If I'd never been able to read large numbers of people who believe themselves to be and are considered to be on the left end of the political spectrum online, a lot of things that hadn't made sense wouldn't have become clear to me. I'd still look at the general outline of asserted liberal-leftist stands and assumptions as presented in formal articles and political platforms and I'd be at a loss to understand how they and the politicians who supposedly support those could be rejected by the very people who would benefit from them. In other words, I'd still be looking at Kansas and, in frustration, asking what was wrong with it.
William James famously pointed out that, "A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices." And that isn't a habit reserved to people who vote for Republicans against their own interest. It's quite amazing how many of those who believe themselves to be evidence based rationalists are really only playing with toy blocks of cognition, many of which are minimally reasoned out based on a little evidence, many of which are far less successful as logical holdings, many of them, and most damaging of all, are nothing more than alternative expressions of class and economic interest, mere alternatives to conservative thinking based on slightly different factors, producing a mere variation on self-interest perhaps enlightened by a few more watts.
A lot of those in the last category are powered by the snobbery and disdain for the lower classes, those who had less educational opportunity, in unglamorous low-wage jobs whose lifestyles are entirely unfashionable. And it is more insidious because, while conservatives are sly enough to hide their intentions, the "rational class" proudly maintains their superiority on the basis of that conceit. It's a matter of scientific fact, or so they love to believe, that they are right and that their opponents are stupid-heads. If there wasn't that kind of snobbery really present in a significant percentage of what gets called "the left" it would never have been possible for the right to use it to talk so many millions of people into voting against their best interests. Just as the right seems to be on the verge of losing big due to its racism, its sexism and prejudice, the left has lost so much due to its toleration of the snobs who play at being leftists and liberals.
Early in my blogging career I tried to reconcile what I encountered in the unedited thoughts of more "leftists and liberals" than I'd encountered in real life by a large factor, with what I knew about electoral politics. I've been friends with a number of people who have been members of local and state governments, many times as a liberal running in swing districts. I knew that in order for them to do anything they had to hold the office, something that the many of the leftish libertarians apparently don't understand about basic civics. An out of office politician can do nothing to make laws, to repeal laws, to set regulations and to participate in legislative or committee debates and hearings. If they don't hold office they are either a failed politician or a politician in their own mind and the minds of those they can sucker into wasting their votes on them or, I suspect not infrequently, being suckered into giving money to. Alan Keyes wasn't the first person to make being a serially failed politician into a career. But such focuses of futility couldn't exist without people willing to be suckered. In that endlessly repeating and unproductive exercise, the fault lies not in our stars but in ourselves, as someone else once put it.
While the play-leftists online can play at politics, real politicians know they have to be elected with a majority of their vote. Their party, their coalition's hold on power depends on receiving the most votes - and, as the last election proved - even getting the most votes doesn't insure that. In only a tiny handful of congressional districts can the elite snobs playing at being the left deliver an electoral victory for a real liberal, one who is in it to make law to change life for the better. In almost all cases, the real left depends on votes from people this elite disrespects and, in so many cases, openly despises. Unable to deliver on a liberal agenda, they can deliver electoral defeat for liberals, they have largely been doing that for the past forty or so years. Real liberals who attain office in most districts will have to weigh carefully how much the support of the play left will cost them in order to determine how seriously to take them. That is a real factor in why they won't do what we want them to do, they have no choice if they are to hold the office and make liberalism a real force in life instead of the mutual whining of blog communities.
As one of my favorite composers and musicians said, "Don't just sit there taking abuse, you've got to put it to use." And I have put the frustrating experience of watching the play left at play for the past twelve years. It wasn't fun, it wasn't easy to take, its diminution of the effective real left in numbers is troubling, but facing the reality of what it will take for the real left to win elections and make its positions real in real lives is the only road to a better future. It may be the only road to any future that includes human beings. Anyone who wants to divert us or put stumbling blocks of thought in the way will have to be rejected and marginalized, their whining ignored and discredited. Eventually better politicians will be able to take better stands on our agenda, but that will depend on real liberals rebuilding the credibility that has been lost through the "left" which has made itself an asset to our opponents. We need The People to be with us, in their unfashionable clothes,in all their unstylish uncouthness and lower class diction. Those are the people we have to love and respect and listen to and learn from, they won't listen to people who demonstrate their disrespect and disdain for them. I don't expect that the people who this post calls out are going to listen to what it says, after all. Only thing I can say about that is I can count who has been winning elections and making law.
LIKE.
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