Another book recommendation from a friend, another post reacting to it. This one was a short one. It's only three chapters, and it makes it easier to react to.
Chapter 1
Chapter 1 seems to focus primarily on the need to establish a positive cultural identity and patriotism to solve our problems. The problem with this, is I feel like I'm at odds from this perspective. here at outofplatoscave2012, we support the principles of free thought, and accepting things based on reason and evidence. I'm not really big on "culture" or trying to make massive national identities. Quite frankly, I support the opposite. The right is the side of flag waving nationalism and going on about how great we are, while the left has the thankless job of critiquing American culture, and trying to make America better. And while this book has a lot of criticism of various factions of the left, which I agree with going into chapters 2 and 3. However, unlike criticism in those chapters, my criticism is intended to be more constructive, pointing out the problem areas that this country has to work on them, and proposing solutions to fix them. The goal is to make the country better, not to tear it down, like some branches of the left seem to get into.
I know the person who recommended this book to me is a lot bigger on the role of culture than I am. He tends to believe that we need a new form of patriotism to encourage a new national unity. But in a lot of ways, culture is, to me, repressive. If a political consensus is done via force, whether direct (policing those who disagree) or indirect (marginalization), then to me it is not worth having. being the libertarian that I am, I encourage freedom of thought, and if we are to make a vision for the country to be united around, it needs to be based on carrots, and not sticks. While the new deal created a lot of carrots in the 1930s that won a lot of people over, the ensuing McCarthyism after WWII ended up being repressive. I am all for creating a new New Deal so to speak. I talk a lot about this. But I would like to avoid repressing those who disagree with my vision. While our current political divisions are way too polarized and harmful (which the book speaks about in later chapters), once again, for me, any vision has to be positive and directly correlate to a better life for everyone, leading to many to put down their torches and pitchforks voluntarily. You know what I mean?
Again, this is out of place in our current political discussions of the past 6 years or so, but my liberal views were forged by the atheist community, and ideologies associated with it like free thought and humanism. I support making the world better, and I also support encouraging people to be free thinkers who can figure things out for themselves. So encouraging a new nationalism or a new patriotism sounds repressive to me.
Chapter 2
Chapter 2 focused a lot more on criticizing elements of the left that aren't helping. This chapter mostly focused on purity tests from the far left, and it felt like a breath of fresh air to me. I've been saying it for a while, but leftists need to drop the marxist crap. Marxism is an overrated ideology intended for a 19th century context, with a horrible track record in being implemented. yet, leftists will reflexively defend these failures while simultaneously saying true marxism has never been tried. I myself, despite being WAY left of the democratic party on economics, am often lambasted by these guys for not being pure enough. And all this does is alienate people from the left. This chapter also talks about the "America bad" mentality of the left in the context of vietnam and if you can truly be a leftist and support vietnam. While dated, this talk is still relevant today, as the far left goes AMERICA BAD over our actions of trying to defend Ukraine, and how purism just ends up making us look stupid. Essentially, the author encourages people to lower their standards a bit. Figures like Lincoln, FDR, Johnson, were all leftists in their time who did great things for America, but the modern left would hate them for not being absolutely perfect. I agree with this aspect of the book, although with a caveat. We need to not be so lax that we defend worthless centrists like Bill Clinton, Barack obama, and Joe Biden.
Clearly, we need a standard where we leave the door open for a wide coalition of "leftists", social democrats, and other liberals who seek to meaningfully improve the world, even if not ticking off every box (because who does other than Saint Bernie?), while still excluding the obvious posers. As far as I'm concerned, FDR? Based. Johnson? Kind of based. Yang? Based. Bernie? Also Based. We need a left that, while it has some standards, is open enough where we all can unite behind some meaningful change at the end of the day. A more social democratic left that, while not marxist or purist, is also not wimpy and worthless. Of course I suspect the author has a lot to say about wimpy liberals too, based on chapter 3.
