its side because of the degree to which the Canadian economy was dependent on the US. The US could, should it have wanted, cripple our economy. (#3) The US was right most of the time anyway. Its opponents were terrorists and military dictators or authoritarian communist countries. 

Against this way of thinking about the world – Canada as a subservient ally of the US – was a different way of thinking about the world that is associated, in some measure, with the peacekeeping ideal. This way of thinking is most closely associated with liberal intellectuals and, to a significant extent, with the Liberal party, but that requires some nuance. The basics of this way of looking at the world were that Canada should have its own international identity and that there was nothing wrong with being on the side of the angels; that is: there was nothing wrong with morality. Indeed, it was good for Canada’s international reputation and good for Canadians who were well liked (at least compared to Americans) on the world stage. Canada found its foreign policy identity through constructive international engagement and multilateralism that allowed it to work together with other countries to accomplish positive ends and hedge in the power game. In other words, Canada’s aims were a stable, peaceful, and constructive international environment that limited the ability of “might makes right” politics by setting up international institutions that operated according to the rule of international law and some measure of global democracy (with votes vested in the nation-state).

I have no special clarity with regard to the Trump administration’s foreign policy. It seems to me that when its history is written, studies will see it as based in a series of factors that include:

• An effort to further free the US from multilateral and international commitments to extend its ability to use its own might makes right policy approach. That is: to have more of a free hand with regard to international affairs and not be bound by alliances, agreements, and the like. 
• A belief in the power of personal relations with world leaders to address issues (say, by establishing a direct personal relationship with the Putin and Kim-Il Jong) as a way to address problems
• A focus on economic deal-making, employing retaliatory threats, particularly with allies, in an effort to gain an edge. Allies and partners (say, Canada) were, in particular, viewed with suspicion.  The goal of US economic relations with Canada was not to further common goals. Instead, it looked more like neo-liberal mercantilism. The goal is to get something from, as an example, Canada. 

We don’t need to go over these points and I recognize that there are other considerations that need to be included to have a fuller discussion. What it does, however, is highlight the degree to which even Canadian conservatives will have a hard time buying into their formerly near unconditional support for the US international agenda. There are two key reasons for this. 

#1) Conservatives used to argue that bad relations with the US were a problem and they tended to fault Liberal-minded PMs (PET, Jean Chretien) for it. Their overt anti-Americanism, for instance, conservative thinkers and politicians argued, poisoned the relationship with the US and endangered both the Canadian economy and Canada’s international standing with it. It is now impossible to make this argument. Indeed, it would be difficult to find a government that has been more sensitive (the odd mistake to one side) and more concerned with not offending the US government than Justin Trudeau’s. Even at the height of the Black Lives Matter protests, Trudeau refrained from any public criticism of the United States and its government. During intense trade negotiations when US figures publicly hammered Canada, Canadian political leaders and trade negotiators were, more or less, silent. Yet, this silence has bought noting and cannot by anything because the current US government is not looking to get any support from Canada for anything. Canada’s support is, in fact, irrelevant to it.  What it wants from Canada is not agreement but, as it were, increased regulation of the Canadian economy. IOW, the result of being nice to the US is not economic gain but economic decline via production limitations. 

#2) It is impossible to pretend that the US has the global power and influence it had a number of years ago. Indeed, even a number of years ago that power was waning. US power and influence are not things of the past. I’ve read studies that talk about historical shifts in international affairs as if they were some sort of cycle. They are not. But, the US no longer commands the world stage the way it did during the Cold War or the New World Order eras. Economically, US domination is challenged not by a single country (although China gets a lot of press) but by an expanded international regionalization of power. Countries like Turkey, Saudi Arabia, China, Indian, Russia don’t wait for US permission for anything. They might be world leaders or they might aspire to this but they are in the process of carving out their own regionalized and international spheres of influence. The US finds itself as one of a series of global regional powers and that is the reality with which it has to grapple. 

I don’t expect that grappling to be easy. I don’t expect a lot of Americans will want to embrace it. And, I suspect that lot of Americans are looking simply to see themselves as “great again,” regardless of what that happens to mean. For Canada, however, it means that one end of a long-standing debate in Canadian foreign policy is over. There are good reasons to have a good relationship with the US and I will spell these out later, and the US economic connection is still important for Canada. But, whatever happens next for conservative approach to the US and Canadian foreign policy, it cannot be a return to the subservient ally approach of past days. What is equally important, I will indicate in my next blog, that the liberal alternative might also be inoperative. If history has moved past Canadian realism and its design to be close to the US, it might also have moved past its liberal alternative as well. 

