Suggestions for a Post-Trump World, Introduction and Part 1

 

I realize that even suggesting that my thesis – that America will survive Trump – is almost certainly going to be rejected by many readers on this blog without a second thought. I have many reasons to believe that this will be the case, and my original intention was to begin this series with that very article.

However I believe it makes more sense that the first few articles in this series deal with the reality we are facing in this country right now.  I may be in a minority when I say I don't think were doomed but I won't deny the circumstances surrounding our country are dire and we must address them. That means taking note of what isn't working in resistance to Trump – and more importantly what should be done instead. And since there is another No Kings Protest going on as I write this article, I think we need to start there.

 

Part 1

None of The Protest Movements This Century Did Anything To Make  A Difference  Before 2016.

Why Do So Many Cling to Them Even Now?

 

Earlier this week I was watching a documentary special about boxers during the 1960s and 1970s. In the midst of this, I don't know why,  the documentary cut to a series of footage of Ronald Reagan, the boogeyman of progressive causes for the last sixty years.

In the midst of explaining why he had attacked so much of the safety net that had been crucial for the well-being of African-Americans we cut to a series of images from the 1960s including the riots in Watts and Newark and LBJ commenting on it. A playwright then argued: "After so much time of a non-violent approach we felt a reason to take matters into our own hands."

As I was born in 1979 I can't claim to speak for why so many of the demonstrators in the protest movements both against Vietnam and as part of the Black Power movement felt the need to act in an aggressive and frequently violent forms of what they would refer to as dissent.  I know what I think about it from the distance of decades but I wasn't there and I can't claim in good faith to know what was going through their heads. That being said, I do live in a world that has been suffering the ramifications of those protests my entire life and in my adult life, I've seen how the descendants of that movement have been trying everything in their power to imitate it.  And looking at the present moment, the way so many people of that generation still talk of that period with a combination of melancholy and fondness grates on me to this day.

Increasingly every time I hear narration like this from a documentary – and this was just the most recent – part of me thinks: "And how did that approach work out? Not just for the protestors today but for the world we live in now." I find it fascinating that so many histories of this era from the perspective of leftist argues for the rise of conservatism and erases the left's role during this period. That's a striking bit of contortion even for them.

Because as everyone who looks at the historical record knows it was because of the rioting in the streets as well as the Eugene McCarthy primary campaign that forced LBJ to not run for reelection in 1968.  Richard Nixon would seize on what was known as the 'backlash' movement and argue that most Americans were part of the 'silent majority': a term that the left has essentially used to refer to as 'the racist vote'. While there is some truth to that – the Democratic Party has lost the white working class vote in every election since 1968 – it's usually use as a dog whistle to disguise that many Americans at the time were horrified by the violence on the streets on TV that climaxed with the demonstration in Chicago at the Democratic National Convention. Combined with the McCarthy campaigns unwillingness to embrace the Democratic nominee for President Hubert Humphrey -  a man who had for twenty years been ahead of the curve on liberal causes like civil rights -  Richard Nixon narrowly won election in 1968. The Republicans would win a total of five of the next six Presidential elections as the country increasingly moved to the right in both parties.

The left's reaction to this in books, film and all forms of pop culture has been to essentially take the argument of the 1960s as a 'Lost Cause' when we were this close to achieving the dream and America rejected it. Hollywood has spent the last fifty years mythologizes members of the activist movement from Malcolm X to Fred Hampton as well as the Chicago 7 and many members chose to do so. As America moved more to the right, the left chose to react by arguing that the establishment was for suckers and getting involved with politics was a losers game.

And through this came the fundamental approach that has prevailed among the left to this day: activism over participation in the political process. The fact that the generations that have come in the aftermath of the 1960s have essentially been following to the letter a model that had already failed and in fact had caused the opposite of what the demonstrators wanted to achieve is something that those demonstrators have either denied or never chosen to share.

The left's approach in these protests seem to follow two basic principles: "Speaking truth to power" and 'raising awareness'.  All of the protests movement that have existed in my adult life – which pretty much covers this century – are based solely on that as a plan. It is about gathering  a crowd before the cameras, making a lot of noise, waiting for 'the pigs' to show up and disperse you (perhaps with some violence) and then going home until the next action.

This format can be seen in every activist movement during this period from the left: the WTO protests, the anti-war protests against the War on Terror, Occupy Wall Street, the anti-police protests throughout the country during the 2010s (even though they start before that) the student protests against the War in Gaza and all of the anti-Trump protests during his first term and at the moment. (I'll get to that last one in a bit.) They are made up young people, full of energy and emotion, and I won't deny the nobility of the overwhelming majority of their causes nor do I fault them for the reasons they do it.

The problem I have is simple. Just like with the anti-Vietnam movements and the Black power movements during the 1960s they have all failed.  For all their marching and sit-ins and demonstrations none of these problems have gone away. And since Fox News and the conservative organizations in America have been able to broadcast them to a large portion of the public they have increasingly led white working class voters to vote for Republicans which has always actively made all of these problems worse.

