Perfect summation of the dilemma the Democrats are in, and depressing because they refuse to wake up. They just double-down.
I have been saying for years that identity politics will be the death of us. It is fundamentally ILliberal. It goes against all the principles of classic liberalism. The Maoist-style struggle sessions that are the essence of DEI are likewise illiberal. Legislation against "hate speech" is inimical to free speech. The canceling of people for the most trivial linguistic expressions -- illiberal. And the whole trans psychosis that has taken over the country is just plain batshit-insane.
And the people who promulgate this stuff strut around as if they're the most noble, virtuous beings who ever existed. They are smug, sanctimonious, hectoring, condescending, obnoxious.
But I don't see a way out. Insofar as traditional concepts of "left" and "right" even mean anything anymore (and increasingly, they don't), I'd be considered left if not far left. But I am sick to death of the stupidity and narrow-mindedness of "my" side. And I'm metaphorically hoarse from ringing alarm bells about it. I don't know what to do anymore to wake people up.
It's good to know I'm not the only self-styled leftist who has been sick of identitarian politics for years - after a too-long period in which I thought no one could REALLY believe that stuff. Unfortunately, Yascha is right about paradigms. I think of my long-lasting left-liberalism as impervious to changes in fashion, but I am starting to realize that it has long since become somewhat threadbare.
We need a new word for this type of thing. “Double down” is orders of magnitude away from the amount of times this failed strategy has been ramped up and used again.
Ideologically based ostracisms or terminations from employment are deplorable because of the harm to individuals and groups — and because the threat to the fabric of both “community” and to the idea of a REPUBLIC (the effort to establish a workable democratic rule-of-law). BUT since such ostracisms and terminations happen in circles we characterize as “Right Wing” AS WELL AS in those we consider “Left Wing”, it should be immediately clear that it not at all essential to being “Woke” unless one wants to define “wokeness” as this kind of abuse only when conducted by those on “the left”. (In that case, what derogatory term would best describe it when it happens among conservatives or reactionaries? (Don’t be too quick to say “fascism”!)
Exclusion is an inescapable part of forming and maintaining an identity whether the identity be an individual one… OR if it be about forming and maintaining the identity of a group, a community, a nation (or “people”). Tendencies toward it are ever-present and always potentially dangerous. Judeo-Christian philosophy has a term for processes that are both necessary and ubiquitous. The term is “stumbling block.” When it comes to identity formation, worthy parents, elders, communities, and governments seek to “smooth over” or at least highlight the risky edges of the exclusionary dynamics involved in asserting one’s own (or one’s chosen group’s) integrity and independence. They seek to build supportive understandings of the necessity to build solidarities and to avoid unjust injuries that might cause backlashes or engender deep insecurities based on fear, guilt, and shame.
FEAR, SHAME, and GUILT is what our need for affiliation can generate in us when our “identity” (or status) seems to require injuring others.
Judaism and Christianity were BOTH responses to violent (and often GENOCIDAL) empires. They were both responses to traditional and habitual forms of injustice. The Roman Empire probably both compromised AND reinforced itself by co-opting (and compromising) one of those axial “world religions”. Liberalism is a compromised extension of this cultural process of resisting unjust and genocidal power by asserting the sanctity of the individual self and ALSO by recognizing the PERSONHOOD of others (including those who have been labeled outcasts, strangers, or even enemies).
Fear, shame, and guilt along with the TERROR of being guilted or shamed for injustices we may (or even may not have) committed is what drives the exclusionary tendencies of “identity formation” (and maintenance) into the dangerous dynamic sometimes known as “scapegoating”. This is so ironic, so hideous, so powerfully self defeating, and so apparently “EVIL” that Judeo-Christian tradition (which also give us the term “scapegoat”) have another term for its most extreme manifestation. That term is “Satan”
“Satan,” by the way, originally meant “accuser.” And this is what happens when we attempt to compartmentalize or personify “evil” or our own dangerously destructive tendencies. But, of course, it’s one thing to personify “evil” as some horrible anthropomorphic beast with horns, tail and fiery eyes. It’s another to label other persons as evil or to deny the personhood of others. Scapegoating is putting all the blame for ubiquitous tendencies that can become destructive onto “others” without recognizing our own weaknesses and complicity.
Is it wrong for left wingers or performative “pwogwessives” to scapegoat and exclude “others” unjustly? Of course. In some ways it’s even more offensive, disappointing, and disgusting than when it is being done cynically by those who want to support genocide and traditional forms of injustice. In some ways it is even more deplorable when it is being done by those who profess to advocate for the personhood of all humans than when it is done by those who care only for the rights and dignities of their own chosen groups — or by those who deny human values altogether.
But where is the greater threat to community, good government, and the rights of all coming from now? Is the right wing (so-called “conservatives”) so afraid of being demonized (or disparaged) themselves that they must demonize (or disparage) all the tendencies that call for justice and inclusion?
I note an undue and invidious focus on the confusions inherent in the resent upsurge of “gender questioning”. This probably stems mostly from fears inherent in those who are painfully challenging gender norms and identities AS WELL AS from the fears of those who feel threatened by those challenges. But much of these fears and confusions are also being stoked and manipulated by those who seek only to raise more confusion and stir up more division. It’s disappointing when we trip over this particular stumbling block and end up feeding into cycles of resentment and threat. (It’s not necessarily fascist to do this, but it sure helps fascism - and it’s very disappointing when the threat of fascism has become so active in the institutions of the US Federal Republic which also happens to be the most world shaking empire, and the greatest our very of violence that has yet been “established”.
Sounds like you desperately want to join the right, but just can't because of habit and ingrained animosity. The Overton window has shifted. You, and many many others are conservatives now but can't make the emotional switch from your old team
Ha ha ha ha! No, darlin', I definitely don't want to join the right.
I believe in classic liberalism, the principles of the Englightenment. I believe in free speech. I believe in women's bodily autonomy (which the GOP sure as hell doesn't). I believe in the principles of scientific inquiry, which means not yanking grants from research universities and installing that worm-addled lunatic RFK the Lesser. I believe Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and that the US is complicit. I believe in due process, which means not kidnapping immigrants off the street and plunging them into a Kafkaesque nightmare.
Free speech is definitely on the right now. Thousands of examples.
Women's rights in sports, jails, bathrooms, on the right now.
"Bodily autonomy" if a sincerely held belief - would include Covid shots - which the left failed massively, and the right did not.
Scientific inquiry has never been a left thing except in their own minds. "Men are women" is not remotely scientific. I am a scientist. Not on the left any more.
RFK is a Democrat. The left own him even if they hate him for being a traitor.
Supporting terrorists is indeed a leftist thing, but not "classically liberal" by any stretch.
You believe in "due process" only when it suits your team, not when Democrats are doing lawfare - again not classically liberal.
Weird combo. Seems to me you should just drop the free speech and go full woke.
First you told me I should drop everything and go rightwing. Now you're telling me I should drop everything and "go full woke."
Maybe I just appreciate nuance, complexity, and reason, and make up my own mind on the merits of individual political issues.
It isn't free speech when Trump & Co. put protesters essentially on a hit list because of their speech.
And I never said that scientific inquiry is "a left thing."
I know damn well that men can't become women, that the whole transgender psychosis is bullshit and that the Democratic Party has been captured by it. I've already said so. I've already told every single one of my reps -- federal, state, and local -- that I will withhold my vote entirely if they don't wake the fuck up.
I don't give a shit which party RFK the Lesser belongs to; he's an idiot. A dangerous idiot.
The Covid restrictions were about PUBLIC health. There's a reason such a notion as public health even exists, but of course you already know that since you tell us you're a scientist.
And I don't support terrorists, but do go on with your implication that because I oppose Israel's actions in Gaza therefore I do. So predictable.
But the Trump administration is NOT putting leftwing protestors on hit lists. That is the easily debunked lamestream media narrative that is easy to see through.
Lets take the "Tufts scholar", Rumeysa Ozturk case where she "was disappeared because on an article she wrote". Why would a leftist judge, in the leftist city of Boston, in one of the most leftists states of MA, deny her bail?
I don't want to answer that question for you. I would like you to occasionally ask it, when "making up your own mind on the merits of individual political issues" and not swallowing whole the swill the media feeds you.
Public health is not an excuse for authoritarianism and making things up, like 6 ft apart, and masks on 5 year-olds, and not educating for 2 years because the vacation was fun for teachers. Rioting was safe - but church outside was not, might have been a hint as to who the bad guys were. And yes, they were bad guys.
The argument whether Israel's actions are or aren't genocide is pointless. The reason for the argument is the growing gap between the "legal" definition of genocide (" acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group") and the general popular understanding, which uses the Nazi Holocaust, Armenia or Rwanda as references. I prefer the later def, under which Israel's actions in Gaza are atrocious, horrific, unnecessary, and pointless but are not genocide. What is genocidal are statements by Smotrich and other Israeli ministers advocating, in effect, extermination of Gaza's Palestinians, but genocidal speech is not itself a war crime. In fact, there is only one person who could stop it cold, namely Trump, who I hope will do it during his Mideast jaunt this week (Bibi could theoretically could stop it, but he's being blackmailed by Ben-Gvir and Smotrich and would lose his government, so he won't)..
Yes, there is a time constraint. It is simply a matter of math. Genocide means to exterminate a people. We all know that Israel must get rid of the Palestinians if it is to survive. To do that, they must kill them at a much higher rate than Palestinians are born, or else deport them fast enough to places so far away they cannot return . Otherwise Israel fails. As part of Palestinian/UN military strategy, the Palestinians are the fastest reproducing people on Earth. Their designated mission is to destroy Israel, which is why they are in Gaza and West Bank, and not allowed to emigrate to any other place. Each Palestinian female has about 10 children on average, which is made possible by limitless foreign food aid, courtesy of the UN and the Arab monarchs. If Israel only kills 100k/year, the supply of Gaza Palestinians will never run out. Israel fails. To win, Israel must kill far far more than that number, and also stop the flow of food aid that allows Palestinians to reproduce at current rates. Israel is not doing this. They aren't killing enough, and aren't cutting off the flow of food sufficiently to beat the Palestinians. Israel is too conflicted by the desire to save the hostages to actually wipe the Palestinians out. This shows the Hamas strategy of taking hostages was very smart - it tied Israel's hands behind its back.
Lol, sounds like repressed Nazi rhetoric. Not to mention your argument appears to be "it can't be genocide because Israel sees the mass murder of Palestinians as necessary!"
There are plenty of Democrats who are moderate and do not want the party to lose swing/normal voters where the votes are lost due to the Democrats having adopted activist positions from climate change, immigration and transgender issues. Even someone like Senator Elissa Slotkin (who is pretty left wing) was ranting about the Dems need to stop being "weak and woke". And even Ocasio-Cortez is starting to dial back from having "purity tests". Matt Iglesias (Slow Boring substack) has a long post about that debate. But I think this will take time, it's kind of a paradigm shift...
Ken, yes, I agree. The more sensible Democrats are around aplenty, but they're being drowned out by the loudest voices, which aren't sensible. The excerpt I posted from Jonathan Chait's article in The Atlantic, about the first DNC meeting after the election, bears this out. It reads like parody.
I'm also afraid that Trump's lunacy will only make it harder. There's a knee-jerk reaction to anything he does (which, given the calamity this administration is, is somewhat understandable), but that reaction means the most IL-liberal of Dems just get louder and dig in their heels deeper.
We really need a third party, but I don't see that happening in my lifetime. And I don't pretend that would be a panacea. I think it would, however, help.
Agreed that the rightwing is awful, Rozemarijn. This criminal administration got exactly two things right, thus proving the adage that even a stopped clock is right twice a day:
1. Eliminating the shitshow of DEI. Those concepts are obviously good in and of themselves, as abstract philosophical ideals, but the implementation has been a disaster.
2. The EO on the bullshit of "gender."
Unfortunately, these actions have only made the left dig in their heels even deeper. Those actions and the left's reaction are making our struggle harder, especially when it comes to women's rights and protecting single-sex spaces.