But ... so what? The Economics of Ambiguity and Threat

Threats -- the subject I addressed in a previous blog -- are interesting, I tried to argue, from an economic perspective. They are used when one lacks other resources and are, as it were, a currency through which a leader (on behalf of his or her country or party or ruling group, etc.) tries to buy (as it were) things. The currency of threat is both internal and external. Internally, a threat may be good for the leader. It may buy him or her support or praise, particularly if their support is shaky. Thus, and just as an example, the North Korean leadership continually threatens other countries (using its control of the media) both to try to win it international respect (that it has no other means of attaining) and to ensure its support at home. This, too, it has little other means of attaining other than through censorship (which, sooner or later, will fail).

Recently, as I read over the news, I noticed a Washington Post story that Donald Trump planned to declare the Iran nuclear deal bad for the American "national interest." You can find the story here. He also, apparently, however, would not say whether or not he would, on behalf of the US, abandon the deal. That story is here. What does this mean? There are a range of different ways of assessing these statements but if we look at them from an economic perspective and think about their relationship to the economics of threat, we can use such statements as examples that serve to illustrate broader patterns (as opposed to something that is valuable in itself). What is that broader pattern?

One of the problems with threats, I suggested, is that they have a shelf life. This does not mean that you cannot take them out, dust them off, and use them again down the road, after memory has faded a bit. In fact, if you look at North Korea, this is what its government has tended to do. What of Trump? How do his threats work? These threats noted above are interesting from this economic perspective because they show us two things.

First, Trumpian threats are backed up by something vaguely ominous but unclear. This is different the Trump administration's approach to environmental protection legislation. They simply try to get rid of it. They don't threaten anyone. They just move ahead and do it. (I'm not saying that is good. I'm saying it is action that is characterized by a lack of public threatening.) In the case of the Iran nuclear deal, a very different tact has been taken. What happens to the deal if Trump "declares" that it is not in the American "national interest?" It sounds bad, but is it? Does this declaration have any criteria that go with it? Who gets to decide what is and is not in the national interest? Are any laws passed because of this declaration? Does it have any effect on Iran?

Said differently, we have what looks like a definitive statement cum threat that, when looked at closely, is more akin to a house of cards.  Having Trump declare that a nuclear deal with Iran not in the national interest is not like establishing a no fly zone in Iraq or Kosovo. It is not like a certification has been revoked, nor a trade agreement scuttled, nor even a soccer tournament canceled. Trump makes a statement -- some people like it, others criticize it, talking heads chatter over it -- but ... and this is the point, nothing really happens afterward ...  except ...

And, it is that "except" that is vital to the Trump administration's economics of threat. The except is that we don't know.  Will this mean that the US will abandon its deal with Iran? And, what are the implications of abandoning it? Again, it does not sound good but we don't know. This is important because knowing removes the threat. If, for instance, the US stated clearly that it was pulling out of the deal, the Iranian government would say "that is a drag" and go back to their old program. The US might want a new deal but negotiations would have to begin anew. And, as we saw from the first deal, the US does not have a lot of leverage. It could make a stronger threat, say military action, but does anyone seriously believe that they would follow through with that?

Thus, ambiguity is needed for the threat -- or, in this case implied threat -- to actually work. The ambiguity creates pressure and sounds like it creates negative consequences that the other party seeks to avoid. And, from Iran's perspective, seeking to avoid a broken deal might be a good thing and so the treat gains some leverage. But, at the exact minute it stops being ambiguous, the threat loses its leverage, forces Iran to make decisions (whatever these might be) and, because of that, because it convinces Iran that decisions must be made, the US government loses its traction (regardless of what the decision actually is). It can threaten but what if those threats are taken seriously? It now must "fish or cut bait." The beauty of the ambiguity Trump creates is that right now, at least, it need do neither. In other words, to maximize its leverage, the US government needs ambiguity and it needs irresolution.

This is, btw, exactly the same approach the US government has followed with regard to NAFTA. What is the US position on NAFTA? It wants to renegotiate it, but this desire for renegotiation is periodically interrupted by musings out loud about ditching the deal. We can ask in another post, what happens if that were actually the case, but you see the point with regard to the economics of threat. The ambiguity is better than a defined position. Looking at just at Canada, if the US ditches NAFTA (which, it might, of course), that removes the ambiguity and Canada needs to make decisions about what it does with its US trade. Canada makes those decisions on the basis of what is good for Canada. Ditching NAFTA outright, in other words, does not win the US any concessions from Canada. But, ambiguity might. In order to maintain the deal, Canada might be willing to make concessions (say, limiting the export of softwood lumber, or buying even more dairy, or purchasing some military equipment from Boeing). Canada might do this because it is worth something, to the Canadian government and Canadian business, to avoid disruption. But, once that disruption has occurred, the Canada government enters into a different series of calculations. One looks for different markets, rethink energy proportionality, expands supply management programs, etc. Ambiguity, in other words, serves people well in negotiations.

