Solidarity is power
Many isms attempt to capture the divide between left and right both in the U.S. and abroad. A broad set of impulses fuel the personal, religious, cultural, class, and political clashes roiling society.
Without naming it, Heather Cox Richardson examines the shortsightedness in the current appetite in some quarters for fascism:
Over all the torrent of news these days is a fundamental struggle about the nature of human government. Is democracy still a viable form of government, or is it better for a country to have a strongman in charge?
Democracy stands on the principle of equality for all people, and those who are turning away from democracy, including the right wing in the United States, object to that equality. They worry that equal rights for women and minorities—especially LGBTQ people—will undermine traditional religion and traditional power structures. They believe democracy saps the morals of a country and are eager for a strong leader who will use the power of the government to reinforce their worldview.
But empowering a strongman ends oversight and enables those in power to think of themselves as above the law. In the short term, it permits those in power to use the apparatus of their government to enrich themselves at the expense of the people of their country. Their supporters don’t care: they are willing to accept the cost of corruption so long as the government persecutes those they see as their enemies. But that deal is vulnerable when it becomes clear the government cannot respond to an immediate public crisis.
Behold the weak earthquake response in Turkey and Syria, Richardson writes. There should be billions in Turkish coffers from the earthquake tax levied since 1999. Where is it? Syria blocks western aid to communities held by his opponents and hard-hit by this week’s quakes.
Consider Russia’s new imperial project in Ukraine and its designs on Europe. “On Tuesday, Ramzan Kadyrov, a close ally of Russian president Vladimir Putin, spoke openly of attacking Poland after conquering Ukraine. It was time, he said, for the West to fall to its knees before Russia …” Yet, the “freedom-loving” American right has a crush on Putin because he shares their cultural grievances and their disdain for democracy.
Underlying the isms humans blithely toss about is the fact that we are, in the end, animals, social creatures with a feral sense of who’s up and who’s down. Fascism, racism, fundamentalism, sexism, classism, you-name-it. They are all about power: who has it and who doesn’t. About the haves who crave more and the have-nots who fear losing what little they’ve got.
Heather McGhee speaks to the fruitlessness of viewing the world through a zero-sum lens. Slavery, America’s original sin, taints our perceptions and American institutions so thoroughly as to be invisible, she explains. The key to the sum of us prospering is to get past the racist legacy of believing that if those below us on the social ladder advance it necessarily comes at the expense of those on the next wrung up. Those at the top exploit the power anxieties of those in the middle and lower to keep them squabbling. Why? Because the elite are as addicted to needing more and more as the opioid-addicted are to their OxyContin.
Solidarity. Everyone does better when everyone does better, McGhee argues. Yet, our zero-sum lens gets in the way. The rich and powerful get more and keep the rest arguing over scraps.
Digby wrote on Friday, “For the past half century, social justice and social evolution has been unstoppable despite the right’s relentless backlash and attempts to turn back the clock.” Stuart Stevens quotes former client, Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, “Be for the future. It’s going to happen anyway.”
Hunger for a strongman, then, is a losing proposition for everyone in the long run. He will not protect followers when the chips are down. The middle will suffer along with the bottom, in the end only differing by a degree not worth fighting over. The principle of equality for all people protects us all more surely and in the long run.
Forsaking democracy for a strongman’s short-term protection is a fool’s game. But like the poor, we will have fools with us always.