IN STUDYING the American left of which I am arguably a part, I have come to distrust the materialist-atheist-scientistic "left" which I now see as no left at all but a variant of the same anti-democratic gangerism that fascism is. Hardly a week goes by when I don't hear an ideological materialist claim that free-will is impossible and, needless to say, materialists don't believe there is any such a thing as sin or moral obligation, except as some kind of social convention. No leftist who holds any such beliefs can be anything but an anti-democratic thug waiting to mature into full depravity.
That wasn't always the case, though I was never a Marxist I was a socialist and think the tragedy of socialism is that it so early was co-opted by materialist-atheist-scientism, anti-Christianity and other forces that never would do what any real socialism should have been based in, admit to the spiritual character of human beings and human life. There were some early Christian socialists and even some who persist till today but socialism as a category of thought and in any productive political sense was certainly ruined for the present by that early takeover by ideological materialism, atheism and scientism. I do respect some socialists, including some who started out as Marxists such as Victor Berger but who, in the necessities of human life, chose for practical reality over academic and journalistic fantasy. I don't know, if he had lived longer than he did, what his socialism would have been though, like the Marxism of the great legal scholar Louis Boudin. He was an early critic of Russian and then Soviet Communism. I suspect that seeing Marxism in reality instead of theory, he gave it up. I like to think gave it up in disgust. His change of heart contrasts with that of the Trotskyites who, once Trotsky was murdered by Stalin's agents, saw no prospect of their ideology taking power and converted to American fascism, both the corporate-academic type and, in some cases, the indigenous racist form of that, as well. American conservatism to one extent or another is an inevitable accommodation to white supremacy as that elsewhere is an accommodation to their own indigenous fascism. And that is absolutely relevant to my response to the objection to what I said about materialist-atheist-scientism and its anti-democratic tendency.
I simply don't trust people who believe human beings, living beings, are merely objects without any durable and consequential moral obligations and responsibilities owed them or inherent rights endowed equally on us by God. I might, at times, find some of what they say on some things has some merit, though much less frequently what they do - in my observation and experience they're not very big on the doing part of that - but I can say that I don't trust them in the end. I think the history of that secular left warrants that refusal to trust them, I hold them up to a very high level of skepticism, as high as that which I hold anyone else to. As I recently pointed out, I hold two recent Popes I didn't like at all and trusted not very much to that same level of skepticism though, as I admitted, I agreed with them on some specific points such as the moral depravity of considering human beings as a means to an end.
I especially distrust the self-identified media of the left, by and large, with a few, a very few, exceptions to that rule. I especially distrust those tiny organs of the American left who, after witnessing and experiencing Trump, Republican-fascism, the Bush II regime and the Reagan and Bush I administrations before that are sandbagging Joe Biden and Democrats. I totally distrust In These Times, TYT, and a myriad of other impotent organs who never produce anything but undermining Democrats' chances of winning elections and gaining and holding offices and making real change in real law. Joe Biden and the Democrats in his first two years made more change than all of the lefty media and all of the lefty "third parties" have in their entire existence magnified by any large number. And that was even with a Senate not in actual Democrats control but with that once darling of the play left, the atheist Sinema and the corporate gangster Manchin in it. I can report that even as I support the Democratic Party, there are a number of Democrats who I have blasted and wished to burn in hell - I don't hold back my skepticism of anyone who does wrong. There are even Democrats I once admired highly, such as Barney Frank who I don't much trust now.
About actually doing things and producing things, the highest achievement of any socialist office holder in American history is Bernie Sanders' committee chairmanship in the Senate under Democratic control from where he has done some actual things, making him probably the highest achieving socialist in American history, even as his former dead-end supporters turn on him as he actually does things that they may have claimed to want. I don't think the American secular-left, at least in its very large play-left faction, really wants to do anything but whine and pose and compete for attention and, in those parts of it that are actually money making, suckering the gullible into sending them money. I am fully confident that some of them are on the take from Republican-fascists and other billionaire ratfuckers of American democracy. I think in that they are not markedly different from the Trump crime family operation, just far more penny-ante. I think the Greens are one of the bigger of those minor con jobs as well as just about any other "third party" effort. I think RFJ jr. is perhaps even more vile than the Putin asset, Jill Stein. Though she is plenty vile in herself.
If you want evidence, I've given evidence in scads here. I'd suggest looking for "Marxism" "Green Party" "The Left Forum" "third party" and other such seach terms, individual MAS lefties, too, Lillian Hellman among so many others. Look for "The Nation Magazine," "In These Times," "The Progressive," "ACLU." I seldom wrote about them without presenting evidence, citations and links. Look for "the civil liberties industry".
The American secular left has pretty much nothing good to show for it's existence and anything it may claim to have achieved it has more than taken back in its usefulness to Republican-fascist and the corporate media use of them to discredit the real left, which, by the way, is often overtly religious in its character and motivation. As recently as 2006 I believed the secular even anti-religious "left" was a vitally important part of making any real change, I now think that any good change it had a pinky finger in would soon be endangered by them and their ideological program and posturing. In many cases the struggle to make change had to contend with bad publicity from their claimed involvement, The Reverend Martin Luther King jr. had that problem. I more than loathe them, now. I hold them in the contempt that I do a Max Eastman or Whittaker Chambers (who both started out on the materialist left) and former Trot-neo-cons and the organized atheism that the trust-fund Stalinist Corliss Lamont mounted and financed. That last one is still is in existence, though much of it has abandoned any political lefty pretensions to push ideological atheism, Lamont's first and true and, really, only love. I don't trust atheists much, not until they've consistently earned my trust but never if they hold their religious ideology above their claimed devotion to rights and the common good. I hold the same suspension of trust for white evangelicals and Catholics who, I have to say, sometimes have proven to me that they can be trusted. Far more than hard core atheists have.
The fact is, the secular left just isn't left enough, it's not even really left at all, as I've pointed out repeatedly about the Left Forum and the lefty magazines, they have to be left behind by the real American left, the left of the Reverend MLK, the left of Dorothy Day and Pax Christi and a myriad of other religious based People and organizations that are the real, effective, productive left. I'm many degrees farther to the left now as a Christian leveler than I was as an agnostic socialist. There is nothing more radical than The Gospel, nothing anywhere.
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