The Democrats are still in post-election disarray and are trying to find a coherent message. One thoughtful beginning of response response is on Yascha's latest podcast with Bill Galston and Elaine Kamarck, who are right in emphasizing "culture" over economics, but never even mentioned the bungling of DEI in so many ways, which is what lost Dems the last election (along with transgender posturing, which they do discuss). They're more centrist than I am on some things, but they've got the right idea. The question is whether the party bureaucracy (filled with "progressives") will let the essential changes happen or whether they'll fall on their swords in defense of a spurious equality and condemn us all to Trump's successors.
Tell it to the people who've lost their jobs or reputations because they didn't mouth all the correct p.c. pieties.
Or to a former colleague at NPR, where I worked for years, who, when asked after a typical DEI "training" (i.e., struggle session) for his opinion, said, "I can't say anything. I still have two children to put through school."
You sound like a person who has common sense which is antithetical to the lefts infatuation with wokeism. Wokeism is a mental disease and must be eradicated.
Well, I'm not sure it'll ever be eradicated. "Wokeism", under other names, has been around for years, decades. Monty Python was doing skits about it back in the 1970s.
We do need to return to classic liberal values, though, classic tenets of the Enlightenment. If that's common sense, I'm all for it.
They have no choice but to double down until conditions fundamentally change. Then they can adjust. The Democrats are in a holding pattern, putting up maximum resistance to slow down the Trump Train until either the Great Global Everything Bubble implodes, WW III erupts, or a new pandemic gets going - or possibly all 3 at once. Then they can stand up a new "leader" who can take over under emergency conditions.
I don't see how "they have no choice but to double down." They are losing support. This last election should've taught them that. They are increasingly out of touch with ordinary Americans, especially the working class. They lost more black and Hispanic voters and the GOP gained them.
Trump and his criminal cabal are an almighty disaster. They are ruining the country. I despise them with every fiber of my being. But they still have a lot of support.
The Democrats need to look in a fucking mirror, pardon my French. They continue to insist that the only reason Trump won is because most of the country is racist. I can't count the number of times I've heard this from people in my circle. They are living in a bubble. They won't admit that they, too, are at fault, that people are fed up with being lectured at and talked down to, being told that every time they open their mouths they're wrong, they're using the incorrect, constantly-changing terminology, that their mere existence is wrong, that they're stupid. This isn't a winning strategy!
You are right if one assumes nothing will fundamentally change, but if you see the status quo as unsustainable (**particularly in the realm of finance**), and expect that there will be huge fundamental changes soon that are already baked into the cake, then the best strategy for the opposition is to slow down Trump as much as they can until that happens. Right now they are playing Defense. That means they have to keep their coalition together, and that means doubling down. The Democrat strategy is the political equivalent of an army digging trenches and barricades. You go to war with the army you have, not the one you would like to have. When the financial system implodes, you change strategy and go on offense.
Trump knows he has very limited time and that is why he is so aggressive on Offense. He is desperate to get as much done as quickly as he can before the time runs out.
Maybe you're right, Andrew. I just don't know. And I wish I could trust the Dems enough to wise up. But given their frequent cluelessness, I don't know.
I think I already posted the link to Jonathan Chait's article in The Atlantic about the DNC's first meeting after the election. Just the bare-bones description of what went on reads like a Monty Python skit. It's hard to believe these people expect to be taken seriously. In case I posted it at a different Substack (so many subscriptions!), here it is:
Woke and DEI and related stuff has been four decades in taking over academia. It is now entrenched. The question is not whether it is dead; the question is how to kill it. If Trump helps us get there, ride the evil wind. Liberality needs help from people we may not like.
Why do we assume that the left is solely defined by academia? Biden managed to get unions on board--more, please. I'm not as pessimistic about the emergence of a populist left that doesn't just try to return to the New deal but manages to build one for the 21st century. And I think there are plenty of Dems who think similarly. I think Yascha needs to get out more.
"Why do we assume that the left is solely defined by academia?"
Perhaps because so many of the ideas from academia have filtered down through the rest of society. Judith Butler's nutso ideas about "gender" have captured the country (and other Western countries). DEI became de rigueur in corporate America.
What's birthed in the ivory tower doesn't just stay in the ivory tower.
As a liberal university professor who went to Columbia many years ago, I can attest that left ideology rarely makes its way into course materials and lectures — even in the humanities. Most of us are too professional to express our political opinions in class. Sure, if you take a course explicitly dealing with gender or race, you will encounter predominantly left liberal ideas. But that is not at all the norm. Students get their leftist ideas nowadays not from their professors, but from social media and from other students. Social media didn’t exist when I was an undergraduate philosophy major, so it was mainly through conversations with classmates and long form legacy media that my own political values were formed. Liberals should not concede to Republicans the idea that universities teach woke values (even though hiring practices and DEI initiatives may reflect them). Universities are instead places where already woke students compete on identitarian grounds for political cred.
You make a good point, Robert. I will always stand up for the value of universities and for education in general. I went to what is probably the most classic of classic liberal arts schools -- St. John's College in Annapolis -- and am grateful every day for the education I received there.
I am a lifelong liberal, usually far left (insofar as the terms "right" and "left" even mean anything anymore). I don't want to concede to Republicans; I want to shake the Democrats out of their woke stupor. I deliberately use "woke" as a pejorative. Though I'm temperamentally inclined to side with the Dems, even I can't stand them anymore because I'm so sick of their smug, sanctimonious, hectoring, condescending, woke bullshit. And if people like me can't stand them, just think how middle America sees them.
I do believe that academic theories filter down into the general culture over time. It's not that professors are at universities are standing up there dictating what their students should think -- although that goes on, too, as I know from young people who've told me -- but that these ideas are spread more subtly.
I gave the example of Judith Butler above. Her batshit-insane ideas on "gender" have infected the culture at large. And of course Foucault, along with other jargon-laden post-modern lit-crit theorists.
So while I think it's true what you say about students jockeying with each for the most prominent virtue-signaling cred, I think that the abstract theories they absorb from their studies also have an effect on their behavior.
David, with all respect, you do know that the left lost the working class, don't you? I mean, of course there are urban, barista-type workers that are still there, but, generally speaking...
David, we are in fundamental disagreement. You seem to want a populist left to define the Democratic party. I do not. It would be another tragedy.
America is the greatest nation in the history of the world. That is what we should build on. We need better governance in a number of ways, but we do not need anything revolutionary. Better safety net, better schools, better early education. A better understanding of our history. More progressive taxation, especially the estate tax. Numerous things can be improved. But basic democratic capitalism remains the way forward.
The dems have public unions in their pockets and they are the only unions with any power anymore. Public unions are a bane on the system — they extract concessions in exchange for political support. The politicians rarely even attempt to bargain in good faith because when they do, the unions hold the public hostage in order to flex and punish.
All is not lost. Thank god for Shiloh Hendrix and the Trump Administration firing the librarian of Congress (who was black so obviously a woke DEI hire). Yasha can continue monitizing his Substack, phew! Long live woke!
I have been saying this for years, “In reality, every victory for one of these ideological currents immediately strengthens those who fight for the other.”. These two positions absolutely fuel each other to nearly everyone’s detriment.
Who continued it, while we all waited patiently for a reset that never happened? The left.
Who is the bully here? The left.
The fact is that conservatives are just now, after 20 years of being a punching bag, fighting back. And suddenly, now, after 20 years, only now do we hear worries about where this is heading.
Too late. You waited far too long to start worrying about spirals now.
"These two positions absolutely fuel each other to nearly everyone’s detriment."
Of course. If I wanted to implode Team R, the fastest and surest way to do so would be to decimate Team D.
The two political parties need each other, just as sports rivals need each other, or there is no game, nothing to play for, no excuses why we aren't in paradise yet, no reason not to fight over a share of the goodies.
On a more emotional and less instrumental level, you can make a perfectly marketable Batman movie without Robin. Take away The Joker, however, and Batman becomes a rich weirdo with a penchant for cosplay.
when did the left cancel people by hauling them off of the street to detention for writing and opinion in a student newspaper?
Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski, last month, addressing a question about how to respond to people who are afraid in the current political climate, Murkowski responded: “We are all afraid. It’s quite a statement,” she continued after a long pause, in remarks first reported by the Anchorage Daily News. “We’re in a time and place where — I don’t know, I certainly have not — I have not been here before. And I’ll tell you, I’m oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice because retaliation is real. And that’s not right. But that’s what you’ve asked me to do and so I’m going to use my voice to the best of my ability."
Interesting, I've not seen where she is concerned about AOC
That Trump is an apprentice dictator does not make woke cancellations and policed speech ok. They are both expressions of authoritarianism. As usual (see Weimar & the Bolsheviks), the right is much quicker to use brute power than the intellectual left, but both are on the same path.
Many historians write that Hitler succeeded gaining power, by among other factors, in response to the excessive Allied WWI reparation demands on Germany. So I guess per your argument we can equally blame the Allies at Versailles and Nazi racist ideology for the Holocaust
Frederick, that depends on the strength of one's addiction to "blaming" rather than "understanding". It is pretty much uncontested that the Nazis used the Versailles Treaty treatment of Germany as an emotional prod and "proof" of their patriotism and a fictional reinforcement of their blaming Jews for Germany's poor state between the wars. It certainly means the allies foolishness was a contributing cause of Nazis coming to power
If you insist on "blaming" rather than "understanding", that's an intellectual limitation which is your problem to deal with.
We wouldn’t have the problems that worry you now had the woke left not brought it about by their intransigence and refusal to contemplate the least possibility that they might be just a little bit in need of a course correction.
#5. Yashca's faculty at the SAIS at Johns Hopkins. He's heard the game plan. Looks like they've decided on Norm Eisen's color revolution at home. What better way is there to sow discontent in America than with race? Expect another summer of 2020, and, ahem, an "event" that sets it off :-( This whole state of affairs is just so sad. So very sad.
The Dems are going to have a difficult time staging another summer of 2020 with the the Pro-Palestinian/Antifa/transgender rights mobs creating havoc in so many cities.
I don't get it. Those are the activists that they depend upon... With media coverage that paints them as heroes, because of an "event," ahem, that makes it easy for them to do so.
Not entirely sure what you mean, but the Dem powers-that-be cannot and do not control the mobs that once again are on the rampage at Columbia University and that once again went on a rampage in Seattle, this time on the University of Washington campus. The Dems are the monkeys trying to cross the river on the back of the crocodile.
Well, I guess we disagree then, Holly. I believe the Democrats have a network of professional or semi-professional activists, who are ready in waiting should they be needed. I read Yascha against the grain -- Straussian, if you will. I believe he is telling us to expect a repeat of 2020. When? Midterms, maybe? But almost certainly in 2028, when Trump might pull some real shady shit.
You're absolutely right. The post-election introspection you've urged is nowhere to be seen—Democrats look set to fight populism with populism. History offers plenty of precedent for a dual rise of oppositional populisms in the West, and it rarely ends well. Worse, it's usually unclear until it's too late which extreme will win if the escalation metastasizes into tyranny. This is dangerous—but I'm grateful you're tracking it. The only hope I see is that America might have the best historical record of recovering from mutual radicalization once it crests.
Right now, the main danger to our society comes from the Trump administration. Many centrist and right-wing writers acknowledge this, but I only see progressives out there organizing visible opposition to Trump. The leaders of Indivisble keep saying that they want to reach out beyond their ideological bubble; I'm not sure they know how to. But if we don't want the resistance to be woke, shouldn't we, you know, participate in the resistance?
Yes! We should resist the woke supremacists, take back the democratic party and support solid politicians and policies that are attractive to voters!! :) :)
a) the problem is that different politicians and policies are attractive to different voters and so alliances are necessary, and
b) the enemy of my enemy is at least my temporary ally
Today, we have in power someone who believes elections are valid only when he wins, and has the heads of the military, justice department, and FBI with people who would wholeheartedly support that approach. That's... a problem. Everyone who cares about being able to elect their guy in the future should work together on the current problem.
"Today, we have in power someone who believes elections are valid only when he wins, and has the heads of the military, justice department, and FBI with people who would wholeheartedly support that approach. "
Am I truly the only cat who recalls the Russiagate conspiracy theory?
