Category Archives: Politics

#VanElxn2022 | Vancouver | Median Market Rental Rate | An Explanation

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Each year, dating back to 1947, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation …

… a Crown Corporation of the Government of Canada, originally established after World War II to help returning war veterans find housing, CMHC since expanding its mandate to improve Canadians’ “access to housing”, the organization’s primary goals to provide mortgage liquidity, assist in the development of affordable housing, and provide unbiased research and advice to the Canadian government on the housing industry, which as of the second quarter of 2021 had assets in excess of CA$295 billion.

Each October, CMHC sets about to conduct the Rental Market Survey (RMS), during which time the Corporation gathers information on the primary rental market in urban areas with a population of at least 10,000. The primary rental market refers to privately-initiated structures intended to supply the rental market. The RMS specifically targets privately initiated structures with at least three rental units, which have been on the market for at least three months.

The Rental Market Survey is conducted primarily through site visits with the owner, manager, or building superintendent for all sampled structures. From 1996 through 2008, as part of our employment with the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, VanRamblings was tasked with overseeing the collection of rental market information throughout the province of British Columbia, while working with economists employed in CMHC’s Pacific Regional Office to verify the collected information as part of an integrity check.


Vancouver median market rental rate, all bedroom types, 2009 – 2018

When the Rental Market Survey results are published — as early as late November, as late as mid-January — in each metropolitan area across Canada, the median market rental rate in each neighbourhood in each community is determined, and published. What does median market rental rate mean?

“Median Market Rent means the middle value of all monthly rents paid, inclusive of essential utilities, when placed in order of value for a designated market area, and by unit type.”

Let’s use Kitsilano as an example to better explain what is meant by median market rental rate. The October 2021 Rental Market Survey found the median market rental rate in the Kitsilano CMA (Census Market Area) was $1139 per month for a one-bedroom apartment, across all building types and date of construction, recording results in five year increments in buildings constructed from 1975 til now.

In other words, in late 2021, half of those resident in apartment rental accommodation in the Kitsilano CMA were paying less than $1139 each month to rent a one-bedroom apartment, while half of Kits apartment dwellers were paying more. In Kitsilano, as is the case elsewhere across the city, there are those who have been resident in an apartment building dating back to the mid-1970s, and are paying anywhere from $825 to $950 per month in rent.

By the same token, for newer apartment buildings, or in the case of new tenants moving into a vacated apartment, the landlord has seen fit to increase the rent — for say, an unfurnished one-bedroom apartment — to market rental rates as high as $2500 per month, or in some cases even higher.

As former Vision City Councillor Kerry Jang told CKNW talk show host Simi Sara  in 2013, “Affordable housing is something that somebody can afford.”

Awhile back, VanRamblings received a call from COPE City Councillor Jean Swanson, who asked us if we’d look into the definition of affordable housing, as it is defined in Metro Vancouver municipalities other than Vancouver. So, we did. This is what VanRamblings found: speaking with administrators in Planning Departments in each Metro Vancouver municipality, be it North Vancouver, Surrey or Port Coquitlam, we learned, in each case, “affordable housing in our community is defined as 20% below the median market rental rate, as determined by CMHC.”

Vancouver, and Vancouver alone, since Kerry Jang’s 2013 statement respecting the definition of affordable housing, has determined affordable housing as NOT 20% below the median market rental rate, but 20% below the market rate. In Kitsilano, to employ that neighbourhood as an example, 20% below the median market rental rate would be an affordable rent of $938 per month, whereas 20% below the current market rate would be $2000 per month — more than double the 20% below Kitsilano’s median market rental rate!

Since being elected to office in 2018, has any — and we mean, any — Vancouver City Councillor sought to adopt the definition of affordable housing, as it applies in every other Metro Vancouver municipality, determinant from the results of the conduct of CMHC’s annual Rental Market Survey? Jean Swanson, maybe? That dissembling “thinks she’s a socialist” saviour of our city (but not really), Christine Boyle?

Christine Boyle and most of Council voted for any and every project that had a so-called affordable rental rate component included. What does that mean in real life?

Let’s take the Jameson Development Corporation project, on the old site of the Denny’s, at Birch and West Broadway. Originally conceived of as a 16-storey purpose-built rental, when the Jameson family made the decision to include a 20% “affordable rental” component, Ms. Boyle and her Vancouver City Council colleagues agreed to allow the developer to build out at a skyscraper-like 28 storeys, in order to deliver 200 market rental homes, with another 58 “homes” to be geared to a person or household earning between $60,000 & $80,000 per year.

