No Is Not
Enough, by Naomi Klein
Review by
Dave Gamrath
One-liner: a fascinating examination of the dynamics in our
society that allowed Donald Trump to get elected President, describes what we
can continue to expect from the Trump Administration, and provides a a manifesto detailing what we need to do to not only beat
Trump, but to truly change our society.
Overview:
The
election of Trump is not just a US phenomenon; it is part of a global
contagion, with recent success (and near misses) of far-right parties in
multiple countries. Trump’s naked
corporate takeover of our government has been years in the making. Up until now, in US politics there’s been a
mask on the corporate state’s White House proxies; now the mask is gone. Trump should not be viewed as just one
dangerous person, but as a ferocious corporate backlash to protect their wealth
against overlapping societal and political movements demanding a safer and just
world Trump and his cabinet of former executives are remaking government to
serve the interests of their own businesses, their former businesses and their
tax bracket as a whole.
The
main pillars of Trump’s political and economic project are:
·
The
deconstruction of the regulatory state
·
A full-bore attack
on the welfare state and social services
·
The unleashing of
a fossil fuel frenzy
·
A civilization
war against immigrants and Muslims
In
the book, Klein describes how Trump is the culmination – the logical end point
– of a great many dangerous stories our culture has been telling for a very
long time, including: greed is good; the
market rules; money is what matters in life; white men are better than the rest;
the natural world is there for us to pillage; the vulnerable deserve their fate;
the one-percent deserve their golden towers; that anything public or commonly
held is sinister and not worth protecting; and that we are surrounded by danger
and should only look after our own. And that there is no alternative to any of this. We have to question not only Trump, but also
these stories that produced him. We have
to confront these deep-seated values that have been sold to us.
No
matter how bad things seem right now, things will likely get a lot worse in the
short term. Klein goes into detail about
“the shock doctrine” and how Trump will likely exploit it to enhance his power
and continue his rule.
Summary:
The Trump “Superbrand” – Naomi Klein’s first book, No Logo, focused on the key moment in corporate history when
behemoths like Apple and Nike stopped thinking of themselves primarily as
companies that make stuff, and started thinking of themselves
as, first and foremost, manufacturers of brands. This Superbrand model
sought to connect with consumers and craft shared values, and then charge a
premium for products that are less about the objects themselves then about the
profound human desire to be part of a tribe, a circle of belonging. The true product was the brand, and thus it
could be projected onto any number of seemingly unconnected commodities. The Superbrand goal
is to own little, but brand everything.
Trump built an empire by following this formula precisely. And then, as a candidate, he figured out how
to profit from the rage and despair the offshoring of
jobs left behind in communities that used to be well-paid manufacturing towns, I.E.,
the places companies like Trump’s long ago abandoned. It’s quite the con to have convinced so many
to support someone who has crushed their interests.
The
reality TV show The Apprentice offered Trump the chance to leap into the
stratosphere of Superbrands and to solidify his
mission to equate the name Trump with material success. On the show, Trump was paid a fortune for
priceless free advertising. After you
pull this off, what’s your next trick?
Merge your brand with the ultimate symbol of power and authority: the White House. And the ultimate branding
tool: the US presidency. Every minute Trump is president, his brand
value and the value of his businesses are increasing, and he is therefore
directly profiting from being in public office.
You can’t disentangle Trump the man from Trump the brand. Trump sees public office as a short-term
investment to swell the value of his brand.
Example: Mar-a-Lago has already doubled its membership fees to
$200,000. More importantly, who’s to say
what services are being purchased when a private company pays millions to lease
the Trump brand? Whether its sales at
his hotels, golf courses or with his merchandise, it will be extremely
difficult to prove that Trump increased sales are due to his presidency. Trump smirks at charges of conflicts of
interest. “Prove it!” Very hard to do.