I can't agree. But I do think that you will very likely have your wish since chances are very high that Trump will go the way of Nixon. My hunch is that the decisive voter block in '24 included former democrats who cast a negative vote against whatever it was that was running the country--and they are going to turn against the Trump movement. So you will have your wish but I doubt this will catalyze a return to normalcy and competence. Fifty years of economic disenfranchisement and cultural ostracization of half the country has left a very deep well of resentment--and a populist left wing backlash is unlikely to bring us closer to reason.
There is only one populist move that the "left wing" could pull - that is revert to economically look after the working class again. The problem is that the left these days is solidly bourgeois and actively wants mass cheap labour eg immigration brings (but conceals this under humanitarian cover). Ironically the Trump Tariff War are actually a notionally left wing move - they would be pilloried by GOP if anyone else was advancing them.
I think the populist move they are well set to make is to push us hard toward socialism just as Biden and Harris were doing in rhetoric and in actions. The high tax policies and hostility towards businesses and high earners goes very nicely with victim-victimizer narratives that are a staple of wokeism and a major part of the AOC toolkit.
Notionally left wing, in that it was only the labour unions left arguing for protectionism after conservatives got behind globalisation to break the power of those unions. There was plenty of America First protectionism in the past. General Franco implemented autarchy in Spain after defeating an elected republican government in that country's civil war.
One of my most interesting observations about economics is to look at Europe of the 50s and see the same economic good times across so many different regime types. From fascist Iberia to Stalinist Soviet Union, passing the lib/soc-dem mellow middle, they all had economic good times in that era.
Maybe the real secret is to kill off a generation of men, then the following one can gain from the labour demand. Shame we missed out...
The major failure from globalisation is the quality of jobs - low-wage service jobs AND high-skills ones replaced the middle skilled factory type labourer. The first doesn't pay enough to climb the wealth ladder, the second is out of reach for most of those who lost their jobs in factory style industries.
> There is only one populist move that the "left wing" could pull - that is revert to economically look after the working class again. The problem is that the left these days is solidly bourgeois and actively wants mass cheap labour eg immigration brings (but conceals this under humanitarian cover).
The other problem is that eight decades of "economically looking after the working class" has left the country with unsustainable levels of debt.
I really hope that you are right. My hunch is that if the next major election (2026) goes against Trump, there will be a real mess that will make 2020 look like a first rehearsal, but I don't know what its outcome will be. And I really want to be wrong on this.
Curious what sorts of policies you'd propose to address the disenfranchisement and ostracization.
But seriously...the cultural part is easy...that IS just a matter of showing decency and respect to people with different views and treating their personhood and their vote with the respect that every citizen deserves. On the economic front we would need to support manufacturing in America and we would need to assign appropriate social and moral value to that endeavor beyond just looking at the economic output in GDP terms. We would need to dismantle the WTO especially with pulling back from the economic relationship with China, and go back to something like the pre-WTO GATT. Our China policy has been utterly naive and is probably one of the worst foreign polices of my lifetime--in addition to gutting our working class it has made the world a far more dangerous place. And when we look at industrial regulation, in addition to economic cost-trade balances we would want to be weighing the social costs of environmental issues against the social value of the jobs created. We would also need to stop gratuitously crushing manufacturing while telling ourselves that outsourcing production of goods and energy to totally unregulated markets that are governed by bad actors and who employ slave-wage labor. I do think that if we do these things this will dial down the temperature a lot. All of this would no doubt piss off the left because it has nothing to do with socialism--but then again socialism in America makes about as much sense as antlers on an alligator. :)
The difference in cancel culture is that Trump never claimed to be a liberal. He was elected with a mandate to remove opponents from positions of authority.
Correct. And they got it all wrong. Immigrants, ethnic minorities and blue-collar workers did not turn to Trump because they were marginalized, if anything almost the opposite. At least the ones I talked to said they were tired of government wasteful spending of their hard-earned tax dollars, and did not appreciate when the left started giving benefits to newly arrived immigrants and long-term unemployed on their dime. I wish they would listen to what people were actually saying, rather than guessing. I am not saying the right will solve all these problems, although they're doing a good job on cutting government wasteful spending. Left wants benefits for the poor, right wants tax cuts for the rich, meantime middle class are suffering and paying for everyone. Would be nice if incentive and hard work were rewarded for a change rather than punished, but that's just my opinion.
"Left wants benefits for the poor, right wants tax cuts for the rich."
This is what the left are brainwashed to say, but is there really any evidence at all to suggest it is true? That chant sounds so like a religious incantation - not reality. Question it.
For example, we can objectively look at the results of the GOP tax cuts (in 2018) and see that they overwhelmingly helped the middle class. Not the poor - no taxes to cut. And definitely not the rich (SALT limitation pummeled the NY and CA rich). The experiment was run. The data exists for you to find - if you have the emotional strength to actually see it.
Agreed. It's a mantra. The left repeats it over & over again, "the right only wants tax breaks for the rich", but meantime they gave tax breaks to the middle class too.
I challenge you to identify what "waste" was genuinely eliminated by the trump administration, especially when weighed against the additional cost burdens incurred by their utter hash of a methodology in doing so.
Cheering for the richest man on earth intentionally starving children to death in war zones all over the world because he took away the food they had come to depend on with no replacement seems like a pretty evil thing to be happy about from my perspective, but you do you.
Starving children? USAID was created in the middle of the Cold War to buy political influence in foreign countries. According to Wikipedia, “The goal of this agency was to counter Soviet Union influence during the Cold War and to advance U.S. soft power through socioeconomic development.” Dismantling a key instrument of the American empire is progress for democracy in the U.S. and the world.
I am as leftist as they come and read widely and know all about what USAID did and why its existence was important. The loss of it will cause millions of needless deaths all over the world and the fact we let evil billionaires do it in the first place has tarnished our reputation even further around the globe for a generation. Trump is an evil moron and everyone not brainwashed by American propaganda knows it. America is now a pariah state internationally no better than Russia in the eyes of everyone but the MAGAs. I don't know what your agenda is, but I am a humanist that understands that there are plenty of resources on this earth for all of us. Scarcity is an illusion created by the rich so they can control us all because their narcissicism and bottomless greed compels them to steal more and more of societies wealth for themselves and immiserate us all until the people are forced to rise up and rebalance the scales. The next revolution has already begun. Many Americans might be too stupid to see they have already destroyed this country and our place at the top of the global pyramid going forward, but I personally think its something to celebrate. We deserve all the hardship that is to come and are serving as a painful lesson for the rest of the planet about why its a bad thing to put amoral fascists in charge of anything. Our greed, hatred and collective apathy doomed the nation. I guess when most of the generation that fought in WW2 died, everybody kind of forgot the fascists preaching hate and division are the bad guys. Culture is irrelevant, history shows the pattern is always the same. At least Trump woke everyone else the fuck up. Too bad about America though, 250 years was a good run. Our fall will not be pretty.
You think USA deserves hardship - but believe feeding people on the far side of the world being America's responsibility... This is textbook leftism: they-good, we-bad.
The left failed because it chose to start looking after everyone except the majority - in the West that means working class white people. It is an anti-West hate cult that used to at least historically deliver a measure of economic justice to working people.
60 million promote LGBT awareness in South America
50 million sustainability + health in Africa
40 million educational outcomes in Southeast Asia
30 million social cohesion in Eastern Europe
20 million education (Sesame Street) in Middle East
I know some of this is/was to promote democracy around the world, and help for sick/malnourished African children is commendable, but they are the types of programs that lend themselves easily to fraud/wasteful spending.
"Easily lend themselves" is not proof of fraud. But investigations of waste and fraud that then discover and eliminate it would be worthwhile. I'd applaud that effort. But there were no investigations. There's was wholesale slaughter on ideological grounds (as all your examples make plain -- each is a shibboleth of RW orthodoxy). As to those above who decry US soft power as "imperialistic" -- we have revealed ourselves to be an impulsively cruel and unreliable partner. Our credibility is shot, giving China a leg up on embracing the nations and causes we've abandoned. Who would you rather trade with? Finally, with respect to foreign aid being at the expense of US citizens, specifically the white working class -- I'm all for rebuilding the infrastructure and US manufacturing. There was this guy named Biden who got Congress to approve bipartisan funding for both. Maybe you've heard of him. And he did that without turning our back on the world. It's no a zero-sum issue.
Since you welcome fiscal accountability why is there no evidence of this in your party. I do no recall the progressive left ever raising this issue. And the build back better programs of Biden mostly benefitted the green scam.
Yascha - the meta narrative that rhymes with history is that the extremists first attack the centrists who serve as the levees. The extremists WANT extreme change. Th centrists want things to remain. Trump is extreme. He activates his mirror extreme twin - the Woke Left.
This happened in Weimar Germany. The Red-Brown alliance cooperated to essentially dismantle the Weimar Republic. They then went after each other.
This suggests that the shelf life of our current world order (politically, socially) is expired. The bananas are dark brown. Entropy has exhausted our 80 year project. The extremists recognize it and aim to first remove all barriers to their Great Conflict.
That does mean Trump vs AOC. Or Trump vs Sanders. The people are weary of pablum. They itch for fight and blood and change and destruction. This is horrifying to the center (who refuse to accept it), but it’s true nonetheless.
Historically, I'd argue that that 80 year project of which you speak is extreme, and those who believe its assumptions are mad men. It was dreamt up by autistic economists, after all, and normies cannot live in that world for long. They simply cannot.
I agree with Yascha's sharp analysis. I would add that the threat from the illiberal (we should just say totalitarian, really) left is civilizational. They want to end us as a society of free thinkers, capitalists, and rational actors of our own destiny. There is a self-hating quality to the left that knows no bounds.
The threat from Trump's lawlessness is real (though exaggerated by the MSM) but much smaller, I think, and has more to do with government specifically and not our entire civilization. And he's doing a lot of things that are really needed that no other politician in my lifetime has had the guts to actually do.
What's happening here is a new paradigm, to use Yascha's term, is actually being created. Trump is breaking the old one that had a long term buy-in from both non-radical sides. Trump won't be the new paradigm, that'll come after him. But without him, it won't happen at all.
And this article's right, he could empower the resistance too much so that it comes back and swamps the vacuum he's creating, filling it back up with woke garbage. I don't think that will happen, but there's no guarantee.
I don't really see a self hating quality that literally knows no bounds. Sure we on the have a lot of cancel culture nonsense but I think there has been and will be major pushback to the excesses. Just my take..
If you're right, then it'll be the death of liberal democracy. Eventually, you have to be willing to put some restrictions on people's freedoms, and those are going to require value judgments that liberalism can't make.
If it's not chemically castrating children and calling it healthcare, or being required to pretend a man is a woman through totalitarian coercion, perhaps next we'll be asked to accept pedophilia or beastality. Maybe we should legalize prostitution next. We can even have special "sex workers" for "minor-attracted people". Perhaps we should decriminalize public fornication.
It's all individual choice between consenting individuals, right? And isn't adulthood just a social construct anyway? And we're all equal individuals, aren't we? If I claim it's my right to walk around naked in public and that I'm pursuing my constitutional right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness, who are you to tell me otherwise?
Liberal democracy is a self-licking ice cream cone. If liberalism won't limit individual choice, and history shows that it basically won't, eventually, people will vote against liberalism, even if it means voting against democracy itself. We're seeing that begin to happen all around the world.
Ultimately, liberalism represents the deconstruction of all values and identities because it can't make value judgments or distinguish between people.
Are you listening to what AOC is talking about at this point? Class politics have essentially replaced identity politics in her ideology. Fighting oligarchy is a movement of American patriotism and lefty populist fiscal policy with a class-centered focus. It’s not a “woke” movement by any means.
Let's not forget when she defended the use of Latinx to "decolonize language" even AFTER she learned about the PEW study showing that only 3% of Latinos have ever heard the phrase.
Yes, precisely. Her support, despite the abject unpopularity, is essential to understand because it's deeply revealing.
