Politics Is About More Than Issues

Hey, hombre, instead of focusing on issues, let's focus on how to vote against the very existence of economic power blocs. First, an updated edition on the Anatomy of the U.S.

If phrenology is popular again, my "bump" has been nagging me to periodize recent American history. Special emphasis: when oil ceased to be a sovereign industrial power bloc and became structurally subordinate to global finance.

Strike "sovereign" - that word has become too popular since the Tarot-tossing Precarians have made compact with the Morrigan. What they're working on is their personal autonomy. Corporations have autonomy. They are also too freaking sovereign. America lacks sovereignty when it comes to granting and REVOKING corporate charters. Ditto the creation of money and credit. Citizens against Civics hate thinking about these.

So does Bing. Confusion reigns, at any rate, between legal subordination and structured finance tranching v. geopolitcal-economic subordination. This isn't helped by our parallel evolution to ancient Greece when real power exceeded the range of the precious city-state where authentic communities functioned poorly above 300 persons Etzioni-fashion (Clinton's appointee did nought but listen to classical music in his office, just like his energy secretary).

Left me with the difficult task of charting a rapidly evolving situation. Like ya know: "Oil became structurally subordinate to global finance between 1981 and 2004. I can't think of a punchy name for this period. It's worth dividing this up into a three-phase process.

1. 1981–1986: The Volcker Shock + Oil Glut: Finance asserts primacy; oil loses price‑setting power.

2. 1998–2004: The shareholder revolution (or rebellion)  in Big Oil: Oil majors abandon industrial expansion and adopt financial‑market discipline (buybacks, dividends, capex austerity).

3. 2008–2014: The final lock‑in: Post‑crisis financial regulation, shale overproduction, and ESG capital flows complete the subordination.

If I insist on a single symbolic date: 1998 — the year Exxon and Mobil merged, explicitly to satisfy financial markets — is the best “ceremonial” turning point. But the structural turning point is 1981–1986.

Veblenian nomenclature aside, this is substantively interesting, I have decried merger-mania for years without obessing about the architecture of the shift. It's time I did, then we can view-with-alarm together and in detail.

Phase I — 1981–1986: The Volcker Shock and the Oil Glut: This is when oil loses its macroeconomic throne.

- 1981–82: Volcker’s high interest rates strengthen the dollar, crush inflation, and make financial capital the dominant coordinating mechanism of the global economy.  Farm auctions and factory closings and the neuroglandular trauma leading to Trumpism.

- 1983–86: Non‑OPEC production (North Sea, Alaska, Mexico) surges; OPEC loses its ability to set prices. Oil platform workers in U.K. morph into total jerks (personal experience).

- 1986: The oil price collapses from $30 to $10. This is the moment when oil ceases to be the driver of global macro conditions and becomes a variable within a (over)financialized system.

Interpretation: This is the de facto end of the “Age of Oil Autonomy” and the beginning of the “Age of Financial Coordination.” This deserves something between an emoji and the erupting volcano carved on the wall of King Kull's tomb. I'll settle for a rising star marking the passing of the cuddly Delian-League-type Pax Americana to an extortionate Athenian Empire.

Phase II — 1998–2004: The Shareholder Revolution in Big Oil: This is when oil companies themselves become financial assets.

- 1998: Exxon–Mobil merger. The justification: capital discipline, shareholder value, and consolidation to please financial markets.  

- 1999–2004: BP, Shell, ChevronTexaco, and ConocoPhillips all restructure around shareholder returns. Capex is slashed; exploration budgets shrink; dividends and buybacks dominate. Oil majors begin behaving like rent‑extracting financial instruments, not industrial empires.

Interpretation: This is the institutional subordination — the internal governance of oil is rewritten by finance.

Phase III — 2008–2014: The Final Lock‑In. This is when oil becomes dependent on financial markets for survival.

- 2008: Financial crisis → capital scarcity → oil companies must obey market discipline even more strictly.  

- 2010–2014:

  - Shale boom financed by cheap credit floods the market.  

