Tristero Hearts Mahablog
by tristero
There is another Left, one that is more serious about good government than it is about making posters. And that Left is serious about winning elections. It’s also serious about building progressive coalitions that can have a real impact on making and enacting policy.
The Left Blogosphere, more than anyone else, speaks for the mainstream Left. And we are the descendants of the Progressive Era and the New Deal. The GOP wants to make us out to be the same old New Left of the 1960s, and there are plenty of people (International ANSWER, Ralph Nader, etc.) who are ready to oblige and play the role of the cartoon “pinko commie left” in front of news cameras. But IMO that’s not who we are. Not most of us, anyway.
I anticipate getting comments about how we should support other lefties instead of Bush. But though its corpse is still twitching the New Left is dead. And its baggage is holding us back. Cut it loose, I say.
The point Barbara is making seems to me similar to one many of us, including most importantly Paul Krugman, an honorary Blogospherian, have been saying for years: Many of us out here in Left Blogosphere are actually moderate liberals. Angry as all hell, it is true, but moderate liberals nevertheless. We are “Left” the way anyone to the left of Louis XIV is Left. We have nothing in common with the Ward Churchills out there even if we wouldn’t quit ACLU if they defend him, just as we didn’t when they defended Oliver North).
We are not the radicals. To force women who wish to terminate their pregnancies – for whatever reason – to use coathangers – that’s radical. And unspeakably cruel. To refuse to recognize, both legally and publicly, a couple in love – that’s radical. And narrow-mindedly cruel. To base foreign policy on the president’s “gut” and an obviously untenable unilateralism – that’s radical. And stupid. To get a team of unscrupulous lawyers trained in the black arts of sophistry (ahem!) but ignorant of American history to gut the Constitution and argue that a president is just an ominipotent monarch under a different name – that’s radical. And utterly un-American.
That’s why I’m blogging. It’s not to advance a “leftwing agenda.” Unless preventing Social Security from being gutted by rightwing maniacs is considered a leftwing agenda. Unless demanding that the US president behave like the president of the United States is supposed to behave towards the victims of a devastating hurricane is a leftwing agenda. Unless insisting that the nation’s schools teach science and not cynical lies is a leftwing agenda.
These are some of my issues. If I thought marching and protesting could help them today, I would march and protest. But I think there’s something we can do that’s more effective to counter Bush and Bushism. That is to help build a genuine second-party that will stand up against these scoundrels and provide this country the intelligent, genuinely strong leadership it deserves. And that will require a different kind of left – the left of blogs like Mahablog. (And it will require a lot more than just blogs, to say the least, but we have to start somewhere!)
I think the timeframe we have to create such a party is vanishingly small. Even the NY Times editorials are sounding like an hysterical blogger from a few years ago, hinting of the dangers to America of totalitarian rule, fascism, whatever you want to call it from Bushism. In any event, the US democracy may, just may, right itself when Bush’s presidency is over. But if the next president is anything like this one… God help us.
Another president like Bush and even the most cautious amongst us will be forced to conclude that the project of American democracy – or at least the version of it I learned about and, yes, admire – is over. That would not be a Good Thing. Barbara’s clear insight gives me some hope that good, substantive ideas about what to do – and good people to do them – are percolating up to a place where they can have some genuine impact.
[Update: This post has elicited some angry comments. To respond briefly, I’m genuinely puzzled. I fail to see how one could understand what I wrote as casting aspersions or caricaturing folks on the left who fought the Klan, or got their heads bashed in protesting the Vietnam War. How could I? I, too, marched, but to mention that sounds ridiculously patronizing. And to say “the left did great things” is to say something so obvious, it’s even more insulting. Of course, that’s true. And for me to fulsomely praise those who personally confronted the Klan? Praise doesn’t go far enough, certainly not my praise. In a just world, those encomiums would come from 1600 Pennsylvania.
But the problem in the US today ain’t about left vs. right, at least not as I see it. It’s about the extreme right versus everyone else: left, right and center.
I’m amazed that this is so difficult to express without infuriating people who are some of the very last people to whom I would address any disparaging comments. Did I really imply that the Democratic Party should move even more to the right? I don’t think so, I think that’s a terrible idea, in any event. How could one find that in what I wrote? I thought I implied that the politcal discourse in the US is so far right already that even moderate liberals like Krugman are considered too far left to be taken seriously.
In any event, the strong negative reaction in comments was truly unexpected and therefore fascinating. If its purpose was to spur second thoughts about what how I perceive the present mess in the US, considered me so spurred. I doubt I will change my mind much, but I’ll try to understand your points a little better. That may sound like mushy liberal hogwash, but I can’t see what good purpose either ignoring or disparaging what you wrote could possibly serve.]