What she and the entire woke movement support is "decolonizing" America. It's the same reason they support Hamas. It's not because Hamas is popular, it's because they agree with Hamas that America should be "decolonized," IE, cease to exist.
It's also why they will not give an inch on the issue of migration, even for hostile populations that chant things like "Death to America". They agree with those people that America is fundamentally bad!
It's also why people like me, who are, if I may say so myself, decently educated, are so adamantly supportive of Trump despite his obvious shortcomings.
Not as overtly as 2020 AOC. Just as Kamala didn’t lean into it either. Though both enthusiastically embrace it when it suits their purposes. Neither truly embrace class struggle (as Bernie honorably does) because then they would have to admit that poverty and struggle aren’t a people of color problem. 15M+ whites live in poverty - but somehow have “white privilege”. Those poverty stricken Trump voters in red America (addicted to fentanyl and dying deaths of despair) are called deplorable by Democrats. For AOC to turn her back on Progressive dogma of the marginalized people of color would lose her base. She doesn’t bring it up publicly like she once did, but she will never embrace lower class whites with conservative (religious) social values because they conflict with her leftist hatred of social conservatives who would oppose her on trans, abortion, and many other things. Thus, she is merely concealing her true woke nature and can not be trusted to be anything less than the extreme leftist she once so proudly extolled.
Um, no. If you're not a psychoanalyst, don't psychoanalyze. Ditto mind-reading. Listen to her honestly--instead of assuming she's being disingenuous, which is palpable in your remarks. AOC has definitely read the room and realized the issue is indeed about race. There's also a growing consensus that the Left has made a category error dismissing the concerns of youong men (and thus lost touch with their mothers). Just because Progressives may reject totally abandoning trans people, racial minorities, women who consider bodily autonomy a right, does not mean they somehow congenitally can't find common ground on economic issues. Your entire take is that the left cannot by its nature think self-critically and respond accordingly. The evidence I see from the inside of the movement is the exact opposite.
I'm a lifelong leftist and feminist, and I'm sick of getting screwed by both the right and the left.
As the meme goes (which unfortuantely I can't reproduce here in its photo form, depicting one of Margaret Atwood's Handmaidens): The left wants to put you in a prison cell with a rapist; the right wants you to have his baby.
In case anyone doesn't get the reference, men are being put in women's prisons, sometimes in the same cell with women, because they utter the magic phrase, "I'm transgender." Many of these men -- who ARE men -- are sex offenders.
This is going on all over the country, and Democrats are supporting it. California Democrats -- every single one of them in the state legislature -- just voted DOWN a bill that would've protected women.
For those men, transgenderism is a scam that lets them access women, or compete against them with a built in advantage. Anyone who isn't "woke" can see this.
"Totaloly abandoning trans people" (or refusing to elevate "gender identity" [a social fiction] above biological sex)?
"Racial minorities" vs "slavery and genocide" (or a society of striving immigrants of many ethnicities [none of which call themselves "AAPI" or "Latinx"] who came to America seeking a better life)?
"Women who consider bodily autonomy a right" (vs a woman's "right" to treat a baby developing inside her as a malignant growth)?
Yes, in each instance, the rephrasing in parentheses is obviously tendentious and propagandistic, and is not conducive to dialogue or to a "big tent" -- but that's just the point! So is David Corbett's presentation of these issues.
What goes around comes around. If you want to find common ground on economic issues, knock it off!
So, you will wear a MAGA hat then because you agree with the statement make America great again? You will take Donald Trump at his word that he’s fighting for America and not join the legions of psychoanalysts who tell us non-stop that his words and actions disqualify him?
Especially ones that would violate their professional norms by making pronouncements about individuals they have never even spoken with. Seems inappropriate to me.
And I am not sure President's can ever be "disqualified" by the people who dislike them. Who gave these legions disqualification rights, and when?
I like what you are saying and I hope the democrats get serious and go back to their roots. But class politics can take many forms and I don't think her tax-the-rich brand of class politics will amount to anything more than a counter-populist call to arms and a massively counter productive wealth transfer. Hope I'm wrong. :/
You’re not wrong. The Bernie/AOC Left is leaning into “Fight the Billionaires” message - but Biden/Kamala had HUNDREDS of billionaires contribute to her campaign. It’s now sexy to point at Musk and say “kleptocracy!” when they didn’t say anything resembling this as recently as Nov 4, 2024. Their message is opportunist and they hope to galvanize the same anger Trump does in his base. More anger = guaranteed conflict that ballots and democracy can’t fix. We are headed for a showdown like all of history’s revolutions. Unless we have a world war first. Or a Martian invasion.
Yeah its pretty crazy for dems to be screaming about oligarchies 30 years after ditching the working class to get cozy with the tech millionaires who are now the tech billionaires. Whew--it's not the heat, it's the hypocrisy. As Douglas might say "show me what you accuse [the Trump voters} of, and I'll show you what you are guilty of. "
The problem is class politics badly failed for the left.
People realized that it was far quicker for them to just work hard, than it was to wait for Democrats to do anything. The problem with class is that people have their own control over it. They are not actually obligated to Democrats to be able to change their own class.
Race on the other hand - you can't work your own way out of. If the world is a "systemically racist" place than you have no choice but to vote Democrat. They are your only savior.
The sales pitch is just so much easier with cultural Marxism (race/sex/gender oppression) than with classic Marxism (class oppression). Because people can change their class by themselves - and people did. Class is a terrible way to get the human dependency that the left leverages its power from.
I agree and I don't see a lot of distance between our ponderances...... I think they still have plenty of tricks in their bag for foisting socialism on us in the guise of equity and based on past performance AOC will be perceived as a credible leader for that poisonous brand of policy.
Maybe you could phrase your question more precisely. I am not sure what you are confused about? Maybe you just are threatened by reality and are lashing out? I am not sure.
"For anybody who is committed to remaining on the left, there simply isn’t an alternative paradigm to wokeness."
And someone needs to present a new paradigm, and small-bore tax credits and neoliberalism isn't going to be it. What is a fresh new framework Democrats can commit to?
It's a great question, to which I'll ask another: Where will the incentive to change come from?
During a recent forum, Tim Walz rhetorically asked, “Why have we lost this self-identity that the Democratic Party is for personal freedom?"
He also says the party has to fundamentally change, but thinks the change is centered on messaging, not policy: "“We win on the issues and we win on competency, and then we lose the message and we lose power.”
Very glad to hear you say this. Not so glad that you're right. In Berkely/Oakland we've been woke since Carmichael sparked the Panthers in 1966 and they started selling us Mao's Little Red Books.
It's not going away until its history is thoroughly exposed. That'll keep you busy.
Sadly, I wouldn't expect to see anything negative about the Panthers coming from from Barbara Lee.
In addition to the Panthers, there's a through-line to the current situation from Harry Bridges and the ILWU. These folks (and the municipal unions) still have plenty of money and lots of power in The Town.
Too many have too much invested in woke. Too many degrees, positions, careers, and whole lives built around woke philosophy. The woke faithful simply cannot abandon the cause, they lose too much. It won't go quietly; it will have to be forced out. Until then, expect to lose elections
Democrats teach hate and pretend it’s black history. This Real Clear Investigations article below from 2020 is about the “1619 Project” and what the author Nikole Hannah-Jones told the editors of the Chicago Tribune about its purpose which is, she said, to instill guilt in white liberals so they will support reparations for blacks. White liberals are not being targeted though. White children in our public schools are. And Woke white leftists love this and are totally supportive of it. She was even given a Pulitzer Prize for this poison in 2020. This is not “black history” though. This is anti-white hate mongering pretending to be history. This is evil and this is what the democrats have become. And these are the same people who say they simply can’t understand why so many people voted for Trump.
“If you read the whole project, I don’t think you can come away from it without understanding the project is an argument for reparations,” she told the Chicago Tribune in October.
“I'm not writing to convert Trump supporters. I write to try to get liberal white people to do what they say they believe in,” she said. “I'm making a moral argument. My method is guilt.”
“Disputed NY Times ‘1619 Project’ Already Shaping Schoolkids Minds on Race.”
"Democrats teach hate and pretend it’s black history. This Real Clear Investigations article below from 2020 is about the “1619 Project” and what the author Nikole Hannah-Jones told the editors of the Chicago Tribune about its purpose which is, she said, to instill guilt in white liberals so they will support reparations for blacks. "
But the 1619 project is hardly the sum total of black history, right? You actually say that, great! I would call the honest teaching of black history that acknowledges the evils of slavery and the resulting Jim Crow era in the south and redlining in the north. This is not teaching hate but insisting on honesty.
What you call “honesty” is focusing on the bad and ignoring the good. That’s not honesty. That’s hate mongering and it has pretty much destroyed the social fabric of our society which is why it’s so rapidly unraveling. No society so devoid of trust and so full of hate can survive as a nation. Does America even still exist as a country?
I think woke is a perfect counter to maga. Both absurdly useless for anyone living below the elite. Both just crap thats pumped up online. Its as good a reason to hate and fight as my gods better than yours.
Am i the only one thats just completely bored with this crap? Am i the only one who thinks this country is populated with a bunch of suckers? Which makes sense, we are literally bred to be consumers, and ofc they dont want us to be smart about it! We get sold on well theyre going to help with OUR problems too. Lies. Now is the time for squeezing. Then itll be taking. Maybe by then we'll see this for what it really is.
Oh man, really starting to sound like a crackpot looney:/ See what yall have done to me?
Perfect summation of the dilemma the Democrats are in, and depressing because they refuse to wake up. They just double-down.
I have been saying for years that identity politics will be the death of us. It is fundamentally ILliberal. It goes against all the principles of classic liberalism. The Maoist-style struggle sessions that are the essence of DEI are likewise illiberal. Legislation against "hate speech" is inimical to free speech. The canceling of people for the most trivial linguistic expressions -- illiberal. And the whole trans psychosis that has taken over the country is just plain batshit-insane.
And the people who promulgate this stuff strut around as if they're the most noble, virtuous beings who ever existed. They are smug, sanctimonious, hectoring, condescending, obnoxious.
But I don't see a way out. Insofar as traditional concepts of "left" and "right" even mean anything anymore (and increasingly, they don't), I'd be considered left if not far left. But I am sick to death of the stupidity and narrow-mindedness of "my" side. And I'm metaphorically hoarse from ringing alarm bells about it. I don't know what to do anymore to wake people up.
It's good to know I'm not the only self-styled leftist who has been sick of identitarian politics for years - after a too-long period in which I thought no one could REALLY believe that stuff. Unfortunately, Yascha is right about paradigms. I think of my long-lasting left-liberalism as impervious to changes in fashion, but I am starting to realize that it has long since become somewhat threadbare.
We need a new word for this type of thing. “Double down” is orders of magnitude away from the amount of times this failed strategy has been ramped up and used again.
"Dead-Horse-Flogging"
You sound like me.
Me too. :)
Disappointing.
Ideologically based ostracisms or terminations from employment are deplorable because of the harm to individuals and groups — and because the threat to the fabric of both “community” and to the idea of a REPUBLIC (the effort to establish a workable democratic rule-of-law). BUT since such ostracisms and terminations happen in circles we characterize as “Right Wing” AS WELL AS in those we consider “Left Wing”, it should be immediately clear that it not at all essential to being “Woke” unless one wants to define “wokeness” as this kind of abuse only when conducted by those on “the left”. (In that case, what derogatory term would best describe it when it happens among conservatives or reactionaries? (Don’t be too quick to say “fascism”!)
Exclusion is an inescapable part of forming and maintaining an identity whether the identity be an individual one… OR if it be about forming and maintaining the identity of a group, a community, a nation (or “people”). Tendencies toward it are ever-present and always potentially dangerous. Judeo-Christian philosophy has a term for processes that are both necessary and ubiquitous. The term is “stumbling block.” When it comes to identity formation, worthy parents, elders, communities, and governments seek to “smooth over” or at least highlight the risky edges of the exclusionary dynamics involved in asserting one’s own (or one’s chosen group’s) integrity and independence. They seek to build supportive understandings of the necessity to build solidarities and to avoid unjust injuries that might cause backlashes or engender deep insecurities based on fear, guilt, and shame.