Upon completion, a 395 sq. ft one-bedroom on a lower floor of the Jameson project will be marketed at more than $3,000-a-month, which means an “affordable rental” will be available at $2400 each month, or $28,800 annually.

Let’s say you’re a beginning teacher, and you’re earning $60,000 a year. After taxes / CPP / EI deductions, and union dues to pay, in part, for a pension plan and benefits, your total net income would come in at around $45,000, less the $28,800 in rent + utilities — Hydro / Internet / TV / cell phone (say, another $250 a month)— at $3,000, never mind car insurance, gas and car repairs at another $3,000 annually … well, lucky, lucky beginning teacher, s/he will have a grand total of $10,000 remaining to pay for food, clothing, and entertainment — forget about dining out, vacations, never mind birthday presents and Christmas gifts for family and friends.

Nothing like paying 64% of your net income on a 395 sq. ft. supposedly “affordable” apartment on the 5th floor of the Jameson Birch Street project.

In 2022, Vancouver and Vancouver alone continues to define “affordable” as 20% below whatever the market will bear, shutting out tens of thousands of hard working Vancouver citizens — those working at minimum wage, those earning a living wage, or any single person earning the median income of $45,000 — from ever being able to afford to rent within the City of Vancouver.

At the upcoming all-candidates meetings in September, ask all those who are running for office to become a Vancouver City Councillor whether they will commit to ensuring that affordable housing in Vancouver is redefined as 20% below the median market rental rate as determined by CMHC’s annual Rental Market Survey.

And while you’re at it, ask these prospective candidates whether they will move to have rents in apartment buildings tied to the current rental rate — through a change to the Vancouver Charter — so when a tenant moves out, the owner / landlord can’t raise the rent to an unaffordable market rental rate.

One more thing: ask these prospective Vancouver City Councillors whether they’ll move to adopt Burnaby and New Westminster’s demoviction bylaw.

  • An affordable housing plan. The revival of the Community Land Trust relationship between Vancouver City Hall and the Co-operative Housing Federation of B.C., that would see the construction of 1500 new housing co-op homes built each year on city, provincial and federal Crown land, each of the next four years. An affordable housing plan that would expedite the construction of ten 150-unit family housing co-ops each year — think the City Gate Housing Co-operative on Milross Avenue, the Roundhouse Housing Co-operative on Marinaside Crescent, in Yaletown, or the Railyard Housing Co-operative on Quebec Avenue at 1st, due east of the Olympic Village — all built at no expense to Vancouver citizens — while foregoing the $1 million in development permit fees. Construction and materials cost: paid for through a combination of mandated developer Community Amenity Contributions and provincial and federal funds (both Prime Minister Trudeau and former B.C. Housing Minister, David Eby, have signed off on the above). Cost to Vancouver citizens: zero. Cost of land: zero. Cost to Vancouver citizens for construction and materials: zero. A negotiation with the federal government would ensure that all subsidy monies for Co-op members would be paid for through the federal co-op housing subsidy fund. All monies paid by Co-op residents — after administrative, amenity payments and maintenance costs, and monies placed into a “replacement reserve fund” for major, future renovations — would be returned to the City to build supportive social housing, at no cost to citizens.

You’ve got your work cut out for you over this next six weeks, as you and your neighbours hold those who would wish to be elected to City Council to account. Are these candidates for Council on your side, or are they on the side of an unacceptable status quo or worse, greed-oriented and deep in the pockets of the developers who are funding their campaigns for office?

#VanElxn2022 | Welcome to the Crucial 2022 Vancouver Civic Election!

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Today marks the unofficial start of the 2022 Vancouver municipal election.

Vancouver voters, and voters from across British Columbia, in every village, town and city, go to the polls from 7 a.m. til 8 p.m. on the chill autumn day of Saturday, October 15th — to elect a Mayor, 10 City Councillors, 7 Park Board Commissioners, and 9 School Trustees — with advance  polls opening at the beginning of October, on this most important of months in the 2022 civic election year — given that the newly-elected will set the direction our city will take over the course of the next four years, and likely far beyond the next critically important 4-year term of office.

Today, VanRamblings will present a treatise on what’s on the line for voters in this  consequential election year, while taking a brief, glancing blow at each of the 10 parties offering candidates for Council, Park Board & School Board.

First up, two appalling Vancouver civic parties decidedly, unabashedly not to vote for, under any circumstance: ABC (A Better City) + OneCity Vancouver.

