Tom Frank on Liberal Obtuseness

… liberals, intoxicated by their own righteousness, can never figure it out. They keep expecting the right to die off, as if poisoned by its diet of wickedness, and yet…

… liberals, intoxicated by their own righteousness, can never figure it out. They keep expecting the right to die off, as if poisoned by its diet of wickedness, and yet the Republicans persist, dreaming up new culture wars against the “liberal elite,” radicalizing themselves continually along the way, refusing to succumb.

And what do liberals do? We dig in. We cheer for our side, we cheer some more, we demand that everyone else also cheer. We react hysterically to bad news, we refuse any analysis that doesn’t begin by ascribing Satanism to the G.O.P., and we go on Twitter to scold those who don’t measure up to our standards in some way. This is not strategy. It is fandom. …

If I have learned one thing from the experience of the past few decades, it is that America cannot expect genuine reform to come from Democratic Party leadership or enlightened technocrats in Washington; it must come from the bottom up. It must be demanded by ordinary people, in solidarity, coming together by the millions in a social movement capable of sweeping all before it. Unfortunately, liberals don’t build such movements these days: What we do is purge them, police the unruly public via social media and write off wayward voters as sinful or beyond redemption.

Frank, "The Deadly Lack of Imagination in the Democratic Party"

The subtext here is that the Left has to accept Middle America where it is culturally, which is a place that is decidedly un-woke. It's not a question of who's right or who's wrong in the culture war, but to recognize that it's a war that's unwinnable in the political sphere. A more effective Left politics would build coalitions of solidarity by establishing a broad-as-possible common ground with constituencies that have shared interests. It's not hard to find where that common ground lies–it's in how the bottom 80% are being hurt by the persistence of Neoliberal policies Reaganite Republicans in coalition with Clintonite New Democrats have made since the '90s. The Democratic brand for most of traditionalist Middle America is Neoliberal, and for good reason. Frank points out that —

The “New Democrats” won the war inside the Democratic Party, defeating the traditionalists [i.e., New Deal Social Democrats]. They were given many chances to rule. They triangulated and sought grand bargains. Today we live in the future to which they built their celebrated bridge, with a deregulated Wall Street, a devitalized heartland and college diplomas held up as the answer to all problems. Turning their backs on the populism they loathed, our future-minded, new-style Democrats declined to take the opportunity offered by the 2008-09 financial crisis to remake the financial system. Instead, some of them came to identify with that system.

Right now the American populace has two fundamental political drivers: One is Neoliberalism, which is fundamental to the interests of America's economic elites, many of whom are finding that the Democratic Party is a more comfortable home for them these days than the GOP. The second driver is identitarian politics, which is at the heart of the culture war that is framed by the Right as a zero-sum game. This war is being fought, on one hand, by traditionalist white Americans who were never on the fringe fearing that they will be pushed there, and on the other, by racial, ethnic, and sexual minorities who were always on the fringe and want to claim a place of respect and recognition in the center.

I want to live in a society in which nobody feels marginalized–except Neoliberal sociopaths and Neo-Nazi psychopaths. And maybe a way to achieve such a society if for every American who is not captured by these pathologies to find a way to work together to redress the injustices that Neoliberalism has wrought. Because in the end, the way we all find a way to live together is to realize that in the cultural sphere respect for one another's humanity is not a finite spiritual resource. We can learn that by working together to more equitably distribute the earth's finite material resources. In other words, call a truce in the culture war, and join forces against the entrenched Neoliberal elite.

Sooner or later we're going to figure this out, but the tragedy, of course, is that it will be later rather than sooner. Because as much sense as building such a non-elite coalition makes, it's not going to happen because too much is working against it: (1) the Cultural Right won't let it happen because its cultural grievances and fear of displacement are more important than its material interests; (2) the identitarian Left won't let it happen because it thinks racial and gender equality issues are more important than economic justice issues; and (3) Neoliberal economic elites in both parties won't let it happen because it's not in their material interests, so they will do what they can to keep the culture war going because it keeps non-elites fighting one another and not them.

So here we are, and here we're likely to sit until reality comes and punches all in the face. Can't wait.

After the Future

Tom Frank on Liberal Obtuseness

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