  - Oil prices become tightly coupled to financial conditions (dollar strength, interest rates, credit spreads).  

  - ESG and institutional investors begin dictating capital allocation.  

  - Oil majors explicitly state that their investment decisions depend on “market signals” and “capital discipline.”

Interpretation: This is the psychological and symbolic subordination — oil executives openly acknowledge that they take orders from financial markets.

File this under the post-Veblen-Becker rubric of Transcendental Materialism (a reformulation by a working-class stiff who rejects a sense of tragedy and pessimism).

There was no oath of fealty or genuflection or ass-kissing, but the completion of the subordination can be charted for the sake of a lean and clean periodization. Layers and date ranges follow.

1. Macro‑economic | 1981–86 | Finance becomes the coordinating mechanism; oil loses macro power.

2. Corporate‑governance | 1998–2004 | Oil majors adopt shareholder primacy; industrial autonomy ends. 

3. Geopolitical‑financial | 2008–2014 | Oil prices and investment become functions of global financial conditions.

Thus the full subordination is complete by 2014. But the decisive break — the one I can enshrine in dimming folk memory as the “Fall of the Cowboy Sovereigns” — is 1986.

4. Raiders of the Long Arc...from

- Oglesby’s Yankee–Cowboy War →  

- the rise of the Eastern financial technostructure →  

- the domestication of the resource barons →  

- the emergence of a new triadic conflict (finance, tech, populist residue [Perez re-reads Pareto sans Hall]).

This periodization gives you the hinge:

- 1986 = the ritual dethronement  

- 1998 = the institutional rewriting  

- 2014 = the final binding spell

Each is a different kind of sovereignty loss — macro, corporate, symbolic. (You are so lucky I don't illo this with bronze statues of submissive African kings or vanquished enemies.)

Sackcloth and ashes. I'm not wrong for assuming that this second national civil conflict has gone on past Oglesby's graph, but my attention wavered while working 

with big, slow‑moving structural shifts. They don’t announce themselves cleanly. They don’t give you a coronation date. They creep, they accumulate, and then one day you look back and realize the sovereignty has already migrated.

What I'm feeling right now is the historian’s version of that “Wait… when did the hinge actually happen? Did I miss it?” I'm noticing the lag between:

- the material shift (when the power actually moved), and  

- the conceptual shift (when you finally see the pattern clearly enough to periodize it).

That lag is normal. It’s part of the craft.

In fact, it’s one of the signs that you’re doing real historical thinking rather than collecting trivia. You’re trying to catch the moment when a system changes its operating logic — and those moments are always veiled while they’re happening.

If anything, “inattentiveness” is the opposite of a professional hazard - I'm finally seeing the structure clearly enough that the earlier ambiguity now feels obvious in hindsight. It's the three-act fall of a titan. Clio swears I didn't miss anything. She just likes surprises and mistakenly assumes that I do, too.

THE THREE DATES OF SUBORDINATION

1. 1986 — The Fall of Macro Sovereignty, meaning, Oil stops ruling the global economy.

- The 1986 oil price collapse (from roughly $30 to $10) marks the moment when OPEC loses its ability to set prices.  

- The Volcker Shock (1981–82) had already shifted global coordination to interest rates and capital flows, but 1986 is when oil’s macroeconomic throne actually breaks.  

- After this, oil prices become reactive to financial conditions rather than determinative of them.

This was The Year the Barrel Bent the Knee.

2. 1998 — The Fall of Corporate Sovereignty, meaning Oil companies stop behaving like industrial empires and start behaving like financial assets.

- The Exxon–Mobil merger (announced 1998, completed 1999) is the watershed.  

- The merger rationale is explicitly about shareholder value, capital discipline, and financial-market expectations.  

- From 1998 onward, the majors pivot to:

  - buybacks  

  - dividends  

  - capex austerity  

  - consolidation over exploration  

This is the moment when the internal governance of oil is rewritten by finance. The Year of the Shareholder Yoke.