VanRamblings will explain why later in the month (this is no reflection on the good-hearted candidates for those parties, but simply what would be wrought were either civic party to elect a majority on Vancouver’s next City Council).

In 2022, the choice for whom to cast your ballot offers you a stark choice …

  • The six Vancouver municipal parties deep, deep in the pockets of the developer class of our city, who fund much of the operation of Vancouver City Hall — civic parties including: Forward Together, Vision Vancouver,  ABC (A Better City), OneCity Vancouver, the NPA (Non-Partisan Association) & Progress Vancouver — or …
  • The four community-minded civic parties who believe in a city for all and the city we need, who see the need for densification across our city, yes, but want gentle density across Vancouver neighbourhoods, that champion respectful engagement with citizens, whose notion of gentle density includes more parks and green spaces, small business, schools, community centres and amenities — those neighbourhood-oriented civic parties offering candidates for office in 2022 would most definitely include TEAM … for a Livable Vancouver; COPE Vancouver; Sean Orr, running as the sole candidate for office with Vote Socialist Vancouver , and — we suppose — the Green Party of Vancouver — the latter four Vancouver civic parties running on platforms that will oppose the mass construction of the wildly expensive (read: unaffordable for 90% of those of us who live in Vancouver), over-developer-friendly (not to mention, developer-obsequious), the isolating, skyscraper-driven model of towers, towers and more towers that would seek to push Vancouverites out of the city we love, in favour of turning Vancouver into a Monaco-like playground for the wealthy elite who traverse our globe in their private jets.

All will come into clearer focus for those few beleaguered folks who manage to make it to the polls in October, to select Vancouver’s next City Council, as well as the cherished institutions of Park Board and School Board.

VanRamblings would wish to see activists elected at every level of civic governance, a City Council ready to reclaim ownership of our paradise-by-the-sea to Vancouver’s put-upon — and dare we say, overtaxed — citizens, where priority will be given to funding new parks and recreation centres; keeping our streets clean, and the landscape of our city pristine; where Vancouver’s new City Council will work with senior levels of government to address Vancouver’s cruel and unsustainable homelessness crisis; where in addition to hiring new police officers, priority will be given to hiring social workers for an expanded Car 87 programme, which has saved countless lives of persons suffering through a mental health crisis; where attention, and priority, will be given to working within the city, and with other jurisdictions, to respond effectively to our climate emergency.

And,  the two most important policy changes that a new Vancouver civic administration must implement as their first priorities when elected …

  • An affordable housing plan. The revival of the Community Land Trust relationship between Vancouver City Hall and the Co-operative Housing Federation of B.C., that would see the construction of 1500 new housing co-op homes built each year on city, provincial and federal Crown land, each of the next four years. Consideration is being given to a TEAM-initiated plan that could both expedite the construction of ten 150-unit family housing co-ops each year — think the City Gate Housing Co-operative on Milross Avenue, the Roundhouse Housing Co-operative on Marinaside Crescent, in Yaletown, or the Railyard Housing Co-operative on Quebec Avenue at 1st, due east of the Olympic Village — all built at no expense to Vancouver citizens — while foregoing the $1 million in development permit fees. Construction and materials cost: paid for through a combination of mandated developer Community Amenity Contributions and provincial and federal funds (both Prime Minister Trudeau and former B.C. Housing Minister, David Eby, have signed off on the above). Cost to Vancouver citizens: zero. Cost of land: zero. Cost to Vancouver citizens for construction and materials: zero. A negotiation with the federal government would ensure that all subsidy monies for Co-op members would be paid for through the federal co-op housing subsidy fund. All monies paid by Co-op residents — after administrative, amenity payments and maintenance costs, as well as monies placed into a “replacement reserve fund” for major, future renovations — would be returned to the City to build supportive social housing, at no cost to citizens.

  • A  Renoviction Policy. Not Mayor Kennedy’s watered down version of the successful Burnaby and New Westminster renoviction by-law. In May 2019, Burnaby City Council adopted a ‘best in Canada’ tenant assistance policy that provides support for tenants displaced from rental buildings with 5-plus apartments, mandating developers cover tenants’ moving costs (up to $1,400), and pay the difference between a tenant’s current rent and the rent in the new building tenants move to, while providing the right of first refusal to displaced tenants to move into the replacement building, at the same rent they paid before being displaced (subject only to the provincially mandated maximum annual increases), with developers again covering moving costs when tenants move into the new building.

A core review of staffing levels at City Hall must also become a priority.