 Most of this, for the record, was a big problem before Trump arrived on the scene in 2015. And when in the aftermath of his inauguration millions of Americans took to the streets against him it really didn't change anything. It certainly did nothing to loosen the grip he had over his base: certainly that didn't change in either his first bid for reelection or last year's. And it has done much damage to the Democratic party as a whole in the aftermath of the 2018 midterms.  They have increasingly been trying to strike a balance between what could be referred to as the AOC-Bernie wing of the party and the other parts of their coalition.  And since the Squad has been just as much about this model of activism as opposed to governing cable news has had great success using them as the new face of 'the enemy'.  We saw this play out in last year's election when Harris only carried 32 percent of white working class voters and 8 percent of rural America – record lows for a Democrat in either category.

During this period major left aligned coalition groups such as MoveOn and Daily Kos have constantly been trying to mobilize progressive causes. They are far less interested in electing progressives to office then they are pushing the Democrats to the left. They constantly have been setting marks for protest movements such as the No Kings movements as well as town halls where they openly want to chide incumbent Democrats for not following leftist doctrine, regardless of how many elections the Democrats lose as a process. This is clearly as much a losing formula as the protest movement itself but the left seems pot committed to a losing hand.

And the reason it’s a losing hand is because at every level the protest movements are flawed because their achievements are counter to a political one. What's more the two aspects that are gospel demonstrates the left's Achilles heel not just since Vietnam but throughout every aspect of its movements of reform dating back to anti-slavery movement: engaging in every method possible to achieve your ends except the one that will do so  - politics.

This would be bad enough on its own and is compounded exponentially because of the narrowness of the two aspects of a protest movement are counter to how real change is achieved. 'Speaking truth to power' has been the gospel of the left for two hundred years but it excludes one critical point: power is under no obligation to listen unless you have either political or economic capital to make them do so.  All of the movements of the 21^st century, down to the No Kings Protests,  purposely reject either. It is all about performing before cameras or social media or in person.

But without those two critical elements power doesn't have to listen to you at all. That's part of the advantage to having power. They protest in front of your building: you can send the police to get rid of them. Make loud speeches before the cameras: they can change the channel. And they can ignore anything you do on social media without caring either. You'd think the last decade would have reminded the left that all of these things work just as well for the opposition as they do for them but they don't seem to get that.

As for the idea of raising awareness the left has always taken the attitude of 'no publicity is bad publicity'. Except that's never been the case with these movements: I live in a world where the right is very good at making Greta Gerwig's Barbie the sign of the downfall of America as we know it. The conservative media has spent the last thirty years convincing its listeners, its viewers, its followers, that every single thing you're demonstrating for is the exact reason they must vote Republican for the rest of their lives. The left knows how good they are at this but to them that just proves that those people are beyond saving and are not the target of 'the movement'.

But  what is the point of this so-called movement? Far as I can tell it basically means you all gather together for a few hours, chant the worst possible slogans against your enemies, get as much attention for the media of every form, and then go home feeling you've accomplished something. Then Fox News rebroadcasts this, Republican politicians denounce it, white working class voters see it out of (or in) context and continue to vote Republican.

And there's no attempt to connect this with any political movement. Indeed even now the people who make up these protests by and large still follow the post-Vietnam mindset that there is no difference between the two parties. They might make some effort to run progressive candidates for office but as we saw with the Justice Democrats movement in 2018, it is overwhelmingly rejected by all but the bluest districts in the bluest states. And those who do manage to end up winning elected office are frequently lambasted by their own causes when they step outside the boundaries of ideological purity.

Sarah McBride, the first transgender member of Congress, would learn that the hard way when she suggested that the maximalist attitude of the LGBTQ+ community was pushing away much of the electorate. This was a fact that couldn't be denied by the results of most elections but McBride was publicly lambasted by that community for saying as much. She is already subject to immense bigotry from conservative America and her own Republican representatives but this response demonstrates she is unlikely to find solace from the left unless she stakes to the far left of her party and the nation. That this might end up causing her to lose reelection and therefore no longer be an advocate for progressive causes is irrelevant to that demographic.

 As I've send over and over in other articles I support the majority of progressive causes and principles but I know that unless the country or the electorate are behind you, you won't get them achieved. The right understands this and has much of the last half-century weaponizing every part of their movement: from the Republican party to the grass roots level towards gaining it.  They committed to their vision and spent a long time realizing it. The left knows this and will tell you as much but even now they don't seem inclined to engage at any level of the process, whether it is political, in think tanks or media. They have fought the battle for the soul of America in this century on their terms and with their weapons.  That those weapons have no force outside their own bubble is a point they don't want to accept; that their enemies will gladly use the weapons they disdain to defeat them is something they might acknowledge but see no reason to change their tactics.

For that reason the conservative movement has been able to achieve what it has over the 21^st century in large part because in the one battle where it counts the left has proudly been getting a grade of 'absent' for decades.  They will claim the protests today are part of a movement. To me and I suspect millions of Americans, all they are doing is marching in circles and talking to themselves in front of the cameras. That nothing will change after today's protest is essentially the point of what they do.

Perhaps many of them do so in large part because they need to feel like they're doing something against the horror show that is America and the world they live in. This is understandable and excusable. But that's the difference between activism and politics. In the former you're doing something right now and it feels like an accomplishment. In the latter you can't tell what the effect will be for years, decades or maybe even in your lifetime. I understand why so many people might glean towards the former rather than the latter, particularly in the era of instant gratification. The problem is that the other side has proven to be more than willing to do the latter as well as the former – and if today's left don't realize that the horror show will not go away even when Trump finally does.