Now, I am not trying to say that the Trump administration is filled with geniuses.  What I am trying to say is that there is an economics to threat and it is different in this case than in the case of North Korea (where a different but similar economics is at play). In both cases irresolution works to advance the state objectives except that North Korea is really looking for either (a) permanent irresolution or (b) the attainment of their aims (which seems unlikely). The US government, one assumes, is looking to attain certain aims and long-term irresolution will not work to meet its aims. This ambiguity with regard to NAFTA has, in this sense, a time limit because sooner or later the US government will want to show results, if for no other reason than to get re-elected.

Same thing with the Iran deal. The deal with Iran might be bad. It might be good. That point is irrelevant. The US wants a deal because it does not want to deal with nuclear proliferation. That was, after all, why it signed the deal in the first place. The current administration is gambling that ambiguity can help it meet its goals in that renegotiation as well. Ambiguity, in this sense, becomes a currency that it is using to try to buy its objectives.

Democracy's Disjuncture: Money, Economics, Health Care and Politics

In my last post, I tried to pick up a thread from over a year ago where I looked at Trumpism for what it tells us about the shifting dynamics of American public life. This is not a discussion of whether Trump is right or wrong; good or bad. We have to engage empirical issues in any analysis. That is life and if you don't believe that ... well ... you and I have different conceptions of what constitutes analysis.  But, if we put the question of Trump's merits or demerits on hold and look at what the discourses associated with his government tell us about American public life (or, the changing character of American public life), we can, I think, produce both interesting, nuanced and accurate treatments of this subject. This analysis may have some implications for Canada as well.

Last post I tried to argue that there were important implications to the disjuncture between image and reality in American public life with regard to health care. The right-wing discourse of the problems of Obamacare, for instance, focused on a failure that was, in important ways, difficult to specify.  The American health care system has its problems. No one debates that but, overall, the issue of the cost of health care -- associated by Republicans in the US with Obamacare -- is intensely problematic because it fails to understand why health care costs have increased. There are a number of reasons for this, but one reason is that health care is expensive. I've made this point with regard to Canada.  Canadians periodically complain about taxes being too high (which is both an empirical and philosophic issue) but those doing the complaining fail to tell us what those taxes dollars have done. And, one thing they have done is improve the health of the country.  We now, for instance, live longer than we used and not by a little bit. By a lot. Moreover, the recovery from serious health problems -- say, heart attacks or strokes -- is astronomically better than it was when I was a kid. Said differently, we are getting things for our dollars.

Does this mean  that one cannot have health care "reform." Of course not, but it does mean that if you start from the wrong premise, you get the wrong answer.  If you begin, for example, from the assumption that the cost of health care is *not* related to its increasingly high tech nature and increased costs but must, instead, be related to something the government is doing, one begins to toy around with policy when, in fact, that might *not* be the thing to do.

In this blog, let me take a long diversion to make a point about taxes, honesty, and democracy. Trump and his crew may have problems with honesty. Frankly, I think they believe their own propaganda. But, ultimately, I want to suggest that on economic issues there is a disjuncture built into democracy between reality and ... well ... image, for lack of a better term. We can use the health care debate in the US to illustrate this point.

This is an important consideration for the US because we key proponents in the health care debate tell people something that is not true. I've complained about this before. The anti-tax perspective in Canada, for example, tends to ignore the costs of not paying taxes? There is a cost to not paying taxes?! Does not lower taxes, in fact, save us money?  As anyone who has taken economics 101 will tell you -- and this is the reason that there were so few economists on board with ant-tax think tanks -- there is a cost to everything. This is called, in economics, "opportunity cost" and it is a basic principle of economics. It is not, in other words, some fancied up confusing newfangled idea. It is a basic foundation upon which the discipline is built.

What is it? In effect, the principle of opportunity cost states that there is a price for everything. Money is a valuation of that price but it is a valuation only. Saving money saves you money but it also comes at a price. What is that price? You give up what you otherwise would have done with that money. Let me give you an example or two. Imagine that I have a dollar and I can buy a hamburger for that dollar. I decide to not buy the hamburger and keep the dollar. What is that price of that dollar? The hamburger I could have had. So, I have a dollar in my pocket -- money I have "saved" -- but I am hungry. Likewise, I go to work to make money. The price of going to work (even if I like my job) is what I could have done outside that job (say, go for a hike, weed my garden, sit in my hot tub, etc.).