FEAR, SHAME, and GUILT is what our need for affiliation can generate in us when our “identity” (or status) seems to require injuring others.
Judaism and Christianity were BOTH responses to violent (and often GENOCIDAL) empires. They were both responses to traditional and habitual forms of injustice. The Roman Empire probably both compromised AND reinforced itself by co-opting (and compromising) one of those axial “world religions”. Liberalism is a compromised extension of this cultural process of resisting unjust and genocidal power by asserting the sanctity of the individual self and ALSO by recognizing the PERSONHOOD of others (including those who have been labeled outcasts, strangers, or even enemies).
Fear, shame, and guilt along with the TERROR of being guilted or shamed for injustices we may (or even may not have) committed is what drives the exclusionary tendencies of “identity formation” (and maintenance) into the dangerous dynamic sometimes known as “scapegoating”. This is so ironic, so hideous, so powerfully self defeating, and so apparently “EVIL” that Judeo-Christian tradition (which also give us the term “scapegoat”) have another term for its most extreme manifestation. That term is “Satan”
“Satan,” by the way, originally meant “accuser.” And this is what happens when we attempt to compartmentalize or personify “evil” or our own dangerously destructive tendencies. But, of course, it’s one thing to personify “evil” as some horrible anthropomorphic beast with horns, tail and fiery eyes. It’s another to label other persons as evil or to deny the personhood of others. Scapegoating is putting all the blame for ubiquitous tendencies that can become destructive onto “others” without recognizing our own weaknesses and complicity.
Is it wrong for left wingers or performative “pwogwessives” to scapegoat and exclude “others” unjustly? Of course. In some ways it’s even more offensive, disappointing, and disgusting than when it is being done cynically by those who want to support genocide and traditional forms of injustice. In some ways it is even more deplorable when it is being done by those who profess to advocate for the personhood of all humans than when it is done by those who care only for the rights and dignities of their own chosen groups — or by those who deny human values altogether.
But where is the greater threat to community, good government, and the rights of all coming from now? Is the right wing (so-called “conservatives”) so afraid of being demonized (or disparaged) themselves that they must demonize (or disparage) all the tendencies that call for justice and inclusion?
I note an undue and invidious focus on the confusions inherent in the resent upsurge of “gender questioning”. This probably stems mostly from fears inherent in those who are painfully challenging gender norms and identities AS WELL AS from the fears of those who feel threatened by those challenges. But much of these fears and confusions are also being stoked and manipulated by those who seek only to raise more confusion and stir up more division. It’s disappointing when we trip over this particular stumbling block and end up feeding into cycles of resentment and threat. (It’s not necessarily fascist to do this, but it sure helps fascism - and it’s very disappointing when the threat of fascism has become so active in the institutions of the US Federal Republic which also happens to be the most world shaking empire, and the greatest our very of violence that has yet been “established”.
💯it’s exhausting
Sounds like you desperately want to join the right, but just can't because of habit and ingrained animosity. The Overton window has shifted. You, and many many others are conservatives now but can't make the emotional switch from your old team
Ha ha ha ha! No, darlin', I definitely don't want to join the right.
I believe in classic liberalism, the principles of the Englightenment. I believe in free speech. I believe in women's bodily autonomy (which the GOP sure as hell doesn't). I believe in the principles of scientific inquiry, which means not yanking grants from research universities and installing that worm-addled lunatic RFK the Lesser. I believe Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and that the US is complicit. I believe in due process, which means not kidnapping immigrants off the street and plunging them into a Kafkaesque nightmare.
Etc.
Sorry, you can get rightwing confrères elsewhere.
Free speech is definitely on the right now. Thousands of examples.
Women's rights in sports, jails, bathrooms, on the right now.
"Bodily autonomy" if a sincerely held belief - would include Covid shots - which the left failed massively, and the right did not.
Scientific inquiry has never been a left thing except in their own minds. "Men are women" is not remotely scientific. I am a scientist. Not on the left any more.
RFK is a Democrat. The left own him even if they hate him for being a traitor.
Supporting terrorists is indeed a leftist thing, but not "classically liberal" by any stretch.
You believe in "due process" only when it suits your team, not when Democrats are doing lawfare - again not classically liberal.
Weird combo. Seems to me you should just drop the free speech and go full woke.
First you told me I should drop everything and go rightwing. Now you're telling me I should drop everything and "go full woke."
Maybe I just appreciate nuance, complexity, and reason, and make up my own mind on the merits of individual political issues.
It isn't free speech when Trump & Co. put protesters essentially on a hit list because of their speech.
And I never said that scientific inquiry is "a left thing."
I know damn well that men can't become women, that the whole transgender psychosis is bullshit and that the Democratic Party has been captured by it. I've already said so. I've already told every single one of my reps -- federal, state, and local -- that I will withhold my vote entirely if they don't wake the fuck up.
I don't give a shit which party RFK the Lesser belongs to; he's an idiot. A dangerous idiot.
The Covid restrictions were about PUBLIC health. There's a reason such a notion as public health even exists, but of course you already know that since you tell us you're a scientist.
And I don't support terrorists, but do go on with your implication that because I oppose Israel's actions in Gaza therefore I do. So predictable.
But the Trump administration is NOT putting leftwing protestors on hit lists. That is the easily debunked lamestream media narrative that is easy to see through.
Lets take the "Tufts scholar", Rumeysa Ozturk case where she "was disappeared because on an article she wrote". Why would a leftist judge, in the leftist city of Boston, in one of the most leftists states of MA, deny her bail?
I don't want to answer that question for you. I would like you to occasionally ask it, when "making up your own mind on the merits of individual political issues" and not swallowing whole the swill the media feeds you.
Public health is not an excuse for authoritarianism and making things up, like 6 ft apart, and masks on 5 year-olds, and not educating for 2 years because the vacation was fun for teachers. Rioting was safe - but church outside was not, might have been a hint as to who the bad guys were. And yes, they were bad guys.
Thank you for educating me on "not swallowing whole the swill the media feeds you." I clearly need your help.
And the "hit list" is metaphorical, for god's sake.
Not going to argue Covid with you.
I'm done here.
...and they're now in power.
A "scientist." Ya, sure you are, Bubba. And I am the walrus in the engine room of the Yellow Submarine.
Lots of Bubba comments from Bubba.
Whatever Israel is doing in Gaza is way too lame to be "genocide". A real genocide would have been over and done with in a few weeks.
We’re anti-Zionist Jews and we see genocide unfolding in Gaza
As Jews, we condemn what Israel is doing in Gaza. Any mass slaughter will not just be on Israel’s hands, but on the hands of America
by Ellen Brotsky and Ariel Koren
18 Oct 2023
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/18/israel-gaza-hamas-palestinians
The argument whether Israel's actions are or aren't genocide is pointless. The reason for the argument is the growing gap between the "legal" definition of genocide (" acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group") and the general popular understanding, which uses the Nazi Holocaust, Armenia or Rwanda as references. I prefer the later def, under which Israel's actions in Gaza are atrocious, horrific, unnecessary, and pointless but are not genocide. What is genocidal are statements by Smotrich and other Israeli ministers advocating, in effect, extermination of Gaza's Palestinians, but genocidal speech is not itself a war crime. In fact, there is only one person who could stop it cold, namely Trump, who I hope will do it during his Mideast jaunt this week (Bibi could theoretically could stop it, but he's being blackmailed by Ben-Gvir and Smotrich and would lose his government, so he won't)..
So, what's the time limit on a genocide? Does slow starvation count?
So by your logic every siege is a "genocide".
When the stated goal is to kill the inhabitants. I suppose you didn't see the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto as a genocide?
Yes, there is a time constraint. It is simply a matter of math. Genocide means to exterminate a people. We all know that Israel must get rid of the Palestinians if it is to survive. To do that, they must kill them at a much higher rate than Palestinians are born, or else deport them fast enough to places so far away they cannot return . Otherwise Israel fails. As part of Palestinian/UN military strategy, the Palestinians are the fastest reproducing people on Earth. Their designated mission is to destroy Israel, which is why they are in Gaza and West Bank, and not allowed to emigrate to any other place. Each Palestinian female has about 10 children on average, which is made possible by limitless foreign food aid, courtesy of the UN and the Arab monarchs. If Israel only kills 100k/year, the supply of Gaza Palestinians will never run out. Israel fails. To win, Israel must kill far far more than that number, and also stop the flow of food aid that allows Palestinians to reproduce at current rates. Israel is not doing this. They aren't killing enough, and aren't cutting off the flow of food sufficiently to beat the Palestinians. Israel is too conflicted by the desire to save the hostages to actually wipe the Palestinians out. This shows the Hamas strategy of taking hostages was very smart - it tied Israel's hands behind its back.
Lol, sounds like repressed Nazi rhetoric. Not to mention your argument appears to be "it can't be genocide because Israel sees the mass murder of Palestinians as necessary!"
I am somewhere near dead center, in the sense that when the left is in power, I'm center right and when the right is in power, I'm center left.
With you all the way on this, my friend.
There are plenty of Democrats who are moderate and do not want the party to lose swing/normal voters where the votes are lost due to the Democrats having adopted activist positions from climate change, immigration and transgender issues. Even someone like Senator Elissa Slotkin (who is pretty left wing) was ranting about the Dems need to stop being "weak and woke". And even Ocasio-Cortez is starting to dial back from having "purity tests". Matt Iglesias (Slow Boring substack) has a long post about that debate. But I think this will take time, it's kind of a paradigm shift...
Ken, yes, I agree. The more sensible Democrats are around aplenty, but they're being drowned out by the loudest voices, which aren't sensible. The excerpt I posted from Jonathan Chait's article in The Atlantic, about the first DNC meeting after the election, bears this out. It reads like parody.
I'm also afraid that Trump's lunacy will only make it harder. There's a knee-jerk reaction to anything he does (which, given the calamity this administration is, is somewhat understandable), but that reaction means the most IL-liberal of Dems just get louder and dig in their heels deeper.
We really need a third party, but I don't see that happening in my lifetime. And I don't pretend that would be a panacea. I think it would, however, help.
"But I don't see a way out. Insofar as traditional concepts of "left" and "right" even mean anything anymore (and increasingly, they don't)...."
When entrenched interests make fundamental reforms impossible, the only thing to do is to Burn It All Down.
Oy. No. The only thing to do is NOT “Burn It All Down.”
Then start liking it.
No worries the right has their own extremism/hardliners to deal with, and they are infinitely worse. We need more than 2 parties.
Agreed that the rightwing is awful, Rozemarijn. This criminal administration got exactly two things right, thus proving the adage that even a stopped clock is right twice a day:
1. Eliminating the shitshow of DEI. Those concepts are obviously good in and of themselves, as abstract philosophical ideals, but the implementation has been a disaster.
2. The EO on the bullshit of "gender."
Unfortunately, these actions have only made the left dig in their heels even deeper. Those actions and the left's reaction are making our struggle harder, especially when it comes to women's rights and protecting single-sex spaces.
The Democrats are still in post-election disarray and are trying to find a coherent message. One thoughtful beginning of response response is on Yascha's latest podcast with Bill Galston and Elaine Kamarck, who are right in emphasizing "culture" over economics, but never even mentioned the bungling of DEI in so many ways, which is what lost Dems the last election (along with transgender posturing, which they do discuss). They're more centrist than I am on some things, but they've got the right idea. The question is whether the party bureaucracy (filled with "progressives") will let the essential changes happen or whether they'll fall on their swords in defense of a spurious equality and condemn us all to Trump's successors.
Agreed. I think they went too far when they set mandates (like university quotas for admission).
"and they are infinitely worse."
In actual objective fact?
Or in a desperate emotional attempt to justify sticking with team woke?
Sounds like the latter.
Methinks you could use a few more "struggle sessions." And I ain't talkin' DEI...
"...Maoist-style struggle sessions"...
Come on...
"Come on" ?
Tell it to the people who've lost their jobs or reputations because they didn't mouth all the correct p.c. pieties.
Or to a former colleague at NPR, where I worked for years, who, when asked after a typical DEI "training" (i.e., struggle session) for his opinion, said, "I can't say anything. I still have two children to put through school."
