Changes

Finally, the American mainstream media mustered up the will after an entire week to admit that the U.S. ‘House of Representatives’ has changed hands, and that a Democrat majority is now a Republican majority. A few months ago, I noted some of the implications which may result from this transition of power in the U.S. House of Representatives. For one, the ‘January 6 Select Committee’ will most likely dissolve. Second, the subpoenas and the ‘investigations’ which have been waged relentlessly by the Democrat House against certain people over the last few years will perhaps swing towards the opposite direction. How intense the waging of the subpoenas and investigations will be and who the targets will be for these subpoenas and investigations is something which we will find out over the course of time. 

But the likelihood that subpoenas and investigations will hit certain people who are connected with Joe Biden is bolstered and increased by the fact that anti-establishment Republicans amongst the House GOP are more active and more vociferous than they have ever been before. It is likely that the House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy had to make concessions to the anti-establishment elements in the House GOP in order to re-assume his leadership position. There has been a challenge to the leadership of both McCarthy in the House and to the leadership of Mitch McConnell in the Senate from within the Republican party. McCarthy seems to have survived this challenge by perhaps making concessions to the anti-establishment wing of his party in the House. How McConnell will fare in the challenge towards his leadership role from within his party remains to be seen. 

When one combines the re-insertion of Donald Trump into the big picture of American political and social life with the changes and transformations that are occurring from within the Republican party, one begins to wonder what these two factors and this combination will have on the broader context or structure of American political and social life that is essentially under the hegemony of a combination that consists of three characteristics or features, namely, ‘black magic’ (https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-jewish-death-curse-in-israeli-politics), dark money, and mental repression through both academia and the media. And perhaps all three of these features of the American system are interconnected.

The dark money factor became much more consequential in American political and social life when I was a graduate student. It was during my time as a graduate student when the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) legalized and normalized the insertion of dark money into American political and social life through the decision in the Citizens United case. Since that decision on the part of SCOTUS, American political and social life have taken a turn for the worse.

The combination of the re-insertion of Donald Trump into American political and social life on one hand and the changes and transformation from within the Republican party on the other hand also means that the partisan divide which emerges from this combination will translate into a certain level of chaos and tumult in Washington in the immediate and short term. Before Donald Trump and these changes and transformations from within the Republican party took place, America was essentially under ‘one-party rule’ with the appearance of a two-party system that wielded the three characteristics and features which I mentioned before. Now, America is beginning to become a truly ‘two-party system’ as a result of the partisan divide but not necessarily in a good way. And with the partisan divide comes another dynamic, namely, the competition and the struggle between the two parties over who comes out on top as the immediate and short-term situation plays out.