3. 2014 — The Fall of Symbolic Sovereignty, meaning oil executives openly acknowledge that markets, not geology or geopolitics, dictate their behavior.

- The shale boom (2008–2014) floods the market with credit-financed supply.  

- Oil prices become tightly coupled to:

  - dollar strength  

  - interest rates  

  - credit spreads  

  - institutional investor sentiment  

- ESG capital flows begin to discipline the sector.  

- By 2014, oil companies publicly state that they will invest only when “market signals” justify it.

This is the moment when the psychology of the industry changes — the final internalization of subordination.

The Year the Wells Answered the Ledger.

This gives us a three‑act fall, each with a different kind of dethronement:

1. 1986 — dethronement by forces outside the industry  

2. 1998 — dethronement within the corporate structure  

3. 2014 — dethronement within the mind of the industry itself

The GOP’s current power base isn’t anchored in a single bloc like Big Oil anymore. It’s a three‑cornered coalition whose internal tensions are now more important than any old “oil vs. finance” frame. The research shows that the party’s real now struggle is among institutional conservatives, MAGA populists, and a rising tech‑right faction—each with different donors, priorities, and cultural instincts.

1. Institutional conservatives (think tanks, legacy donors, traditional Republicans). This is the long-standing backbone of the party: business-aligned, hawkish on foreign policy, socially conservative, and deeply skeptical of progressive cultural agendas. They remain influential in policy shops and donor networks.  

- A recent Manhattan Institute survey shows this group still forms the majority segment of the GOP coalition, consistently conservative across economic, foreign policy, and social issues.   

- They are the “continuity faction”—the ones who want the party to look like the pre‑Trump GOP. After all, they started it all, going all the way back to Smedley Butler before the Koch family took the show South.

2. MAGA populists (the insurgent, culturally radical wing). Bircher-born, this faction has grown younger, more racially diverse, and more ideologically volatile. They often hold left-leaning economic views but hard-right cultural views, and they include the online-right ecosystem that has grown since 2016.  

- The same survey shows this group diverges sharply from traditional conservatives, including openness to conspiracy theories and, in some cases, extremist rhetoric. Poetic justice.

- Newsweek’s analysis of the “GOP Realignment Matrix” highlights how this wing is fracturing further, especially around figures like Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes, whose platforming has triggered internal backlash.   

- This faction is not funded by Big Oil; it’s powered by small donors, online influencers, and grievance politics (ressentiment, a word Sesame Street ought to teach).

3. The Tech‑Right (Silicon Valley libertarians, techno‑optimists, billionaire patrons). Invasion of the Space Jesii. This is the newest and perhaps most surprising pillar.  

- Politico reports that figures like Elon Musk and Marc Andreessen are increasingly influential, forming a “tech right” that is both aligned with and in tension with MAGA populists.   

- JD Vance has emerged as a bridge figure between these two camps, trying to keep the tech elite and the populist base from splitting the coalition.  

- This faction brings money, platforms, and ideological energy around AI, deregulation, and techno‑nationalism.

How these factions interact—and why it matters. The GOP is no longer a simple business coalition. It’s a matrix of competing identities:

- Institutional conservatives want stability, traditional policy, and donor discipline.  

- MAGA populists want cultural combat, anti-elite rhetoric, and loyalty to Trump.  

- Tech-right elites want deregulation, AI acceleration, and a post-bureaucratic future.

These groups coexist uneasily.  

- The Newsweek matrix shows the party splitting along two axes: populist vs. institutional and Trump-loyal vs. post-Trump autonomous.   

- Politico’s reporting shows the tech faction and the populist faction openly clashing over immigration, AI, and economic policy.   

- The Manhattan Institute survey shows the coalition is demographically and ideologically unstable, especially once Trump exits the stage. 

This means the GOP’s “backers” are not a single class but a three‑way struggle for control of the party’s future. Each faction is trying to define what the GOP will be after Trump—and none of them can dominate the others outright.

Meanwhile FIRE (Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate nationally) has undergone a transfiguration into OCGFC (Oh Be a Fine Girl and...)