Just glancing over Maureen Dowd’s op-ed this morning, and it seems corporate Democrats in the US are well on the way to once again learning nothing from a devastating loss at the polls and are once again intent on pinning the blame anywhere but on themselves.
Here’s what I wrote to some friends on November 6th: I’ll just note that it’s been 40+ years of neoliberalism that brought us to this point; the entire US political spectrum has shifted far to the right during that period; right-wing ideologues have played a very effective long game over multiple decades to seize power at every level of US gov’t and in so doing, to hollow out many of our core institutions and public goods; the US political establishment failed to meaningfully respond to the collapse of this neoliberal consensus after the GFC and left us with a limping, attenuated zombie neoliberalism instead; and as a byproduct, space was opened up for neofascism to fill the void. If we don’t want to descend into the abyss, I believe we need to start thinking and planning on a multi-decadal time horizon how we offer a true alternative. Obviously preaching to the choir here, and grateful for good work that many of you are doing, but I find it helpful personally at times like this to anchor, at least for a moment, before circling back to near-term scrambling and damage control.
In my view, the lesson that should be learned by the Democratic Party is that abandoning universal programs, social welfare, public goods, and the working class was a tragic mistake, and that the fateful choice made by party elites to go to any length to sabotage the Sanders campaign in 2016 (and again in 2020) set us on the path to this grim moment; however, the lesson that apparently is being learned is that the Democrats were “too radical” – a totally laughable notion given that, on most issues that matter (corporate power, taxation, labor rights), our Democrats of today look like moderate Republicans of 50 years ago, and in peer countries with actual political left parties, our Democrats would sit well to the center right – and that it is now time to throw trans kids under the metaphorical bus. What goes unsaid here is that, under a broad Obama-Clinton umbrella, the corporate Democratic Party mobilized exactly this now maligned identity politics against Sanders – to try to paint him and his movement as racist, sexist, etc – rather than embrace the broad, class-based politics that Sanders advanced and which clearly spoke to a large fraction of the population. In the meantime, the idea of abandoning the most vulnerable among us just as national politics turn sharply against them is reprehensible.
We have our work cut out for us, but briefly on a few other topics of relevance, at least to me, I’ve heard/read many people in climate tech questioning whether it’s wise to continue to say the word “climate”. As a matter of pragmatism or necessity, many teams will, no doubt, shift to talking about energy, infrastructure, resilience, or even geopolitics. So be it, but the first people to abandon the climate label – I’m looking at you, MCJ!! – will also have been some of the most vocal in having previously appropriating it, and will often enough be the same “climate” folks who have been most eager to malign activists, organizers, and exactly the grassroots movements that have driven climate action and progress for decades (including through lonely and trying years when few outside those circles were concerned with climate issues). For those of us who were around before, and will be here after, it is easy to recognize fair-weather friends who had a convenient four-year bout of climate on their LinkedIns, and I’ll only add, in more November 6th writing, on why I, personally, will continue to say “climate”:
It’s 80 degrees in NYC today (and routinely) now and a major hurricane is takings shape in the Gulf as we approach the second week of November. Climate is the word, and we should continue to say it routinely because it reflects the broader truth of our circumstance. Florida, Texas, Arizona, and the whole Gulf Coast are in very bad shape and our task in places that still believe in gov’t is continuing to respond to the urgent tasks at hands and positioning ourselves and those after us to have a fighting shot at addressing these challenges.
Finally, from the 6th, on calls for bi-partisanship, etc, in the end, I’m a pragmatist and care about people at an individual level, and we’ll have to muddle through in the face of whatever circumstance brings, but feel it’s important we not delude ourselves about the nature of the movement that has risen to power nationally:
The intellectual authors and ideological leaders of Trumpism do not believe in democracy. They are theocrats, monarchists, and the like, and well-meaning folks from the left showing up to ask how the everyday people soldiering this movement are feeling when its leaders have arrived and announced, ‘We are going to kill you’ is misguided. As the Republican Party has trended increasingly nihilistic and omnicidal, its leadership have shown a clear willingness to do more or less anything in the name of political power, and they definitely don’t care about fairness, procedure, or our institutions.
Trumpism’s mass base seems to be cold-hearted fiscal conservatives who are willing to do anything to reduce their tax burden, etc, on the one hand, and, on the other, a large, deluded fraction of the population who – yes, have suffered under the exact structural conditions mentioned above (neoliberalism writ large, the concomitant wealth and income inequality, deindustrialization, destruction of organized labor, etc – ironically, all challenges that Biden did more than any president of the last 50 years to address) – but also, frankly, were participating in large numbers in Trump campaign events that looked and sounded like Nuremberg Rallies or Two Minutes’ Hate. Trump ran openly as a fascist, and won. He talked about murdering journalists and attacking his political enemies. He encouraged his supporters to drink bleach, take horse tranquilizers, and ransack the national capital, among many other things. He is very clearly out to enrich himself, his family, and his cronies, but has successfully hoodwinked a large, disaffected percentage of the population who are high on grievance and in the grip of a misdirected cruelty that he cares about (let alone represents) their interests. Given the size, diversity, and political decentralization of the United States, that doesn’t mean we’re headed into fascism nationally, but we should be clear-eyed about the nature of the threat.
The right in the US has driven fully off the cliff. We are holding them now as they enter into free fall. Following after them – copy of Hillbilly Elegy in hand – to enquire after their state of mind is not advisable. Yes, we should pull them back to reality in the name of decency and the future of a livable planet and our country, flawed as it may be, but pretending like there’s a conversation to be had on many of the core issues strikes me as partaking in their delusion. We need to get more serious about power, institutions, and winning a different future – and in my view, that means a sharp focus on transforming the material conditions and structural realities of US life – or we can all just settle into not using the word “climate” and getting increasingly more paranoid (like everyone on the left already is in India) about not saying the wrong things online…
Not a future I want to live in, so I intend to model an alternative, starting with this post.
Climate / Change 