Impunity: why
scandals don’t stick – Trump carries
a near-impenetrable sense of impunity. In the world he has created, he’s just a
“winner”; if someone gets stepped on, they are obviously a loser. Every traditional scandal bounces off Trump,
because he didn’t just enter politics as an outsider who doesn’t play by the
rules, but as someone that plays with a completely different set of rules, the
rules of branding. According to branding
rules, you don’t need to be good or decent, you only
need to be true and consistent to the brand you have created. If you stay focused, very little can touch
you. Trump created a brand that is
entirely amoral. Trump’s Superbrand as the mega-rich boss allows him to do whatever
he wants, and people shrug it off with “he’s such a winner, of course he can do
that!” In his world, even more than endless
wealth, impunity is the ultimate
signifier of success.
A one man “megabrand” – Trump is a product of powerful systems of thought
that rank human life based on race, religion, gender, sexuality, physical appearance
and physical ability, and that systematically uses race as a weapon. Trump is the personification of the merger of
humans and corporations – a one-man megabrand.
Trump is the embodiment of the belief that money and power provide
license to impose one’s will on others.
Trump is the product of a business culture that fetishizes
“disruptors” who make their fortunes by flagrantly ignoring both laws and
regulatory standards. Most importantly,
Trump is the incarnation of powerful free-market ideals that wage wars on
everything public and commonly held, and imagine CEOs
as superheroes that will save humanity. All
this is represented in his Administration; Trump has collected a team of
individuals who made their personal fortune by knowingly causing harm to some
of the most vulnerable people on the planet, often in the midst of a crisis.
Trump’s campaign premise – when people are living in a nightmare, dreams
sell. Trump’s primary political pitch
was “I’m a winner, and I will turn you into a winner, and together we can crush
the losers.” After decades of hawking get
rich quick manuals, Trump understands exactly how little needs to be behind his
promises. If people’s desperation is
great enough, people will believe his unfounded promises, such as bringing back
manufacturing or that he is the master negotiator and will renegotiate all our
trade deals to support US workers (as opposed to himself).
Well
before Trump, elections had already crossed into ratings-driven
infotainment. What Trump did was
exponentially increase the entertainment factor, and therefor
ratings. The biggest gift from the media
to Trump wasn’t just all the free airtime, but the entire infotainment model of
covering elections which plays up interpersonal nonsense and bickering, at the
expense of policy specifics. Trump
didn’t create the problem; he exploited it, taking this game to a new
level.
World Wrestling Entertainment – Klein points out that Trumps entire campaign had an
entire WWE quality to it. Trump has been
connected with the WWE for years. In the
campaign, Trump carefully nurtured feuds with other candidates, like his
opponents in a wrestling ring. Trump played
ringmaster at his rallies, complete with over-the-top insults (“lock her up!”)
and directing the crowd’s rage at the designated villains in the room: journalists and demonstrators. What reality TV (The Apprentice) and WWE have
in common is a curious relationship with reality – one that is fake and both
genuine at the same time. They both
thrive on the spectacle of extreme emotion, conflict and suffering. But at the same time, as you’re watching it,
you don’t have to care, because you know it’s not real, and you get to be part
of the drama without having to feel empathy.
It makes it ok to laugh at suffering.
And now Trump has grafted this same warped relationship to reality onto
his administration. Let’s crush
political correctness! Bring on the
nastiness! Ain’t
this just fun?!! We’ll show “those
people”!!!
Draining the swamp – Trump supporters claim they elected him to “drain the swamp”; to go
to Washington and break things, and by doing so that
will make things better. Honestly, US
federal government is a mess! Klein
states that our system is corrupt; it is a swamp. But it’s become a swamp largely due to
attacks on government by the Right and supported by Corporate America. This mess never have
happened without decades of deregulation that essentially legalized political
bribery, with money now legalized as free speech in our political process. Trump’s political career would not have been
possible without the degradation of the whole idea of the public sphere, that
government is the problem (thank you Ronald Reagan). The fundamental premise of Trump’s campaign
was that government is not just a swamp, it’s a burden. That’s why voters are willing to put up with
a reality TV show for our government – what have we got to lose?! But Trump is dramatically enhancing the swamp,
not draining it. And even if Trump got
impeached, that would be proof of the claim that our political system doesn’t
work. Hey, another President just
failed!