When you’ve got 76 highly-paid folks employed in the dis-information communications department at Vancouver City Hall,  and 1100 middle-management bureaucratic staff added during Sadhu Johnston’s brief tenure as City Manager, and a senior staff who believe they’re running the show, who steadfastly refuse to answer the simplest of questions put to them by Councillors, or provide any data whatsoever — of course, there’s Green Councillor Adriane Carr, who believes any question put to staff by Councillors or the public perforce must be seen as disrespectful and out of order, requiring the good Ms. Carr’s intervention to sanction the misbehaving Councillor questioner, while moving to shut the questioning down — you know there’s a heap of trouble at Vancouver City Hall that needs fixing … achieved only by a Vancouver City Council with the gumption to prioritize the myriad interests — pecuniary, and otherwise — of Vancouver’s wearily beleaguered citizenry.

#VanElxn22 | Tuning Out, Disengagement, and Low Civic Voter Turnout, Likely

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When Canadians’ engagement with the news dropped significantly in 2021, the plunge was in some ways seen as inevitable.

The change in news consumption habits last year came after two years with no shortage of storylines — the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic, both a provincial and a federal election, the ongoing circus of the politics of Trump, and a nationwide reckoning over race, Indigenous relations and related police violence.

For many Canadians stuck at home, there was plenty of time to tune in.

However, the pace of news waned toward the end 2021, as did interest in the Liberal administration in Ottawa, and politics in general. The news cycle in 2022, comparatively, has more closely resembled the frenetic years of COVID, between the war in Ukraine, and existential threats to democracy and the planet.

Yet eight months into 2022, data collected by a Leger / Public Square Research poll shows Canadians are even more disengaged than they were this time last year, with a quarter of Canadians tuning out “too depressing” political news.

In fact, most Canadians who are tuning out the news say they’re doing so because the sheer negativity of what they read and hear is turning them off from politics.

According to the Leger poll, one-fifth of Canadians engage with political news “throughout the day,” while a third of Canadians engage with it daily and 22% engage with it a few times a week.

About a quarter of Canadians are almost entirely disengaged from the news, with 10% of Canadians actively avoiding political news, and 5% engaging with politics only through conversations with friends, with 10% reading the news only a few times a month.

Fifty percent of Canadians disengage, saying they’re “tired of the negativity in politics”, 38% saying the news is too depressing.

News engagement across all platforms in the first half of 2022 — website visits, news app sessions, cable viewership, and time spent on social media — is down compared to the first half of 2021. The steepest decline — 50 percent — pertains to engagement with news articles on social media, and probably stems from changes Facebook made to its news curation model.

Cable viewership news on CBC, CTV and Global 1 “is, on average, down 19% in prime time,” losses that skew heavily across all three news networks.

The Leger / Public Square Research poll also finds a mismatch between the issues dominating the headlines and what Canadians are concerned about. Only 16% of Canadians said they were concerned about the Pope’s visit to Canada and 35% said they were concerned about the backlog in immigration processing in Canada.

“The role of the news isn’t always to give people the news they want to hear,” says Heather Bastedo, who runs Public Square Research and produced the Leger survey for The Hub, the survey to which we are referring today. “But the media needs to make the connection to people’s lives with these stories. Most people aren’t flying out from Pearson, but the fact that the government can’t run things should be an issue.”

Thirty-four percent of Canadians said they’re concerned about long lineups at passport offices, while 21% said they simply don’t care.  The number one issue for Canadians is rising interest rates. Forty-five percent say they’re are very concerned about it, with 26% saying they’re somewhat concerned; 13% say it doesn’t affect them. The war in Ukraine is similarly pressing for Canadians. Forty percent of Canadians are very concerned, with another 35% somewhat concerned.

As might be expected, younger Canadians are least likely to be highly engaged news consumers, with only 13% Canadians aged 18 to 34 reporting that they read or listen to the news throughout the day, compared to 27% of people over the age of 55. Young people are less likely to be totally disengaged than people aged 35 to 54, though. Among Canadians under age 35, about 11% report having no interest in politics, compared to 14% of Canadians aged 35 to 54.

The numbers above underscore a collective weariness among the voting public.

Higher turnout in federal, provincial and civic elections is a reflection of vibrant, robust democratic practice. Conversely, low voter turnout depicts cynicism, apathy, anomie and alienation, triggering voters not to exercise their right to vote.

A representative democracy calls on citizens to participate in the electoral process. Many voters believe they know about likely election winners, and their single vote won’t make a difference. This is a classic example of a collective action problem.