You sound like a person who has common sense which is antithetical to the lefts infatuation with wokeism. Wokeism is a mental disease and must be eradicated.
Well, I'm not sure it'll ever be eradicated. "Wokeism", under other names, has been around for years, decades. Monty Python was doing skits about it back in the 1970s.
We do need to return to classic liberal values, though, classic tenets of the Enlightenment. If that's common sense, I'm all for it.
They have no choice but to double down until conditions fundamentally change. Then they can adjust. The Democrats are in a holding pattern, putting up maximum resistance to slow down the Trump Train until either the Great Global Everything Bubble implodes, WW III erupts, or a new pandemic gets going - or possibly all 3 at once. Then they can stand up a new "leader" who can take over under emergency conditions.
I don't see how "they have no choice but to double down." They are losing support. This last election should've taught them that. They are increasingly out of touch with ordinary Americans, especially the working class. They lost more black and Hispanic voters and the GOP gained them.
Trump and his criminal cabal are an almighty disaster. They are ruining the country. I despise them with every fiber of my being. But they still have a lot of support.
The Democrats need to look in a fucking mirror, pardon my French. They continue to insist that the only reason Trump won is because most of the country is racist. I can't count the number of times I've heard this from people in my circle. They are living in a bubble. They won't admit that they, too, are at fault, that people are fed up with being lectured at and talked down to, being told that every time they open their mouths they're wrong, they're using the incorrect, constantly-changing terminology, that their mere existence is wrong, that they're stupid. This isn't a winning strategy!
You are right if one assumes nothing will fundamentally change, but if you see the status quo as unsustainable (**particularly in the realm of finance**), and expect that there will be huge fundamental changes soon that are already baked into the cake, then the best strategy for the opposition is to slow down Trump as much as they can until that happens. Right now they are playing Defense. That means they have to keep their coalition together, and that means doubling down. The Democrat strategy is the political equivalent of an army digging trenches and barricades. You go to war with the army you have, not the one you would like to have. When the financial system implodes, you change strategy and go on offense.
Trump knows he has very limited time and that is why he is so aggressive on Offense. He is desperate to get as much done as quickly as he can before the time runs out.
Maybe you're right, Andrew. I just don't know. And I wish I could trust the Dems enough to wise up. But given their frequent cluelessness, I don't know.
I think I already posted the link to Jonathan Chait's article in The Atlantic about the DNC's first meeting after the election. Just the bare-bones description of what went on reads like a Monty Python skit. It's hard to believe these people expect to be taken seriously. In case I posted it at a different Substack (so many subscriptions!), here it is:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/02/dnc-meeting/681548/
Woke and DEI and related stuff has been four decades in taking over academia. It is now entrenched. The question is not whether it is dead; the question is how to kill it. If Trump helps us get there, ride the evil wind. Liberality needs help from people we may not like.
Why do we assume that the left is solely defined by academia? Biden managed to get unions on board--more, please. I'm not as pessimistic about the emergence of a populist left that doesn't just try to return to the New deal but manages to build one for the 21st century. And I think there are plenty of Dems who think similarly. I think Yascha needs to get out more.
"Why do we assume that the left is solely defined by academia?"
Perhaps because so many of the ideas from academia have filtered down through the rest of society. Judith Butler's nutso ideas about "gender" have captured the country (and other Western countries). DEI became de rigueur in corporate America.
What's birthed in the ivory tower doesn't just stay in the ivory tower.
As a liberal university professor who went to Columbia many years ago, I can attest that left ideology rarely makes its way into course materials and lectures — even in the humanities. Most of us are too professional to express our political opinions in class. Sure, if you take a course explicitly dealing with gender or race, you will encounter predominantly left liberal ideas. But that is not at all the norm. Students get their leftist ideas nowadays not from their professors, but from social media and from other students. Social media didn’t exist when I was an undergraduate philosophy major, so it was mainly through conversations with classmates and long form legacy media that my own political values were formed. Liberals should not concede to Republicans the idea that universities teach woke values (even though hiring practices and DEI initiatives may reflect them). Universities are instead places where already woke students compete on identitarian grounds for political cred.
You make a good point, Robert. I will always stand up for the value of universities and for education in general. I went to what is probably the most classic of classic liberal arts schools -- St. John's College in Annapolis -- and am grateful every day for the education I received there.
I am a lifelong liberal, usually far left (insofar as the terms "right" and "left" even mean anything anymore). I don't want to concede to Republicans; I want to shake the Democrats out of their woke stupor. I deliberately use "woke" as a pejorative. Though I'm temperamentally inclined to side with the Dems, even I can't stand them anymore because I'm so sick of their smug, sanctimonious, hectoring, condescending, woke bullshit. And if people like me can't stand them, just think how middle America sees them.
I do believe that academic theories filter down into the general culture over time. It's not that professors are at universities are standing up there dictating what their students should think -- although that goes on, too, as I know from young people who've told me -- but that these ideas are spread more subtly.
I gave the example of Judith Butler above. Her batshit-insane ideas on "gender" have infected the culture at large. And of course Foucault, along with other jargon-laden post-modern lit-crit theorists.
So while I think it's true what you say about students jockeying with each for the most prominent virtue-signaling cred, I think that the abstract theories they absorb from their studies also have an effect on their behavior.
yes but when it loses votes, it gets chased back!
Usually it ends up imposed by judicial and/or administrative fiat and then the people are *made* to support it.
David, with all respect, you do know that the left lost the working class, don't you? I mean, of course there are urban, barista-type workers that are still there, but, generally speaking...
not really, there are plenty of working class dems....or maybe the Dems really are not "the left" anymore... maybe...
David, we are in fundamental disagreement. You seem to want a populist left to define the Democratic party. I do not. It would be another tragedy.
America is the greatest nation in the history of the world. That is what we should build on. We need better governance in a number of ways, but we do not need anything revolutionary. Better safety net, better schools, better early education. A better understanding of our history. More progressive taxation, especially the estate tax. Numerous things can be improved. But basic democratic capitalism remains the way forward.
The dems have public unions in their pockets and they are the only unions with any power anymore. Public unions are a bane on the system — they extract concessions in exchange for political support. The politicians rarely even attempt to bargain in good faith because when they do, the unions hold the public hostage in order to flex and punish.
yeah and so do oil company CEO's....who's worse??? This is such a tired right wing trope... wake me up cuz I ain't woke...😆
Yes, it should not be just "faculty lounge politics" like Carville used to say!😎
Amen
All is not lost. Thank god for Shiloh Hendrix and the Trump Administration firing the librarian of Congress (who was black so obviously a woke DEI hire). Yasha can continue monitizing his Substack, phew! Long live woke!
No, please no.
Really hope I'll turn out to be wrong about this one!
Holy shit you responded!
I have been saying this for years, “In reality, every victory for one of these ideological currents immediately strengthens those who fight for the other.”. These two positions absolutely fuel each other to nearly everyone’s detriment.
Who started it? The left.
Who continued it, while we all waited patiently for a reset that never happened? The left.
Who is the bully here? The left.
The fact is that conservatives are just now, after 20 years of being a punching bag, fighting back. And suddenly, now, after 20 years, only now do we hear worries about where this is heading.
Too late. You waited far too long to start worrying about spirals now.
"These two positions absolutely fuel each other to nearly everyone’s detriment."
Of course. If I wanted to implode Team R, the fastest and surest way to do so would be to decimate Team D.
The two political parties need each other, just as sports rivals need each other, or there is no game, nothing to play for, no excuses why we aren't in paradise yet, no reason not to fight over a share of the goodies.
On a more emotional and less instrumental level, you can make a perfectly marketable Batman movie without Robin. Take away The Joker, however, and Batman becomes a rich weirdo with a penchant for cosplay.
when did the left cancel people by hauling them off of the street to detention for writing and opinion in a student newspaper?
Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski, last month, addressing a question about how to respond to people who are afraid in the current political climate, Murkowski responded: “We are all afraid. It’s quite a statement,” she continued after a long pause, in remarks first reported by the Anchorage Daily News. “We’re in a time and place where — I don’t know, I certainly have not — I have not been here before. And I’ll tell you, I’m oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice because retaliation is real. And that’s not right. But that’s what you’ve asked me to do and so I’m going to use my voice to the best of my ability."
Interesting, I've not seen where she is concerned about AOC
That Trump is an apprentice dictator does not make woke cancellations and policed speech ok. They are both expressions of authoritarianism. As usual (see Weimar & the Bolsheviks), the right is much quicker to use brute power than the intellectual left, but both are on the same path.
Many historians write that Hitler succeeded gaining power, by among other factors, in response to the excessive Allied WWI reparation demands on Germany. So I guess per your argument we can equally blame the Allies at Versailles and Nazi racist ideology for the Holocaust
Frederick, that depends on the strength of one's addiction to "blaming" rather than "understanding". It is pretty much uncontested that the Nazis used the Versailles Treaty treatment of Germany as an emotional prod and "proof" of their patriotism and a fictional reinforcement of their blaming Jews for Germany's poor state between the wars. It certainly means the allies foolishness was a contributing cause of Nazis coming to power
If you insist on "blaming" rather than "understanding", that's an intellectual limitation which is your problem to deal with.
We wouldn’t have the problems that worry you now had the woke left not brought it about by their intransigence and refusal to contemplate the least possibility that they might be just a little bit in need of a course correction.
Now we are on a spiral to nowhere good.
It wouldn't matter tbh. It's completely gone.
sorry, man. not a chance.
👎
I'll be so happy if i am wrong. :/
Ya. Yeah…. Yeaaaaaaaaaaah….
#5. Yashca's faculty at the SAIS at Johns Hopkins. He's heard the game plan. Looks like they've decided on Norm Eisen's color revolution at home. What better way is there to sow discontent in America than with race? Expect another summer of 2020, and, ahem, an "event" that sets it off :-( This whole state of affairs is just so sad. So very sad.
The Dems are going to have a difficult time staging another summer of 2020 with the the Pro-Palestinian/Antifa/transgender rights mobs creating havoc in so many cities.
I don't get it. Those are the activists that they depend upon... With media coverage that paints them as heroes, because of an "event," ahem, that makes it easy for them to do so.
Not entirely sure what you mean, but the Dem powers-that-be cannot and do not control the mobs that once again are on the rampage at Columbia University and that once again went on a rampage in Seattle, this time on the University of Washington campus. The Dems are the monkeys trying to cross the river on the back of the crocodile.
Well, I guess we disagree then, Holly. I believe the Democrats have a network of professional or semi-professional activists, who are ready in waiting should they be needed. I read Yascha against the grain -- Straussian, if you will. I believe he is telling us to expect a repeat of 2020. When? Midterms, maybe? But almost certainly in 2028, when Trump might pull some real shady shit.
You're absolutely right. The post-election introspection you've urged is nowhere to be seen—Democrats look set to fight populism with populism. History offers plenty of precedent for a dual rise of oppositional populisms in the West, and it rarely ends well. Worse, it's usually unclear until it's too late which extreme will win if the escalation metastasizes into tyranny. This is dangerous—but I'm grateful you're tracking it. The only hope I see is that America might have the best historical record of recovering from mutual radicalization once it crests.
If the resistente is woke, then it is a bad resistance.
Hear! Hear!
Right now, the main danger to our society comes from the Trump administration. Many centrist and right-wing writers acknowledge this, but I only see progressives out there organizing visible opposition to Trump. The leaders of Indivisble keep saying that they want to reach out beyond their ideological bubble; I'm not sure they know how to. But if we don't want the resistance to be woke, shouldn't we, you know, participate in the resistance?
Yes! We should resist the woke supremacists, take back the democratic party and support solid politicians and policies that are attractive to voters!! :) :)
I don't disagree with that in principle, but
a) the problem is that different politicians and policies are attractive to different voters and so alliances are necessary, and
b) the enemy of my enemy is at least my temporary ally
Today, we have in power someone who believes elections are valid only when he wins, and has the heads of the military, justice department, and FBI with people who would wholeheartedly support that approach. That's... a problem. Everyone who cares about being able to elect their guy in the future should work together on the current problem.