Deregulation –
Trump’s primary actions are, in short, a great unmaking, what Steve Bannon calls “deconstructing our regulatory state”. Regulations are hurting businesses and
killing jobs! We not only need to reduce
them, we need to eliminate them! Let the
free market rule! But how did
regulations get established in the first place?
It wasn’t that someone in power thought “hey, let’s just add some
regulations!” Regulations were responses
to real problems that needed fixing, to dynamics that were hurting the masses
for the benefit of the few. Trump has
vowed to cut regulations by 75% and to lower taxes for the wealthy and
corporations. It’s
workers who will pay the price for this.
Without regulations, their jobs become more unsafe with more injuries
and our environment (water, air and natural places) will be, once again,
trashed. And what about massive
corporate tax cuts and tax cuts on the wealthy?
Government services will have to be cut, the same services that lower
and middle-class workers use. As history
has shown, deregulation will further enrich the wealthiest at the expense of the
masses.
Which
is why Trump’s cabinet is laughing at the feeble objections over public claims
of conflicts of interest by Trump and his Administration. This whole thing is a conflict, and that’s
the point. All this deregulation is
designed to further enrich them at the expense of society, under the guise of
more jobs. To actually bring
manufacturing back to America, you need to make manufacturing in America cheap
again, hurting workers and destroying the environment. For a corporation to bring jobs back to Texas
from China, they need to see lower labor costs in Texas than they get in
China…just do the math on that!
Trade deals
– Trump is not planning on removing the parts of trade deals that are the most
damaging to workers – the parts, E.G., that prohibit policies designed to favor
local production. Or the parts that
allow corporations to sue national governments if they introduce laws that
“unfairly cut into corporate profits.”
Trump’s plan seems to be to expand corporate protections, not workers. Yet many US trade unions showed support for
Trump, making a deal with the devil by buying into Trump’s false claims.
Climate change – in a previous book, This Changes Everything, Naomi Klein details what Conservatives understand
about global warming, and what Liberals don’t get: to truly and effectively combat climate
change we need to end what Klein calls “neoliberalism”. Klein describes neoliberalism
as the idea that holds that the market is always right, that regulation is
always wrong, that private is good and public is bad, and that taxes that
support public services are worst of all.
Neoliberalism is an extreme form of capitalism
that became dominant in the 1980s under Reagan and Thatcher, and its strongest
adherent is the US Right. Because
climate change, especially at this late date, can only be dealt with through
collective action that curtails the behavior of corporations (such as Exxon and
Goldman Sachs), and because it demands investment in the public sphere on a
scale not seen since World War 2, and since this can only happen with raising
taxes on the wealthy and corporations, then to admit that the climate crises is
real and true action needs to be taken is to admit that we need to see the end
of neoliberalism.
That’s why the Right is in rebellion against the physical world and
against science. In No Is Not Enough, Klein
provides data and examples to support how we now need extensive, urgent action
on climate change. The clock is now at
midnight. Yet Trump has moved us dramatically
in the opposite direction. With this
trajectory, we are set to warm the planet by 4 to 6 degrees Celsius as opposed
to the Paris goal of less than 2 degrees.
Climate scientists project that four degrees of warming is “incompatible
with any reasonable characterization of an organized, equitable and civilized
global community.” Trump is trying to
make climate change disappear with his slew of deregulations and his
elimination of climate efforts in government, as well as his prohibition of
government officials even mentioning it.
Trump’s thorough plan to kill all US response to climate change is
“fully baked”, as will be the rest of us.