In 2018, 39.4% of  the Vancouver public voted, a record voter turnout to be sure — which still meant that a whopping 60.6% of the voting public didn’t vote. Why?

  • Lack of interest. Not everyone tunes into the nightly news every evening. Some people are simply not interested in politics, others outright hate it. The last thing they want to do is research politicians or read about the latest election;
  • Lack of knowledge. Often coinciding with a lack of interest, many people also don’t know much about elections or politics. They’re not aware of who’s running, and sometimes they don’t even know there’s an election coming up;
  • Disillusionment. A thread of cynicism that runs through the Canadian electorate. Many believe their vote either doesn’t count or doesn’t matter, so why bother voting? In Vancouver, some of this has to do with the lack of a representational neighbourhood voting system (sometimes called a “ward system”). In addition, many potential voters feel it’s pointless to vote for parties and candidates, because they don’t believe that any of those parties or candidates represent their interests;
  • Voter fatigue. Even the most dedicated voter may feel worn down by the sheer number of names on the ballot, most of whom they don’t know. Additionally, long lines and difficulty voting may discourage individuals from going to the ballot box..

Low voter turnout is also evident from the fact political campaigns rely on data that serves to ignore popular voices on issues of importance, allowing candidates for office and their political parties to feel safe, ignoring the public will while failing to comply with even the most amorphous of campaign promises.

In these cynical times, most campaign managers, political parties and candidates know few people are going to turn out at the polls, so why bother crafting a message? In this scenario, amidst an abundance of voter fatigue, some political voices win, while most of the public — particularly those who choose not to cast a ballot — lose, getting government they don’t want, rather than government they need.

American Crisis | The Devolution of Democracy

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Over the course of the past six months, British Columbians have experienced a heat dome in late June that saw temperatures rise above 40° Celsius for more than a week, a summer wildfire season that saw the Interior town of Lytton burn to the ground, an autumn season of previously unheard of atmospheric rivers that flooded large areas of the Fraser Valley, and towns along the Thompson River that destroyed the town of Merritt, only to be followed by a winter season of record low temperatures and more snow across the province than experienced ever before.

And, at least for those of us who reside in British Columbia — where climatologists predict ever-worsening summer heat domes and wildfire seasons, ever more autumnal atmospheric rivers and even more devastating winter seasons of record low temperatures across the province — you’d be left to think that our present climate emergency is the worst of the problems facing us going into the future.

But you’d be wrong.

In point of fact, even more devastation is on the near horizon, this time social, political and economic, as well as climate-based, given what we are witnessing on a daily basis in the country just south of the Canadian border, in the United States.

Today marks the one-year anniversary of the insurrection that shook the very foundation of American democracy, the brief but devastating takeover of the halls of power of the American government forcing members of Congress, the Senate, and the Vice-President of the United States into hiding to protect their very lives.

Thomas Homer-Dixon, Canadian political scientist and author of the recently published Globe and Mail article, ‘The American polity is cracked, and might collapse. Canada must prepare’.

The United States could be under a right wing dictatorship by 2030, Canadian political science professor Thomas Homer-Dixon has warned, urging our country to protect itself against the “collapse of American democracy”.

“We mustn’t dismiss these possibilities just because they seem ludicrous or too horrible to imagine,” says Homer-Dixon, founding director of British Columbia’s Cascade Institute at Royal Roads University, in an article published recently in the Globe and Mail.

“In 2014, the suggestion that Donald Trump would become President would also have struck nearly everyone as absurd. But today we live in a world where the absurd regularly becomes real and the horrible commonplace.”

Homer-Dixon’s message is blunt: “By 2025, American democracy could collapse, causing extreme domestic political instability, including widespread civil violence. By 2030, if not sooner, the country could be governed by a right wing dictatorship.”

The author’s prediction centres on a Trump return to the White House in 2024, including Republican-held state legislatures refusing to accept a Democratic win.

“It’s not a matter of if but when: A civil war is on the way, as the United States is coming to an end,” writes Toronto-based historian Stephen Marche, in his new book, The Next Civil War: Dispatches from the American Future.

Marche observes that the United States is riven by a sectarian conflict that cannot help but end, at some point, in violence. By his projections, the inevitable civil war will be uncommonly vicious, pitting neighbour against neighbour. “It’s not just Donald Trump’s fault, though he certainly did his best to sow hatred and division,” writes Marche, noting that Trump was right when he said, “This country was seriously divided before I got here.”