"Today, we have in power someone who believes elections are valid only when he wins, and has the heads of the military, justice department, and FBI with people who would wholeheartedly support that approach. "
Am I truly the only cat who recalls the Russiagate conspiracy theory?
> Today, we have in power someone who believes elections are valid only when he wins
No, he believes elections aren't valid when they're brazenly fraudulent.
I can't agree. But I do think that you will very likely have your wish since chances are very high that Trump will go the way of Nixon. My hunch is that the decisive voter block in '24 included former democrats who cast a negative vote against whatever it was that was running the country--and they are going to turn against the Trump movement. So you will have your wish but I doubt this will catalyze a return to normalcy and competence. Fifty years of economic disenfranchisement and cultural ostracization of half the country has left a very deep well of resentment--and a populist left wing backlash is unlikely to bring us closer to reason.
There is only one populist move that the "left wing" could pull - that is revert to economically look after the working class again. The problem is that the left these days is solidly bourgeois and actively wants mass cheap labour eg immigration brings (but conceals this under humanitarian cover). Ironically the Trump Tariff War are actually a notionally left wing move - they would be pilloried by GOP if anyone else was advancing them.
I think the populist move they are well set to make is to push us hard toward socialism just as Biden and Harris were doing in rhetoric and in actions. The high tax policies and hostility towards businesses and high earners goes very nicely with victim-victimizer narratives that are a staple of wokeism and a major part of the AOC toolkit.
Notionally left wing, in that it was only the labour unions left arguing for protectionism after conservatives got behind globalisation to break the power of those unions. There was plenty of America First protectionism in the past. General Franco implemented autarchy in Spain after defeating an elected republican government in that country's civil war.
One of my most interesting observations about economics is to look at Europe of the 50s and see the same economic good times across so many different regime types. From fascist Iberia to Stalinist Soviet Union, passing the lib/soc-dem mellow middle, they all had economic good times in that era.
Maybe the real secret is to kill off a generation of men, then the following one can gain from the labour demand. Shame we missed out...
The major failure from globalisation is the quality of jobs - low-wage service jobs AND high-skills ones replaced the middle skilled factory type labourer. The first doesn't pay enough to climb the wealth ladder, the second is out of reach for most of those who lost their jobs in factory style industries.
Yeah, but Team D's rich donors would have a fit!
> There is only one populist move that the "left wing" could pull - that is revert to economically look after the working class again. The problem is that the left these days is solidly bourgeois and actively wants mass cheap labour eg immigration brings (but conceals this under humanitarian cover).
The other problem is that eight decades of "economically looking after the working class" has left the country with unsustainable levels of debt.
I really hope that you are right. My hunch is that if the next major election (2026) goes against Trump, there will be a real mess that will make 2020 look like a first rehearsal, but I don't know what its outcome will be. And I really want to be wrong on this.
Curious what sorts of policies you'd propose to address the disenfranchisement and ostracization.
I was thinking we could stop doing it. :)
But seriously...the cultural part is easy...that IS just a matter of showing decency and respect to people with different views and treating their personhood and their vote with the respect that every citizen deserves. On the economic front we would need to support manufacturing in America and we would need to assign appropriate social and moral value to that endeavor beyond just looking at the economic output in GDP terms. We would need to dismantle the WTO especially with pulling back from the economic relationship with China, and go back to something like the pre-WTO GATT. Our China policy has been utterly naive and is probably one of the worst foreign polices of my lifetime--in addition to gutting our working class it has made the world a far more dangerous place. And when we look at industrial regulation, in addition to economic cost-trade balances we would want to be weighing the social costs of environmental issues against the social value of the jobs created. We would also need to stop gratuitously crushing manufacturing while telling ourselves that outsourcing production of goods and energy to totally unregulated markets that are governed by bad actors and who employ slave-wage labor. I do think that if we do these things this will dial down the temperature a lot. All of this would no doubt piss off the left because it has nothing to do with socialism--but then again socialism in America makes about as much sense as antlers on an alligator. :)
The difference in cancel culture is that Trump never claimed to be a liberal. He was elected with a mandate to remove opponents from positions of authority.
I’m not in the U.S. or an American, but when I see progressives protesting AOC, I can’t help but think things have gone badly wrong somewhere.
Correct. And they got it all wrong. Immigrants, ethnic minorities and blue-collar workers did not turn to Trump because they were marginalized, if anything almost the opposite. At least the ones I talked to said they were tired of government wasteful spending of their hard-earned tax dollars, and did not appreciate when the left started giving benefits to newly arrived immigrants and long-term unemployed on their dime. I wish they would listen to what people were actually saying, rather than guessing. I am not saying the right will solve all these problems, although they're doing a good job on cutting government wasteful spending. Left wants benefits for the poor, right wants tax cuts for the rich, meantime middle class are suffering and paying for everyone. Would be nice if incentive and hard work were rewarded for a change rather than punished, but that's just my opinion.
"Left wants benefits for the poor, right wants tax cuts for the rich."
This is what the left are brainwashed to say, but is there really any evidence at all to suggest it is true? That chant sounds so like a religious incantation - not reality. Question it.
For example, we can objectively look at the results of the GOP tax cuts (in 2018) and see that they overwhelmingly helped the middle class. Not the poor - no taxes to cut. And definitely not the rich (SALT limitation pummeled the NY and CA rich). The experiment was run. The data exists for you to find - if you have the emotional strength to actually see it.
Agreed. It's a mantra. The left repeats it over & over again, "the right only wants tax breaks for the rich", but meantime they gave tax breaks to the middle class too.
I challenge you to identify what "waste" was genuinely eliminated by the trump administration, especially when weighed against the additional cost burdens incurred by their utter hash of a methodology in doing so.
Eliminating USAID is frankly something that any leftist should cheer.
Cheering for the richest man on earth intentionally starving children to death in war zones all over the world because he took away the food they had come to depend on with no replacement seems like a pretty evil thing to be happy about from my perspective, but you do you.
Starving children? USAID was created in the middle of the Cold War to buy political influence in foreign countries. According to Wikipedia, “The goal of this agency was to counter Soviet Union influence during the Cold War and to advance U.S. soft power through socioeconomic development.” Dismantling a key instrument of the American empire is progress for democracy in the U.S. and the world.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Agency_for_International_Development
Andy, do you really believe this? May I ask who you read?
I am as leftist as they come and read widely and know all about what USAID did and why its existence was important. The loss of it will cause millions of needless deaths all over the world and the fact we let evil billionaires do it in the first place has tarnished our reputation even further around the globe for a generation. Trump is an evil moron and everyone not brainwashed by American propaganda knows it. America is now a pariah state internationally no better than Russia in the eyes of everyone but the MAGAs. I don't know what your agenda is, but I am a humanist that understands that there are plenty of resources on this earth for all of us. Scarcity is an illusion created by the rich so they can control us all because their narcissicism and bottomless greed compels them to steal more and more of societies wealth for themselves and immiserate us all until the people are forced to rise up and rebalance the scales. The next revolution has already begun. Many Americans might be too stupid to see they have already destroyed this country and our place at the top of the global pyramid going forward, but I personally think its something to celebrate. We deserve all the hardship that is to come and are serving as a painful lesson for the rest of the planet about why its a bad thing to put amoral fascists in charge of anything. Our greed, hatred and collective apathy doomed the nation. I guess when most of the generation that fought in WW2 died, everybody kind of forgot the fascists preaching hate and division are the bad guys. Culture is irrelevant, history shows the pattern is always the same. At least Trump woke everyone else the fuck up. Too bad about America though, 250 years was a good run. Our fall will not be pretty.
You think USA deserves hardship - but believe feeding people on the far side of the world being America's responsibility... This is textbook leftism: they-good, we-bad.
The left failed because it chose to start looking after everyone except the majority - in the West that means working class white people. It is an anti-West hate cult that used to at least historically deliver a measure of economic justice to working people.
USAID:
60 million promote LGBT awareness in South America
50 million sustainability + health in Africa
40 million educational outcomes in Southeast Asia
30 million social cohesion in Eastern Europe
20 million education (Sesame Street) in Middle East
I know some of this is/was to promote democracy around the world, and help for sick/malnourished African children is commendable, but they are the types of programs that lend themselves easily to fraud/wasteful spending.
"Easily lend themselves" is not proof of fraud. But investigations of waste and fraud that then discover and eliminate it would be worthwhile. I'd applaud that effort. But there were no investigations. There's was wholesale slaughter on ideological grounds (as all your examples make plain -- each is a shibboleth of RW orthodoxy). As to those above who decry US soft power as "imperialistic" -- we have revealed ourselves to be an impulsively cruel and unreliable partner. Our credibility is shot, giving China a leg up on embracing the nations and causes we've abandoned. Who would you rather trade with? Finally, with respect to foreign aid being at the expense of US citizens, specifically the white working class -- I'm all for rebuilding the infrastructure and US manufacturing. There was this guy named Biden who got Congress to approve bipartisan funding for both. Maybe you've heard of him. And he did that without turning our back on the world. It's no a zero-sum issue.
Since you welcome fiscal accountability why is there no evidence of this in your party. I do no recall the progressive left ever raising this issue. And the build back better programs of Biden mostly benefitted the green scam.
True (all of it).
Yascha - the meta narrative that rhymes with history is that the extremists first attack the centrists who serve as the levees. The extremists WANT extreme change. Th centrists want things to remain. Trump is extreme. He activates his mirror extreme twin - the Woke Left.
This happened in Weimar Germany. The Red-Brown alliance cooperated to essentially dismantle the Weimar Republic. They then went after each other.
This suggests that the shelf life of our current world order (politically, socially) is expired. The bananas are dark brown. Entropy has exhausted our 80 year project. The extremists recognize it and aim to first remove all barriers to their Great Conflict.
That does mean Trump vs AOC. Or Trump vs Sanders. The people are weary of pablum. They itch for fight and blood and change and destruction. This is horrifying to the center (who refuse to accept it), but it’s true nonetheless.
Trump can't run again and Sanders is too old. 2028 will be Vance v AOC.
you're an optimist, I love it!😎
I agree. I think I am on the same general page as you. well said.
Good thing we don’t have a nation of young disenfranchised men with weapons training who recently returned from a war.
If we do have any conflict I would bet the military stomps it out very quickly and sets up a junta government.
That's a major plus, right?
It's probably the best outcome of a civil war for us.
Historically, I'd argue that that 80 year project of which you speak is extreme, and those who believe its assumptions are mad men. It was dreamt up by autistic economists, after all, and normies cannot live in that world for long. They simply cannot.
I agree with Yascha's sharp analysis. I would add that the threat from the illiberal (we should just say totalitarian, really) left is civilizational. They want to end us as a society of free thinkers, capitalists, and rational actors of our own destiny. There is a self-hating quality to the left that knows no bounds.
The threat from Trump's lawlessness is real (though exaggerated by the MSM) but much smaller, I think, and has more to do with government specifically and not our entire civilization. And he's doing a lot of things that are really needed that no other politician in my lifetime has had the guts to actually do.
What's happening here is a new paradigm, to use Yascha's term, is actually being created. Trump is breaking the old one that had a long term buy-in from both non-radical sides. Trump won't be the new paradigm, that'll come after him. But without him, it won't happen at all.
And this article's right, he could empower the resistance too much so that it comes back and swamps the vacuum he's creating, filling it back up with woke garbage. I don't think that will happen, but there's no guarantee.
I don't really see a self hating quality that literally knows no bounds. Sure we on the have a lot of cancel culture nonsense but I think there has been and will be major pushback to the excesses. Just my take..
If you're right, then it'll be the death of liberal democracy. Eventually, you have to be willing to put some restrictions on people's freedoms, and those are going to require value judgments that liberalism can't make.
If it's not chemically castrating children and calling it healthcare, or being required to pretend a man is a woman through totalitarian coercion, perhaps next we'll be asked to accept pedophilia or beastality. Maybe we should legalize prostitution next. We can even have special "sex workers" for "minor-attracted people". Perhaps we should decriminalize public fornication.