Trump supporters – Klein noted that Trump’s base isn’t mostly poor white men; it is
solidly middle-income, with most of his voters earning between $50,000 and
$200,000 a year (albeit with more at the $50K end). Klein describes the economic woes that the
middle class in America have encountered over the past 35 years, and there are
many. Losing job
security, loss of healthcare, flat and/or low wages, etc. She noted the high rise of addiction,
overdoses and suicides: “deaths of despair”, due to the failure of life to turn
out as expected. As the US becomes more
ethnically diverse, white men are losing their economic security AND their
sense of a superior status. Trump has
promised to make them “real men” again, and has promised to remove competition
from brown people, who will be deported or banned, and from Black people, who
will be locked up. One cannot vote for a
person who is openly riling up hatred based on race, religion and gender unless
one believes, at some level, you don’t think those issues are important. Trump supporters show troubling indifference
here. And there is no more effective way
to convince white voters to support defunding schools, bus systems, welfare and
other services then to tell them it’s those dark skin people that benefit for
these services, not you poor white folks (who actually use these services quite
extensively).
Why Hilary lost
– Klein takes a critical look at the Clinton campaign. Klein was a Bernie supporter and notes how
the Left specializes not in working together, but rather in turning one each other
and firing away in a circular hail of blame.
Klein states the single, overarching lesson of the election is that we
should never underestimate the power of hate.
Also, never underestimate the appeal of wielding power over “the other”,
be they migrants, Muslims, Blacks, women or any other group, especially during
times of economic hardship. Klein
believes Clinton’s failure was not one of messaging but one of her track
record, specifically her economics of neoliberalism. Trump supporters saw more of the same with
Clinton and had no belief she would change things to help them.
Lying –
Trump tells blatant, outrageous lies.
With Trump, it’s not so much the Big Lie as it is the Constant
Lies. Yes, he does tell big ones, but
it’s the continuous stream of lies, offered to us as “alternative facts”, that
is most dizzying. This is quite
deliberate. Lying with impunity is part
of being the boss; being tethered to boring facts is for losers. But Trump’s lies, in time, will be shown for
what they are. For example, Trump’s selling
his white working-class voters on the dream of a US manufacturing comeback will
eventually come crashing down. His
voters won’t like this. But what is most
worrying is what Trump will then do:
falling back on the only other tools he has, pitting white workers
against immigrants, do more to rile up fears about Black crime, and whip people
up with attacks on reproductive rights and on the press. And then, of course, when you’re looking for
a real shock to society there’s always war.
There’s little reason to hope Trump will be able to resist putting on
the show of shows – the televised violence of a full-blown war, complete with
blockbuster ratings. North
Korea anyone?
Trump’s implementation of the shock doctrine – Naomi Klein previously wrote a book, The
Shock Doctrine, describing the
intentional use of “shock” by governments to enable governments to force upon
us pro-corporate policies while citizens are too overwhelmed to resist (or even
understand what is really happening). Shock
happens when something big and bad happens, that we don’t yet understand. Without our moorings, a great many people
become vulnerable to authority figures telling us to fear one another and
relinquish our rights for the greater good.
Speed is of the essence here since periods of shock are temporary by
nature. The hope by the “shockers” is
that populations will rapidly become exhausted and overwhelmed, and will
ultimately swallow their bitter medicine.
The shock doctrine seeks to capitalize on the vulnerability of others in
order to maximize wealth and advantage for a few. Klein described the use of shock around the
world by many governments, including in the US.
Klein detailed how many on Trump’s cabinet have personally profited from
exploiting shocks.