Chapter 3
Chapter 3 is where this book goes full on Thomas Frank, ripping the SJWs and the "new left" since the 1960s for being obsessed with cultural issues, turns white liberal guilt into a new religion with a new original sin, and is completely useless on economics. Essentially, the left traded being underwhelming on social issues, to being useless on economics, seemingly only able to focus on one at a time. And of course, I'm more in the economic wing of that argument. We won most social arguments in the past 40 years, and are only starting to lose now because the left isn't reading the room and is doing...sadly...everything this book warned the left not to do. Despite this book being written in the 1990s, it's almost prophetic. It talks about the new left being obsessed with the votes of suburbanites who don't want their taxes to go up to take care of inner city kids (despite virtue signalling about privilege among those same kids). It talks about how it likes to avoid economic issues because economics is impolite. And this dude's prescription for the future? Chaos. He predicts, at some point in the future, that the country will reach a breaking point, as the living standards decline and stagnate for many, only to grow a lot for the top 25% or so of the country, that due to the inaction of the left, the right will elect a demagogue promising to solve all of our problems. He also predicts that the country will look more and more like the Weimar republic, and that much like the Weimar republic, we will be at risk of having a mob overthrowing the government. Sound familiar? Sure does to me, and it scares the crap out of me. We already suffered through Donald Trump, who promised to "Make America Great again", and we suffered January 6th, where a mob was driven by that guy to attack the capitol to overthrow the results of the election he lost. And this guy, seems to predict that they might succeed. That whatever progress has been made since the 1960s, will be thrown out the window. That people will use slurs in the workplace again, and openly discriminate, and that whatever progress made by the supreme court will eventually be overturned.
Yeah. That's where we're at. And it's all because of the left's incompetence. In rejecting Bernie, and rejecting Yang, and rejecting change, and basically telling us we better settle for what we get or else, the left is poised to lose in a landslide. And we're right there. Biden is repeating the Carter years, and a red tsunami is on the horizon. 2020 was the year where the tides recede before the tsunami comes in. People think we succeeded just by getting trump out, but that was always a temporary victory. Unless the dems can create a consensus in which we all can rally behind them, Trump and others like him will return, his movement isnt going anywhere, even if he does. And given the democrats seem completely incapable and unwilling to change course, I fear we're watching helplessly as the tsunami hits.
This is why ive been so antsy and anti democratic party the past 6 years or so. I was trying to prevent...precisely this. People might blame me for not just voting democrat, but until the democrats help themselves, and the country in the process, we're just stalling for time until the right takes over. We need a full on realignment to pull us away from this death spiral we seem to be in, and we need one NOW. A complete realignment of politics, with a left that actually stands for something beating the current right. As long as the left remains weak and on the defensive and unwilling to do anything, it will just drive us further into that death spiral.
Conclusion
Honestly, even if I disagree with this guy's call for a new patriotism or whatever, I see where he's coming from. I agree in the sense that we need a new left wing movement in this country. One that, much like FDR's, saves the country from itself. But the modern left isn't up to the job, with the bernie bros and DSA being as purity oriented as the marxists described in this book, and the more mainstream left being obsessed with fighting losing battles over divisive cultural issues while the world burns.
I almost feel like that dog from the meme where the house is on fire and the dog is sitting there, sipping coffee, saying, "this is fine". It's not fine. The house is on fire. It's burning down. Everything this guy said was going to happen is happening. And the democrats seem intent on driving us further down the death spiral, as the right drags us closer and closer to fascism. We need a new left. We need a new social movement. Something different, something distinct. And I know exactly what I support. Honestly, the more I look at the way things are, the more I really realize, yes, Yang is right, yet again. I know when he came out with the forward movement I was scared his centrist framing would be bad, but he's looking at the writing on the wall too, and he's trying to do something to save our democracy. So I support him. Either we realign the country, or we fall into a death spiral. That's where we're at, right now.
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