This relates to taxes in this sense: the issue is not "how much money would you have if you had not paid taxes" but what is the cost of not paying those taxes?  What does our society -- and the people in it -- not have that they otherwise would have had? In Canada, these costs are big. Taxes are used to pave roads (which are often, btw, needed for business development), make sure the medicines we buy are safe to use, pay the coast guard, repair the water supply, maintain schools, keep electricity flowing, make sure I don't get mugged walking down the street, etc. Said differently, we can give up on taxes but we also have to give up on all the things that we get from those taxes. That is the cost of *not* paying taxes.

What this means is that for most people, there are good reasons to pay taxes. Some people -- say, just about everyone who lives in New Brunswick -- is a net beneficiary of the tax system. That is, what is being purchased through taxes is fairly valuable and are things that we don't want to give up. Moreover, because we do them collectively, we realize something called "an economy of scale". This is another important concept that is also *not* fancied up. An economy of scale is something you all know. That is: it is less expensive per item to do things on a big scale. For instance, if I am making shirts, one shirt costs a lot to make. If I am making 1000 shirts, however, the cost per shirt falls because I can get a deal of raw materials, set up an assembly line, etc. Thus, while making one shirt might cost per shirt $25.00. The per unit cost of a 1000 shifts might fall to $15.00. Making things on a big scale, in other words, for a lot of people, allows those lot of people to benefit.

Taxes can be like this. If we all pay into a central fund and organize, say, our health care or education or road paving or electrical supply collectively, we can all save money. Yes, we have to pay taxes but those taxes are buying us something at a lower rate than if we tried to go out an buy it individually.

I don't want to get more deeply into this at this point in time. What I am trying to indicate, however,  is, I hope, by now clear. Taxes are not just a loss. There is a price to lowering taxes and that price might be significant. Moreover, there are good reasons to have central purchasing of some product because they allow us to realize an economy of scale, thus lowering the per unit costs for everyone. Said differently, taxes can actually save you money if you get a product that you would otherwise have bought for less. Health care is an obvious example. In Canada we buy it collectively and it costs us less than it does for Americans who buy it individually (through insurance premiums). Why? Economies of scale.

I've taken too long to get to my point but bear with me just a nick longer.  What does all this have to do with the health care debate in the US? If you use these simple tools of economics, you start to realize that the debate is on the wrong track. The anti-Obamacare people do not explain in their discussion that if you get rid of Obamacare, there is a cost and that cost is health care. Yes, you will pay less. But, you also will not get the same product. And, why would you? We live in a capitalist society and you have to pay for what you get, right? That is the nature of capitalism.* (*I will provide a refresher on markets and lower costs in a future blog.)

What this means, for the federal governments and an increasingly section of the population (as they come to understand the issues) is this: you can't get something for nothing. I recognize that that is not an ethical position that, if you are a politician, wins elections. If I come out and say to people -- in the US or Canada -- look, I am running for election and what I have to tell you is that you have to pay taxes *if* you want certain things -- roads, health care, a military, disease control, schools, police officers, fire departments, electricity, etc. -- and, because of that, if you elect me, I will not lower taxes, I doubt I will win. The person who says "I have found a way to save you money" and this will mean that you will get to keep all you are getting now and still have more money in your pockets, will have a better chance of winning. If they say, I will lower taxes and you will still have good roads (in fact, I'll make them better), you will still have health care (in fact, I will make sure its cheaper), you will still have a military (in fact, I will rearm), etc. ... which position will sound better to the average Joe? This person is the person more likely to get elected even if they are not telling the whole truth?

What this means is that here is a bit of a disjuncture built into democracy. When it comes to economic issues, like taxes, there is a strong incentive to not tell the whole truth. Now, I recognize some people don't tell the whole truth because they believe something other than this. They believe, for instance, that "entrepreneurial spirit" will lower taxes. Exactly what this is, is never explained and I, myself, am deeply concerned about things that are not -- or, cannot -- be explained. I recognize that someone who believes in this might say "gee, Andrew, if you were a business person you would understand" but I have a brain. Explain it to me. I've never been to the moon and I can understand what the moon is like when a scientist explains it to me. Don't tell me "you can't understand because you are not X" because that basically says only people X  can understand and, that being the case, why would anyone believe you? The only thing we can do -- if we cannot understand -- is accept it on faith and that is the definition of metaphysics.  And, I, personally, think metaphysics is not a good ground on which to build a polity.

What this means, though, is that democracy suffers from a problem. It suffers  from a disjuncture between reality and image and that is connected to electoral politics.