Summary: The Left has become more powerful than ever before in US history. They are marching across America. Do they march to victory or to self-destruction? Here is an argument for each future.
Why the Left is strong
From an analysis by Rod Dreher at National Review.
“What is more interesting is how the corporate world has been taken over by these same values. The idea that corporations are in any way conservative is a badly outdated concept. What I hear often from conservatives within corporate environments is how progressive social beliefs are made the law (so to speak) of the workplace by being disguised as therapeutic methods of achieving diversity, inclusion, and equity.
“As ever, LGBT activists were pioneers in this, conquering elementary and secondary school culture by selling progressive cultural politics as “safety” measures. Middle, upper-middle, and wealthy people who populate these institutions and professions, especially in managerial ranks, quickly absorb this cultish religion, which they then use to bully people who don’t agree – especially both religious people and working-class people who have not been acculturated into these norms via college education – into submission.”
Now, for the other side of the coin …
“Why the Left Is Losing”
By Eric Kaufmann.
The mainstream Left is in serious trouble in the West. …{due to the} realignment of politics away from the economic conflicts of the 20th century toward the cultural battles of the 21st. Instead of just talking about state redistribution versus free markets, elections increasingly revolve around questions of immigration, national identity, and domestic security. This disadvantages the Left.
Why? Because, as David Goodhart remarked in an interview, it’s easier for right-wing parties to move left on economics than for left-wing parties to move right on culture. That is, left-wing parties cannot move to the vote-rich zone of most electorates where the median voter – typically somewhat conservative on culture and centre-left on economics – resides. Conservatives can do so more easily as they are less beholden to libertarian economic orthodoxy than left-wing parties are to progressive cultural values.
Identity politics and multiculturalism are central motivating forces for the highly-educated activists who have dominated left-wing parties since the 1968 generation rose to prominence. These ideas tend to be considerably less popular than the Left’s economic offer, hence the bind the Left finds itself in.
Political Correctness Makes the Left Unelectable.
Yet this alone cannot explain the inflexibility of left-wing parties. To do so requires an additional ingredient: the rise of political correctness. Political correctness functions as an emergent system that can push new ideas even when few people actually believe in them. Like the emperor’s new clothes, no one dares violate a taboo which may cost them dearly.
To be blunt, left-wing political correctness is more powerful than the right-wing variant. For instance, many social conservatives may dislike environmentalist candidates in their ranks, but dissidents on the left of a conservative party won’t have their character questioned and reputation trashed.
By contrast, a left-wing politician who moves right on culture – calling for lower immigration or abolishing female-only shortlists, for instance – is likely to be accused of racism or sexism by radical online activists. This causes them intense embarrassment and, by triggering a social taboo, may lead others to pile on them to signal virtue. This can damage a person’s reputation well beyond politics. …No wonder few on the Left are willing to move right on culture.
The catalyst for the change has been the post-1960s “cultural turn” of the intellectual Left, away from class issues toward the problems of disadvantaged race, gender, and sexual identity groups. Social sanctions accompanied this change of sensibility. …
These first two great awakenings of cultural progressivism – a liberal-left fusion ideology I termed “left-modernism” in my 2004 book The Rise and Fall of Anglo-America
Editorial usage of “sexist” and “racist” (New York Times Media Analytics, accessed 20 Aug. 2019).
The rise of identity politics stanched discussion of the cultural anxieties of many white working-class voters, who instead find themselves the object of scorn for their apparently retrograde social attitudes. Meanwhile, identity appeals attract young, educated urbanites motivated by questions of equity and diversity. This is especially true of the largely white eight percent of the American population whom the Hidden Tribes study categorises as Progressive Activists. However, since 2014, the Great Awokening spread some of these sensibilities among the third of American whites who identify as liberal.
From the Law & Liberty website, 13 February 2020. He provides details about this trend across the West.
Eric Kaufmann is a professor of politics at Birkbeck College, University of London. His previous books include Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? – Demography and Politics in the Twenty-First Century
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Why the Left might lose big, or win
Like the Rabbit–Duck illusion, this story can be interpreted in two different ways.
“After Attending a Trump Rally,
I Realized Democrats Are Not Ready For 2020.“
By Karlyn Borysenko at Medium.
“I’ve been a Democrat for 20 years. But this experience made me realize how out-of-touch my party is with the country at large.”
“If you had told me three years ago that I would ever attend a Donald Trump rally, I would have laughed and assured you that was never going to happen. Heck, if you had told me I would do it three months ago, I probably would have done the same thing. So, how did I find myself among 11,000-plus Trump supporters in Manchester, New Hampshire? Believe it or not, it all started with knitting.
“You might not think of the knitting world as a particularly political community, but you’d be wrong. Many knitters are active in social justice communities and love to discuss the revolutionary role knitters have played in our culture. I started noticing this about a year ago, particularly on Instagram. I knit as a way to relax and escape the drama of real life, not to further engage with it. But it was impossible to ignore after roving gangs of online social justice warriors started going after anyone in the knitting community who was not lockstep in their ideology.
“Knitting stars on Instagram were bullied and mobbed by hundreds of people for seemingly innocuous offenses. One man got mobbed so badly that he had a nervous breakdown and was admitted to the hospital on suicide watch. Many things were not right about the hatred, and witnessing the vitriol coming from those I had aligned myself with politically was a massive wake-up call. …”
Does this foreshadow the long-awaited counter-revolution against the ascendant Left, as the silent majority awakens? Or does it show how the Left has taken root in even conservative communities? Dalrock has documented how radical feminism has taken hold in “conservative” Christian communities (e.g., here, here, and here). Does the Left have sufficient momentum to win?
Remember, anything is possible in ClownWorld. Predictions are futile.
For More Information
Ideas! For some shopping ideas see my recommended books and films at Amazon. Also, see a story about our future: Ultra Violence: Tales from Venus.
If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. See all posts about ways to reform America, about the Left-wing, about the Right-wing, and especially these…
- The Left goes full open borders, changing America forever.
- Visions of America if the Left wins.
- The key insight: the Left hates America and will destroy it.
- The Left can win in 2020 and dominate US politics.
- The middle in American politics has died. Now extremists rule.
- Glimpses of the political revolution just starting.
- About the slow-mo revolution by the Left.
- Triumph of the Left over the liberals who nurtured them.
- None of the Democratic candidates are moderates.
Two books explaining what happened
I have not found a good book explaining what happened to the Left, causing its hatred of America. These are the best I have found, looking at our politics.
Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?
The Party Is Over: How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless, and the Middle Class Got Shafted