Marche posits a number of scenarios around which a civil war could emerge: the assassination of a President; the seizure by local authorities of a bridge condemned as unsafe by federal officials, drawing militias from afar into armed conflict with the Army; a campaign of terror initiated by anti-government patriots, with dirty bombs less lethal than panic-inducing, countered by a government that will suspend First and Second Amendment rights to contain the violence.

In all of the above scenarios, the fuel is the deep chasm between two visions of America, one multi-ethnic, the other White supremacist. This chasm is full of antipathy and venom. “Hatred drives politics in the U.S. more than any other consideration,” Marche writes, and in the America of today, the middle ground has disappeared. What is to be done? Marche proposes a radical solution: Allow the South to break away into a largely impoverished theocracy, grant prosperous California and Texas their own nationhood, and let the rest of the country form a flourishing, wealthy blue-state democracy. “Disunion would be the death of one country,” he writes, “but it would be the birth of four others.” For other possible remedies, after reading Marche’s new book, start with Barbara F. Walter’s How Civil Wars Start.

A terrible storm is coming from the south, writes Homer-Dixon, and Canada is woefully unprepared. Over the past two years as Canada has turned its attention inward, distracted by the challenges of COVID-19, reconciliation, and the accelerating effects of climate change, while just below the 49th parallel the unraveling of a long cherished American democracy portends a threat to the American citizenry, and an even greater threat for Canadians across every part of our country.

“If Donald Trump is re-elected President in 2024, even under the most-optimistic of scenarios the economic and political risks to Canada would be innumerable,”  writes Homer-Dixon. “Driven by aggressive, reactive nationalism, Mr. Trump or one of his acolytes who could go on to win the American Presidency could isolate Canada continentally.”

“Under the less-optimistic scenarios, the risks to our country in their cumulative effect could easily be existential, far greater than any in our federation’s history. What happens, for instance, if high-profile political refugees fleeing persecution arrive in our country and the U.S. regime demands them back. Do we comply?”

“Trump and a host of acolytes and wannabes such as Fox News’ Tucker Carlson and Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, have transformed the Republican party into a near-fascist personality cult that’s a perfect instrument for wrecking democracy,” writes Homer-Dixon.

“Worse,” he writes, “Donald Trump may be just a warm-up act.”

“Returning to office, he’ll be the wrecking ball that demolishes democracy but the process will produce a political and social shambles,” writes Homer-Dixon. “Still, through targeted harassment and dismissal, he’ll be able to thin the ranks of his movement’s opponents within the state, the bureaucrats, officials and technocrats who oversee the non-partisan functioning of core institutions and abide by the rule of law.”

“Then the stage will be set for a more managerially competent ruler, after Mr. Trump, to bring order to the chaos he’s created.”

The consequences of the breakdown of the American system is only now beginning to be felt. January 6 wasn’t a wake-up call; it was a rallying cry. The Capitol police have seen threats against members of Congress increase by 107%. Death threats have become a standard aspect of the work life of every elected official. A third of poll workers in the U.S., in the aftermath of 2020, said they felt unsafe.

The United States has burned before. The Vietnam war, civil rights protests, the assassination of JFK and MLK, Watergate — all American national tragedies which remain in living memory. But the United States has never faced an institutional crisis quite like the one it is facing now. With most on the American right having abandoned faith in government, their politics is, increasingly, the politics of the gun.

The American right is preparing for a breakdown of law and order, but they are also overtaking the forces of law and order. Hard right organizations have now infiltrated so many police forces — the connections number in the hundreds — that they have become unreliable allies in the struggle against domestic terrorism. Anti-government patriots have used the reaction against Black Lives Matter effectively to build a base of support within law enforcement.

At this moment in the American crisis, the left has divided into warring factions seemingly incapable of confronting the seriousness of the moment. There are liberals who retain an unjustifiable faith that their institutions can save them when it is increasingly clear that they cannot. Then there are the educational and political elites dedicated to a discourse of willed impotence, not unlike pre-WWII America.

The right has recognized what the left has not: that the system is in collapse. The right has a plan: it involves violence and solidarity. They have not even repudiated the Oath Keepers. The left, meanwhile, has chosen infighting as their sport.

The United States must recover its revolutionary spirit. Does the country have the humility to acknowledge that its old orders no longer work? Does it have the courage to begin again? As it managed so spectacularly at the birth of its nationhood, during the Civil War of the 1860s, and again in 1932 with the election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt as President, the United States requires the boldness to invent a new politics for a new era. It is entirely possible that it might do so.

America is, after all, a country devoted to reinvention.