I've seen some surly and depressed leftists in the past few weeks since it became clear that Trump, despite the pains his people are taking to forestall acknowledgement of it, failed to stave off failure at the polls with the consequence that Biden actually squeaked out a victory this time. Some of the mournful are purists I presume who may genuinely rue the outcome of the election -- I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they'd be almost equally unhappy if Trump had won-- but some I imagine are apprehensive about the prospect that the lesser evil might actually be demonstrated to produce less evil, belying their admonitions to fellow leftists about the consequences of participation in 2020 presidential electoral politics. I don't read minds and it's way too early to gloat. But I've also accepted and preferred the chances with sleepy Joe and I'm hopeful; not that the best is yet to come but that the worst has been averted-- for now. For myself, on the whole I am feeling a bit beaten down by the state of the world and prospects for change which surge and ebb unpredictably. Since the outcome of the election has been settled, they aren't exactly surging but the ebbing has possibly ebbed.
Following the conclusion of the Sanders campaign, I found myself loading up on leftist journalism and podcasts and scouring the usual sites for activity and discussion on what's to become of the left. My conclusion is that the snooze button has been hit. Until the primary I was feeling very optimistic about a movement building and expanding beyond its borders. Bernie’s defeat was a serious blow to the momentum. I haven’t seen anything rising in the past few months anyway in its place. The vast majority of Sanders supporters who voted I'm sure followed Bernie's lead and voted for Biden to try to prevent Trump 2 in spite of active ostentatious alienation on the part of the rest of Biden's team as a measure of courting the white centrist suburban vote. In Bernie's primary loss, the left was dealt a blow that I don’t quite see how it can recover from while we try to prevent needless suffering and further horrors in the meantime. I console myself that Biden is probably too weak to actually preside. Who knows. My point though is that I felt I was able to vote for Biden without actually voting for Biden. Yes we do get Wall Street in the mix which is terrible but we stanch judicial hemorrhaging perhaps, probably greatly improve things at the border, maybe grab COVID-19 by the germ balls. The bullshit doesn’t end, but it is diminished appreciably right off the bat. The alternative was Trump, not some leftist movement that was going to rise up to do what Bernie was not able to. Bernie was the guy who could have done it and we didn’t let him. The left had its chance in Bernie and they blew it. (Yes there were DNC shenanigans and corporate funding and suppression and media insanity but that wasn’t supposed to matter, right?)
I might also feel a bit inadequate in my ability (and my record) at participating in making change happen. And frustrated that people like Joe Biden and Rahm Emanuel and Neera Tanden and the Clintons and Pete Buttigieg and Barack Obama and money people and media people and etc. are still actively working to wreck those chances and may be successful at this time again as they always have been to date, and their supporters probably don’t know what the shit is happening or they’d be Bernie Sanders supporters. Seeing the beauty of the vision of a system that works for everybody that nobody else seems capable of being seduced by is flustrating as shit, am I right?!
Not knowing what else to do with myself, I attended a DSA meeting this summer. It was so easy to participate in Bernie’s campaign; socialism is work. I didn’t really participate to a full extent. I joined with my camera off and my mike muted and only unmuted it to give a brief self-intro (name, town, favorite revolutionary work-- i.e, book, film, artwork, play) (eight; the suburbs; bugs bunny.) (I kid on the last one. I fortunately did not go first because I didn’t have (and still don’t have) a favorite revolutionary work of art that I could name. I took a cue from someone who went before me who mentioned a Noam Chomsky book I’d never heard of to mention the only nonlinguistic one I could remember, which I hadn't read but which I did once watch a documentary about. Then I listened to everyone else having a meeting. I had a daffy notion going in that it was going to be more like a Bernie Sanders meeting—i.e., a bunch of folks not knowing what exactly they were doing but compelled to try to figure out something to do, and I suppose it was, but the caliber of people trying was at a far far higher level than I was anticipating. I, a naturally timid person, was intimidated. When it came time to exchange email addresses I procrastinated so long that the meeting ended before I could. And I fully supported the major initiative that came out of it which was to email a list of demands to our county taskforce on policing in the wake of the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, all beautifully drawn up unsolicited by a first time attendee informed by his job as a public defender. I felt very superfluous. I was definitely the odd man way out. People were of all ages but everyone was already actively engaged in the revolution. Thank goodness for them, but afterward I got to thinking, if I feel this way, how is there any hope of bringing my neighbors, coworkers and family along? Is there a place in the revolution for the atrophied and slothful and timid? If not, how does it happen? I am unusually, egregiously timid and slothful, so perhaps it’s just that there’s no place for me in the revolution. As long as it doesn't mean the revolution dies without me, I can live with that. While I wait for it, it's not inconceivable that some extra-financial way for me to contribute will yet occur to me.
I've been reading Rick Perlstein's chronicle of the rise of the right starting with the shaky if scary first steps of Goldwater '64 and reaching its apotheosis in the crushing success of Reagan '80. In the intervening years, those guys and gals were creative and disciplined, often taking their cues in strategy and tactics from the earlier improbable successes of their mortal nemeses the Communists. In 1960, 30 years on from the New Deal, the only success mainstream Republicans had had for decades was in proffering candidates promising Roosevelt-light in a way similar to how Democrats have adopted Reaganism as an iron lung to keep the party alive in these times. The rightist response to Eisenhower Republicanism was a well-organized, well-funded, innovative long game in which personal diverse sometimes conflicting agendas were sublimated to the long term goal of advancing the political cause of conservatism until it swept the country (including Third Way democrats) from the 1980's on. And this was with an agenda that objectively stank for most people. Contrast this with the current state of the left in which virtue battles, infighting, cynicism and genuine contempt for ideological impurity keep us from advancing the cause of rescue of the planet from the ravages of rampant capitalism perpetrated against it by a tiny fraction of lopsidedly powerful assholes. I get the reverence for individualism and free thought and identity exertions and what not but might our mutually exclusive eccentricities and antipathies be keeping us marginal as a whole? Might we not find more success in setting aside the piddly ass squabbles for just a bit in order to lefticize this motherfucker for a change? Seems impossible considering the preciousness of certain factions' priorities. And also the sense that I can’t fight your struggle so I won’t do jack squat for it. Perhaps we as a whole do need a bit more inclusion. Not I, if you will so much as We.
Where have I heard that before?
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