It's all individual choice between consenting individuals, right? And isn't adulthood just a social construct anyway? And we're all equal individuals, aren't we? If I claim it's my right to walk around naked in public and that I'm pursuing my constitutional right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness, who are you to tell me otherwise?
Liberal democracy is a self-licking ice cream cone. If liberalism won't limit individual choice, and history shows that it basically won't, eventually, people will vote against liberalism, even if it means voting against democracy itself. We're seeing that begin to happen all around the world.
Ultimately, liberalism represents the deconstruction of all values and identities because it can't make value judgments or distinguish between people.
QAnon, thanks for your input...😜
Are you listening to what AOC is talking about at this point? Class politics have essentially replaced identity politics in her ideology. Fighting oligarchy is a movement of American patriotism and lefty populist fiscal policy with a class-centered focus. It’s not a “woke” movement by any means.
Ah yes, I'm sure the woman who said "Trans-girls are girls" less than 4 months ago isn't woke.
https://youtu.be/3kjOlSLjrZ8?si=HuqVLVSUuAymLe5Y&t=17
Let's not forget when she defended the use of Latinx to "decolonize language" even AFTER she learned about the PEW study showing that only 3% of Latinos have ever heard the phrase.
Yes, precisely. Her support, despite the abject unpopularity, is essential to understand because it's deeply revealing.
What she and the entire woke movement support is "decolonizing" America. It's the same reason they support Hamas. It's not because Hamas is popular, it's because they agree with Hamas that America should be "decolonized," IE, cease to exist.
It's also why they will not give an inch on the issue of migration, even for hostile populations that chant things like "Death to America". They agree with those people that America is fundamentally bad!
It's also why people like me, who are, if I may say so myself, decently educated, are so adamantly supportive of Trump despite his obvious shortcomings.
yeah...awkward...😁
She is still plenty Woke.
What do you mean by that? What, specifically, makes her “woke”?
Not as overtly as 2020 AOC. Just as Kamala didn’t lean into it either. Though both enthusiastically embrace it when it suits their purposes. Neither truly embrace class struggle (as Bernie honorably does) because then they would have to admit that poverty and struggle aren’t a people of color problem. 15M+ whites live in poverty - but somehow have “white privilege”. Those poverty stricken Trump voters in red America (addicted to fentanyl and dying deaths of despair) are called deplorable by Democrats. For AOC to turn her back on Progressive dogma of the marginalized people of color would lose her base. She doesn’t bring it up publicly like she once did, but she will never embrace lower class whites with conservative (religious) social values because they conflict with her leftist hatred of social conservatives who would oppose her on trans, abortion, and many other things. Thus, she is merely concealing her true woke nature and can not be trusted to be anything less than the extreme leftist she once so proudly extolled.
Um, no. If you're not a psychoanalyst, don't psychoanalyze. Ditto mind-reading. Listen to her honestly--instead of assuming she's being disingenuous, which is palpable in your remarks. AOC has definitely read the room and realized the issue is indeed about race. There's also a growing consensus that the Left has made a category error dismissing the concerns of youong men (and thus lost touch with their mothers). Just because Progressives may reject totally abandoning trans people, racial minorities, women who consider bodily autonomy a right, does not mean they somehow congenitally can't find common ground on economic issues. Your entire take is that the left cannot by its nature think self-critically and respond accordingly. The evidence I see from the inside of the movement is the exact opposite.
I'm a lifelong leftist and feminist, and I'm sick of getting screwed by both the right and the left.
As the meme goes (which unfortuantely I can't reproduce here in its photo form, depicting one of Margaret Atwood's Handmaidens): The left wants to put you in a prison cell with a rapist; the right wants you to have his baby.
In case anyone doesn't get the reference, men are being put in women's prisons, sometimes in the same cell with women, because they utter the magic phrase, "I'm transgender." Many of these men -- who ARE men -- are sex offenders.
This is going on all over the country, and Democrats are supporting it. California Democrats -- every single one of them in the state legislature -- just voted DOWN a bill that would've protected women.
For those men, transgenderism is a scam that lets them access women, or compete against them with a built in advantage. Anyone who isn't "woke" can see this.
Yup
"AOC has definitely read the room and realized the issue is indeed about race."
So you mean she's learned nothing?!
Lay off the tendentious wording!"
"Totaloly abandoning trans people" (or refusing to elevate "gender identity" [a social fiction] above biological sex)?
"Racial minorities" vs "slavery and genocide" (or a society of striving immigrants of many ethnicities [none of which call themselves "AAPI" or "Latinx"] who came to America seeking a better life)?
"Women who consider bodily autonomy a right" (vs a woman's "right" to treat a baby developing inside her as a malignant growth)?
Yes, in each instance, the rephrasing in parentheses is obviously tendentious and propagandistic, and is not conducive to dialogue or to a "big tent" -- but that's just the point! So is David Corbett's presentation of these issues.
What goes around comes around. If you want to find common ground on economic issues, knock it off!
So, you will wear a MAGA hat then because you agree with the statement make America great again? You will take Donald Trump at his word that he’s fighting for America and not join the legions of psychoanalysts who tell us non-stop that his words and actions disqualify him?
I did.
I don't put much credence in psychoanalysts.
Especially ones that would violate their professional norms by making pronouncements about individuals they have never even spoken with. Seems inappropriate to me.
And I am not sure President's can ever be "disqualified" by the people who dislike them. Who gave these legions disqualification rights, and when?
It is really oligarch v oligarch. Is Pritzker anything other than a big fat oligarch? Reid Hoffman? I could go on and on.
I like what you are saying and I hope the democrats get serious and go back to their roots. But class politics can take many forms and I don't think her tax-the-rich brand of class politics will amount to anything more than a counter-populist call to arms and a massively counter productive wealth transfer. Hope I'm wrong. :/
You’re not wrong. The Bernie/AOC Left is leaning into “Fight the Billionaires” message - but Biden/Kamala had HUNDREDS of billionaires contribute to her campaign. It’s now sexy to point at Musk and say “kleptocracy!” when they didn’t say anything resembling this as recently as Nov 4, 2024. Their message is opportunist and they hope to galvanize the same anger Trump does in his base. More anger = guaranteed conflict that ballots and democracy can’t fix. We are headed for a showdown like all of history’s revolutions. Unless we have a world war first. Or a Martian invasion.
Yeah its pretty crazy for dems to be screaming about oligarchies 30 years after ditching the working class to get cozy with the tech millionaires who are now the tech billionaires. Whew--it's not the heat, it's the hypocrisy. As Douglas might say "show me what you accuse [the Trump voters} of, and I'll show you what you are guilty of. "
As I said above - it is Oligarch v Oligarch.
The problem is class politics badly failed for the left.
People realized that it was far quicker for them to just work hard, than it was to wait for Democrats to do anything. The problem with class is that people have their own control over it. They are not actually obligated to Democrats to be able to change their own class.
Race on the other hand - you can't work your own way out of. If the world is a "systemically racist" place than you have no choice but to vote Democrat. They are your only savior.
The sales pitch is just so much easier with cultural Marxism (race/sex/gender oppression) than with classic Marxism (class oppression). Because people can change their class by themselves - and people did. Class is a terrible way to get the human dependency that the left leverages its power from.
I agree and I don't see a lot of distance between our ponderances...... I think they still have plenty of tricks in their bag for foisting socialism on us in the guise of equity and based on past performance AOC will be perceived as a credible leader for that poisonous brand of policy.
You can work your way out of…the middle class? What are you on about?
The have about a 50% chance of changing your class in your lifetime.
That is 100% faster than a leftist will change your class for you.
https://desdemonadespair.net/2019/05/graph-of-the-day-class-mobility-in-the-u-s-for-children-born-between-1940-and-1984/
Maybe you could phrase your question more precisely. I am not sure what you are confused about? Maybe you just are threatened by reality and are lashing out? I am not sure.
very true, woke is about identity politics almost exclusively!
"For anybody who is committed to remaining on the left, there simply isn’t an alternative paradigm to wokeness."
And someone needs to present a new paradigm, and small-bore tax credits and neoliberalism isn't going to be it. What is a fresh new framework Democrats can commit to?
"What is a fresh new framework Democrats can commit to?"
Well ... the GOP. You are desperately resisting the obvious here.
The parties have changed dramatically over time. You are just too emotionally attached to make the switch. Everything else is ready.
Face it. The Democrats left you.
Have none of you people read Thomas Frank? JFC.
It's a great question, to which I'll ask another: Where will the incentive to change come from?
During a recent forum, Tim Walz rhetorically asked, “Why have we lost this self-identity that the Democratic Party is for personal freedom?"
He also says the party has to fundamentally change, but thinks the change is centered on messaging, not policy: "“We win on the issues and we win on competency, and then we lose the message and we lose power.”
This breaks my heart.
Very glad to hear you say this. Not so glad that you're right. In Berkely/Oakland we've been woke since Carmichael sparked the Panthers in 1966 and they started selling us Mao's Little Red Books.
It's not going away until its history is thoroughly exposed. That'll keep you busy.
Sadly, I wouldn't expect to see anything negative about the Panthers coming from from Barbara Lee.
In addition to the Panthers, there's a through-line to the current situation from Harry Bridges and the ILWU. These folks (and the municipal unions) still have plenty of money and lots of power in The Town.
Too many have too much invested in woke. Too many degrees, positions, careers, and whole lives built around woke philosophy. The woke faithful simply cannot abandon the cause, they lose too much. It won't go quietly; it will have to be forced out. Until then, expect to lose elections
Democrats teach hate and pretend it’s black history. This Real Clear Investigations article below from 2020 is about the “1619 Project” and what the author Nikole Hannah-Jones told the editors of the Chicago Tribune about its purpose which is, she said, to instill guilt in white liberals so they will support reparations for blacks. White liberals are not being targeted though. White children in our public schools are. And Woke white leftists love this and are totally supportive of it. She was even given a Pulitzer Prize for this poison in 2020. This is not “black history” though. This is anti-white hate mongering pretending to be history. This is evil and this is what the democrats have become. And these are the same people who say they simply can’t understand why so many people voted for Trump.
“If you read the whole project, I don’t think you can come away from it without understanding the project is an argument for reparations,” she told the Chicago Tribune in October.
“I'm not writing to convert Trump supporters. I write to try to get liberal white people to do what they say they believe in,” she said. “I'm making a moral argument. My method is guilt.”
“Disputed NY Times ‘1619 Project’ Already Shaping Schoolkids Minds on Race.”
Real Clear Investigations. Jan 31, 2020
https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2020/01/31/disputed_ny_times_1619_project_is_already_shaping_kids_minds_on_race_bias_122192.html
"Democrats teach hate and pretend it’s black history. This Real Clear Investigations article below from 2020 is about the “1619 Project” and what the author Nikole Hannah-Jones told the editors of the Chicago Tribune about its purpose which is, she said, to instill guilt in white liberals so they will support reparations for blacks. "
But the 1619 project is hardly the sum total of black history, right? You actually say that, great! I would call the honest teaching of black history that acknowledges the evils of slavery and the resulting Jim Crow era in the south and redlining in the north. This is not teaching hate but insisting on honesty.
Honesty would involve teaching that what was unusual about America and the West is not that they practiced slavery, but that they abolished it.
What you call “honesty” is focusing on the bad and ignoring the good. That’s not honesty. That’s hate mongering and it has pretty much destroyed the social fabric of our society which is why it’s so rapidly unraveling. No society so devoid of trust and so full of hate can survive as a nation. Does America even still exist as a country?
I think woke is a perfect counter to maga. Both absurdly useless for anyone living below the elite. Both just crap thats pumped up online. Its as good a reason to hate and fight as my gods better than yours.
Am i the only one thats just completely bored with this crap? Am i the only one who thinks this country is populated with a bunch of suckers? Which makes sense, we are literally bred to be consumers, and ofc they dont want us to be smart about it! We get sold on well theyre going to help with OUR problems too. Lies. Now is the time for squeezing. Then itll be taking. Maybe by then we'll see this for what it really is.
Oh man, really starting to sound like a crackpot looney:/ See what yall have done to me?