I see it a lot lately, talks of some commentator "leaving the left" and then people questioning whether they were a grifter all along. For some, the answer is maybe. i do think audience capture is a thing and some commentators move right specifically to appeal to the kinds of audience they pick up.
BUT, I do have a different view on the "leaving the left" phenomenon as a whole. As I see it, the left is an increasingly extreme entity that does no wrong, wants complete and total fealty to 100% of its positions and if you dare disagree with them at all, people question your left wing credentials.
Lately, I mentioned the asch experiment and group think. And how often, you need to have dissenters speak out to break people out of group think. Groups will become increasingly extreme if someone doesn't actually pipe up and say "yeah this is going too far." But...the modern left doesn't appreciate these guys. They just question their leftist credentials, throw them out of the movement, treat them like a pariah, and then claim they were never a "true leftist" in the first place.
And that's the problem. As I see it, many on the left who end up "leaving the left" aren't leaving much of anything, the left is leaving them. It is going down a path of extremism and group think that throws even mild dissenters out of the movement. We saw this with the likes of Ana Kasperian last year. She pushed back against the birthing person's thing and people started treating her like she was leaving the left and she was a grifter. In reality she's progressive, Cenk Uygur knows it, she's still on his program, and lately they've been talking nonstop about what a war crime Gaza is.
And then there's Gaza. I get told all the time I'm not a true leftist if I don't sympathize with gaza. Well, to be fair, by their definition, I never was one, I was always a liberal. I've flirted with socialism before, but never particularly committed to the idea, and now in light of these leftists, I have solidified my more liberal position and push back against them. I admit they have pushed me back to the center a little, but only a little. Basically, they forced a dilemma on me where either I had to commit to their ideological precepts, which would undermine my own core ideology and subject me to manipulation, and I decided to shut down on them instead and moved slightly in the opposite direction, fine tuning my beliefs so i can maintain greater levels of ideological consistency.
And for anyone questioning my left wing credentials and acting like I was more progressive in 2016, well, that's all that was. I fine tuned and matured my beliefs, and sometimes getting older means agreeing more with the more centrist side of the argument, recognizing that the far left is getting insane. And that's where I'm at. I'm sorry, but if I HAVE to choose between the left and the center, and I think the left is getting insane, I'm going to...go back to the center. I'm going to....go with the ideological view closer to my actual convictions.
I mean, in the 2010s, I found myself mostly. I really spent a lot of time figuring out who I am and what I stand for, but there was always a little bit of ideological inconsistency here and there. Most of the time it was minor, and not a big deal, like me recognizing the left sometimes has a point, but then when they take the same logic to extremes, I'm like, ya know what? Bye! And adopt the more moderate position.
Case in point: identity politics. I used to sympathize a bit more with them, but after the critical theory zealots started showing up and telling me it's their way or the highway, I chose the highway and I shifted back to liberalism.
When the left started radicalizing into literal marxism, I reaffirmed my more liberal roots. Yes, liberalism is a broad philosophy, and as I see it, there's right liberals, ie, the third wayers of the democratic party, but also left liberals, who kinda walk the line between socialism and capitalism, and I'm still on the capitalist side of that divide, focusing more on generous social programs and other reformist measures over literal socialism.
And on foreign policy, sure, anti interventionism made sense from the mid 2000s on all the way to the Biden administration. When the big issues of the day are Iraq and Afghanistan, two US interventions that serve no real purpose, and cost taxpayers a lot of money and servicepeople their lives, and we have to actually ask what they're fighting for, it makes sense to want to become less interventionist. It makes sense to say, when we're a hegemon with no clear threats spending overkill levels of money on military, that we should kind of focus less on foreign policy and more on domestic. But the Biden administration represents a realignment in foreign policy, kind of like 9/11 itself did. We closed that chapter of American history by leaving Afghanistan in a way reminiscient of us leaving Vietnam in the 1970s, and we then were faced with the threats of Russia rolling across Europe and Chinese expansionism into Taiwan. At this point, this isn't just about us being a hegemon intervening in unnecessary ways with no clear goals, here, we're trying to counter the emergence of other great powers that could threaten our dominance. And with leftism once again rearing its ugly head and coming off as the literal "the left hates america" crowd the right strawmanned us with from the 1980s on, I've kind of had to side with the liberals on this one, as they represent a sane balance between peace and strength.
As such, any more liberal turns I've made in the past few years mostly come from me just adjusting to the times and reaffirming my underlying ideological goals, and not letting myself be swept away in the tides of ever increasing extremism and group think.
But that's the thing. The left....isn't self reflective. They don't take no for an answer. They just go to the furthest possible extremes, and when you start disagreeing with them they start treating you like you weren't ever part of them in the first place. Well, with their extreme current ideology, I wasn't, but the left of years past? Sure. Because the left in America has been historically moderate. The liberal left has shifted right to avoid giving off the vibes of being the same unhinged whackos the left is now becoming.
And as a result, many of us are now being thrown out of the left, to the point we're being seen as "grifters" who are "leaving the left."
No, you guys are leaving me. You're becoming too extreme for me. You're doing the equivalent of political suicide in this country, and a lot of us just can't bear to watch. We want to win elections. We want to pass policy. We don't want to be this extremist minority faction that no one takes seriously. I'm fine with throwing an election or two to push the dems somewhat to the left, but not to literal "leftism". Just to that more left liberalism akin to social democracy, while still maintaining its liberal roots. it's like people don't understand that.
As far as I'm concerned, people leave the left sometimes because the left is toxic, and because it's the only choice we have given the other is to follow the group think to uncomfortable extremes we can't live with. Hate me and others all you want, but unless you're like literally Tim Pool, don't question our convictions too much. Sometimes it's just a falling out over individual issues like with Ana Kasperian. And sometimes it's just the fact that we were never as far left as the left is becoming. It doesn't mean our views arent progressive though. They just don't age well.
I notice Kyle Kulinski for example likes bashing Bill maher a lot. I admit, sometimes Bill Maher is moving right and is cringey. On the other hand, I also think that bill maher is also just what he always was. It's just that the times changed. And me, as a millennial who is no longer considered part of "the youth" and is rapidly approaching middle age, sometimes getting older means looking at Bill maher and thinking he's right and the modern leftists are wrong.
Am I out of touch? No, it's the children who are wrong. And I mean that unironically. It's the zoomers. We millennials grew up in a very conservative environment and found our way to liberalism as we got older. Now the zoomers are running so far to our left it scares the crap out of us. There's no maturity in their perspective, no nuance, no complexity, no respect for considerations like rule or law or consequences, just unmitigated extremism. And it scares us. Yes, we forged our own path left, and I thought, as we got older, we'd actually start changing things. But sadly the silents, boomers, and gen x still run everything and people are staying in office well into their literal 80s. And now the zoomers are grossly overcorrecting. And yeah. It's kind of problematic. I hope they take a chill pill and moderate back to liberalism as they get older. But, if I've learned anything, it's not really that people get THAT much more conservative as they age. It's more the fact that they just keep getting out flanked by younger people.
Still, one can hope.
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