Trump’s
constant bombardment of us with wave after wave of shocking actions/statements
is intentional; overwhelming us is a key goal to distract attention from the
true goals of his Administration. Nothing
has the ability to change the topic quite like a large-scale shock. Trump’s actions can be counted on to generate
wave after wave of continued crisis. Not
just Trump’s manufactured “shock of the day” from his tweets. But real shocks, such as
economic and financial shocks (from deregulation), security shocks (blowback
from anti-Islam rhetoric/policies, weather shocks (denying climate change) and
industrial shocks (pipeline spills, oil rig disasters, etc.). Trump can be relied upon to exploit any and
all of these shocks to push through his radical agenda. A large-scale crisis would provide pretext to
declare a state of emergency, and provide cover to push through Trump agenda
items that require suspension of democratic norms, such as a Muslim ban,
restrictions on the free press and/or to dismantle programs like social
security. And Trump doesn’t necessarily
have to plan a shock; he can take advantage of any old shock that happens his
way.
Resisting and overcoming these shocks – it can happen; we can resist. To do so, Klein states that two critical
things need to happen. First, we need a
firm grasp on how shock politics work and whose interest they serve (thanks for
reading!). Second, we need to tell a
different story from the one the shock doctors are peddling, a vision of the
world compelling enough to compete head-to-head with the “shock vision”. A better values-based vision must offer a
different path, away from serial shocks to one based on coming together across
racial, ethnic, religious and gender divides, rather than being wrenched
further apart. Most of all the vision
needs to offer those being hurt – lack of jobs, health care, peace or hope – to
a tangible better life. The firmest of
NO’s has to be accompanied by a bold and forward looking YES – a plan for the
future that is credible and captivating enough that a great many people will
fight to see it realized no matter the multitude of shocks thrown their
way.
Any
opposition that is serious about taking on Trump must embrace the task of
telling a new story about how we ended up in this position. They must describe our history that details
the politics of division and separation.
Our history of racial, class, gender and citizen
divisions. And
the false division between humans and the natural world. No liberal billionaire is going to come save
us from Trump. The ultrarich
won’t save us. We need to be careful
here: Trump supporters accepted the idea
of a billionaire to save them; liberals don’t want to fall in the same
trap. Klein states that progressive
“politics as usual”, the establishment option, won’t work. It doesn’t have nearly enough to offer.
Defeating
Trump and pro-corporate America is not just a matter of a new Democrat’s electoral
strategy and not just about finding the right candidates to run. It’s about being willing to engage in the
battle of ideas that will take on our wealth-worshiping world that created the
backlash that got Trump elected in the first place. Progressives are going to have to come
together as never before. Klein states
that only a bold and genuinely redistributive progressive agenda can offer real
answers to inequality, and the crisis in our democracy, while directing rage at
where it belongs: at those who have
benefited so extravagantly from the auctioning off of public wealth. Klein states that we need to remain
optimistic, and points out how Trump has made so many people active that have
never gotten politically involved before.
We
can only defeat Trumpism by cooperating with one
another – no one movement can win on its own.
We need to stick together. We
can’t get caught up in “my issue is more important than yours.” We need to show the connections, connect the
dots, between all of our issues, including climate/environment, healthcare,
jobs, racism, inequality, education, housing, affordable transportation,
safety…ALL of them are connected and important.
Leap Manifesto
– Klein closes with a discussion of her work with a large group of other
progressive leaders to create a new progressive platform, which they named the
Leap Manifesto. They attempted to write
a people’s platform to reflect not just the needs of one platform, but of a
great many at once. It focuses on values
not policies. It describes the need for
a shift from a system based on ENDLESS TAKING – from the earth and one another
– to a culture based on caretaking. Klein
details how the money to make this shift is out there; we just need the guts to
go after it. This manifesto is the
opposite of the art of the deal (Trump’s book); instead of “how can I screw
you” it is based on a call for caring for the earth and one another. You can read The Leap Manifesto here.
Reviewer Opinion:
Well
done. Very worth the
read. Sometimes hard to remain
optimistic during these desperate times, but this book, by providing clarity on
many of the dynamics we’ve been seeing over the past year, and by providing a
map forward, certainly does help.
Rating
Thumb
up.